Chapter 32: Mammals

As he had predicted, when he finished consuming both the apatosaurus and the dilophosaurus it was already the nine o'clock in the morning. It had taken him a whole night to make the corpses disappear into his jaws. Now, what remained of his two preys were just enormous skeletons, and many of the bones were even broken since he snapped them to eat the delicious and nourishing bone marrow. Incredibly, however, he wasn't tired. He didn't feel the need to sleep at all. When he was still a common spinosaurus he could stay awake for some days, but he still felt tired. Now, however, he was still in full force. "I assume it's due to evolution. Now I need less sleep..." he thought, but still he couldn't help but ask himself some questions. "I wonder how it works. After all, the brain needs certain mechanisms and a lot of energy to function. Staying awake for too long would cause brain damage to amyone due to excessive energy consumption. Why is mine so different? Perhaps it has become similar to that of dolphins, who can turn off one hemisphere of the brain and use the other alternately? But I don't seem to feel the effects of this change..." He didn't understand, but after all he wasn't a scientist. He decided to not think too much about it: without a tac or some other scientific instrument, he probably would have never understood what happened in his brain. Also, it was better that way: he would have had more time to hunt. He would have simply slept when he felt tired again, and he would have suffered no harm. The previous day had amply demonstrated to him that he could not take creatures on land lightly. They weren't stupid and defenseless like the fishes. These were very strong and fierce. He needed to learn everything about life on land if he wanted to optimize his abilities and consequently speed up the gaining of experience points and skill points. The dilophosaurus had given him 4 skill points. Add to the 5 he already had, one more point and he could have upgraded [Regeneration]. Or maybe he should have upgraded [Fast eating] first? He initially thought that [Fast eating] was useless, but he had change his mind. Eating a whole apatosaurus took a long time, time that could put him at risk. What would have happened if a larger carnivore had arrived instead of the dilophosaurs? After all, the scent of carcasses could be smelled many kilometers away. What if a giganotosaurus or a charcarodontosaurus were attracted by it, or worse a tyrannosaurus? If he wanted to avoid to become a target it was better for him to consume his prey faster. Unfortunately, he needed to hunt carnivores to get skill points. Herbivores were already a challenge, so he couldn't even image how difficult would have been defeat dinosaurs equipped to kill! Maybe he could have search the smaller ones. After all, defeating the two dilophosaurs hadn't been so difficult. Perhaps he could have hunted a rugops, or a ceratosaurus... even a carnotaur might not have been out of his reach. He could have also targeted smaller creatures like dromaeosaurs, but he doubted that it would have been easy for him to find and capture them now that he was so large; after all, animals like velociraptors were still specialized for speed and agility, and while Sobek was not slow, he was still a large predator. Therefore, to avoid the prey escaping by simply slipping into a hole, it was better to hunt animals of a size more similar to his own. However, attacking a predator was always a risk. Furthermore, carnivores were rarely solitary. A group of small predators could easily defeat a giant but solitary carnivorous dinosaur. A single carnotaur against him was powerless, but four or five of them could have put him in serious trouble. He really risked to become the one who would have ended up eaten. While mulling over these issues, however, he spotted an acrid odor, which didn't seem to belong to anything he had already smelled. Trying to hide as best he could, he approached the source. And here he was surprised... for a moment. Later he called himself a fool. Before him there were four saber-toothed tigers sleeping peacefully in a clearing hidden among the leaves. If he could, Sobek would have hit himself on the head. It was so obvious! There weren't just dinosaurs in that world! It was also full of mammals from all ages! And mammals, compared to an adult predatory dinosaur, were just snacks. Even a rhino or a lion could do nothing against them. Probably the only reason they weren't already wiped out by that messy world was their very rapid birth rate. And if Sobek remembered correctly, there were many large creatures among the mammals too. Just think of elephants or mammoths, huge beasts compared to the standards of their times, but very low in comparison with him. Sobek already weighed more than an adult male elephant, which fully demonstrated that these animals were not giants at all in a world ruled by dinosaurs. While not as good as an apatosaurus, such animals certainly could provide him with a good amount of experience points. Moreover, many mammals were also carnivores... [Prey identified: Smilodon populator, felidae. Experience: 5,000 points] The animals that he found were the famous saber-toothed tigers, some of the most dangerous predatory mammals of all time. They weren't worth much, but it was normal. After all, the experience points referred to the size and danger of the prey. Saber-toothed tigers couldn't cause him much trouble given the difference in size. However, experience points aside, he could used them to obtain skill points. He crept closer, trying not to wake them. As soon as he was close enough, he lowered his claws and killed one of them. Unfortunately the others woke up for the sound. The tigers roared and snapped in fright at the sight of the huge predator. One of them, a brave one or a complete fool, took the initiative and charged at the spinosaurus, trying to jump around his neck. Sobek just had to move his claws to make it take a five-meter flight; the tiger fell dead to the ground. The other two smilodons fled. Sobek didn't even try to chase them: they were too fast for him, he didn't even have to test it to know it. This time it took him just a hour to devour them: after all the tigers weren't huge, so he could swallow big whole bites. He was disappointed to find that each of them gave him just 2 skill points. He was frustrated, but he couldn't blame the System: the skill points too reflected the danger of the opponent, and the tiger could not be defined as such. Even so he had now obtained 4 new skill points, thus he now had in total 13. He could finally upgrade one of his ability. He was a bit undecided which was the best, but in the end decided to improve [Regeneration]. Even if [Fast eating] really tempted him, he preferred think about his safety before everything else. Healing very fast could save his life, so it was better to upgrade [Regeneration]. However he promised himself that next time he would have upgraded [Fast eating]. Once finished, he set out to hunt again. Now he knew what to look for. Mammals smelled very different from the dinosaurs, so he could recognized them. It didn't take long to locate a sizeable group of deer. [Prey identified: Megaloceros giganteus, cervidae. Experience: 7,000 points] Sobek grinned. That was easy food. Megaloceros were identical to normal deer, but they had antlers at least three meters long and were two meters tall at the withers. Their massive antlers might have been a danger to predators of their time, but they couldn't do anything against a dinosaur three times their height. After identifying a very handsome specimen, he came out of the woods and loaded. The deer screamed as soon as they saw him and fled. However, Sobek ignored them. Even if they fled, they wouldn't have gotten far. In the forest a giant deer in panic would have just ended up entangled with its own horns in some branch. He easily captured the specimen he had aimed at, then he concentrated on the rest. Most of the megaloceros had managed to escape, but as he had predicted there were still a few wedged nearby. Thanks to his nose he could spot them all. Once they were killed he dragged them all to one spot and started eating them. He needed at least a couple of hours to swallow them all, but it was worth it. He had eaten five megaloceros in total, earning a whopping 35,000 experience points. Added to the 65,500 he had already obtained from the parasaurolophus, the apatosaurus, the dilophosaurus and the saber-toothed tigers, and adding the 8,000 he already had before evolution, he had a total of 108,500 experience points. Now he needed very few of them to level up again. Sobek could be satisfied. If things turned out like this, he could only be happy of it. He just had to concentrate himself to hunt mammals and avoid the dangerous dinosaurs; in that way, he would have easily obtained experience and skill points. And the more he upgraded his skills, the more he became stronger, and the more confidence he would have obtained to confront against other predatory dinosaurs.