Chapitre 1: The First Act [The Lost World] (1)
95 million years ago, Late Cretaceous (Egypt, North Africa)
I awoke to a distant roar of a Carnosaur, which was most likely to be a dominant solitary Carcharodontosaurus, and which I imagined that the beast must have just clashed with a challenger, a rival male valiant or maybe unintelligent enough to roam and encroach through the stricture of his hunting range seeking for the privileges to it.
That I moreover anticipated the proprietor had obtained and achieved through excruciating adversities from myriad warfare with, I projected, to be feebler males who must have reserved from the ecstasy and revulsion of the feral and gory fight, before being imposed upon with major critical grievances from the conquering male.
And evading with moderately and utterly conserved and tantalizingly integrated diminutive lesions and grazes and gnaw inscriptions, as time passed and the negligible gashes and gouges healed, while following their instincts work.
From the ambiguity of the holler, I figured the brute to be a few hundred kilometers away, separated in between from me by millions of foliage and flora.
And from the idiosyncratic profundity of the roar, I envisaged that it came from and belonged to the massive brutal male Carcharodontosaurus who I nicknamed 'shark tooth', and who I've encountered and barely managed to fight off once before, during the drought season and the rising of the sea waters that consequently made the rivers I dwell on vanish mysteriously and leaving behind a few puddles.
Forcing me to venture on to scavenging for the cadaver of prey on the banks of the dried upstream, which was then conquered by those pesky little crocs.
But also amongst them was my nemesis, the Sarcosuchus, a forty feet long giant crocodile.
To which he suddenly emerged from a pool of murky water and hissed and snarled at my shockingly unusual and extraordinary appearance upon his door, whilst I was instinctively and desperately clawing the cracked soil beneath me and sniffing at it for trails and signs and pongs that I hoped was left by an unfortunate terrestrial dweller.
And to then I felt an urge to lift my narrow head, thus the realization of Sarcosuchus' hostile intention towards me dawned on my consciousness.
By reflex I flexed and lifted my lengthy limbs, showing off my meter-long sharp talons and claws, swaying my head left to right in an aggressive manner, baring my conical unserrated teeth while simultaneously growling from the bottom of my throat, hoping in my heart of hearts to deter and ward him off, to which I was then suddenly struck with a moment of a horrifying thought that maybe he'd think I was enduring a nasty stomachache and was having a fit of it.
And to then, while I was pondering on the thought, he hissed at me again and streaked through the water towards me, while, I think, he would so likely be dreaming about having me for his midnight feast, and thrusting me with a skewer for the barbeque tomorrow night, when his equally sized relatives would be coming for a party at his dwelling.
I wouldn't want to wait for him to season my juicy flesh with his famous herbs and ingredients, I'd rather join in the party, which, I know, is absolutely impossible for both of our kind to mingle and cooperate like that.
We'd most certainly be tearing each other apart.
He hissed a louder warning at me a third time and I snapped back to my senses, eventually receiving a tight grasp on my utmost inconvenience on this bizarre situation I caught myself in when I froze solid at realizing how close he'd got to me.
He was waddling on all fours, completely out of the water, and was only a few feet away from me. His sights set on slaying me.
I tensed myself as the beast lumbered onwards, squat, stocky feet vibrating with each pound to the marshy terrain, contoured jaws gaping, saliva dripping with oozy dread, conical, unserrated teeth yearning for my flesh. He came to a stop at a circumspect and leery distance from me, assessing me, idling for the right time to pounce. Likewise, I also anticipated with hooks at the ready, my tiny, low set eyes never leaving the adversary.
Like bullets bursting out of the barrels of guns, we lashed out at the same heart-stopping moment. My claws cutting through the air, his jaws snapping back. I was a moment's faster than him, my right arm's four-feet-long claws connecting to the left of his scaly, bulging, protruded neck-scruff. It barreled past through the thick scaly hide an embedded itself for a skull-shattering microsecond before I rent and yanked with all my might, slicing three deep gashes of mottled, severed bloody flesh from the base of his scarred scruff to the tip of his alligator snout and blew his head far backward, where he somersaulted and fell on his back, retching and gasping and twitching horribly before abruptly stopping altogether. He was dead. One of my claws implanted on his severed head.
I was gasping from the ecstasy, repugnance, and revulsion of it all when the acid in my stomach frothed and bubbled. I was craving. I had never been so hungry. I looked at the new cadaver of my nemesis ahead of me, fresh and not yet close to atrophy, decay, and rotting. And I could feel bile rising to my throat. Bile and desire. I was so desirous, famished and starved to near-death. What the hell?
The hunger was relentless as it tore and tore at the quite coriaceous walls of my stomach with mindless ardor. Perpetual this time. I looked again at the body in front of me. Notwithstanding the rancid and putrid meat of crocodilians, it was a superlative treat. Absolutely not the time to think of that though. The famine was painful and insufferable.
Dragging myself to the fresh carcass I clutched heavily the body and began to rend and tear at the tough, scaly hide. Without thought, I felt my mouth open, a crocodilian, narrow-lined jaw with bristles detaching apart for the first time after what felt like a millennium of endured and suffered inanition. The feeling was excruciating, but the thought of indulging the hunger was all-consuming. More than anything, I wanted to recede, wane, and dwindle the hunger ever-rising in my paunch. lavish opulent succulent thick
I gnarred and roared in pleasure, spontaneous, and bewildered. The rancid and putrid meat blundering down my gorge was anticlimactically delicious. It tasted like the meat of my kind, whom I got a taste on eons ago, the zest and tang of lush flesh, the smack of curdled fat, the spice of delicate, mushy pulp, and the relish of succulent meat. I knew it should have panged me with regret of once committing siblicide and cannibalism, but however I was now, the deprivation I had suffered, I savored in satiating my hunger. I was truly a dinosaur.
