Sobek opened his eyes. Darkness greeted him, followed by a peculiar mushy sensation. He felt like he was wrapped in some kind of jelly. He tried to go out from that place, but even move the fingers was difficult because of the substance that covered him.
"Where did that damn woman send me!?" Sobek thought angrily, desperately trying to swim. Very soon he hit something, something very hard. "What the... a wall?"
It actually looked like a wall. Th logic told him to change direction, but something inside him, some kind of instinct, was telling him to hit his head against it instead. Trusting that singular sensation, he knocked the wall with all his strenght.
Crack... crack...
A crack appeared in the wall and a faint light came out of it. Sobek finally understood: he was in an egg!
Of course! Like almost all vertebrates except mammals, dinosaurs laid eggs. If he had reincarnated in one of them, then it was normal for him to be in an egg!
Understanding the situation, he began to hit the egg even harder until a piece was broken. His head peeked out.
The sunlight blinded him for a moment, then he was able to focus. The yolk was still on his eyes and made difficult for him to look around, but he was able to see a small expanse of sand that ended in a source of water, probably a river. Small plants decorated the landscape and a big tail stood out in the middle of his field of vision.
Wait! Tail?
As Sobek realized he was not alone a shadow covered him and teeth appeared before his eyes. Which made his blood run cold for a moment, but then the huge mouth started nibbling at the egg that still held him. At that point his instincts reassured him, saying that the creature was just helping him out.
"I guess this is my mother... or maybe it's my father?" Sobek hought as he emerged completely from the egg. Once he was finally out he was able to notice several changes.
In the first place, he could barely get on two legs: he felt it was much more comfortable to move on four. In addition, his limbs were no longer pink and soft like those of humans, but long, scaly and covered with claws that while they were small they also seemed very sharp. His senses had also changed: his vision seemed to have become monocular, like that of horses, leaving him with a large blindspot in front of him, and his sense of smell and hearing seemed to have amplified dozens of times.
"I've really become another animal..." he thought, then he turned to look at the creature that probably was one of his parents.
What he saw surprised him: a huge beast, at least fourteen meters long, shaped like a crocodile, with a long snout, imposing limbs, a long and flat tail like that of a caiman and finally an immense sail formed by bone spines on the back. The sail was square and not very harmonious, folded in several places, but still gave a feeling of grandeur.
That was a spinosaurus! Sobek felt like a child in front of his favorite toy. It was truly wonderful!
"So, if my mother is a spinosaurus, it means that I am too..." he thought, and headed for a nearby pool of water to look at himself. He could have looked into the river, but something told him it was best to stay far from it for now.
What greeted him was not the reflection of a human being, but the image of a large reptile with a sail! It was the same as his 'mother' in all respects, apart from the color of the sail, that it was red. Also, he had a quadrupedal posture, while his 'mother' was bipedal. "Mh... I suppose that young spinosaurs cannot move on two limbs because they were weaker than the adults" he thought. "Also, the tail. Mine is red, but the one of this spinosaurus is yellow like its body. This is because I'm young?"
He looked to the other eggs in the nest, where other little spinosaurs were coming out, but just some of them had a red sail, while the others have a yellow one. "No... maybe is sexual dimorphism? I'm a male, and in animal kingdow males often need to be colorful and flamboyant to attract females. That means that this spinosaurus is really my mother!"
Sobek felt radiant. As God said, he remembered nothing of his identity on Earth, but he had retained his knowledge and knew that in his previous life he had greatly admired dinosaurs. Among them, the spinosaurus was his favorite! And now he was one of them!
"Wait... wasn't I supposed to have a System too?" he suddenly thought.
In that instant, a 'ding' rang in his head!
[Host birth completed. Do you want to start the Super System?]
"Of course! What a silly question!". Sobek was impatient: he couldn't wait to see how it worked!
[D******d of the Super System... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%...]
"Come on, hurry up!" Sobek exclaimed in his mind, anxiously.
