“Ugggh, that was terrifying...” I moaned. If I’d had a mirror handy to look at myself in, I had a funny feeling I’d look so tired and haggard you’d think I’d just gotten over a weeklong fever.
It had been a horrific experience, no two ways about it. I’d lost track of how many times I’d nearly wet myself. The dinosaurs that lived in the mountaintop basin were too scary for words. Fel, Gon, Dora-chan, and Sui’s attitudes, meanwhile, were the polar opposite of mine. They looked like they’d just finished up a satisfying walk in the park, and were chatting away about the dinosaurs they’d fought.
“Hah hah hah hah hah! Oh, how fun it is to trade blows with a foe willing to face you head-on! The first beast I vanquished was hardly worthy of note, but the second was both larger and possessed a bite strong enough to rival my own. Even I would have been in danger had it closed its jaws around me—though of course, such a thing could never be possible to begin with!”
“True indeed! Yours was the largest out of all of ours, Fel, but mine was a match for it in ferocity! It did not hesitate for a moment to assail an ancient dragon—in fact, it tried to eat me, of all things! It had remarkable mettle, truly. Lethal venom as well, apparently, but that would never have worked on me, of course. Gra hah hah hah!”
《Yeah, the ones you two were up against looked pretty nasty, but did you see mine?! I would’ve been seriously up a creek if it bit me, and its claws were crazy sharp to boot! I mean, if one of those had even grazed me, it would’ve opened me right up! Too bad I was way too fast for it to ever get the chance! Goes to show that no matter how strong of a bite you’ve got and how sharp your claws are, they’re not worth squat if your enemy can just dodge ’em!》
《Sui’s monster was super-duper strong too! It was reeeally fast, but Sui dodged like this, and like this, and then pew’d it and beat it! Sui’s super strong too!》
Everyone was still riding the post-battle adrenaline rush, it seemed, while I was busy crashing, and hard. I just went around scooping up the dinosaur corpses as they did their little play-by-play post-battle review session. I ended up grabbing a decapitated acrocanthosaurus, a giganotosaurus that had had its gut torn open and all sorts of bits that I assumed were very important strewn across the nearby grass, a t-rex with a few very deep claw wounds and its head bitten almost all the way off, a carcharodontosaurus that had a brutal burn inside its mouth reaching all the way down to its throat, a carnotaurus that had had a hole melted clean through its torso, and, last but not least, an assortment of velociraptors that had all been split clean in half.
I did my best to not think about what I was doing while I collected them all. I really did...
Anyway, once that gruesome task was complete, we set off into the woods once more, this time (most of us) in the highest of spirits. We ran into one carnivorous dinosaur after another as we kept moving along, each of which was gleefully dispatched by one of my familiars.
That said, the human capacity for adaptability was once again proving itself terrifyingly potent. We’d been attacked by enough dinosaurs to make me want to stop and shout, “How many of these even are there?!” to the heavens, and over the course of those attacks, I’d gotten so used to ducking for cover the second a new one arrived that it was basically second nature. I’d just done it a second beforehand, in fact, when Dora-chan and Sui jumped to intercept a t-rex that charged straight at us.
Seriously, though, why are there so many of these things? It sure looks like they’ve all been eating one another to survive, so maybe they were made to breed quickly enough for their populations to stay stable in this sort of environment? Not that I’d know what makes an ecosystem sustainable to begin with, I guess. And one way or another, the fact that some of them have been trying to go for me feels really uncalled for.
《Hell yeah! Chalk up another win for us!》
《Yaaay! We beat it!》
Dora-chan and Sui, it seemed, had taken their newest prey down. I went over to collect the departed t-rex—I’d say what number it was, but the truth is, I’d lost count some time ago. Then, a moment later, I heard heavy, thudding footsteps off in the distance.
“It seems we have another challenger,” Fel said.
“And I do believe it’s my turn,” Gon noted.
“Correct. And mine after.”
And even the senior citizens are acting giddy as could be. Ugggh... Could we please go home soon?