As the matriarch lunged again, Dominic lifted his left forepaw before him and summoned one of the hyena carcasses from his storage space. The carcass shuddered and blood poured out of it as the matriarch bit deeply into it with the sound of jaws snicking shut. Dominic was chilled as he realised that, if his ears were to be believed, her Crushing Bite had passed through bone almost as easily as flesh. It could only be his own Enhanced Body which had prevented her from doing the same to his shoulder – as far as he could tell, though the whole area was screaming in pain, there were no bones broken even if some might have been slightly crushed or scratched.

  Triggering Consume, Dominic inhaled the golden dust, startling the matriarch with the sudden disappearance of the obstacle. She fell right towards him and Dominic was able to spit the ball of acid that he’d been preparing right into her open jaws.

  He flicked his tongue frantically as the matriarch reared back in surprise, filling his mouth with acid once more. At the same time, he summoned a carcass to the paw on his damaged side, quickly disintegrating it into golden dust too.

  Some of the golden dust again went to the matriarch, unfortunately, but most of it was absorbed by him. Seeing that the matriarch was about to lunge again for his vulnerable throat, Dominic swiped at her with his undamaged paw.

  The swipe was badly positioned to cause any significant damage, and her tough fur deflected much of what he did manage to deliver. But at least his paw was now in the perfect position for another attack.

  Concentrating on Lightning Discharge, he poured his full mana bar into the blow. 26 MP wasn’t enough to damage the matriarch much, but its pain added to that of his claws interrupted her intended attack for the fraction of a second he needed for his next move.

  Spitting his ball of acid with an accuracy born of desperation, he managed to cover one of her eyes and spill a little into the other too, instantly blinding her.

  The matriarch reared back with a yelp, still moving with that impossible speed and strength. But Dominic had bought himself the time he needed.

  Summoning a new carcass, Dominic felt his shoulder come back together. As soon as he felt capable, even if not fully healed, he rolled back onto his front and pushed himself up from the ground, ripping at the two hyenas who dared to approach him again – clearly they had become emboldened by him being on the ground.

  He ripped out the throat of one of them while the other giggled and ran for it again. He’d pursue it but he had a more important target right now that couldn’t wait.

  The matriarch was still yelping and scratching at her eyes, but every couple of seconds or so, she ran and bit at the air in a random direction. Dominic realised that she was attempting to strike her target even while blind – perhaps she realised that the only way she would survive this now was to kill him.

  He wasn’t inclined to let her. But as he looked at her and saw how the injuries he’d given her had noticeably improved, he had to question whether he wasn’t the only one with enhanced regeneration.

  His shoulder was still killing him – even Consuming three carcasses in a row had only reconnected the tendons and healed the muscles enough to give him mobility and stop his life from pouring out onto the ground. It was still an open wound which pained him every time he even twitched. But he feared that if he gave the matriarch much more time, she might even be able to regenerate her eyes and regain her vision. And she’d already proven that, somehow, she was stronger and faster than he was.

  Should he offer again to let her surrender? They were both injured, but hers was arguably more serious than his. For sight hunters, losing their vision was one of the worst injuries to sustain. Even if she rejected it last time, the situation had changed – she might be open to a surrender and then that would end this matter here.

  Except would it? Leo didn’t need to speak for Dominic to feel his complete rejection of the idea. And Dominic could understand why. The fact was that the hyena matriarch was dangerous. He’d only gained the upper hand by surprising her with the carcass – next time, she would be prepared.

  And though he was pretty confident that any surrender would be System-backed, what if the hyena matriarch found a way around whatever she promised? She was clearly smart and that was only at Tier 2. What would she be like at higher Tiers? And Dominic accepted he was no lawyer. He’d lucked out with Nyx that the ameshek had come around pretty easily – he somehow doubted that the matriarch would do the same.

  Yet…the very thought of Nyx made him hesitate longer than he really should – there was a battle going on beyond the System-cleared space, after all, even ignoring the fact that he was giving his opponent time to recover. At the time, he hadn’t thought that that was possible. What if giving the hyena matriarch a chance was all that was needed?

  Then again, Nyx had stepped forwards to fight him to stop him from killing any more of her pack. The hyena matriarch had done the complete opposite by letting him rip through her hyenas first without lifting a paw. That wasn’t exactly hopeful behaviour.

  Still….

  ‘Do you surrender?’ he sent to the matriarch with Telepathy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Leo cried out incredulously. ‘Kill her now and end this,’ the lion growled at him.

