Chapter 42: Human city found!

Unbeknownst to Jocelyne, Sobek hadn't limited himself to just hunting the boar. He knew that the little girl was probably very hungry, but he couldn't worry exclusively about her. He was still a living being and therefore just like everyone he needed to eat a certain amount of food every day if he wanted to continue to live, an amount that surely wouldn't have been satisfied by such a small prey like a boar. Consequently, he had to hunt primarily for himself. After all, humans, even though they had long since abandoned the natural state, had retained all the survival techniques they had evolved over millions of years: being able to survive for a long time without food was one of them. A human body could last for three months without eating. That little girl could therefore keep herself hungry for half a day. He didn't know how ethical this thought of his was, but in nature no one cared about ethics, so it certainly wasn't his problem. As for the water, instead, he hadn't had to worry. The advantage of living in a forest was that the humidity in the morning condensed into dew on the leaves, so she only had to squeeze them a little to drink. And with all the leaves he'd used to hide her, he was sure the little girl would have understood how to properly hydrate herself. Fortunately, there was no shortage of food in that area. Sobek had also discovered an interesting fact: in that place, unlike those where he had been until then, mammals dominated and there were very few dinosaurs. This was probably due to the fact that they were located near a human settlement. If his thesis was correct, humans had hunted large carnivores in the vicinity in order to ensure greater safety, and to prevent their return they had also driven away the larger preys. The mammals, on the other hand, had been left alone as they were much more controllable, which allowed them to proliferate. And indeed for the first time he found mammoths. They weren't really mammoths: they were hairless and definitely larger than the classic woolly mammoth. However, the System still classified them as "Mammuthus columbi". They were columbian mammoths, a hairless species that on Earth lived in North America to 100,000 and 9,000 years before the modern age. Just one of them was enough to feed him all day, but he'd found it wouldn't have been that easy to catch those animals: when he came out, the whole pack had lined up against him. Like elephants, mammoths also had a complex social structure and strong empathy with the members of their species, consequently they were willing to fight him in order to defend even just one member of the herd. Eventually Sobek gave up. Attacking so many mammoths would have been a challenge that even a tyrannosaurus would have renounced. While elephantids were not as dangerous as triceratops, ankylosaurs, or sauropods, their complex social structure made them a difficult target. Fortunately, shortly thereafter he found another herd of very interesting creatures: they were very massive rhinos with a strange horn that had the shape of the letter Y. [Prey identified: Embolotherium andrewsi, brontotheriidae. Experience: 10,000 points] The experience they provided was quite high, but it was only because of their size. They weren't dangerous to him at all. Some fool might have thought that there weren't too many differences between a triceratops and a rhino. Nothing could be more false. The triceratops's horns were made of bone and its skull was specially designed to deliver deadly blows to the enemy. On the contrary, the rhinos had the horn made of hardened hair that broke like nothing, as well as not having in the least the bone structure of the skull suitable for undergoing powerful blows. Their charging was just a way to scare the enemy, often they didn't intend to hit it at all. As a result, while the triceratops still presented a challenge, the rhinos were helpless in the face of a 21-meter carnivore. Furthermore, they did not even have the strong empathy and social structure of elephants: in front of a too strong predator the embolotheriums only used the technique of disordered escape. Sobek captured eight of them, getting sated and receiving a total of 80,000 experience points. After that he continued at a great pace. His purpose was obviously not just to hunt: he had to find out where the humans had come from in order to bring the child back there. The forest was hardly a safe place for her. Even if he protected her from predators and fed her every day, there were still thousands of invisible dangers. Mosquitoes, for example, which carried diseases. Then there were dozens of poisonous insects. Not to mention snakes, poisonous frogs, or even just tree sap or mushrooms which was sometimes toxic... furthermore, humans weren't made to live in nature: the comforts of modern life had erased the instincts and the defenses that the animals possessed. All it took was a cold or heat stroke, or a slightly deep wound that went into septicemia, and they were dead. And on top of that, the little girl wasn't certainly what could be defined as 'invisible'. She made too much noise and her scent could be heard miles away. For any predator it was like hanging a giant neon sign that said: "Hey, there is easy food here!". In short, he absolutely had to bring her back into civilization. But first he had to find it. He had tried using the GPS from cell phones he had stolen from poachers, but to his surprise it didn't work. He was quite thrilled, but then he remembered that indeed in the map that the GPS showed there were some empty areas, one of which was right next to the jungle. At first he didn't understand, then he picked up one of the phones of the guys he had exterminated the night before and understood everything. Apparently the nation they came from, a certain Odaria, was very totalitarian. As a result, newspapers, news and the press were controlled. They had their own Internet which they took only in their own territory, and that of other countries could not be used there, this to avoid the spread of 'dangerous' news. As far as GPS was concerned, the nation did not give it to ordinary citizens. It was the exclusive property of the army. This is because with the GPS any rioters could have orientated themselves much better. The people he had killed were part of an important family, but the only ones who had cell phones with GPS were the drivers and the boss, and sadly he had destroyed their cell phones while killing them. He could then only search manually. Another problem was that he couldn't get too far from the girl. As long as he was within a certain radius he could control her by smell, but if he went too far he could no longer keep an eye on her. Unfortunately, he still didn't possess a powerful nose like the one of a t-rex. Which meant that if any predator would approached her while he was too far he wouldn't notice it before it would be too late. Sobek hoped that someone would come looking for the girl so that he could find it easier. Unfortunately, however, he also knew that it would be difficult for people to enter the prehistoric forest with a light heart. Fortunately he had noticed a slightly elevated hill nearby. That was his goal for that day. Once he reached the top he was finally able to get a panoramic view. Behind him, where he had come, the forest seemed infinite. In front of him, however, he had a border line, but still continued for tens of kilometers. Beyond it he could see huge empty spaces with large holes, probably mines or oil wells. Next to them, more to the right, there was a cluster of buildings that was undoubtedly a city. It was surrounded exclusively by those huge holes and the only thing that broke the bare landscape were the mountains just visible behind it. Sobek snorted in frustration. He had found the human city, but there was no way that he could bring the girl there. It was one thing to grab her with his mouth for a few seconds to make her go up and down a tree, it was another thing to carry her for several kilometers. A noise too loud, a sudden predator, or in generally something that would have made him wince, and in his surprise he could have squeezed his jaws too tightly and shattered her as if she were tinfoil. Taking her with the claws was then out of the question: he might cut off her head directly, and then Sobek didn't have an opposable thumb. Carrying her on his back was also not an option: unlike other theropod dinosaurs that were covered in feathers, he was still a freshwater dinosaur, consequently he was covered in scales like crocodiles, scales that were hard and sharp like knives. If the girl had sat on him she would have suffered considerable sores and it would have been a miracle if she hadn't bled to death before arriving at her destination. And ultimately, Sobek couldn't go directly to the city: humans would have shoot him in the istant they would saw him. Maybe he should have given her one of his cellphones? Better not. He couldn't take the little girl too far from the tree where he had hidden her and from there she could control every movement he did: she would surely have noticed if he had tried to hide a cellphone nearby. In that case, how would he have explained it? She was just a little girl, but she wasn't stupid. If she would have told that to someone when she would have returned to the civilization, Sobek would have been in serious trouble since he would have proved he knew how a cellphone worked. He blamed himself. He had been a fool. He should have put one of his cell phones in the rubble while she slept! Now that she had already checked she would have noticed if a cell phone had miraculously materialized suddenly. How could he not think about it! The opportunity to send her away rapidly had basically blown away, just like that! Angrily Sobek realized that the only possible solution was to wait for someone to come and take her. "Apparently I really have to babysit her!" he roared in his mind. "Why does it always seem to me that this world is scamming me?". He began to descend the hill. Fortunately, he was soon able to get distracted with a new hunt: a group of large pig-like animals had appeared. [Prey identified: Entelodon magnum, entelodontidae. Experience: 5,000 points] Nothing was easier than hunt them. Five of them quickly disappeared into his stomach. The sixth instead was took by him to bring the food to the little girl: it would have been her meal for the day. Sobek returned to the tree. He took the girl out of the top of the tree and then he tore the entelodon in pieces. When he took one of that pieces to her, she swallowed it with an incredibly speed. She must have been really hungry. Then Sobek devoured the rest of the entelodon and then he layed on the floor. Even if he had less need to sleep, he was a little tired. In the next hours he observed the little girl catching some leaves and prepared a bed. Initially he didn't understand what she was doing: in his eyes she was just browsing around. He was even annoyed when she disturbed a megarachne (a giant Carboniferous spider) and almost let it attack her. However, the more she worked, the more he understanded what she was doing. When he realized she was built a bed he was surprised. "What's your age, girl? Eleven, twelve? How can you be so smart? It's not normal! When I had your age... well, when I was a human and I had your age, the most I could have done if I got lost in the forest would have been cry and hide in the first hole I found!" he thought. "Maybe she is some prodigy? Or is true that girls are smarter than boys?" He considered to help her, but he was too big and he would probably have been a nuisance rather than a help. However, he found a way to make himself useful: when he saw she was flattening the ground, he used his huge tail to spare her all the work. She seemed to appreciate his help, even if the unexpected thud scared her. When she finished and she went in the bed, she remained asleep for almost an hour to controlling him. Sobek couldn't blame her.