Chapter 44 – Territorial Scent Marking
The cat made an impossible jump across so much dead space that even I was impressed, right into Rosalia's arms.
"Spoon," Rosalia said. "You shouldn't bully your cute pet like that!"
I scoffed. "That cute pet lasted less than a nanosecond in front of the spinosauruses we were fighting earlier. A loyal pet should fight for its master, not the other way around."
"Dinosaurs are scary~" Meat Shield chimed. The cat stuck out her tongue and clung further onto Rosalia, sinking her white paw mittens into Rosalia's ample breasts, which were buoyant in the water. A black star tattoo peeked out at me as if to say hi.
Deciding that I didn't want to die of blood loss from nosebleed, I stepped out of the bath and dried off, heading to the dimension room.
Right as I entered the living room, a notification went off on my screen.
[Golem has slain Juvenile Spinosaurus]
You have gained 7 souls.
HA! Poor cannibalistic little shit must have wandered back, hungry, just to get met by a murder machine. I didn't mind sitting back in the dimension room and letting my golem murder the hell out of every antagonistic life form in this region.
"Rosalia!" I called out to her. "Wanna go out and explore?"
"I can't yet. Need to recharge my holy power," she answered back. "Don't go out by yourself!"
I was tempted to go out by myself, but thinking it through it probably wasn't the best choice. For one, this new prehistoric wildlife infested region could not be underestimated by any means, and two, Rosalia didn't have any way to enter or leave the dimension room without me. Speaking of which…
I headed back to the bath to ask Meat Shield a question. "Hey, Meat Shield. Is there any way you can grant Rosalia access to the dimension room without me?"
Meat Shield walked over to me, jumping on the table next to the sink. "I can't give her portal access to the dimension room, but because Luxuria's Hot Spring Bath was created with her magical energy and she has partial ownership to it, I can give her a portal to that~"
Rosalia smiled widely. "Really? That's so convenient!"
Meat Shield strutted over to Rosalia, who had her elbows out of the water and her chin on her hands. The black cat walked into cat melee range of Rosalia, and gently placed one of her mittens on Rosalia's forehead.
"Done~" Meat Shield said matter-of-factly, turning around and hopping onto the trident bearing male statue, climbing up the statue's shoulders and resting on the top of its head.
"Oh," Rosalia exclaimed. She opened her hand and faced it upwards, a tear in space forming in the steamy air on top of her hand. Before the tear could fully widen into a portal, she closed her hand, and the portal winked out of existence. "This is just like your ability."
Meat Shield spoke from the top of the male statue's head. "You can now leave the dimension room whenever you want by yourself. But if you want to enter from outside, your portal only takes you to the bath which you have partial ownership over, and the other rooms will be locked."
"That's better than nothing," I responded. "Saves us a lot of logistical problems now that you can travel back and forth from at least this room. If I'm ever in trouble, you can hop out by yourself."
Rosalia nodded with her lips puckered up. "Yep, that's good."
Meat Shield continued. "And don't forget the most important rule. You can't access the dimension room in combat~"
I looked at the cat. "Meat Shield, you never told me that back in the beginning…"
"Hehe~" Meat Shield snickered, jumping from the top of the male trident statue to the side of the bath, running to the other side and hopping on the statue of the naked woman holding a vase. Paying careful attention not to get her fur wet from the water gushing out of the vase, Meat Shield adeptly climbed her way to the top and got comfortable.
I had to resist my knee jerk urge to take out an adamantite battleaxe from my inventory and toss it at her with the force of ten Jason Momoas throwing axes at a wooden target. Yeah, I wanted to murder this pussy cat so bad. Did she intentionally not tell me about this information back when I was level 1? Just so I could learn it myself the hard way?
[Golem is asking for your attention.]
What?
"Rosalia, how long until your holy power is recharged?"
"Em… I need some more time. It charges soooo slowwww~" Rosalia said with a crying face.
"Can it wait? I just got an alert that my golem is asking for my attention. If he's asking for it, it must be urgent."
Meat Shield's ears perked up at the news.
"Oh, I see. You're right, if your cute golem needs help then we have to go help," Rosalia acknowledged. She got out of the bath and quickly headed to the table, putting on her clerical robes. I drew my adamantite poleaxe from my inventory and opened a portal to the outside. I waited for Rosalia to finish changing.
"Let's go separately this time," I said to her. "In case there's an ambush waiting."
"Okay," Rosalia replied. She opened a portal in front of herself and looked at me.
"I'll count down from three, and we go. Three… two… one… go!"
We stepped into our respective portals simultaneously and landed on the beach. Immediately, I scanned my surroundings for enemies.
Huh?
Siege Golem was bent down in a sitting position next to a stoic looking dwarf with graying hair, a fierce trimmed beard, and sun burnt skin. Both the dwarf and my golem seemed to be waiting for us.
"Well I'll be damned," the dwarf said while standing up. "Living, breathing intelligent beings. It's been so long…"
Rosalia walked over to my side, as we looked at the tanned dwarf walk towards us.
"I know you have a lot of questions," the dwarf said. "I'll introduce myself first. The name's Bjorn. I fell from the mountain above during a mining accident, and managed to survive miraculously when my equipment got tangled up in the trees over yonder. Been living by myself as a castaway for god knows how long."
"I'm Spoon."
"Rosalia."
Bjorn nodded, then looked at the half eaten and decaying corpses all over the shore, and up at the mountain directly above us. "How the hell did you guys manage to survive from that kind of fall?"
I answered him bluntly. "Magic, and a lot of luck."
Bjorn looked pensive for a moment. "Ah, magic. It's been so long I forgot that you humans always relied on your little magic tricks."
I decided to get to the elephant in the room. "I don't know how long you've been gone, but it seems like humans and dwarves aren't getting along so well up there. It's come to open hostility at this point."
Letting out a heavy sigh, Bjorn looked me in the eyes and spoke. "Enemies, allies, all that kind of stuff doesn't matter at all here. You must've noticed by now, this place is full of monsters from the past. It's almost like an oasis, a hotbed for megaflora and megafauna that never got touched for Thor knows how long."
"That's why I got so excited when I heard voices speaking actual language around here, and not just the roars and grunts and squeaks and croaks I hear day in and day out. Right about when you were fighting those spinos was when I heard you guys and started heading over. But by the time I got here you guys were already gone, so I had a chat with your big friend over here."
Bjorn tossed a small rock in the air and caught it repeatedly while continuing his story.
"Anyway, let's cut to the chase. We're all on the same side here. We're gonna have to work together to live, and we need to do it now. Ever since you knocked out those two spinos, they're no longer scent marking their territory."
I nodded. "Yeah, we noticed that. One of the adults left to scent mark with their piss or feces once every few hours."
"Aye, that's exactly what they were doing," Bjorn continued. "Problem is, what happens when they suddenly stop doing it? I have a few theories, and none of them are pretty. Scenario one, with the male spino's scent gone, more males will be investigating this territory. They know there's a female here and those horny bastards probably don't even care that her scent is gone as well, they'll poke around the area to investigate. And that's when they find all the free real estate and dead bodies, and move in. And I'm talking about a lot of them, more than you or I could handle."
"Then there's scenario two. Other bogies discover that the spinos guarding their territory are gone, and the territorial landscape of the area starts to shift. You don't know how big of a problem you started killing those two spinos. If the territories start shifting, then my maps will be outdated by the end of the week. Raptors, T-rexes, and all sorts of foul animals, some even of the magical sort, are going to start changing their scent marking and their territory."
My heart sank. This dwarf knew what he was talking about, and it seems like killing the spinosauruses was setting off a complete chain reaction of bad.
"Now at this point, you guys are thinking that you can just hide in your magic space and be safe. No, it's not that easy," Bjorn explained. "You need to come out for food, right? That's when they'll get ya. These animals are tricky, and they rely more on ambushes than full on chases. So far you've only dealt with spinosauruses, which are fish eaters. Yes they'll eat whatever is available, but as a general rule of them, they're terrible at hunting on the ground. Well now, you're about to deal with ground hunters. Predators specialized for terrestrial based takedowns, who'll get you before you even realize what's going on."
"So what should we do?" Rosalia asked. Her worried expression matched my own, as both of us were thinking of the awful possibilities that could happen at any time. "Spoon has a golem here that can help us, and we're strong in a fight. We beat two adult spinosauruses after all."
"Fighting is a last resort," Bjorn replied. "It might be different now that there are more of us here, but I've managed to stay alive here for so long because I know how these animals think, how they act. They've evolved to be very sneaky. You have to realize that there are no healers or medicine for dinosaurs. If they're hurt, they might die, even if it's just a scratch that gets infected. So even the bigger predators have to be cunning and calculating in the way they stalk their prey. They prefer clean kills, with little to no risk of injury."
"I already told your golem to be careful. The way he sounds when he moves is very similar to the large prey animals that these guys like to snack on. They can feel the low vibrations through the ground and track you. So the golem will be great in a fight, but just having him around attracts predators."
"Speaking of which, here." Bjorn opened a coconut shell bottle and poured a bit of foul smelling yellow liquid in his hands, then started rubbing it down our arms. I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the strong ammonia smell.
"What the hell is this?" I said, coughing.
"T-rex urine," Bjorn replied without even flinching. "Male T-rex urine. The strongest deterrent smell I've found. The female T-rexes run away because the males can get bitey during coitus, other male T-rexes stay away unless they want to challenge for territory, and other lesser predators know this smell means to stay the hell away."