Sobek took Buck to guide him to visit all their camps around Latissa. Thanks to the power of [Teleportation], traveling several tens of kilometers in a few moments was absolutely simple. Sobek gave many speeches, one for each camp, to inspire his troops to work even harder.

Sobek had found that most of Latissa's recruits weren't ready to go to war yet. Even with [Regeneration] and the food provided by the feeders, their bodies had taken months to recover, reducing the time for actual training.

Unfortunately the environment, or rather the pollution, worked against Sobek's designs. The spinosaurus could see that the situation was much worse than he had initially imagined. Human-controlled continents were reduced to deserts, but even where humans had not yet reached the sea level was rising, the oceans were full of garbage, the climate was changing, and life had to struggle hard to survive.

Sobek knew that there was a 'no-return limit', that is a maximum time within which polluting emissions should have ceased; beyond that threshold, climate change would have been irreversible, with the consequent disappearance of most of the planet's life forms. Sobek did not know Eden's limit of no return, but given the conditions in which he poured the planet he suspected he did not have more than a decade at his disposal.

He therefore had to hurry to move against the humans, but the troops he had at his disposal were still too weak to fight seriously. The polluted environment had weakened their bodies, thus slowing down their training.

"In all likelihood, Latissa's dinosaurs will have to lag behind for some time" Sobek mused. "Better keep them as reserve troops and give them time to prepare properly. Taking them into battle now, many of them would die"

After saying goodbye to Buck, he again used [Teleportation] and left. His new target was the fifth continent, Tegrom.

Tegrom was located southeast of Maakanar and was perhaps the most isolated continent of all, as it was surrounded on all sides by several thousand kilometers of ocean. It was located halfway between the temperate and equatorial bands. Due to its particular climate, the forests covered only a small part of the continent, while the savannas were the masters. Several species of tall grass grew there, including bamboo, which formed a small forest in the northern part of the continent. Obviously the predominant fauna was composed of typical animals of the savannahs, such as lions, hyenas, gazelles, rhinos and elephants. As for the dinosaurs, the scarcity of trees had led to a small number of sauropods: only some of the more primitive members of the family, such as the plateosaurus, or smaller ones, such as the magyarosaurus, lived there. But all the other dinosaurs, especially stegosaurids and ceratopsids, thrived easily due to the abundance of grass that provided them with food. As far as carnivores were concerned, tall grass had favored small to medium-sized ones such as dromaeosaurids, but there were also large predators such as qianzhosaurus, a cousin of the t-rex, and siax, a distant relative of the allosaurus. .

However, Tegrom was also changing. On Maakanar, the forests trapped moisture and kept the temperature stable; but on Tegrom, where there were few forests, the warmer climate was starting to take effect. The desertification of entire savannas had already occurred, especially in the center of the continent where the rains were struggling to arrive. Many species had therefore been forced to move to new areas, and competition for ever-diminishing food resources had weakened their population even more.

The arrival of the Sobek herd had momentarily slowed down this phenomenon, since now all the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, birds and reptiles fed through the feeders, thus leaving all the rest of the food to the mammals, the reptile-mammals, to amphibians and all the other creatures of the continent, which therefore no longer needed to compete for food.

However, if climate change was not arrested in time, life on Tegrom would soon disappear. In all likelihood, Tegrom would have been the first continent not controlled by humans to experience total desertification.

Sobek could see him the instant he arrived on the continent. Through the skill of mental sharing he had already seen those lands even though he had never been there, and he remembered that as soon as the pterosaurs arrived there they had found large savannahs covered by very tall grass. It was green and healthy grass. But now, less than a year later, that same grass was becoming dry and at times looked sick, a clear sign of drought and consequently of famine.

Carnopo was there waiting for him. While Buck was responsible for training Latissa's troops, Carnopo managed Tegrom's. "My lord, you have arrived"

"Yeah" Sobek replied, looking around. "How long has it not rained?"

"More or less eight months"

"I imagined it" the spinosaurus murmured looking at the dying plants. "Is it like that everywhere?"

"Not everywhere, especially in the north. In the south, which is further from the equator, temperatures are lower and it is still raining"

Sobek snorted deeply. Even as Carnopo tried to downplay it was clear that the situation was one step away from becoming critical.

"Sir, I hope you have considered my proposal" the carnotaur suddenly said.

When he went to Tegrom, Carnopo had not limited himself to recruiting and training dinosaurs: as a good commander of the army that he was, he had begun to study the territory to prepare it for the future war. However, the carnotaur soon came to the conclusion that Tegrom was indefensible. Unlike Maakanar, whose shores consisted mostly of large cliffs and headlands that served as natural barriers, and Latissa, whose ice floes and jagged fjords would prevent ships from moving nimbly, the Tegrom continent had a line coast composed almost entirely of beaches on which it would have been easy to land. Unless they fortified every square inch of the coast, humans could have easily reached the continent in droves and started a guerrilla war inland.

Therefore Carnopo had decided to opt for the best solution: completely abandoning the territory, since defending it would have meant shedding an infinity of blood. It was therefore better to move all the dinosaurs on the continent to Maakanar or Latissa, more easily fortified.

Sobek praised him for this initiative. He agreed with Carnopo and trusted his judgment of him: after all, trying to keep hold of a territory out of pure pride was nonsense. Just think of the Italians in the Second World War, who had not wanted to leave East Africa despite the fact that it was clear that it was not possible to defend it, and the result had been thousands of deaths.

"I have evaluated your proposal, and I agree. However, we will not move the troops now" Sobek replied. "With [Teleportation] we can now move from one part of the world to the other in seconds, so there is no reason to hurry. Since these troops have not yet completed their training, they will remain here for now. When it becomes clear that humans will set their sights on this continent, then we will leave"

Sobek had already calculated every possible scenario. Tegrom was too far from the human continents to even be hit by an ICBM: Sobek knew from his memories of Earth that the maximum range of those bullets was 5,500 km, but between Tegrom and Laurentia there were 12,000 km. It was impossible that a missile could hit the continent, unless the humans of Eden invented a miraculous way to increase the range of their bombs. Any other danger (ships and planes) would have been spotted by the lookouts hours after their arrival, but with [Teleportation] the escape was a matter of seconds.

"I figured this would have been your opinion" Carnopo said.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

AUTHOR'S THOUGHTS

Hi! Sorry for the short chapter. I'll take advantage of the situation to have another one of our chats!

1) As many of you have already understood, many of the characters that appeared in the last few chapters belong to the 'Jurassic Park' franchise. Soyona Santos and Rainn Delacourt are both villains that appeared in 'Jurassic World: Dominion', while Vic Hoskins appears in 'Jurassic World'. Zia and Franklin are both co-stars in 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom', while Barry is in 'Jurassic World' and 'Jurassic World: Dominion'. Finally, Owen and Claire are both protagonists of all three 'Jurassic World' films.

2) Rodney, Dodge and John Landon are instead some characters of the film 'Dawn of the planet of the apes'.

3) The fact that therizinosaurus has burnt eyes is a reference to the fact that in the movie 'Jurassic World: Dominion' it appears to be blind.

4) The phrase 'TAKE OFF THOSE LURID HANDS OF ME, LURID HUMAN BASTARD' that the therizinosaur pronounces is a reference to the 'Planet of the apes'.

5) The character of the investigator Nero is present in the TV series 'Salvation'.

6) The name of the mosasaur, Mazu, is as already explained a reference to the Chinese sea goddess. The name of the crocodile, Ammut, is instead that of an Egyptian monster.