Chapter 214: New evolution

[Evolution completed! Congratulations, you have evolved to Spinosaurus perfectus!] "At long last! Who knows what happened while I was sleeping" was Sobek's first thought as soon as he opened his eyes. As usual, his much better senses than before confused him, since he was now much more powerful seeing, hearing and smelling, but he tried to pay attention to them as little as possible. Fortunately, Old Li was there waiting for him. "Pack leader, you are awake!" The words of the ankylosaurus were received with even more intensity due to Sobek's amplified hearing, which confused the spinosaurus even more. As usual after each evolution, Sobek found himself hoping for a bit of silence. "Let's think about the important things! Did something relevant happen while I was asleep?" "No, pack leader, you can rest assured!" Old Li answered. "The humans respected the covenants and there were no conflicts. Everything went exactly as you wanted" "Oh, good. It's a relief" Sobek said, shaking his head. Even though he was 99% sure that humans wouldn't do stupid things while he was in the midst of evolution, there was still that 1% chance that instead everything would go to pieces for one reason or another. Sobek got up on his hind legs, feeling his body somewhat lighter. He felt that his bones and conformation had improved, and the same was true of his muscles, making it easier for him to support his 16.5 tons of weight. Accompanied by Old Li he walked out of the warehouse. The sunlight blinded him for a moment; not only had his eyes not seen a single glow for two weeks, but now his visual perception was magnified hundreds of times. The same was true of his hearing and his sense of smell: as soon as he was out, a cacophony of sounds and a multitude of different smells hit him like a tank. As he managed to put all that information in order, he discovered that he could now see, hear and smell things more than a hundred miles away. This time the dinosaurs, probably remembering the last time, did not attack him with questions and left him his spaces. Sobek then began to look for any means to mirror himself. Fortunately, human cities were not without reflective surfaces. When he was finally able to see each other, he was confused for a moment. This time he was sure he would become like Jurassic Park's spinosaurus, but that didn't seem to be the case. His skin had grown darker, tending to blue or purple, and the sail on his back was more and more crescent-shaped, but still serrated. His face had grown wider and longer and his body more massive. The front legs had longer and thicker claws and the rear ones had thick thighs as thick as tree trunks, suitable for supporting weight and moving easily. It was strange: for once, Sobek had no idea where such a design could come from. All other evolutions modeled on the designs of films or television programs from his past life on Earth. But he couldn't recognize the pattern he saw reflected in the mirror. "Wait a minute..." a strange thought struck him. "Have I become like the spinosaurus that appeared in one of The Land Before Time movies!?" It actually looked like that. 'The Land Before Time' was a series of dinosaur-themed children's movies, which Sobek had watched when he was still a child on Earth. Like many kids of his generation, he loved that cartoon, and it was those films that sparked his passion for dinosaurs. Even though it had been several years since he had seen one of those films, he clearly remembered that a spinosaurus appeared in one of them. And now he had become to all intents and purposes the same as that spinosaurus, obviously not in a cartoonish version. "Damn, I just didn't expect this... well, at this point it seems obvious to me that in the next evolution I will become like the spinosaurus of Jurassic Park" Sobek thought. After all, the spinosaurus hadn't appeared on as many television shows as the t-rex had. Sobek was pretty sure that, apart from Jurassic Park, there weren't any more... if he didn't count that insult to cinematography that had been Age of Dinosaurs, an Asylum film in which a spinosaurus appeared for less than five seconds and it even climbed on a skyscraper no one knew how. "System, open the interface!" he ordered. [Spinosaurus perfectus] Level: 33 Length: 33 m Height: 10.5 m Weight: 16.5 ton Strength: 140.605 Agility: 110.980 Defense: 89,400 Maximum speed: 34 km/h Experience points: 530,000/960,000 Skill points: 0 Fame points: 2,300,000,000/10,000,000,000 Bonus Money: 568,980 [Congratulations! Got three new skills!] [Congratulations! You unlocked the Anti-aircraft system!] "Mh... leveling up is getting harder and harder..." Sobek reflected, reading the astronomical figure needed to level up. "And soon it will be even more complicated, since at any moment I will reach the rank of beast lord..." Even though he didn't care much about leveling up, he didn't mind getting bigger and bigger. He imagined that as soon as he got a new grade the gap between one level and the other would be at least 200,000, since it was now 100,000. "System, show my skills!" [Skill interface] Swim speed: 5/5 Ambush: 5/5 Rapid digestion: 5/5 Regeneration: 5/5 Deadly claws: 5/5 Fast eating: 5/5 Reinforced skin: 5/5 Powerful bite: 5/5 Linguistics: 5/5 Apnea: 5/5 Devastating roar: 5/5 Linguistics (2): 5/5 Teleportation: 0/5 Supreme instinct: 0/5 Linguistics (3): 0/5 "Uh!? Teleportation!? This is new... please tell me that's what I think!" Sobek exclaimed in his mind as he quickly opened the skills so he could see what it was all about. [Teleportation]: allows you to move your molecules from one point to another in a few thousandths of a second, but you can only teleport to places already seen. At the maximum level it allows you to move to any point on the planet. Cost: 30 skill points. [Supreme instinct]: increases intuition to maximum levels allowing you to perceive dangers before they arrive. At the maximum level, it guarantees a forecast of 30 minutes in advance before the event happens. Cost: 35 skill points. [Linguistics (3)]: allows you to communicate with all the diapses, except for those already unlocked by previous linguistic skills. This skill is very specific of its kind. At level 1 it allows you to talk to archosaurs, at level 2 with lepidosauromorphs, at level 3 with ichthyosaurs, at level 4 with plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, and at level 5 with mosasaurs. Cost: 30 skill points. Sobek was beaming. Exactly as he expected, [Teleportation] was the most efficient means of transport he could find! With it he could have traveled to other continents! Which meant not only more beautiful and exotic