  ‘I have to give her a chance,’ Dominic replied firmly. The situation had changed. If he didn’t offer it, he would always wonder what might have happened if he had.

  ‘You are endangering our Pride with every moment extra you spend offering mercy to vermin which has tried to kill us multiple times. We’ve already lost one female – how many more do you want us to lose in offering this creature mercy?’

  Dominic didn’t want to admit it, but Leo had a point. They were on a time crunch.

  ‘You have the space of one breath to decide. And then I kill you,’ he warned the matriarch, exaggerating his breath so the hyena could hear it.

  She seemed to be considering it, shifting into a more submissive stance. Dominic dared a glance around, Leo’s words about his Pride worrying him.

  It was in that moment that the hyena matriarch struck.

  Spatial Awareness warned him in just enough time for him to leap backwards. The matriarch’s teeth snicked together just inches from his muzzle. Shaken, Dominic leaped to the side. Then, anger rising to overcome his shock, he stalked silently around the hyena, taking advantage of the fact that she was still blind – she must have used his breathing to identify where he was. More fool him for giving her such an obvious clue.

  Getting himself in the perfect position, he Pounced. He landed on the matriarch’s back with the full force of his weight, Airborne triggered to increase it even further.

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  His teeth set themselves into the hyena’s spine even as his weight bore her to the ground. He clenched them together, feeling disbelief when they barely sank in beyond the top layer of muscles.

  His sense of incredulity increased as the matriarch pushed up against him, almost managing to lift even his massive weight from the ground. What kind of opponent was she? Strength, speed, and defence?

  Determined to end this right here and now before the matriarch managed to pull out some more cheating Aspects – maybe she had a spell or three up her sleeve – Dominic started flicking his tongue to fill his mouth with acid and poured his remaining stamina into Crushing Bite. Just to try to decrease her health pool further, he raked at the matriarch’s sides with his claws, opening them up and applying Bleed where he could even as her defensive coat resisted his strikes.

  His teeth sank deeper bit by bit. The matriarch desperately did her best to squirm free from him, regardless of the damage it might do to her own flesh. Dominic shifted his claws from raking to just holding as it felt like his teeth were about to be pulled from his mouth.

  His stamina was getting low. Seeing little choice – it was all or nothing – he activated Second Wind. Hopefully by the time the debt came due, the fight would be over. The sudden replenishment of his health and stamina was a relief, but his stamina soon started draining away again as the matriarch just would not give up.

  Snapping bites at his flanks and hindquarters revealed that the few hyenas he hadn’t killed were now attacking, doing their best to distract him from their leader. Dominic didn’t dare let up with his bite – with as tough an opponent as the matriarch had been, he feared that if he let her go now, even as injured as she was, she might still get the best of him – especially if she could hear that she had reinforcements attacking him.

  Instead, he just beat at the hyenas with his wings, growling through the pain as his not-quite-healed wing was damaged once more. And he increased the pressure of his jaws even further, pushing it to limits he’d never reached before – something he couldn’t do for long.

  ‘Let me go and I will surrender!’ Dominic heard the matriarch say, her mental tone panicked.

  ‘Too late,’ he replied grimly – it hadn’t escaped him that she hadn’t actually offered him surrender then and there and the lack of System notification told him that the fight was still ongoing.

  And then, suddenly, his teeth slid closed with a snap that he was pretty sure cracked at least one of his canines and made his own skull shudder.

  The matriarch went limp below him as her lifeblood pumped into Dominic’s mouth. With relief he stopped feeding stamina into Crushing Bite – he’d been getting low on that even with the recent injection of Second Wind.

  He didn’t dare release the matriarch, though. There had been no notification of her death; the Challenge was still continuing. She was not yet dead.

  His health bar lost chunks as the hyenas ripped flesh from him, but fortunately his wings were able to keep them away from latching onto anything serious. Unfortunately, his venom was still tapped so he was unable to use Poison Cloud again.

  And then, finally, it appeared before his eyes.

  [You have killed Spotted Hyena Matriarch (Evolved Beast level 27)]

  [You have earned 23 PP]

  [Congratulations! You have won the Challenge: For The Lord’s Honour. Would you like to see your rewards?]

  ‘Later,’ Dominic thought at the System as he released the matriarch’s neck and struck at the closest hyena, his Sharp Bite Attack ripping out the creature’s throat before it could react.

  The rest of the hyenas scattered as he whirled around, giggling in fear as they ran from him – again. The Challenge over, the artificial space which had been created around them had clearly ended as the hyenas quickly disappeared into the crowd of beasts which was already pressing inwards.

