For a long moment almost dead silence reigned across the basin. Dominic saw several beasts looking around, as if searching for one who dared to break the silence.

  The movement caught Dominic’s gaze first – in a sea of stillness any movement was immediately noticeable. A beast was pushing its way through the others, though when they realised what was happening, the crowd melted away before it, offering a clear route through.

  Dominic suspected that their willingness to move was partly to do with wanting someone else to face the one who had killed their leader, and partly due to exactly who was coming through. A scrin, bigger than the one Dominic had killed before, approached him quickly. Its gorilla-like barrel chest and strong arms with meaty hand-like paws at the ends was topped by a vicious hyena-like head.

  Dominic prepared himself – out of everyone here, he wasn’t surprised that a scrin might think that it had a chance. The last time he’d met one of their kind, he’d almost died. He didn’t doubt that it would be a different outcome now, but he was already tired and spent from his fight with the matriarch. If it did come down to a fight, he would need to make sure it was an official Challenge so he would benefit from its resource-restoring properties.

  But luckily, the scrin didn’t attack straight away. Instead, it stopped a few paces away, far enough that neither of them would be able to cover the space between them in a single leap. At least, Dominic suspected that that was the scrin’s intention – with the aid of his wings, Dominic probably could cover the distance with a single pounce. But he didn’t since it seemed like the scrin wanted to talk.

  ‘Why should we join you?’ she demanded – if Dominic was interpreting both her body language and the scent brought on the breeze correctly. ‘You, a pet of the two-legs.’ She was projecting her contempt, eyeing him with disgust. Dominic couldn’t help wondering whether she’d actually had experience with ‘pets of two-legs’ – her reaction seemed over-the-top for someone who had only encountered the elves for the first time in the recent Challenge. Perhaps the scrins were from the same world as the elves? And even if he hadn’t seen any scrins in the elven settlement, that didn’t mean that it was impossible for them to have been captured in the past or had been somewhere Dominic hadn’t seen – the elven town was big enough that he’d only explored a fraction of it. It wasn’t beyond Dominic’s notice that underneath the obvious contempt was also a significant amount of fear – her scent was full of it.

  He shook himself out of his woolgathering – he didn’t need Leo’s pointed mental prod to remind him that he was currently engaged in a conversation which might determine whether this ended in a slaughter on both sides, or might gain him allies for the coming dungeon overflow.

  ‘I am no pet,’ he told the scrin imperiously, standing as tall as he could and stretching his wings out behind him to increase his size even further. Primitive techniques of intimidation they might be, he still saw immediately that they had had an effect as the scrin flinched back for a moment before she ruffled her fur and shifted forwards again, her own hackles up. ‘I am a temporary ally of the elves with my own territory – one fully independent of theirs,’ he continued firmly.

  ‘Then why have you come as their emissary?’ the scrin demanded.

  ‘I have not,’ Dominic replied decisively, his eyes fixed on the yellow predatory gaze of the scrin. ‘Any who join me are joining me, not the elves.’ Then he looked beyond the scrin and panned his gaze over the rest of the beast army. Already he saw that a couple of groups were sneaking away, using the attention on Dominic to serve as cover for their escape. He didn’t draw attention to them – if they wished to leave peacefully, that was their choice. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t encourage them to reconsider.

  ‘There are enemies coming,’ he announced loudly, making sure that his Telepathy projected his message even to the leaders at the back – and those trying to slip away. Somehow, he just knew who the leaders were despite it not always being physically obvious. He wondered if that was part of being a ‘Beast Lord candidate’. ‘Many of them. Enemies who will seek to kill carelessly and consume utterly. Alone, you will be easy prey. Join me and we will be able to fight them off together. Our cubs and pregnant females will be protected in the heart of my territory while our fighters grow strong with the deaths of our enemies.’

  There was a long silence after he finished speaking. Even the scrin before him seemed to be looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘How we know you don’t just kill us later? You get stronger with our deaths!’ a creature in the crowd asked. It was a being Dominic hadn’t yet come across, something which looked kind of like a tall black fox with a ruff of fur around its neck.