[80%... 90%... 100%! Congratulations, you have obtain the Super System!]
"Finally!"
An interface appeared before Sobek's eyes. It was like looking at a computer screen! There were several boxes that he could open, including [Main interface], [Secondary systems], [Skill interface], [Evolution interface], and [Guide].
"Let's see... if my knowledge of web novels doesn't betray me, then [Main interface] should be the one that shows my attributes..." Sobek thought as he clicked on it. Instantly, the box expanded and opened a long page.
[Spinosaurus aegyptiacus]
Level: 1
Length: 1 m
Height: 0.9 m
Weight: 500 kg
Diet: carnivore, fishivore
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Defense: 5
Maximum speed: 2 km/h
Experience points: 0/1,000
Skill points: 0
Fame points: 0/1,000,000
Bonus money: 0
Sobek snorted. His attributes didn't seem good, but he couldn't complain: he was just born and had done basically nothing. He certainly couldn't expect to reach the top of the food chain in a second!
He decided to focus on another issue. "Let's check what abilities I have. If this System works like the ones I know, then there should already be some hidden abilities..."
[Open window: skill interface]
Swim speed: 0/5
Ambush: 0/5
Rapid digestion: 0/5
As he imagined. There were already abilities ready to be activated. He clicked on each of them.
[Swim Speed]: Allows you to accelerate your speed to the maximum. It can only be used in or near water. At its maximum level it allows you to increase your maximum speed by ten times. Cost: 5 skill points.
[Ambush]: allows you to blend in perfectly with the environment, hiding your presence and canceling any smell or sound emitted. You can therefore hide perfectly to hunt. At its highest level it guarantees to hide in an absolute and unobtainable way, provided that someone has not already seen the one using it. Cost: 10 skill points.
[Rapid digestion]: allows to digest the preys more quickly, without however affecting its nutritional value. It also allows you to absorb only the useful substances, eliminating fats or parasites. At its highest level it allows you to digest a meal in just three minutes. Cost: 5 skill points.
"Well... not bad as a start" Sobek thought. Sure, there was nothing exceptional, like indestructible skin or anything like that, but for an ordinary spinosaurus such abilities were already exceptional. Once he evolved, new abilities would have surely appeared.
For now, probably the most important ability he had was [Ambush]: being able to hide was the key to survival for any predator. No carnivore had a chance to survive if it didn't get close enough to its prey.
The idea of the gigantic and horrifying dinosaur charging in broad daylight and in the middle of the plains was simply ridiculous, a stupid Hollywood invention. In fact dinosaurs, like any other carnivore, were ambush predators. Even the tyrannosaurus was one of them, in fact it was commonly believed that he hunted at night, where the cover of darkness would hide him better.
However, [Swim speed] was also not bad at all. Being able to dash forward to catch prey, or being able to quickly break free from a predator's grip, was a good survival strategy.
[Rapid digestion] might seem useless compared to the others, but it was just an illusion. If Sobek wasn't wrong, he would have had to hunt and eat prey to earn points. And a body could not handle more than a certain amount of food without the stomach ripping apart. As a result, digesting the meal more quickly and getting only positive effects from it, without risking getting fat or sick, was the guarantee that you could hunt as much as possible and earn more points.
Speaking of points, he still didn't know what exactly the criteria were for getting them. Noticing that the System had a [Guide], he hastened to open it and read it calmly.
Thus he discovered that he was right: hunting was the basis for leveling up. The 'experience points' were what allowed him to level up. Each level was equivalent to an increase in length of 1 meter and height of 0.3 meters, in addition to raising the body mass of 500 kg and the maximum speed of 1 km/h, and of course that means that also his strength, agility and resistence will increase. Experience points were earned by eating preys. The amount of points provided would have been determined by the size of the animal and its danger.
The skill points, on the other hand, could only be obtained by eating other carnivorous animals. With them he could level up his abilities and become more skilled at hunting. Like experience points, skill points also varied depending on the size and danger of the prey. However, the maximum they could reach was 10, which could be provided by superpredators such as tyrannosaurus.
