It didn't end well. Or at least, it didn't go as smoothly as Sobek had hoped. In spite of himself, he soon discovered that even in the animal world the actions had their consequences.After moving a couple of kilometers away from the carcharodontosaurus he finally had stopped and ate the stegosaurus. That was his most noteworthy prey after the allosaurus: the stegosaurus had given it 20,000 experience points at one time. Even though it was only a sub-adult, it was still a huge amount of meat and quite dangerous, making it a great source of experience points. It had been also a very peaceful and tasty meal as Sobek had discovered that stegosaurus meat was particularly sweet and tasty, so he had felt as if he had eaten a luxury meal.Rather, the problem had come the next day. While he was swimming, Sobek had spotted the unmistakable silhouette of a large predator in the distance. Initially he had thought it was just some theropod who had come to drink, but on closer inspection he discove
"Sir, we're almost there!"Mika grunted at the driver's words. Although he had lit a cigarette for less than a minute, he took it out of his mouth and threw it out the window. "Are we sure that the area is safe?""Yes, sir. This place is too remote to let the police arrive in a short time, and we don't even have to fear the wildlife because large predators keep away from the borders of Cartago. We will not be disturbed here" the man replied. "Don't worry, your wedding will go great""Very good" Mika murmured looking behind him. There, bound and gagged like a salami and held in place by two men, there was a little girl who was no more than twelve years old.As on Earth, even in that messy world where Sobek happened, there were nations more civilized and others less so. Odaria, the nation bordering the forest, was one of the less civilized.In the eyes of the rest of the world, it would have turned out to be a fairly advanced country in terms of technological development, but completely
Sobek couldn't say he understood everything of that situation, but he was sure he understood enough.When he arrived he had seen that the smell of blood and fear he had smelled actually came from a little girl, who was being held still by some highly disreputable men. With his amplified hearing then he had heard the words of the political official, and there he understood what was happening.Sobek had never been one who took no interest in third world news when he was on Earth, so he was well acquainted with situations like this: forcing a girl to marry a grown man for political or financial reasons. Also under the circumstances, he was pretty sure her family was unwilling and that it was all orchestration.At that point he had seen red. Sobek had killed and devoured many life forms and no longer felt much attachment to humans, but he too had lines that he had not crossed. Even though his dinosaur body saw puppies and children only as easy prey, he tried to maintain a modicum of humani
When he returned to the clearing the vehicles were still burning and would probably have gone on all night. Better this way: the smell of smoke would have kept the other animals away, since it meant that there was fire there and every animal feared fire. Also they were far away from the trees, so he didn't risk to cause a wildfire and therefore burning half of the forest.The girl was still there and was desperately trying to crawl away. The ropes that immobilize her were very tight. Sobek could clearly tell by how deep the marks were on her wrists.When she saw him coming, the girl froze and almost stopped breathing, staring at him in terror."Yeah. I guess the way I introduced myself isn't the best way to curry favor with a twelve-year-old girl..." Sobek thought, then he lowered his muzzle towards her.The little girl screamed, surely convinced that he wanted to eat her. However, shouting was useless: the strings wouldn't have melted with the force of the sound. Unless the child poss
When Jocelyne woke up she was convinced that she had been having a nightmare, because only a nightmare could justify the terrible chain of events that had taken place the previous night.She was quietly accompanying her father on his visit to Cartago, enjoying the trip as she always had, when those bad guys came to ruin her life. They had kidnapped her from her hotel room and dragged her into the forest to marry one of them. They had beaten her, insulted her and screamed at her, and she wouldn't have been surprised if they killed her too.And then a monster had come. A gigantic dinosaur, bigger than any other Jocelyne had ever seen in zoos, that had wreaked havoc under her eyes by devouring her attackers one after another. Yet that same monster hadn't eaten her, but instead it had free her and given her a medical plant to relieve her pain.Yes, it could only have been a dream. It was too absurd. However, when she finally made up her mind to open her eyes, she didn't find her comfortabl
Unbeknownst to Jocelyne, Sobek hadn't limited himself to just hunting the boar.He knew that the little girl was probably very hungry, but he couldn't worry exclusively about her. He was still a living being and therefore just like everyone he needed to eat a certain amount of food every day if he wanted to continue to live, an amount that surely wouldn't have been satisfied by such a small prey like a boar. Consequently, he had to hunt primarily for himself.After all, humans, even though they had long since abandoned the natural state, had retained all the survival techniques they had evolved over millions of years: being able to survive for a long time without food was one of them. A human body could last for three months without eating. That little girl could therefore keep herself hungry for half a day. He didn't know how ethical this thought of his was, but in nature no one cared about ethics, so it certainly wasn't his problem.As for the water, instead, he hadn't had to worry.