landscapes, but more troops too! Did he need to see the place before he could teleport there? No problem: there was the mental sharing function of [Contract]! Sobek would simply have to send some pterosaurs to other continents and then have them share images of the places they had seen with him. This was an efficient service! And then... [Supreme instinct]? It was something extraordinary! Predict dangers 30 minutes in advance? Combined with [Teleportation], those two skills literally put him in an iron barrel! Even if humans threw a thermonuclear bomb at him, Sobek would have foreseen it well in advance and would have teleported hundreds of miles away! However... "It doesn't need a genius to understand that [Supreme Instinct] is basically a plagiarism of Ultra Instinct! They have almost identical functions and even the names are similar! God, by any chance you want to pass me as Goku but are you afraid of a plagiarism complaint from Toei Animation!?" As for the third ability, Sobek had expected it to be about marine reptiles. But he didn't expect to get control of archosaurs and lepidosauromorphs as well... but when he thought well about it, he understood it was pretty obvious. Until then, Sobek's language skills had moved along the branches of the evolutionary tree, except for the one to talk to humans which was completely disconnected. When he got [Linguistics] he started from being able to talk to large carnivorous dinosaurs, just like him; after which he had been able to speak with the medium-sized ones, who were immediately earlier in the branches of evolution; and then again he had obtained the ability to talk to any small dinosaur, both herbivorous and carnivorous, because they were very close to each other on an evolutionary scale. Generally, the cases in which an animal passed from a herbivorous to a carnivorous stage and vice versa occurred when its ancestor was still small and therefore more easily adaptable to large changes. He then moved on to medium and then large herbivorous dinosaurs, whose branch started precisely from the point where the common ancestor of the dinosaurs split into herbivores and carnivores. The same was true of what [Linguistics (2)] had achieved: on an evolutionary scale, pterosaurs were the closest group of animals to dinosaurs. He had started with the small ones, since they were the ones most closely related to the first dinosaurs and therefore with the entire phylogenetic group, and then he had continued step by step up to the giant-sized pterosaurs, which had evolved last. With [Linguistics (3)] he would have continued on that path. First he would get the chance to talk to the second most dinosaur-like group, namely the archosaurs (for example crocodiles), then he would descend the tree of evolution and reach the point where the common ancestor of the dinosaurs, of the pterosaurs and archosaurs broke away from lepidosauromorphs, which also included marine reptiles. After that he would go up that branch, thus obtaining the language of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs and mosasaurs. Once he finished, he would have the opportunity to communicate with the whole genus of diapsids. In practice, he would have taken control of half of the terrestrial vertebrates (and even more, since there were also marine reptiles), since the only other phylogenetic group totally independent of water were the synapsids. Yes, it was all perfectly logical if he thought about it. The only thing he didn't understand was how the ability to talk to humans had appeared, but he didn't pay much attention to it. After all, God had designed the System to be useful to him when the time came, it was possible that she had taken some liberties. The problem now was rather... "I'm without skill points" For some time he hadn't hunted anymore and ate only the meat provided by the [Food System], which gave him neither experience points nor skill points. And now that the humans knew he existed they certainly wouldn't take their eyes off him. Not to mention that he now had tens of thousands of dinosaurs under his command: Sobek could no longer afford to be absent for days. He had already taken a big risk to carry out the evolution. He accessed the [Secondary systems]. While there he checked the [Anti-aircraft system]. As he had imagined, there were many missiles suitable for repelling an air strike. Probably the humans would field ballistic missiles at their next fight or anyway soon. After all, the time Sobek had gained to reinforce his army was also time that humanity could use to improve its arsenal. The missiles obviously weren't free, but Sobek cared little. In his farsightedness, she knew he wouldn't need too powerful an anti-aircraft. Pterosaurs were more than capable of shooting down planes and marine reptiles could have sunk ships, while dinosaurs could take care of land armies. The [Anti-aircraft system] would probably have served him against surface-to-air missiles and that was it. What attracted him was rather the name of the last [Secondary system] yet to be unlocked: [Mutations system]. He had no idea what it was and no matter how puzzling he was, he couldn't come up with a sensible thought. He hoped these were not mutations suitable for surviving a nuclear holocaust. However, that wasn't what he was there for. It was another the [Secondary system] he wanted to see. Without delay he opened the [Food system]. When he had unlocked all the boxes in the [Weapon system], he had obtained a weapon suitable for him. If Sobek's intuition was right, that rule applied to all [Secondary systems]: when he completed the [Armor system] he would have an armor that adapted to his ever-changing shape and size, when he completed the [Anti-aircraft system] would get some sort of personal long-range weapon and when he completed the [Mutations system] would he get... a mutation of his own? If this theory was correct, even by completing the [Food system] he would have to get a manger of his own. And since the weapon received by completing the [Weapon system] was perfectly suited to him, the manger was likely too. And to be suitable for his needs, the food had to provide him with experience points and skill points, so the manger would almost certainly provide them. It was the best option at the time. If he had gotten such a manger, he could have secured an endless supply of skill points and experience points without having to leave the pack unattended and hunt for days. The only way to get the manger was obviously to complete the [Food system]. By now only one box was stuck, and Sobek was pretty sure it was a marine reptile feeder. Which left him only one option. "I have to go back to the ocean!"