Chapter 19: Poachers

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 of months! Of those 30 skill points, 20 were used to maximize [Ambush]. Now he was perfectly capable of disappearing completly, as if he were a chameleon or a squid. He could sneak up on his prey until he was basically near to its neck and kill it without the slightest effort. The other 10 skill points had been routed to [Rapid digestion], and had been enough to get it to level 3/5. He also still had 5 skill points left by the baryonyx he had killed the same day he discovered the oxalaia, which allowed him to upgrade again [Rapid digestion] to level 4/5. Now he could hunt almost every moment and he was in no danger of contracting pests or diseases. Sobek felt proud of himself as never before. It was a unique pleasure to open the skill panel and see almost all of his skills at level 5/5. There were only 5 more skill points left to maximize [Rapid digestion] as well and reach the maximum of all his skills! And he certainly had no intention of stopping. Even though he was now as big as an adult spinosaurus, he aimed to became far larger! He wanted to be 16, 17, 18 meters long and even more! The next level advancement needed 90,000 experience points. He planned to upgrade [Rapid digestion] by the end of the day and level up within three days. However, something was bound to change his plans. While he went to the oxalaia nest, his nostrils felt something that almost made him sneeze. He had never smelled such a smell, but from memories of his previous life he knew it was exhaust smoke. It was repulsive; it would already have bothered him as a human, let alone now that he had a more developed sense of smell. But it was something else that occupied his mind at that moment. If there was one thing Sobek knew, it was that exhaust smoke could only mean one thing: humans! God had sent him to that world to stop humans from destroying it, but Sobek hadn't yet encountered one of them. However, God had told him that she (or he? He still haven't figured it out) had sent him to the borderline between their territory and in a still virgin continent, so it was only a matter of time before he met someone. But the question was: would it have been good or bad to show up? Humans could do wonderful things, but sometimes they revealed their most terrible and bestial sides. When he reached the oxalaia nest, his fears turned out to be founded and he was grateful for maximizing [Ambush]: there was a ship next to the island. It was at least fifty meters long and crammed with cages. It was from it that the smell of fuel came. Several motorboats were anchored on the island and on the ground, intent on capturing the young of oxalaia and also some adults, there were at least twenty men armed with tranquilizers. Sobek had no difficulty understanding the situation. If it had been scientists or biologists the ship would have had a logo. The fact that it didn't have a sign of recognition meant only one thing: poachers. No matter which side of the world you went to, there were always unscrupulous people willing to make money by taking animals out of their habitat even if it was forbidden. Nothing prevented such things from happening in another world as well. Sobek watched the poachers. They had sedated a good number of adult oxalaia, but only a few of them were being tied up. The little cubs, on the other hand, had all been locked up in cages. Their intent wasn't difficult to understand: the ship wasn't too big, so the humans would only have taken a few adults away; their target was the youngs. On the world that Sobek came from, it was filled with wealthy people who were willing to pay big bucks just for the sake of having rare animals of their own, and generally aimed for cubs as they lasted longer. The same thing was probably happening here: poachers would have taken away some adult oxalaia to sell to some zoo, but it was the cubs that would have granted them the bigger amount of money. Sobek was disgusted and felt a strong anger, but his survival instinct prevailed: humans were certainly not simple preys. They were armed and very dangerous. To challenge them to his current state meant a very, very high risk. It was better turn around and get out of there: after all, he only saw oxalaia as preys and poachers would have left him almost all the adults, so there was no point in worrying. However, as he was leaving, another thought occurred to him: he still didn't know anything about the world, but the poachers could have helped him. Even at that distance he could clearly see that some of them had cellphones in their pockets, and the model didn't look old at all compared to a smartphone; if he could get hold of one of them, he could use Eden's Internet network to find out all about that messy world. But taking a single cell phone meant exposing himself. Even with [Ambush], the humans would surely have noticed if he had eaten one of them. On the other hand, though... come to think of it, maybe he could have had the advantage. They were in his territory, he knew it well and could hide in several places; if he had used [Ambush] and [Swim speed] well, he could have split them up and killed them separately. Of course, always assuming that any of them could shoot him; although with [Swim speed] it could reach 160 km/h, it was certainly not enough to distance a bullet. He wanted to know how that absurd world worked too much. In the end he chose: he had already taken risks before, he was certainly not afraid of some bald monkeys! He was a spinosaurus, by God! A 15-meter long carnivore! He was not supposed to fear such big rats! ************************************** "Get moving! These cubs must have been in the cage twenty minutes ago!" "Come here and get them instead of staying there to keep the cage! These bastards bite!" "Use the tranquilizer, no?" "You know very well that they are calibrated for large dinosaurs! Do you want a cub or a corpse?" Two poachers were squabbling incessantly, making the others very angry. Apparently some cubs had hidden under a mangrove tree and could not get them out, hence the aforementioned quarrel. "Stop it, you two!" a voice behind them yelled. The two of them turned