Unfortunately, Sobek discovered that he was quite tired: even though he needed less sleep now, he had not slept for an entire night for several days. So he ended up falling asleep this time, which wasn't a good idea at all.From his point of view, the little girl would have remained stationary in the same place where he had left her. Jocelyne, however, had other plans.When the sun rose, she opened her eyes and found that the 'spinosaurus' hadn't yet awakened. She immediately understood that this was her chance. Very quickly she got out of the bed and, being careful to not make any noise, she walked off into the forest.The idea of walking alone in the middle of that jungle terrified her, but the logic told her it was the best thing to do to survive. She still didn't know why the 'spinosaurus' (she decided to identify it as a spinosaurus since she didn't know what it was) was helping her instead of eating her, but she didn't want to discover how long the situation would remain stable
"YOU AGAIN!?" was what Sobek wanted to scream at that moment if he had had a human voice.That day hadn't absolutly started in the best way. First he woke up and discovered that the little girl had disappeared, which was already enough to irritate him: come on, someone gave you food and protection and you ran away like that? Even though he knew it was a normal reaction from a human point of view, for his animal self it was an absolute lack of respect: since it was difficult for animals to get food, giving it to others was a very altruistic action, therefore not receiving trust in return was equivalent to a great lack of respect.He had been tempted to just leave, but that shred of humanity that he still had in the end prevailed and so he began to follow the olfactory traces left by the girl, sure that she would have gotten into some trouble. And when he finally found her, not only she was (obviously) in serious danger, but the source of that danger was the same carcharodontosaurus that
It took Sobek a few moments before he realized he was back in the room where it all began. That room where time and space ceased to exist, and where everything and nothing seemed to have changed at the same time. He already knew where he had to go; walking through the infinitely large (or perhaps infinitely small) room, in a few minutes (or perhaps a few centuries, who knows) he reached the familiar armchair on which was seated a woman with white skin and light hair.God didn't even seem to move since she sent him to Eden. Even her expression didn't seem to have changed at all. She was still the same, beautiful and terrible at the same time, whose gaze was both magnetic and loving on him. “Welcome back, son,” she greeted him in her crystal clear voice.Sobek advanced on her. This time there wasn't an armchair waiting for him, but a large mattress wide enough to allow him to lie down. She lay back on it and gazed intently at God. Even now, after he'd grown i
On the continent of Maakanar, near a river that was once a typical spinosaurus nesting place, something immense could be seen. A huge creature was lying on its belly, but nevertheless it was so tall that its dorsal sail towered over the surrounding masts.Sobek was now thirty-three years old. To say he had grown into a behemoth was an understatement: he now measured 150 meters from head to tail and reached 45.6 meters in height. Even without activating the mutation he was now larger than Godzilla: the gigantic atomic reptile was a tiny lizard compared to him. All kaiju would be small compared to him. Even King Ghidorah would have been forced to acknowledge its superiority.In the last five years he had hardly moved. After the death of his last loyalist he returned to his birthplace and settled there. He ate what was provided to him from the [Personal Manger] and drank the water from the river. Otherwise, he remained calm, warming himself in the sun or admiring the star
After a few days Nefertiti settled at the lake together with her father and her last remaining uncle. With the help and indications of Sobek she built a comfortable nest and there she laid her egg.Thus began the brood. The female spinosaurus never moved from above her little egg, keeping it constantly warm. Sobek and Buck brought her food and water. When Nefertiti was hot, Sobek used her huge wing as a parasol and Buck fanned her with his tail. In the rare moments when it was cold, the two of her huddled to help her warm up.That routine went on for three months. Finally, at the end of the third month, a familiar clicking sound came from under Nefertiti's paws.The female spinosaurus reared up and looked down. A small crack was opening on the egg. With a smile she moved from above it. The crack widened more and more and finally a large piece of egg broke off, showing a lively green eye that stared intently at Nefertiti.“Hello, baby. I'm your mothe