The fame points were used to evolve. To get them he had to make himself known by humans. However, it was not enough just to be seen: it was necessary that those who saw him or who heard about him imprinted his memory in their minds and did so for their whole life.
As for the bonus money... it was simply written that they could be use in the [Secondary systems]. There was no explanation about how obtain them, except for a phrase: 'You will have them according to your choices'. What the fuck that meant?
By the way, what were the [Secondary systems]?
He opened the appropriate interface, but he discovered that all the boxes were locked. He couldn't even read the name. Only one, despite being blocked, had the visible name: [Food system]. A caption below it read: 'unlocks on first evolution'.
"I guess I'll find out when the time comes..." Sobek thought, then he opened the [Evolutions interface].
[Open window: evolutions interface]
Spinosaurus aegyptiacus: current
Spinosaurus superior: 1,000,000 fame points required
Spinosaurus ingens: 10,000,000 fame points required
Spinosaurus imperator: 100,000,000 fame points required
Spinosaurus perfectus: 1,000,000,000 fame points required
Spinosaurus divinus: 10,000,000,000 fame points required
"Wow... based on their names, they look like big stuff! Now I'm really curious" Sobek thought with satisfaction. He was eager to evolve, but he knew he didn't have a chance to do it right now. He was just born and still had a long way to go.
Sobek contemplated the System a little longer, then he turned it off. Unfortunately, the [Guide] didn't say many other things: for example, how many experience points were needed for each level advancement. It was unlikely that the 1,000 points that he needed would always have been enough to reach level 2.He turned and walked back to what was presumably his mother, who was still next to the egg he had come out of. Other small spinosaurs were still emerging from other eggs. There were at least twenty of them. His mother was taking care to help them get out.Although he remembered his encounter with God and the knowledge of his previous life, Sobek found that he felt a strong bond with those spinosaurs. It wasn't affection, it was something more... instinctive. A sense of belonging to the pack, let's say.He snorted. Being an animal was really different from being a human: even his thoughts and feelings were different. He was experiencing sensations he had never felt before.When he pau
The hunt that day was more fruitful than Sobek expected: the river bank looked bare, but it was actually teeming with small creatures. Sobek had managed to catch two more frogs, a large millipede and a strange chameleon-like lizard with long colorful spikes on its back called longisquama.Of course, the credit wasn't his alone. Without the help of the other spinosaurus pups he probably would have been able to catch only the millipede, another demonstration of the benefits of having a herd. To thank them Sobek had helped them catch another lizard.He certainly hadn't done it for charity: simply he felt that his stomach was already full, so he couldn't continue eating. So he could spend some time playing with his siblings, and while he did this he would also have improved his skills as a hunter.With all those preys he had already obtained 210 experience points (30 for each of the three frogs, 50 for the fish brought by his father, another 50 for the longisquama and 20 for the millipede)
When he woke up the next day, Sobek initially thought he had a dream, but soon he realized that this couldn't be the case since he remembered nothing of his previous life as a human except his knowledge. When he opened his eyes in fact he found himself in front of a scaly wall which turned out to be the tail of his sleeping mother there.The sun was just starting to rise, but Sobek could already fell its warmth: its rays crossed the clear sky and warmed his body like a radiator. Sobek had no idea how the changing of seasons worked in that world, but since animals generally calved during the warm seasons, there was a great possibility that it was summer.Although with a little regret, he lifted himself from his comfortable position and stretched. Alerted by his movement his brothers and sisters also woke up and began to get up as well. Sobek noticed that many of them were imitating him, stretching as he did and yawning like him.He had definitely become some kind of a big brother.A thu
