"Damn you, Oz! Mobilize those damn troops! Now! Bring my daughter back here! NOW!"Marcus Jersey had been yelling at his chief officer for half an hour. Like all great families, he also had a private militia. Too bad it wasn't doing its duty.Jackson Oz, the chief officer, couldn't do nothing except remain silent while his master let off steam. Unfortunately, screaming wasn't very useful: the criminals didn't care about the people screaming, so they continue to remain hiding from the cops as usually.Jersey screamed for the next ten minutes, then he finally calmed down. Jackson waited patiently. He had been at his master's service for years and he knew he was a composed, serious, and rational man; his fury of the moment was only due to the frustration of losing his daughter.Unlike many of Odaria's breadwinners, Jersey didn't care that his child was a girl. He had loved her just as if she were a son and he never thought about using her as a political tool. Indeed, he was thinking of gr
"Good. Now get down...""No, not like that. You have to move slower...""I said to move slower, damn it! But do you listen to me when I speak?"Sobek shook his head as he realized how senseless his curse was. "I'm starting to forget that these words are only in my head. It would be really useful if she could hear them!"The spinosaurus let out a grunt looking at the young girl posted on the branch of a tree, who was trying in vain to get close to a lizard that was sunbathing among the leaves.From his point of view, Jocelyne made far too much noise. He had miraculously managed to teach her how to catch some mice or how to track down a burrow, but catching an animal on a tree branch seemed beyond her reach.Jocelyne tried to get even closer, but her movements didn't go unnoticed. The lizard saw her and opened two small membranes from its back with which it launched itself from the branch and glided towards another tree."Right, coelurosauravus can fly..." Sobek thought. The coelurosaura
Sobek headed for the source of the roar, trying to be as quiet as possible. Even if he didn't recognize the sound, it was obvious that it was the roar of a large predator.As he walked, more roars came from deep in the jungle. Hearing them, Sobek could deduce that there were at least two predators fighting.Eventually he came to the edge of a slope, where he stopped. Below him, in fact, there was a large clearing where at least a dozen large dinosaurs were resting.[Prey identified: Torvosaurus gurneyi, megalosauridae. Experience: 60,000 points]Sobek's heart leapt. Torvosaurs! They were basically the tyrannosaurs of the Jurassic period! They were predators at the top of the food chain. They didn't have the jaw structure as powerful as the one of the t-rex, but they were still almost as big as it was and had a powerful bite. They were the kind of dinosaurs that Sobek preferred stay away from.Their amount of experience proved their danger. Sobek was sure that if he ate one of them he w
For the next two days Sobek tried to avoid the torvosaurs as much as possible, not wanting to risk any confrontation with them, not even the smallest and harmless; however, that doesn't mean that he hadn't spied them. After all, knowing the enemy was the key to surviving even in the most extreme and dangerous situation. The more he learned, the better chance he had of getting out from there alive and unharmed.As he already knew, they hunted in pairs; although they were a family group of about a dozen individuals, generally only two of them left the pack and went hunting. The others remained in the clearing waiting for them. Also, generally the ones that went to hunt were all young adults: the oldest ones or the youngest ones remained in the clearing, and they spent almost all their time lying around, cuddling, licking each other and playing.Even if they were just two, however, Sobek never dared to confront them. After all, two young adult torvosaurs were more than enough to defeat hi
According to the current knowledge of Earth's paleontologists, the andrewsarchus was the largest carnivorous mammal ever lived on the planet. Although most modern reconstructions saw it as an animal more similar to a warthog than to a wolf or in any case an active predator, it was still very large by the standards of a mammal. It reached the impressive length of more than five meters and a height at the withers of almost two meters.By comparison the Bengal tiger was just a adorable kitten, and even the massive polar bears were smaller than it.However, its size was still minimal in a messy world where dinosaurs, mammals and any other creatures lived together. Even if the andrewsarchus could be considered the top predator in the mammal kingdom, it still had no chance against large predatory dinosaurs. Ceratosaurs, allosaurs, carnotaurs, giganotosaurs, carcharodontosaurs, mapusaurs, tirannosaurs: they all could kill it with a single bite. Compared to the giant reptiles of the past, even
Jocelyne was surprised by a sudden roar that the spinosaurus launched before it started to scrape the ground. It was a behavior she had never seen. This worried her quite a bit: even though she was not an expert, she knew that if an animal suddenly assumed an unexpected and confusing behavior it was a bad sign. Yet for some reason the dinosaur seemed... happy?After a few seconds, however, she saw the dinosaur's muzzle approach her. As it had already done many times, it grabbed her, being careful to not hurt her; however, unlike the other times, it didn't put her on the ground, but began to run at great speed in an unknown direction.Jocelyne's blood froze instantly. In her pespective, the spinosaurus was clearly trying to run away. This could only mean that they were in danger. Had it found them? Was the mysterious predator coming? Was the spinosaurus trying to escape with her?Even though she was relieved that her protector didn't want to leave her, she was still anxious: what if the
Sobek concluded that this was absolutly not his day. If he still had the gift of speech he would probably have cursed God and any other deity known and not known to humanity in at least fifty different ways. His greatest fear had come true: two large carnivores were in front of him ready to fight, and he had no way to escape because behind him were humans armed from feet to teeth.He was literally in the middle of a crossfire. If he had at least maximized [Regeneration] he would have been calmer, because he could have at least healed immediately from bites or gunshots; he would just have had to be careful to not get hit in a vital spot. Instead, the skills was still only at level 3/5. Even though his healing speed was already much faster than that of any normal living creature, it was still too slow to be of any use to him in that moment.Sobek screamed of anger in his head. God had said she wasn't going to intervene in his life, but sometimes he had the impression that someone was hav
Everything could be said about Marcus Jersey: that he was someone a real shark when it's talking about finance, that he didn't look anyone in the face when it came to money, that he stopped at nothing to achieve his goal, but not that he wasn't a man of honor. Just like he demanded that everyone pay the debts they had contracted with him, he always paid the debts he contracted with someone else, in one way or another.That's why he couldn't let that dinosaur die. He hadn't understood very much what Jocelyne had said (in reality, he hadn't understood very much the entire situation), but he understood that the dinosaur had saved his daughter's life and that was enough for him. He also had proof that it was protecting her when it got on top of her and had protected her with its claws when the two torvosaurs appeared. Not only that, but despite being at a clear disadvantage it had attacked the two carnivores, so as to draw attention to itself and allow Jocelyne to get away. It was risking
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