and saw a tall, grumpy man with a pale complexion and a stern bearing. He wore light clothing and carried a rifle over his shoulder, and around his neck he wore a necklace made of the teeth of various animals. The two poachers immediately stopped fighting and stood at attention. "Excuse us, Mr. Wheathley. Let's get back to work right away" Ken Wheathley chewed his own saliva, irritated. He had worked in that 'sector' for at least twenty years, so much so that among poachers he was known as the 'white hunter', yet he still managed to be surprised at how certain of his collaborators could turn out to be complete idiots. "I hope of it! Do you want to stay here yelling at each other until these dinosaurs wake up? Tell me, do you think tranquilizers will keep them asleep forever?" Even with modern human weapons, killing a predatory dinosaur was no easy feat. Small firearms were basically useless against their thick skin and even medium caliber ones didn't hurt them much. Very strong rifles or even machine guns were needed to take down even one, let alone a whole pack. "I'll be clear: I want ALL the cubs in the cages within half an hour, okay?" Wheathley snapped. "Not a second more. And remember that one of those animals is worth more than the two of you can scrape together by selling all your organs, so it's better to you that you don't even scratch them!" "Yes, boss!" the two poachers nodded, hurrying back to try to catch the cubs. Wheathley felt the urge to punch them, but didn't do it to avoid wasting any more time. Suddenly, however, someone screamed: "Boss! Over there!" "What's wrong with you?" Wheathley grumbled looking at the man who had yelled. The man start waving, pointing a direction in the water: "Over there! Look! It suddenly appeared!" Wheathley looked up and petrified. Not far from the islet there was a dinosaur sporting a wide dorsal sail. It looked like an oxalaia, but it was red and yellow in color! "A spinosaurus!" Wheathley was beside himself. "Everyone on speedboats! This is a golden opportunity! We had to capture it!" Spinosaurs were considered some of the most difficult animals to hunt, not so much for their power and size, but more for their habitat. Generally they nested in open beaches on the banks of the river, unlike the oxalaia or other fish-eating dinosaurs who instead exploited the cover of the mangroves. This meant that while the poachers could themselves hide under the trees and go unnoticed to catch the oxalaia, they couldn't do the same with the spinosaurs, because there was a risk that some helicopter or plane could have flown over the area and alert the police. It was already difficult to get through customs checks to get in and out of the forest, let alone if they became real wanted people. Also, with the recent expanding of human's colonies, the traffic of reconnaissance helicopters over the forest had recently increased, which made everything much more difficult. Consequently, poachers generally exploited mangroves to capture fish-eating dinosaurs and the thick forest for terrestrial ones. Taking a spinosaurus, which lived in wide open spaces, was a big risk. So finding one in the swamp, where they could safely hunt it, was a heavenly gift. They absolutely had to get it! Even better, this spinosaurus was literally a giant for its kind. Wheatley couldn't be sure, but it seemed measuring almost 15 meters long! Similar size were founded just in zoo. In nature, normally a spinosaurus wasn't more than 14 meters long! Very quickly five speedboats fired the engine and set off in pursuit. Wheathley was already aroused: that would have earned him a lot of money! =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= AUTHOR'S THOUGTHS Hi! Time for another paleontology lesson... and some explanations. 1) Prionosuchus, even if it has this name, wasn't a crocodile but a giant amphibian, maybe the most bigger amphibian that ever existed. It lived in the Middle Permian period, about 270 million years ago (Guadalupian), and its fossil remains have been found in northeastern Brazil. We called it "prionosuchus" (literally, "crocodile saw") because its body shape really resembled the one of the crocodiles, and so when paleontologists found its fossils they believed it was a crocodile, and only next they found that it was an amphibian. It wasn't even the first time that such mistakes happened: many other amphibians like mastodonsaurus and koolasuchus was originally mistaken to be reptiles. 2) Dreadnoughtus was a sauropod lived in the Late Cretaceous period (about 84-65 million years ago), whose fossil remains have been found in the Cerro Fortaleza formation, in the Province of Santa Cruz, Argentina. Using the measurements of the bones of the limbs it was found that this animal possessed one of the largest body masses of any land animal ever lived on the planet; having been found about 70% of its skeleton, the dreadnoughtus is also one of the most complete titanosaurine sauropods found, not to mention that the fossil found belonged to a young specimen that had yet to complete its development. For now its size is estimate to be 25-26 meters long with almost 60 tons of weigth. 3) About the fact that I said that the argentinosaurus was the biggest of all... well, I KNOW that some sauropods are estimate to be even bigger, but we only have little fragments of this giants. Paleontologists are reluctant to establish the size of an animal with just some vertebra, because often they could make a mistake. The biggest theorized sauropod was the amphicoelias, that initial estimations posed to be 52 meters in length, but we have just one vertebra of this dinosaur; more, it was initially considered a diplodocid, but today we consider it more a rapetosaurid and so we reconsider its size to "just" 30 meters. So to avoid mistakes I simply decided to consider the argentinosaurus the biggest of all. 4) The ichthyovenator is a cousin of the spinosaurus; it's even closer to it in the evolutionary tree than baryonyx. However, for its body shaoe I decided to speculate that it fish like a baryonyx. 5) In this chapter there is a GIANT reference. Let's see who guesses it! Remember, you will be mentioned in the next chapter if you notice it!