Sobek woke up sore and with a heavy weight on his face. When he opened his eyes he found that one of his siblings had rolled over in the sleep and landed on his head.He was annoyed, but he couldn't blame the little spinosaur. After all, Sobek alone occupied nearly a third of the nest.Most of his brothers and sisters didn't even reach half a meter in length, while he was a two-meter colossus. They didn't even seem to belong to the same brood! If any scientist had passed by and had seen the nest, he probably would have thought he was a retarded cub from the previous brood.When he got up his movement awake all his brothers and sisters who blew in protest. Sobek felt sorry for them, but there was nothing he could do about it.As usual, he calmly waited for his father to bring him the breakfast. However, he knew it wouldn't have been enough to satisfy him this time. A larger body needed more energy to live, so from now on hunting would have been vital to his survival.His father didn't d
The next morning Sobek was awakened by strange movements. When he opened his eyes he found that some of his brothers and sisters had come out of the nest and were playing on his back. For cubs as small as half a meter, a three-meter older brother was basically like a huge slide for them.Sobek let them do it: they didn't bother him, so he could let them have fun. Until they started nibbling at him, he wouldn't need to chase them away. Besides, he had more important things to think about. "System, open the main interface!"[Spinosaurus aegyptiacus]Level: 3Length: 3 mHeight: 1.5 mWeight: 1,5 tonDiet: carnivore, fishivoreStrength: 170Agility: 130Defense: 86Maximum speed: 4 km/hExperience points: 180/3,000Skill Points: 3.5Fame points: 0/1,000,000Bonus money: 340Much to his relief, the amount of experience points for each level up only increased by 1,000 points at a time, not doubled. Even so, however, it was a fairly high expense.With his current size he would no longer have
The next day Sobek went hunting as soon as he woke up, without even waiting for his siblings to wake up. He headed for the forest and, as usual, placed the eggshell in plain sight.As on the previous day, the first to show up were the compsognathus. After all, such small animals couldn't go too far, so the little pack was still near and they could smell the egg's yolk. Sobek promptly killed one and left its carcass on the sand as he had done the day before.His hopes were not disappointed: after an hour, another thylacinus came out from the bush to eat. Sobek killed it exactly as he did with its predecessor and devoured it.With the thylacinus and the compsognathus he had gained another 1,600 experience, enough to level up again. He didn't hesitate and immediately agreed.After the usual ten seconds of pain he opened the main interface.[Spinosaurus aegyptiacus]Level: 4Length: 4 mHeight: 1.8 mWeight: 2 tonsDiet: carnivore, fishivoreStrength: 510Agility: 470Defense: 142Maximum
When the sun rose Sobek was already awake. He would had lied if he had said he wasn't very excited: this would have been his first time in the river!Even if the yolk in the eggs had not yet completely dried, that type of hunting could no longer support him. He needed more preys, and since he had proved that the forest was still off-limits, his best way was to follow his father into the river.He was confident enough now to dive into the water. Even if there were very large prehistoric crocodiles, most of them would have lost interest in front of a five-meter predator. The only ones who would have seen him as a prey would have been titans like the deinosuchus, but common crocodiles would have aimed for smaller, more viable preys like fishes.Of course, there were other dangers as well. For example there were snakes: gigantic animals such as the titanoboa and the gigantophis hunted in the water. Or there could be freshwater sharks or other huge fishes...But he had no choice this time.
Now his experience points had dropped back to 180 and the threshold for leveling up had risen to 8,000 points. However, for once Sobek wasn't focused on them. His focus was on other skill points.Sobek had gotten to know how skill points worked during his previous hunts. They could only be supplied by animals that could feed on terrestrial vertebrates: for example, if they ate only insects, they were classified as 'insectivores', while if they ate only fishes they were 'fishivore'.However, it wasn't necessary for an animal to be exclusively carnivorous to be worth skill points; if its size or its abilities were enough to allow it to eat terrestrial creatures with bones, than it was consider a carnivore. For example spinosaurs almost always ate fishes, but their size allowed them to feed on even smaller land animals.As a result, Sobek had at his disposal a wide range of animals that lived in the river that could provide him with skill points. An example were crocodiles and snakes. But