  Dominic absorbed the hyena’s body that he’d just killed, sighing in relief as the healing power of the golden dust went to work on the wounds which had transformed his coat into a patchwork of red and sandy yellow. Mostly red. He needed to heal. And sleep to let his stamina regenerate fully. He did absorb another two carcasses just to make sure that when the Second Wind timer ended, he wouldn’t be caught off guard or left helpless, though.

  Then, inhaling deeply, he opened his jaws and Roared, embedding the sound with a sense of victory – and threat.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted, projecting his thoughts as best he could with Telepathy and hoping that the other form of communication would work for the rest. Biting into the matriarch’s body, he lifted it above his head and showed it off to everyone close enough to see. ‘Your leader is dead!

  For a moment, everyone in the battle froze, giving Dominic enough time to briefly take in exactly what was happening even as he dropped the carcass in his mouth back onto the ground.

  The Pride was still hard pressed, though they’d spread out a bit from where they had been and their numbers had swollen with the new lions. Dominic ignored Leo’s anger-filled jealousy at the sight of the large male standing near his lionesses – near Sekhmet. For Dominic, the importance was that the additional lions had bolstered their Pride’s numbers. In fact, with a solid centre now, it looked like they were creating a pincer movement as Nyx had been leading her amesheks and the trodils to descend from the ridge and close in on the left flank of the Pride members, even as the ulla leader accompanied by the wild dogs and harashes closed in on the right flank.

  The beasts formerly under the command of the matriarch were in two bunches. One was the group on the front lines who had been surrounding Dominic and the matriarch’s Challenge space and who were now staring fearfully at Dominic standing above the matriarch’s corpse. The other group was composed of a number of beasts who seemed to have been having second thoughts about fighting even before Dominic had won the Challenge against the matriarch. In between the two groups was a small amount of space that was slowly getting wider as the second group edged ever further away from the action.

  His Spatial Awareness became aware of something entering the space above him and he stepped aside a moment before it thumped into the ground. It was a body, bloodied and broken. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it might have been one of those pterodactyl-type fliers before it fell many metres to earth.

  Dominic spared a glance upwards and saw the distinct shapes of albuhas circling above them, obviously in battle with the fliers up there. Fortunately, like those below, they seemed to have called a temporary truce as they, better than most, were able to see that the matriarch was dead.

  But the lull in battle was tenuous – it was lucky the falling carcass hadn’t broken it already. He needed to find some way of making the peace permanent. Preferably without needing to kill all the erstwhile matriarch’s troops – or at least the ones that hadn’t pulled back already.

  A notification pushed itself in front of his eyes, pulsing almost angrily as if it had been trying to get through to him for a while.

  [You have defeated the leader of the Beast Wave Challenge. You are a Beast Lord candidate. Would you like to become the new Beast Wave leader or would you like to dissolve the Beast Wave?

  Warning: You are currently part of the opposing faction. Accepting leadership of the Beast Wave will forcibly change your faction to the Beast Wave in opposition to your current faction. Leaving your current faction will lose you your rights to rewards that you earned as part of that faction]

  ‘Well, that’s an obvious choice,’ Dominic commented wryly.

  [You have chosen to dissolve the Beast Wave.]

  [The threat of the Beast Wave has been neutralised. The Nature Elves settlement ‘Selenthis’ has won the Beast Wave Challenge! Congratulations!]

  The last notification was in a vibrant purple colour and he strongly suspected that everyone in at least the elven faction might have seen it. His guess was supported as the next notification rolled in.

  [Contribution Credit totals will now be finalised for all participants of the Settlement Challenge. The System reward centre is now open in the settlement near: The Great Mother. You have 6:23:59:59 to claim your rewards before the centre will be closed once more.]

  [You have contributed significantly to the ending of the Beast Wave. You have single-handedly killed the leader of the Beast Wave along with 35 of her 41 Bound clan members. You receive full credit for these kills. Your Pride and allies have killed 373 beasts from the opposing faction. You receive partial credit for these kills. Your second-in-command has converted a group of beasts from the opposing faction to your side and convinced them to fight with you. You receive partial credit for this conversion.

  Benefits calculating…]

  Dominic quickly dismissed the notification, turning his attention back to the beasts who were starting to shift. Not sure whether they intended to attack or to flee, Dominic once more reached out with Telepathy and whatever other communication might work too.

  ‘The Beast Wave is dissolved! Now, you have two options available to you. Run away and live in peace as long as you do not attack either the elves or my Pride. Or stay and swear loyalty to me and face this new world with the strength of numbers.’

  here!