We walked on and on until finally, we emerged in a grassy clearing where something truly remarkable awaited us.
“Holy crap, that’s a huge one,” I muttered under my breath.
The long-necked dinosaur before me was big enough that it made the giganotosaurus from before look like it had been a kid by comparison—and to top it off, there were three of them in total. I, however, had some very helpful insider information this time: Long-necked dinosaurs like those were all herbivores! I could rest easy this time...or at least, I thought I could until I watched one of the long-necked dinosaurs bend over to snatch a t-rex—which had been in the process of eating a smaller dinosaur—up off the ground with its jaws, right before my eyes.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
“Wha?” I grunted. A fun fact about humans is that when we are greeted with the truly unexpected, we often find ourselves completely incapable of reacting. That was the state I’d found myself in, and I sort of just vacantly stared until something even more shocking followed the first surprise.
Instead of eating the t-rex, the long-necked dinosaur that had grabbed it dashed it against the ground. The t-rex slammed into the earth with an earsplitting thud, then lay there, not moving an inch. And then, yet another surprise: the long-necked dinosaur leaned in to start chowing down on the t-rex’s corpse after all.
“Oh, no friggin’ way!”
But no, seriously—hold the phone for just a second! Weren’t dinos like that supposed to be herbivores?! Why’s it snacking on a t-rex, of all things?!
“H-Hey, why’s that thing eating a t-rex?!” I shouted, giving Fel’s back a few solid slaps as I spoke.
“Because it is a meat eater, I am sure,” Fel bluntly replied.
I mean, yeah, I figured that part out!
“I had thought they might still stand at the pinnacle of this place’s food chain,” Fel continued.
“As did I,” Gon added. “They have always been, and still remain, this region’s mightiest inhabitants.”
《Hot damn, those’re huge! Now this is gonna be a real fight!》 Dora-chan said.
《Wooow, so big!》 Sui chimed in.
Does that mean what I think it means? You guys are seriously taking those on? Those?!
I could tell that my familiars were already hyped up for battle, and I looked on in utter dismay for a moment...
“Ah.”
...until suddenly, one of the long-necked dinosaurs looked straight at me. Our gazes met.
Oh. Welp. I’m dead.
I watched in what felt like slow motion as that long, long neck reached out toward me. Then, right before I would’ve been eaten whole, something pulled me away, sending me plopping to the ground on my backside.
“Stand back,” Fel said.
“This is a task for us, my liege,” Gon agreed.
《Yeah, just sit back and wait a minute! We’ll have a real biggun for you before you know it!》 Dora-chan declared.
《Sui’ll fight super hard, Master!》 Sui added.
My four familiars stood at the ready, eager as could be to take down this region’s long-necked apex predator.
“Ha ha ha...” I weakly laughed. Why’re these things carnivores? Dinosaurs like that are absolutely supposed to be herbivores, right? Herbivorous dinosaurs don’t eat meat, and even carnivorous dinosaurs don’t shoot fire out of their mouths! All of the dinosaurs on this mountain are completely wrong!
How was I supposed to do anything but laugh, honestly? Well, laugh, and blame Demiurge, since this was definitely his fault.
“Seriously, Demiurge, why did you make this place?” I muttered under my breath. A moment later, a voice rang out in my mind once again.
＜I just thought they were cool, to be perfectly honest! I’m sure you know how children in your world love to dream up ‘the coolest dinosaur ever,’ yes? Well, I must admit that I was rather youthful myself at the time, and was going through a phase where I’d convinced myself that ‘bigger’ meant ‘more powerful,’ with no exceptions. How very inexperienced I was! Ho ho ho ho ho!＞
“Ho ho ho” yourself! This is so not a laughing matter, and I know for a fact that you’re brushing me off again!
“Okay, look—I get the feeling that these dinosaurs don’t exist anywhere other than here, and it sure doesn’t seem like they’re interested in leaving this place, but just think about what would happen if one of them did somehow, and found its way to a village! It’d be a bloodbath! What possessed you to make all these ridiculous monsters?” I said. Then, suddenly, a thought hit me and I jerked my head up with a start. “Hold on. I really don’t want to consider this, Demiurge, but are there any other places with absurd monsters living in them? You didn’t make any more crazy abominations like these, did you?”
A very, very long pause ensued.
＜Probably not.＞
“And why, exactly, did you have to spend that long thinking about it if the answer’s just a ‘probably’?”
＜A ‘probably’ is a ‘probably’! Fare thee well!＞
“Hey, wait! That was just an ‘I don’t actually remember’ sort of ‘probably,’ right, Demiurge? Right?! Demiuuuuuurge?!”