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 delay and provided him and the other cubs with the daily fishes. Sobek felt the urge to keep all the breakfast to himself; with his current size he could easily push away his siblings. The strong prevails over the weak: this was the rule in nature, even among members of the same brood. Often the most fragile cubs were turned away from the strongest and died of hunger.
However, that little shred of humanity that was still present in his soul held him back from doing so. After all, those were his siblings, he couldn't make them starve; so he bit the bullet and took his usual daily amount, and then he immediately began the hunt.
In the morning the beach was teeming with creatures, so it was not difficult for Sobek to eat many frogs and lizards; however, even if they raised his experience points to 380, they could barely be considered a snack for his new big body. He needed more substantial preys.
The best choice would have been to fish, but Sobek still didn't dare dive into the water. He wanted to wait to reach at least 3 meters in length before doing so; before that even a small crocodile could have killed him easily.
The forest was also off-limits: entering it would have meant courting death. He could only imagine what he would have found: poisonous snakes, dangerous insects, prehistoric mammals, carnivorous dinosaurs...
But maybe he could...
An idea flashed in Sobek's mind. A spinosaurus would never have thought of such a thing, but he still had a human mind!
And if there were things humans did very well, they were traps.
Sobek returned to the nest and grabbed some egg shells. The yolk inside them had begun to dry out and much of it had already been lost, devoured by the cubs or fallen to the ground, but there was still a good amount of it. Sobek dragged them near the forest, after which he hid behind a bush and waited.
The egg yolk was very nutritious. Nature was full of animals that would have done everything to obtain it. None of them would have been crazy enough to get too close to the nest, where the parents were on guard, but if the egg was out of their sight...
As he had expected, a small creature soon emerged from the depths of the forest. It was short and stocky, about one meter long and looking like a hairless dog with a long tail. It walked on all fours and had an elongated snout like the one of a clumsy crocodile.
[Prey identified: Euparkeria capensis, euparkeriidae. Experience: 800 points]
The euparkeria wasn't exactly a dinosaur. If Sobek remembered correctly, it was an archosaurimorphid, a genus of reptiles that went extinct in the Upper Triassic period; however they left their descendants, the archosaurs, that became crocodiles and alligators. It was more related to the so-called 'mammal-like reptiles' of the Permian period than to the dinosaurs.
Even so, however, it was excellent prey! A one-meter long animal would have surely provided him with enough food to have energy until the next day. On top of that, it would have granted him 800 experience points!
Sobek wouldn't have risked facing that animal while he was still at level 1, but he was now at level 2. He had the size advantage, which mattered a lot in a fight.
Sobek waited for the euparkeria to start eating the yolk of the eggs; then he jumped on it! In one leap he landed on top of it and pinned it to the ground.
His goal wasn't certainly face it in a direct confrontation: even if it was smaller, the euparkeria had very strong jaws. Sobek aimed to crush it with his weight until it suffocated, as he had done with the beelzebufo.
The euparkeria made a bray-like sound when it was knocked down by the big spinosaurus and tried to turn its head to bite him, but Sobek had foreseen it and was quicker: he wrapped his arms around its neck and planted his claws in its throat. The euparkeria could no longer move its neck without ripping the jugular by itself. Aware of this, the animal tried to wriggle with its legs, but they were too stubby and weak to be able to beat the muscular legs of a spinosaurus which remained firmly anchored to the ground and prevented it from escaping. With each movement, even if imperceptible, Sobek's claws created ever deeper gashes in the throat of the euparkeria.
A pool of blood formed beneath them and widened more and more. Eventually, the euparkeria collapsed to the ground and gave a few more spasms, then it stopped moving.
Sobek was triumphant, but he knew he couldn't afford any distractions: the blood would have soon attracted other animals. He grabbed his prey and carried it away from there, returning to the safe protection of the herd.
Once away from the forest the banquet began. It took him a long time to finish the euparkeria, also because he had to make sure that none of the other cubs came and stole a piece.
When he finished he was finally full. Not only that, but he had reached 1,180 experience points, more than half necessary to level up! In addition, the euparkeria had given him 1.2 skill points!
Added to the ones he already had, he had 2 skill points! He only needed to find 3 more and then he could upgrade a skill!
He decided that he would have repeated the trap once he had digested the euparkeria, but this time he would have changed the zone: that pool of blood was too dangerous. It surely couldn't attract large predators, but even a dinosaur as small as a velociraptor had lethal weapons that Sobek preferred not to confront. It was better for him to go somewhere else.
In his haste to leave he had abandoned the eggshells, but that was no problem: he still had several and even if he ran out of them he could have taken them from the other nests.
Unfortunately, he knew that this trap could not last long: once all the yolk had completely dried it would have no longer attracted any animals. Sobek still had two, three days at maximum, before his ruse became unworkable: he had to make the most of it while he still had the possibility.
That day he played and moved as much as he could, defying his own fatigue, to digest the meal more quickly. He minded it after all: playing with his brothers and sisters was always a pleasant activity for him.
When he finally digested the meal he took more eggshells and carried them to a new area, far enough from his first hunting area. Obviously he didn't distance the spinosaurs' herd too much: it was important to have an escape route and a safe place to take refuge in case things got bad.
He set the trap again and waited. He was surprised at how easily he could wait: even though he didn't remember his previous life, it seemed to him that when he was a human he had been a very impatient guy. Instead now it was as if his patience had increased to excess and he didn't even feel the wait. It was probably due to the predatory instinct, which cooled his hot blood to improve the ambush.
After nearly two hours of waiting something finally arrived. This time Sobek was faced with a being similar to a bird: it had the typical shape of a velociraptor and was covered in yellow/brown feathers from head to tail. A fan of more colorful feathers opened at the base of the tail. The front legs were small and ended in claws, but they had a hint of wings, similar to what chickens had. It was nearly a meter and a half long, but it was very low: compared to a human being, that dinosaur probably wouldn't have reached a full-grown man's knee.
[Prey identified: Bambiraptor feinbergi, dromaeosauridae. Experience: 1,000 points]
Sobek was filled with excitement. If before he had found a treasure, now he had found a gold mine! With all those points he could have leveled up again!
As he had done with the euparkeria, he waited for it to get close enough, then he jumped out of his hiding spot. His size was far greater than the bambiraptor's, and his opponent had a very fragile constitution: if Sobek had fallen on it like he had done with the euparkeria, he would have killed it instantly.
But he had underestimated the animal; the bambiraptor noticed him in time and dodged him easily. The two of them were now in a stalemate.
If the bambiraptor could, it have certainly escaped, but Sobek had blocked its way to the forest and the animal didn't want to escape towards the herd of spinosaurs; it had no choice but to fight.
The bambiraptor tapped its claws on the ground in a threatening manner; like the velociraptor, its distant cousin, it too had a curved claw on its feet. In terms of strength Sobek had the advantage, but if the bambiraptor could hit him with those it would surely have caused him a painful wound and would have taken advantage of his disorientation to overcome him and escape.
Besides, Sobek didn't want to be hurt, even if it was only a superficial cut. In nature, where there were no antibiotics or medicines, even a tiny cut could go into septicemia and cause death. And Sobek was still a young spinosaurus: his immune system wasn't certainly the best.
However, Sobek had many tricks up his sleeve. In his mind a plan was already taking shape. He knew he had to attack first, but if he did so he would have exposed himself; he had to act differently.
With a snap, he swung his tail against the bambiraptor. The spinosaurs' tails were as flat and hard as that of crocodiles: a single stroke and the bambiraptor would have died instantly. As he had expected, however, the animal dodged the blow with a jump and launched itself at him.
In the limited mind of the bambiraptor, it assumed that using the tail Sobek would have exposed his blind spot, because the bambiraptor had a binocular vision and therefore saw forward. But Sobek didn't have the same sight: like crocodiles, he could see to the sides of the head. Consequently, by moving his tail in that way he had not exposed his blind spot, but he had only illuded the bambiraptor that he had done so.
When the bambiraptor attacked, Sobek could see it perfectly well. As soon as the animal jumped at him in order to use the claw of its foot, Sobek rose on his hind legs and clawed at it in the right paw. There was a 'crack' and the bambiraptor's paw bent inward; the animal let out a sound of pain before falling to the ground, completely unable to get up or walk.
By now the winner was already decided. Sobek quietly approached and bit the bambiraptor in the throat, and he tore it up; the animal died instantly.
"Yes! I did it!" he roared triumphantly as he looked at the corpse in front of him. He had officially killed his first dinosaur!
As he had done with the euparkeria, he dragged his prey into the herd and there he devoured it. By the time he finished he had reached 2,180 experience points and gained 1.5 skill points!
He was about to level up, but then he stopped. Even if he had the nose of his parents on his side, they would have been suspicious if he came back bigger again. He then decided to take a tactical action: return to the nest and level up in front of them, so that they had no doubts that he was their child.
That was exactly what he did. He reached the nest and once there he lay down on the ground under the gaze of his mother and father, and then leveled up. He felt the sharp pain again, but did his best to not show it.
When the ten seconds had passed, he looked up and saw his mother and father's eyes wide open like balls. It was clear that they were surprised, unable to explain what just happened. Sobek didn't care: what matters to him was just that they knew he was still their son and not a stranger.
Sobek stretched: he was now a 3 meter long and 1.5 meter high spinosaurus, weighing a ton and a half! As he had expected, he could no longer sleep in the nest. Despite himself, he could only lie down next to his parents and sleep there.
This reminded him, however, of how long the road to the summit still was: even though he was now bigger than a Bengal tiger, he was just almost one-fifth the size of his parents. He still had a lot of work to do in order to call himself an apex predator.