Time had passed again. Sobek couldn't even figure out how much time had actually passed now. One year? Two? Maybe three? He didn't know.After his retirement, Sobek had gone deep into the forest of Maakanar. It was hard for him to move his huge body through the trees and very often ended up destroying them: his passage was evident as a trail of uprooted trunks was always behind him. He had moved permanently to the lake where he had met Buck and where he had established his first army. And he hadn't gone there alone.Carnopo and Buck had joined him just a month after his departure. They, too, had decided they'd had enough and abandoned their roles entirely. After all, in the new world there was no longer a need for either an army commander or one of the shock legion. Now there was peace, and the old war veterans had no reason to try to find their place in their world. So they had decided to do what they had always done: follow their pack leader.The trio spent th
Another year had passed. In Sobek's eyes, time seemed to have begun to flow more rapidly. The months and weeks all passed almost the same and in a flash the morning turned into evening.Humanity had continued its advance. By now, Aphrodites had been fully colonized. Whole cities had sprung up on it and millions of settlers had begun to live there. Davis had now reached more than a billion inhabitants and Hermes now owned thousands of mining establishments.Thanks to teleportation technology it was so advanced that traveling between planets was even easier than going from one city to another. Since energy and material consumption were now no longer a concern thanks to solar panels on Hermes and mining plants on asteroids, everyone had a portable teleportation device. By now, being hired to work a mine on an asteroid was no different than being hired to work at the local convenience store.Colonies on the moons of Leviathan and Behemoth had multiplied, providing e
More time, more changes. In just one year, many things had changed.Nefertiti had assumed control of the entire astrophysics division of the dinosaur pack, effectively acting as acting pack leader for them. After the first shared mission, she had begun to promote more policies of integration and union between humans and animals. She had facilitated interspecies interspace operations, sending animals and humans to work together in the new worlds to be colonized. Furthermore, there was still much to colonize, as human attention was slowly shifting beyond the outer Solar System to the dwarf planets and comets of the Oort Cloud.The work was not cheap and with it the possibilities of working together. With the Dyson Sphere nearing completion, energy was no longer an issue. After determining which moons to colonize, the Eden Union had begun an intensive mining program in the asteroids of the main belt in order to be able to build huge lenses to capture the sunlight and also
One more year, more innovations. The more time passed, the more progress seemed to accelerate. It was like a speeding train that multiplied its speed every second: first slow, then faster and faster, until it turned into a giant projectile.Sobek knew that progress was bound to accelerate more and more, after all it was his nature. For each new discovery, countless doors open. And every door leads to other doors. This was the nature of progress. It was no coincidence that it took humanity less than two hundred years to go from horses to aircraft capable of leaving the orbit of their home planet.He recalled that on Earth, where he came from, progress had become so fast in the 21st century that it was enough to be born even a generation later or further back to find oneself in a completely different world. While in 1990 the main communication system was the satellite phone, in 2020 people used social networks for the most disparate things. While in 1990 movies were watc
More time had passed. This time it was a year… or maybe a year and a half? I don't know. Not that it mattered much, actually.The world's attention to the inner solar system was gradually waning. Now that three planets had been terraformed, even if one of them still wasn't enough, and Hermes had become a stable colony that was continuously producing large panels of glass that joined in the orbit of the Sun to form the Dyson Sphere, the humanity was beginning to anticipate new challenges. From the inner solar system it was time to move to the outer solar system.Although some colony outposts were already present on some moons of Behemoth, they could not be defined as true colonies. However, now that energy consumption was no longer a problem thanks to the Dyson Sphere, which although not completed already released enormous amounts of energy, the Eden Union decided to start an exploration program of the entire outer solar system, or at least of the space between B
Two more years had passed. The advance of humanity towards the stars continued inexorably.The hypotheses of the scientists had proved to be correct: using a combination of gravity control technology and energy obtained from the Dyson sphere, although still incomplete, they had managed to accelerate the rotation of Aphrodites. The planet was slowly accelerating, though not too fast. There was generally talk of an hour each week. At this speed there was no risk of destroying the infrastructure already present on the planet. Yes two years, the rotation period had gone from 2082 hours to 1978 hours. Continuing at this rate, it was expected to reach 24 hours in 'just' another 38 years.Once this process was completed, the huge orbiting mirrors could finally be taken off. The day/night cycle would no longer be artificially determined and there would no longer be the risk that something would go wrong due to the impact of a micrometeorite. In addition, the accelerated rotati