  ‘We could kill you now,’ Dominic pointed out, turning his head to indicate the carcasses lying around his Pride members and him. ‘And will if you neither join us nor leave peacefully.’ He stretched his wings and then tucked them back along his spine, glad that his regeneration had already mostly repaired the damage that had been done to his wings. They still felt a little tender, but not like they would crack apart at the slightest movement.

  ‘If you want to fight, we’ll fight. Right here. Right now. If you want to flee, run away now. If you want to join us, have your leaders step forward and swear to follow me.’

  ‘And if we want to be sure of your strength?’ the scrin demanded, her gaze intent. Dominic held it without flinching, nudging the carcass at his feet with his paw.

  ‘Your matriarch lies dead before me, surrounded by the members of her clan. I defeated them all alone. If you want to take your chances and fight me now one by one, then go ahead. But I will not hold back. I will attack with full force – and if that means you die before you can surrender, that’s not my problem.’

  In his peripheral vision. Dominic was aware of several beasts looking around at each other, but his gaze stayed fixed on the scrin, suspecting that this one was the most likely to take him up on his offer and attack.

  The hyena-faced creature held his gaze for a long moment, and then dipped her head.

  ‘Our previous clan leader was defeated by the matriarch, and she was the strongest of us all. You have beaten the matriarch. It is enough – for now.’

  ‘As long as it’s recognised that any future Challenges must be officially accepted by both parties and may result in the exile or death of your whole group if you lose them and I choose to impose such penalties,’ Dominic replied, thinking fast. He suspected that trying to rule out any challenges would just lead to issues – it seemed that provable might was even more important among beasts than among humans – but he didn’t want to be facing them every few minutes. Hopefully the potential threat to them all would be sufficient to keep them in check.

  The scrin agreed to his caveat after a moment to consider it and it wasn’t long before she was swearing to obey him and ensure that her clan did the same. When she’d finished, Dominic got a notification about their new alliance.

  ‘What is this?’ the scrin asked, puzzled.

  ‘What is what?’

  ‘This feeling. It is like…I know that you will not attack me if I do not attack you except in a Challenge. That we have peace between us as long as we are loyal.’

  Dominic could only guess that it was the beasts’ equivalent of his notification of the alliance.

  ‘You didn’t have something like that for the matriarch?’ he asked, slightly surprised.

  ‘No. We followed her because she was the most powerful and because we gained strength from it. But we held no loyalty towards her.’

  That was interesting, and hopefully boded well for the rest of the beast leaders – it would be easier to convince them if they hadn’t cared about the matriarch.

  That seemed to be the cue for the rest of the beast leaders to step forward and swear their own obedience. The rest of the leaders who were interested in joining him, that was. Dominic noticed a good number of beasts slipping away, including the killer-rabbit vetens. He wasn’t too sad about that – they really gave him the creeps and he didn’t really want them around his Place of Power, especially not with vulnerable cubs there. Still, it was a pity he wouldn’t be able to sic them on his enemies either. He also noticed a group of enemy kesh doing their best to sneak away without catching his eye. He had a feeling he knew why they were particularly wary of him, but not wanting to set light to the powder-keg, Dominic pretended he couldn’t see them.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Fortunately, no one decided to take on Dominic or his ever-growing army – they all had enough self-preservation for that. Even when Second Wind took its due, and sucked out a good portion of his health and stamina he’d regenerated, he managed to conceal the change enough that no one decided it was a weakness to take advantage of. Even the group of the mohawk-bearing warthog-like queerbs whose belligerence Dominic was already familiar with chose not to go against the flow and swore their allegiance along with the others. Unfortunately, the pterodactyl-like fliers hadn’t chosen to join which Dominic was disappointed about – more scouts would always be a good thing. Still, at least their number of albuhas had just exploded.

  By the end, out of the perhaps twenty-five groups which had been there and survived at least mostly intact, Dominic now held the allegiance of fourteen of them, including the ulla, harash, wild dog, and trodil leaders who had joined him before, and Howler and his group who were quickly added to the Pride fully. The rest of the groups would have to prove themselves before being allowed to join – Dominic and Leo had decided that the new allies would be on the same level as the kesh. The leaders themselves had been added to the Pride, just so they could feel the benefits of it and would be encouraged to get their groups to cooperate for the chance of being added in full.

