[Evolution complete: congratulations, you have evolved to Spinosaurus imperator!]

"Uuuuungh... I don't know why, but I'd like to sleep another five minutes" Sobek thought stretching. And a little later he understood why.

"Pack leader! You woke up!" Buck's deep roar made him shake; for his sensitive eardrums was like a gong in his ears.

Shortly after, other rumors reached his ears.

"How do you feel?"

"Are you hungry?"

"Do you want something?"

Do you know what it means to wake up and be pestered by questions without even a second to understand something? No? Well, good for you.

"Shut up!" Sobek roared, rising abruptly. The dinosaurs around him fell silent instantly.

Quiet at last, Sobek was able to look around. Buck, Carnopo, Al and many others were surrounding him as if he were an idol just out of a concert, but far beyond dozens and dozens of other dinosaurs were observing the situation from a distance, undecided on how to act.

Sobek regretted the times it had evolved with no one around. At least he'd been able to wake up with no one staring at him. It was a situation that made him very uncomfortable.

However, he couldn't start screaming that they had to give him his living space; if he wanted to keep the face of the pack leader perfect and sure of himself, he certainly could not say around that being in too much contact with people bothered him. So he didn't say a single word, but keeping a calm and regal gait he headed for the pool of water where he could look at himself.

His appearance hadn't changed too much from when he was a Spinosaurus ingens, but now his muzzle was wider and bristling with teeth and his neck much more muscular, so much so that in some places there was sagging skin. The forelegs were extremely more muscular and the hind ones were larger and more massive. The sail on the back was now a complete crescent shape, but the neural spines could still be seen through the skin. In essence, he was stronger, more menacing, and more lethal.

According to Sobek, he was now identical to the spinosaurus that appeared in the Discovery Channel documentary 'Mega Beasts'. Except for the size, obviously.

"It seems quite good. I like it" he thought satisfied. "System, open the interface!"

[Spinosaurus imperator]

Level: 33

Length: 33 m

Height: 10.5 m

Weight: 16.5 tons

Diet: carnivore, fishivore

Strength: 125,720

Agility: 116,560

Defense: 98,990

Maximum speed: 34 km/h

Experience points: 11,880/960,000

Skill points: 200

Fame points: 670,000,000/1,000,000,000

Bonus money: 2,058,120

[Caution! You got three new skills!]

[Caution! You have unlocked the Armor System!]

"Finally, new skills! With all the skill points I have earned in the ocean, I can already upgrade quite a few!" Sobek thought happy. New abilities were always useful, so having some new right away was good news.

He had done well to hunt indiscriminately while in the sea. The points he had earned, added to the 40 received thanks to evolution, would have allowed him to move much forward!

"System, showme the skills!" he ordered.

[Open window: 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: 0/5

Devastating roar: 0/5

Linguistics (2): 0/5

"Mmm... [Linguistics (2)]? So it's a skill that grows stronger over time... if my experience in web novels doesn't fool me there should be at least one more [Linguistics (3)]. Who knows what doors of language will open for me..." Sobek thought thoughtfully. "As for [Devastating roar]... from the name it sounds cool... but [Apnea]? It could have been useful to me when I was a common spinosaurus, but now?"

Sobek couldn't understand how those abilities worked. In previous evolutions they had been clear, but now he could not find a use for them. "Let's try to see the description, maybe I understand more..."

[Apnea]: allows you to hold your breath under any circumstances for a much longer period than normal. At the maximum level you can hold your breath for a full day. Cost: 25 skill points.

[Devastating Roar]: allows you to control the sound waves emitted by your vocal cords to create a shock wave of colossal proportions. At max level it is capable of sending radar haywire and breaking armored vehicles. Cost: 30 skill points.

[Linguistics (2)]: allows you to talk to animals even outside the class of dinosaurs. This skill is very specific of its kind. At level 1 it allows you to talk to small pterosaurs, at level 2 with medium-sized pterosaurs, at level 3 with large pterosaurs, at level 4 with giant-sized pterosaurs, at level 5 it allows you to talk to the human beings. Cost: 25 skill points.

Sobek nearly choked when he read the description of the last skill. Could he have talked to humans!?

It was extraordinary news for him. Until then he had thought that he would have to lead a large-scale invasion without openness to dialogue; but if he could talk to humans, then the music changed! He could have gone down to negotiations, taken prisoners, found allies ... after all, humanity was full of individuals who would have sold themselves to any creature for gain, especially in the rich class of society. If he could get their help then he could more easily get weapons, armor and so on with which to unlock the various [Secondary systems]!

Of course, he didn't quite understand why humans were included in the ability: all the other creatures [Linguistics (2)] allowed him to talk to were reptiles. However, Sobek remembered that the System was built by God to be useful to him at the right times. If God had arranged that the ability to speak to humans should unlock with that evolution, there was probably a reason.

And that brought him back to the other two skills as well. How [Devastating roar] worked was easy to guess: with such skill he could destroy entire convoys from a safe distance. But what about [Apnea]? It didn't seem to have a real functioning... if you thought of it with animal canons. But if you threw humans into it, things changed.

Sobek didn't need [Apnea] to stay underwater: with his speed even just a minute or two allowed him to put tens of kilometers from his pursuer. But it could be useful against humans. As Sobek had already imagined, once humans realized the danger he posed, they wouldn't hesitate to create very dangerous weapons.

And among them the simplest to conceive were gas weapons. Poisons such as carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulphide were easily found in nature; although in that world war technology stopped at tanks, it wouldn't take long for someone to think about taking a poisonous gas, stuffing it into a bottle, and throwing it onto the battlefield to kill the dinosaurs of asphyxiation.

But if the dinosaurs could hold their breath for hours, then gas weapons became ineffective. And with the other skills that Sobek possessed other weapons like molotov cocktails, flamethrowers and so on were useless as well. As he progressed in his evolutions Sobek was rendering the entire current and future human arsenal completely useless. With the last two evolutions that remained, he would probably have gained defenses against napalm or even atomic bombs.

Anyways, now it was not the moment to think about the future. He had to choose how to use the skill points he already had carefully. "Let's see... now I have 200 skill points... which one should I upgrade first?"

The obvious choice would have been to maximize [Devastating roar], but it would have cost him 150 skill points, more than half of what he already had. And experience taught him that if the System provided him with defenses like [Apnea] there would be a reason. [Linguistics (2)], however, could be left aside for a later time.

After all, he reflected, he already had many weapons on his side; waiting before getting another one was acceptable. On the contrary, his defenses weren't absolute. So, first he chose to take [Apnea] to the highest level right away.

It cost him a whopping 125 skill points, but he felt it was worth it. The remaining points were all used on [Devastating roar] which was raised to level 2/5. He still had 15 skill points left, but he couldn't spend them in any way.

He decided to give it a try; he turned to a spot in the forest where no one was and roared. Although the ability was barely 2/5, the trees within a radius of twenty meters snapped and rolled away with the power of his voice.

To max out both [Devastating roar] and [Linguistics (2)] he needed a total of 305 skill points. Which meant he had yet to find 290 of them. Despite all his hunting in the ocean he still had to struggle on land.

Now, however, he had other things to think about. He was the leader of the dinosaurs now, and it was his duty to know what had happened while he was sleeping.