Improve the trap

The next morning Sobek was awakened by strange movements. When he opened his eyes he found that some of his brothers and sisters had come out of the nest and were playing on his back. For puppies as small as half a meter, a three-meter older brother was practically like a huge slide for them.

Sobek let them do it: they didn't bother him, so he could let them have fun. Until they started nibbling at him, he wouldn't need to chase them away. Besides, he had more important things to think about. 'System, open the main interface!'

[Spinosaurus aegyptiacus]

Level: 3

Length: 3 m

Height: 1.5 m

Weight: 1,5 ton

Diet: carnivore, fishivore

Strength: 170

Agility: 130

Defense: 86

Maximum speed: 4 km/h

Experience points: 180/3,000

Skill Points: 3.5

Fame points: 0/1,000,000

Bonus money: 340

Much to his relief, the amount of experience points for each level up only increased by 1,000 points at a time, not doubled. Even so, however, it was a fairly high expense.

With his current size he would no longer be able to feed himself with the food his father brought: even if he had kept it all to himself it wouldn't have been enough to satiate him. However, this wasn't a problem: now he knew how to lure his preys out of the forest.

He had decided to continue using the traps until the yolk of the eggs had completely dried up. This was for a very simple reason: sooner or later he would be forced to follow his father into the river to fish. Fishes were the only food source that could sustain him in the long term, since the bigger he got the more he needed large preys, and groups of fishes were the only solution suitable for him. However, before entering the water, he wanted to accumulate enough skill points to upgrade [Swim speed].

Currently the maximum speed he could reach was just 4 km/h, which meant that if he found a big fish or a crocodile he could end very badly. But with [Swim speed] he would have had an escape route. That ability increased his speed for ten times at its maximum, which meant that if it had been maxed out it would have given him a 40 km/h acceleration. However, even just raising it to level 1/5 would bring him advantages: if Sobek was right, then each level of the skill corresponded to a multiplier: level 1/5 to a x2 increase, level 2/5 to x4, and so on up to x10 at level 5/5. Which meant that even a single boosted skill level equated to a remarkable speed.

With that thought in mind he got to his feet and immediately set out for the hunt. He didn't want to wait for his father to arrive with the food: it would have been useless, so he might as well leave it to his siblings. He made a quick tour of the river bank to check if there were any beelzebufo or some large snake, but seeing that there was nothing he gave up and, having obtained some eggshells, went back to the forest.

Unfortunately this time he was not immediately lucky: the first preys he got were more than miserable.

[Prey detected: Compsognathus longipes, compsognathidae. Experience: 400 points]

Compsognathus was a small dinosaur just the size of a turkey. It was also an insectivore and scavenger, so it didn't provide any skill points.

As if that weren't enough, they were pretty fast. Catching one was far from easy. So even if they moved in groups of about ten individuals or even more, it was impossible to catch them all. Like the fishes they counted on numbers to confuse predators.

Sobek only managed to catch two of them, one at dawn and one around ten in the morning. Their caloric intake would never be enough to sustain him.

However, he had another brilliant idea.

The yolk of the egg attracted only a few animals; but the meat, that attracted many more. With this knowledge in mind, when he shot down his third compsognathus he left it in plain sight on the sand.

The results were not long in coming: after less than half an hour an animal similar to a dog emerged from the forest.

[Prey identified: Thylacinus cynocephalus, thylacinidae. Experience: 1,200 points]

Thylacinus, also known as the marsupial wolf, was a canid that reigned in Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea until it was exterminated by humans during the early 1900s. Although in that time it had practically no opponents and was therefore the superpredator of the islands, it reached just sixty centimeters in height and one and a half meters in length.

Before the arrival of the dingoes in Australia it had had no rival; yet in that messy world it was nothing more than a low-ranking predator.

As he had done with the euparkeria, Sobek jumped on it from behind and crushed it with his weight. The thylacinus did not have time to dodge and was hit. There was no need for more: this time Sobek had managed to strike in the right place, and the base of the thylacinus's neck had snapped neatly.

Thanks to thylacinus he was able to satiate himself. Not only that, but he gained 1.8 skill points!

Combined with the 3.5 he already had, he now had 5.3 skill points. He could finally upgrade one of his skills!

The choice was not difficult. Sobek had already thought about upgrading [Swim speed]. After all, [Ambush] needed 10 skill points, which was out of his reach. As far as [Rapid digestion] was concerned, it could wait: although he would have liked to have been able to digest his preys faster, he had to be able to hunt the preys in the first place.

As soon as he upgraded [Swim speed] to level 1/5, he immediately felt something different about him. Physically he hadn't changed, but it was as if he felt more slippery, more hydrodynamic. Not only that: his strength and agility went up exponentially. The first had reached 340 points, while the second 280.

He was eager to put that skill to the test, but he wanted to wait. By that time of day the spinosaurs had already left the river and he didn't want to go into the water alone. So he picked up the compsognathus he had used as bait, devoured it, and then returned to the nest.

With that hunt, as well as an increase in his skills, he had obtained a total of 2,400 experience points (400 for each of the three compsognathus and 1,200 for the thylacinus). Added to the 180 he already had, he had already gained 2,580 experience points. Which meant that it was enough certain that he would level up the next day.

When he arrived at the nest his brothers and sisters crowded on him again. He let them do it: he didn't want to deprive himself of those moments.

The sad thing was that he knew he couldn't stay with them for long. Once he got big enough he would have to go his own way. Furthermore, once the first evolution was completed, he probably wouldn't even have been able to stay with the herd anymore: he would have become a different species, so the other spinosaurs would have hardly accepted him. So he might as well enjoy the time he had left to spend with his family while he still could.