  All these groups were now added to the end of his own status – technically his allies, not the Pride’s.

  Alliances:

  - Long-horned Ulla male (level 20) (Group representative)

  - 16 members (highest level: 19, lowest level: 6, mean: 13)

  - Trodil male (level 20) (Group representative)

  - 8 members (highest level: 20, lowest level: 12, mean: 17)

  - Wild Dog male (level 17) (Group representative)

  - 12 members (highest level: 17, lowest level: 8, mean: 12)

  - Harash female (level 19) (Group representative)

  - 18 members (highest level: 18, lowest level: 13, mean: 16)

  - Scrin (level 18) (Group representative)

  - 8 members (highest level: 18, lowest level: 9, mean: 15)

  - Black Maned Wolf (level 15) (Group representative)

  - 17 members (highest level: 15, lowest level: 6, mean: 12)

  - African Buffalo (level 11) (Group representative)

  - 34 members (highest level: 11, lowest level: 2, mean: 7)

  - Red-nosed Lillip (level 12) (Group representative)

  - 12 members (highest level: 13, lowest level: 1, mean: 6)

  - Western Queerb (level 9) (Group representative)

  - 27 members (highest level: 9, lowest level: 6, mean: 8)

  - Golden Jackal (level 15) (Group representative)

  - 9 members (highest level: 17, lowest level: 11, mean: 13)

  - Long-eared Muran (level 14) (Group representative)

  - 16 members (highest level: 14, lowest level: 9, mean: 12)

  - Dingo (level 16) (Group representative)

  - 13 members (highest level: 16, lowest level: 1, mean: 9)

  - Black-backed Jackal (level 12) (Group representative)

  - 15 members (highest level: 12, lowest level: 6, mean: 9)

  The beast army had been dealt a massive blow and while Dominic’s forces had suffered losses too, the vast majority of the deaths had been among his enemies. Almost half of the beast wave numbers had been cut down and even the groups who had stuck around to swear their allegiance to Dominic were severely reduced. The rest, composed of mere fractions of what they had started the day with, just vanished into the savannah, clearly wanting no more to do with territorial fighting and perhaps hoping that their smaller numbers would see them fly below the radar. Dominic wasn’t sure that would work, but it was their choice.

  The red-nosed lillips were most obviously the weakest of the bunch who had stuck around – they weren’t particularly big, they seemed almost timid for predators, and though they had claws and teeth, the natural weapons were nothing to write home about. Their best features were their tough scaled hides. Their group had been badly reduced by the battle and they were clearly hoping that they could find strength in numbers. Dominic would have to find out where they might be useful, as with the rest of his new allies. Perhaps as scouts? They were pretty well-camouflaged, after all, apart from their bright red noses, of course.

  The massive numbers of deaths seemed mostly to do with the lack of tactics – Dominic learned afterwards that while the beast army had just charged mindlessly for the front lines with their own allies forcing them forwards whether or not they wanted to, his own forces had rotated fighters to the front and then pulled them back when they were injured, the healers sticking at the back to get them back up to a fighting-fit state in as short a time as possible. And of course, Sekhmet had used the Pride Defence shield early on when they were really getting pressed, which had given them the time to recover while their enemies’ front line was crushed against the shield itself by the force of those behind.

  Of Dominic’s Pride itself, apparently there had only been four deaths: the lioness Serena, the kesh Four-Stripe and Slow-Eye, and one of the amesheks, still, as yet, unnamed – and now never would be. Though he wanted to greet his Pride members and assure himself that most of them were still alive and well, he had one thing he needed to do first: check through the various notifications waiting for him and accept the rewards from defeating the matriarch. He was worried that not doing it and leaving her body around would end up with someone else absorbing it. He was hesitant to put it in his storage space in case that affected it or the Challenge in some way.

  So, in the meantime, he just got a report from Sekhmet through Telepathy about the reason for the deaths – she herself was fine, though busy checking on their Pride. The healers were working to heal, but there were enough carcasses around that Dominic wasn’t needed. And frankly, he needed a moment after that battle – they all did. More than half the Pride had lain down where they stood; the other half had pulled away to a less bloody patch and then had lain down.

  Now that they had made peace with those who had decided to stick around and the rest had hurriedly retreated, their new allies were also resting. They hadn’t fought for that long, but it had been intense for anyone actually fighting. That was why they had lost some, despite their tactics.

  As it turned out, Serena and the ameshek were grabbed by their opponents and pulled away from the front lines, killed before they could be rescued by their Pride-mates, as was Four-Stripe. Slow-Eye, however, had been killed by an enterprising group of beasts that had snuck around the back and gone for the most vulnerable. The kesh had become a hero by defending the healers – at the expense of his own life. By the time he fell, reinforcements had arrived.

  Dominic knew he needed to speak to Nyx and Loud-Hoot to give them his condolences. And maybe see if Nyx wanted a post-mortem name for the lost ameshek.

  The attack on the healers had also resulted in the young lions deciding to get involved in the fight instead of staying with the vulnerable albuhas. From what Sekhmet said, it was Siera’s fault – she had seen her mother Isis getting attacked and had decided to go help. Dominic wasn’t sure what he felt about it. On the one hand, he had wanted to keep the youngsters out of this fight. On the other, without the juveniles’ reinforcement, it was likely Isis herself would have been injured severely or may have even died.

  In the end, all he could do was accept that it had happened, and try to work out ways of avoiding a similar situation happening in the future. With any luck, the juveniles had levelled up enough to not be so vulnerable anymore. He’d have to check later.

  But first he used this brief moment of quiet to deal with the mass of notifications he could practically feel hovering around him like mosquitos. Hopefully they would be more pleasant than those blood-sucking bugs, though.

  [For your personal actions in this engagement, you have earned 1058 Challenge Credits. Prey Point Enhancements do not apply to Challenge Credits. Your followers may have gained some Challenge Credits according to their own participation. Continue to work towards your faction’s victory to earn more Challenge Credits.]

  [Congratulations! You have been personally responsible for ending the Challenge with positive results for your faction. You are not the faction leader, however, you are the faction champion. You have therefore earned 1500 Challenge Credits. Prey Point Enhancements do not apply to Challenge Credits. Your followers may have gained some Challenge Credits according to their own participation.]

  [Your final Challenge Credit total is 2913. Please visit a reward centre in your settlement to redeem these credits.]

  [You have saved the population of Selanthis from a threat which they have recognised as being beyond their capacity to combat. The Elders of Selanthis have named you as a Respected Friend of Selanthis. Speak to one of the Elders of Selanthis to gain more clarification on what being a Respected Friend might entail. Note: benefits of a title offered by representatives of a population may be accompanied by responsibilities towards that population. The System will not enforce any rights or responsibilities which have not been clearly defined and accepted by both parties. In light of your actions, you have also been awarded the right to claim the Seat of the settlement. To claim the Seat, return to the settlement and declare your intentions before it.]

  Dominic found the last message slightly troubling, even if at first he had been satisfied at his efforts getting recognised. But the note at the end which implied that he might be held to something which he didn’t even know about was a little worrying, even if it was reassuring that the System itself would only enforce things he knew about beforehand and had accepted – challenges apparently being some kind of an exception as the fight with Nyx had shown. And what was that about the ‘Seat’ of the settlement? Was it trying to give him control of the elves again? Was this one of the consequences they’d referred to, of outsourcing the Challenge win?

  Although he sensed that there were more notifications waiting for him, he was getting too curious about the rewards he would receive for beating the matriarch.

  [Spotted Hyena: Evolved, level 27, Beast Lord candidate,

  54 EP]

  [Enhancements available:

  Sharp teeth (3 EP)

  Defensive coat (7 EP)

  Powerful muscles (7 EP)

  Commanding voice (5 EP)

  Large body (4 EP)

  Sharp eyesight (1 EP)

  Quick reflexes (2 EP)

  Crushing Bite (4 EP)

  Keen Intelligence (12 EP)

  Clan Matriarch (25 EP)]

  ‘What the hell is Clan Matriarch?’ Dominic demanded.

  here!