[Conditions effectuated.]
[Dinosaur System profited and unbarred.]
[Primordial Positioning Subsystem unbolted.]
[Current Position: Tidal flats/Mud Flats, Egypt, North-East Africa.]
[Current Temporal Range: upper Albian - uppermost Turonian stages of the Cretaceous period, 112 - 93.5 million years earlier than the Original Range of Host.]
I nearly fell off balance, toppling to the ground, astonished by the soft, articulated female voice, regaining my balance by stopping my fall with elongated limbs. Distorted, blurry limbs. I brought them to my face, fascinated dazedly at the fading outlines before the sudden, wholly reappearance of renewed claws which previously were supposed to be severed. Even fulfilling hunger couldn't do this. What in the name of dinosaurs happened? What had become of me?
[Dinosaur Identification unlocked.]
[Dinosaur Identification: Self Current Form]
_______________________________________
[Current Dinosaur Identification]
Name: Omnes Sauro [?] [Given by [???] [Anonymous Entity]] [Omniscient Lizard]
Current Form Species: Spinosaurus
Current Form Species Type: Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus
Life-Span Age Status: Subadult Juvenile
[Dimensions] [Length: 12.6 meters (41 ft)] [Height: 4.2 meters (13.8 ft)] [Weight: 7 tonnes]
Region Food Chain Rank: 13th ^2 [Second Echelon]
[Scientific classification]
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Saurischia
Clade: Theropoda
Family: Spinosauridae
Tribe: Spinosaurini
Genus: Spinosaurus
______________________________
[Essential Stats unlocked and disengaged.]
[System Elucidated Stats]
_________________
[Essential Stats]
Health: 97/100
Attack: 10
__________________
*Ding!
[Notification realized.]
[System Notification: System Jargon [Title] unlocked.]
[Well-wishings! [Title](s) have been achieved.]
[Title: Eater of Crocodilians Lv. 1] [Achievement Earned: Eat a Crocodilian] [Current Effect: [+10% Attack] and [+10% Health] against Goniopholidid Crocodyliform Crocodylomorphs]
[You have accomplished a hard feat!]
[You have defeated a juvenile Sarcosuchus.]
[A Medium Echelon Achievement has been earned.]
[Medium Echelon Achievement: Defeat a Sarcosuchus]
[Title: Eater of Crocodilian Highest Echelon; Conqueror of Crocodilian Empire; Eater of Sarcosuchus Lv.1] [Effect: +20% on all stats against Crocodilians, +10% against Sarcosuchus]
[Active Title: Not yet chosen]
[Sarcosuchus Species DNA has been partially assimilated and osmosed.]
[Substat unlocked: Species DNA]
[Sarcosuchus DNA: 10%] [Average [+10%] every kill.]
[You have eased your ever-present hunger. Health has been topped up.]
[Health: 100/100]
What the dinosaur was all this? Though it worked. The hunger I had restrained all through the dreaded drought dissolved into an acidic roar. I regained my bearings and usual rationality. It was terrifying how quickly I was able to think, all problems rushing back to my senses. I lumbered to the edge of the river banks and went up a cracked dune of sand and tried to take in the surroundings of the vast desert beyond my territory.
I would never usually trespass through old 'Shark Tooth's territory before, even if it was the last thing I did, but now was different. I had eaten all the edible portions of typical Crocodilians like Sarcosuchus and I would need more meat. Because of the drought, I knew I would need to stock up my meat-pile. I could go hunting every day but the reassurance of stockpile of meat waiting for me would be nice, especially if the hunting didn't turn out well.
The dried-up desert seemed endless, fading into the bleary horizon as far as I could see. Figures of Ouranosauruses I could make out in the distance, grazing on the few scrubs of undergrowth shooting out of cracks on the desolate landscape. Immense shadows danced across the ground, flowing over the melancholic panorama like darkened streams. What was casting these shadows? If there was something beyond those gray and unforgiving clouds, it shunned me.
Gaping around, the sounds of squawking from nearby Alanqa Pterosaurs fell on inattentive ears. At first, I looked to see why they were so close to the ground, backing to the bottom of the dune, but that wasn't necessary. With more squawking, one of the Alanqa took to the skies and I saw what they were feasting on. It was the skeletal remains of a carcass, abandoned under the shade of a wilted tree. The Alanqa were picking on tiny bits of leftovers of flesh stuck to the bones, stuffing them down their throat. Rich-pickings for an avian pterosaur that small but not the least of a meal for me. My target was not the carcass but the unsuspecting Alanqa. I had the element of surprise, crucial for hunting in these parts.
I felt wary around 'Shark tooth' and I felt the fear gripping my heart whenever forced to trespass his territory.
The huge Carnosaur who I called 'shark tooth', possessed one of the most favored and widest hunting range among the other hunting grounds of the species' males, because of the abundance and vastness of the species of prey roaming the land, and the gathering of large migrations of herds of Paralititans and Ouranosauruses -a genus of the family Sauropodia and a duck-billed dinosaur- from around the region to the watering hole located in the center of the thousand-kilometer wide hunting range of the hunter; making an ambush with the element of surprise from the undergrowth surrounding the clearing on which the lake resided relatively easy for the killer.
I was about to go full-fledge hunting when I sensed something behind me and looked around. There was the scavenger, a solitary Rugops gorging on my stockpile of Sarcosuchus meat, oblivious to the fact I had noticed him. Enraged, I rushed to the fiend with a determination to kill...
With a calm demeanor, the Rugops looked at me approaching in heavy bounds and made himself scarce, disappearing into the thick thickets without so much as a care in the world. Could you believe that, dear reader? The nerve! What an abomination. Was this what 'Shark Tooth' felt when I stole his kill?
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone