THUMP.
Sobek was awakened by a vibration.
THUMP.
Memory reminded him of the t-rex's footsteps, which made him shiver. However, he quickly understood that it couldn't be the case: a tyrannosaurus wasn't that heavy. Those footsteps seemed to have been produced directly by a mountain that had been magically given legs and had begun to walk.
THUMP.
Sobek stood up, eager to find out what was causing that sound. However, when sleep completely abandoned his eyes and he was able to focus, he almost jumped back!
Next to the islet tha he had turned into his home there were a group of real behemoths that were peacefully crossing the swamp. They had huge necks at least nine meters long and just one of their legs was taller than him!
[Prey identified: Dreadnoughtus schrani, titanosauridae. Experience: 200,000 points]
Sobek was stuck. For the first time he met the giants of prehistory: the sauropods!
Sauropods were the largest land animals ever to appear on Earth. Elephants and mammoths were just little cows in comparison. The largest sauropod ever known, the argentinosaurus, measured 35 meters in length, more than a blue whale! Some of them could even exceed one hundred tons!
Sobek couldn't take his eyes off them. They were wonderful animals and their every trait evoked a sense of might. Looking at them, Sobek felt very small, even though he was still a ten-meter-long predator. Who knows how the little humans would have felt next to such enormous beasts!
The sauropods in front of him were dreadnoughtus, gigantic herbivores which, although not the largest in their family, reached 25-26 meters in length. The neck alone could exceeded 11 meters. No wonder they were walking in shallow water without the slightest worry: which predator would have been insane enough to attack them? Even the largest crocodile would have thought twice before messing with those giants. Such animals had no natural enemies.
Sobek feared for a moment that they would have approached his islet, since in that case they would have surely destroyed his bed; even though he could easily run away - he was much faster than them, after all - the sauropods would have ruined his little outpost and he would have had to do the job all over again. But fortunately, they passed at a safe distance: apart from a little tremor from their heavy footsteps that caused some leaves to fall from the mangroves, they did no other damage.
Even though each one of them could provided him 200,000 experience points, Sobek had no intention of antagonizing such large animals. Although they seemed slow and vulnerable, they were actually very dangerous creatures: even one little push of their shoulders could have broken all his bones. Sobek then chose to stay on his islet until they passed over, so as not to risk frightening them. It still had a long way to go before it could afford to challenge a pack of adult sauropods.
Even so he was still able to get his breakfast: the water near the islet had begun to fill with movement, as the fishes fled frightened by the huge sauropods. Sobek just had to reach out to grab an onchopristis. It was nearly eight meters long, but Sobek's jaws and claws were enough to hold it back. It didn't take long for the fish to suffocate.
Sobek found that even though he only upgraded it to level 1/5, [Rapid digestion] was indeed an efficient skill: it would normally have taken a full day to him to finish such a large prey, as he would have had to eat the pieces separately and wait digesting them one by one, but now he finished eating the fish around just eleven in the morning, much faster than the usual.
He hoped that the onchopristis, since it was a very big fish, could give him some skill points, but no: apparently its mouth was too small and its body not suitable for catching animals due to its long snout, and consequently it couldn't eat land creatures, so it wasn't classified as a carnivore.
At least it granted him 13,000 experience points. With them, Sobek's experience points rose to 47,600, allowing him to advance to level 11. He was now a predator 11 meters long and 3.9 meters high. A little longer and he would have grown up to be as big as his parents.
Sobek could have easily advanced hunting a group of onchopristis, but the experience points weren't just what he was aiming for. He wanted to improve his skills, so he had to hunt other predators.
With this plan in mind he tried to track down another baryonyx, but unfortunately the range covered by his nose was limited and apparently there wasn't one nearby, so he could do nothing but search for it manually; so he dived into the water and began to search.
First he had to get out of the range of his nose: he had determined that there were no baryonyx there, so there was no point in looking for them there. While traveling he kept well away from the reeds, fearing to alert some crocodile or alligator. In any case, during his swimming he was able to find something palatable: in front of him appeared a grayish-colored fish with the unmistakable shape of a shark.
[Prey identified: Glyphis gangeticus, carcharhinidae. Experience: 3,000 points]
The glyphis was a species of freshwater shark still existing on present-day Earth. It was two meters long, so Sobek hoped it could provide more skill points than a stethacanthus.
With [Swim speed] it was very easy to catch. The glyphis granted him 1.5 skill points.
As he was intent on finishing devouring it, however, his instincts screamed: the water was moving behind him. He stepped aside just in time before a large brown body hit him. The creature swam in front of him and then charged back, displaying a rectiliform body and a face bristling with teeth.
[Prey identified: Alligator mississippiensis, alligatoridae. Experience: 12,000 points]
"Shit!" Sobek exclaimed in his head. That was the exactly situation he hoped to avoid. If he hadn't dodged in time, the alligator could have bitten his sail and caused him internal bleeding!
He thought of running away, but then he changed his mind. The alligator was 'only' four meters long: he could beat it. That stupid reptile had probably attacked him because he looked awkward and clumsy, but he would have discovered how in wrong it was! Sobek was no easy prey, not for an animal like that at least!
The alligator was only half the length of an onchopristis, but its lethality meant it provided an almost identical amount of experience points. However, just as Sobek could easily kill an onchopristis or a baryonyx, he could also defeat an alligator.
Seeing that the reptile was about to attack again, he activated [Swim speed] and disappeared from its sight. His speed had reached such level that the water moved with so much force that it stunned the alligator.
On Earth, some sharks had evolve long tails to hit the water and create shockwaves that stunned the fishes. They were call thresher sharks. Sobek now had used the same principle against the alligator.
While the reptile was intent on recovering Sobek attack it from behind and grabbed it by the neck, locking its forelegs with his claws to prevent it from kicking. The alligator recovered as soon as it felt something was choking it and it squirmed hard, but Sobek didn't give up. The two of them continued that wrestling match for quite some time.
It was an endurance contest, the one who kept the most strength won. However, Sobek had no intention of prolonging the fight for long: he couldn't hold his breath for very long. His plan was another.
With one of his claws he began to tear apart the base of the alligator's front legs. The reptile's skin was hard and thick, but Sobek had very strong forelimbs. Although with a little effort he managed to open a hole. At that point he let it go and used [Swim speed] to get away and he returned to the surface, but not too far away from the reptile.
Finally free the alligator tried to swim again, but it found itself unable to do so: the muscles that moved its front legs had been severed. It could no longer swim: its hind legs were insufficient to direct a long, tapered body in a certain direction.
Sobek had to do nothing but wait. After an hour the alligator stopped moving completely: it was suffocated to death. Even though it could hold its breath for a long time, it couldn't do it forever. Seeing this, Sobek dived again and carried the carcass to the surface.
That was enough meal for the day. It would have taken him a long time to finish it, even with [Rapid digestion], so he might as well go back to the islet and eat calmly.
However, he could be satisfied: the alligator earned him 3 skill points. In a single day, he had gained 4.5 skill points.
Sure, it was still less than the amount he would have gotten from hunting a baryonyx, but at least it was almost half the amount needed to improve [Ambush]. For that day he could be satisfied.
The following day Sobek immediately resumed the hunt. This time, nothing would have stopped him from moving to a new area. The day before he had gained some skill points, but this time he was desperate to find another large predatory dinosaur to defeat and devour.He swam for kilometers, keeping clear of any spot where crocodiles or snakes might hide. He noticed several freshwater sharks on the way, but he completely ignored them: he had no intention of stopping and risking being attacked again. He had learned from what had happened to him with the alligator, and while he had been lucky that time, he was not going to risk it again; after all, if the alligator had hit him even a little, it could have damaged his delicate sail irreparably, which meant causing severe blood loss. Sobek would not have risked that much: some small sharks weren't worth it.Eventually he came to an area where the mangroves were slightly denser, forming a real forest above the swamp. He was far enough away from
[Spinosaurus aegyptiacus]Level: 12Length: 12 mHeight: 4.2 mWeight: 6 tonDiet: carnivore, fishivoreStrength: 1,680Agility: 1,430Defense: 950Maximum speed: 13 km/hExperience points: 1,900/60,000Skill points: 0Fame points: 0/1,000,000Bonus Money: 1,830By now Sobek's length had become equal to the one of a t-rex. However, his height was still less: a tyrannosaurus generally was 5.5 to 6 meters tall. This is for a simple matter of skeletal structure: the body shape of the spinosaurus was more horizontal, favoring the quadrupedal gait, while that of the t-rex was diagonal, allowing a bipedal gait.Even leaving out that detail, the difference between him and a tyrannosaurus was glaring. A t-rex had dozens of times his strength, ran at least twice his speed, and most importantly had a muzzle designed to bite and tear. Quite the opposite of him, in short. Not to mention that a t-rex was at least two tons heavier than him. He still had a long way to go before he could reach the top
The following days were the easiest of all for Sobek. Each day he caught at least one oxalaia, which, in addition to satisfying his hunger, earned him 33,000 experience points.After a day he had already been able to climb to level 13, reaching 13 meters in length and 4.5 meters in height. In three days he was able to reach the level 14, obtaining a length of 14 meters and a height of 4.8 meters. In a week he finally reached level 15, reaching 15 meters in length and 5.1 meters in height.By now he was bigger than many adult spinosaurs, but he was planning to become even more: the herd of oxalaia in fact had been reduced by very few in number. Despite his soaring level up, Sobek hadn't killed more than six oxalaia in total.Even so, he had gained an immense amount of skill points!Since an adult oxalaia granted 5 skill points, he had earned the titanic amount of 30 skill points. Sobek estimated that under normal circumstances he wouldn't have reached such quantity in less than a couple
By the time he got close enough to the poachers, Sobek understood two things.The first was that he could understand their language. He didn't know how it was possible: perhaps it was the same as one present on Earth in his previous life? Yet it didn't sound like English, French, Italian or any other language he knew. Furthermore, at the level of probability it was basically impossible for humans to develop the same language in a different world, because language wasn't a fixed thing, it evolved according to history and society. It was like expecting that somewhere in the universe existed a perfectly identical planet to Earth, where every single action of every lifeform happened the same way. It was simply impossible.The second thing he realized was that the poachers didn't have too strong weapons: if they did, they wouldn't have been in a hurry to leave before the oxalaia herd woke up. Dinosaurs were still animals, so they could be killed by human weapons, but they had characteristic
"Do you see anything?""No! Nothing at all"The six poachers who had headed north had the impression that they were looking for nothing. Wherever they headed, there was nothing but water, mangroves and aquifers; no trace of the spinosaurus."That bastard ran like a train! By now it will have distanced us by kilometers!" one of them, a fat man with a freckled face, snapped. Definitely, he was starting to get seriously annoyed by the situation.Another poacher, a guy with long hair and short arms, was more optimistic. "It may be as fast as a train, but it's still an animal. Sooner or later it will get tired of running away and we will catch up with it"His words were not wrong at all, in fact they were quite logical, but the guy who had spoken first still did not change his dark mood. "Tsk. You are always an incurable dreamer, Karl. We're spinning around here, we won't find it anymore"The poacher named Karl was about to reply, perhaps to try to lighten the mood again or perhaps to scold
After half an hour, Sobek heard the roar of the engines approaching. He promptly plunged back into the water: he couldn't risk to be seen, not now at least. His plan was carefully thought out and he knew exactly how he had to proceed.When Wheathley finally reached where Karl's last transmission had come from, he found only one of the boats overturned and another on fire behind a small passage in the mangroves. A real massacre that left not even a single survivor.The other poachers were nervous. Such a sight was enough to worry even men accustomed to death. "Was it the spinosaurus to do this, boss?" one of them asked."It seems obvious to me. No other animal would be strong enough to move a motorboat like that" Wheathley grumbled as he watched the wreckage of the burning speedboat. Only a creature that swam with the speed of a boat could do such damage.Suddenly one of the poachers shouted: "Over there! It's over there!"Everyone turned to the spot he had indicated. In the distance th
"Move! Everyone aboard the ship!""Shouldn't we wait for the boss?""Fuck him! The boss is dead! He hasn't answered the radio for twenty minutes, like everyone else! We have to get out of here before the spinosaurus returns!"In addition to the poachers who had gone to hunt Sobek, there were still five remaining on the islet of the oxalaias. They had originally regretted being left behind to check the animals, but now they were thankful they hadn't gone chasing the spinosaurus with Wheathley. Now they were in a great hurry to leave: the instant their leader had ceased communications they had decided it was best to disappear before the spinosaurus returned for them too."What do we do with the oxalaias?""Get the cages with the cubs and leave the others here! Spinosaurs are territorial, we don't have time to bring even the adult specimens on the ship!"Suddenly one of the poachers shouted: "Over there! It is coming!"Under the terrified gaze of the poachers, a sail had appeared in the m
Sobek already had 26,000 experience points, but he needed 90,000 to level up. Staying in the vicinity of the oxalaias' nest he could have obtained several new points in just a few days, but when he returned to their islet he found that the oxalaias were already gone.Unfortunately, what he had feared had happened: feeling in danger, the oxalaias had taken their cubs and ran away all together. Sobek had done his best to not frightening them, but the arrival of the poachers had changed everything. While humans would most likely never return, at least not for a long time, the oxalaias had no way of knowing this, and no animal would have remained in a place where it felt in danger.The oxalaias had a head start of at least three hours and the water helped them to hide their smell. Sobek could track an aquatic animal, but only when it was stationary; there was no way to follow them if they were on the move and had hours of advantage. His nose was certainly not as powerful as the one of a t-
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