Near the lake two pyroraptors, two dromeosaurs with reddish plumage, were walking quietly. And one of the two couldn't stop talking. "You should have seen me! I jumped on that stegosaurus and got it from the back of my head! In a real fight he would have died! So I got promoted and..."

"Yes, Echo, I was there too! They promoted both of us!" the other pyroraptor growled. "Now stay silent! We are on patrol, we mustn't be distracted!"

"Uff. You are such a curmudgeon, Delta!"

"I'm not a curmudgeon, I'm professional! Unlike you, I know what 'responsibility' means!"

"I can be responsible too!"

"Then shut up!"

The two pyroraptors were both two-star warriors, and in fact had two yellow lines on their cheeks. Given their rank they had been assigned to the reconnaissance section and had the task of controlling the boundaries of the lands of the herd. They weren't exactly high up in the pack hierarchy, but they weren't at the lowest rank either.

Echo and Delta were sisters, but while one was overly excited and wordy, the other preferred a more sedate and quiet lifestyle. Delta was irritated by Echo's behavior because her constant shouting prevented her from hearing the sounds of the forest properly.

Perhaps it was because of this that she could not feel any signs of danger for a long time. When an unknown smell entered their roots and alerted them, it was too late: once they pass a rock, they find themselves face to face with a strange bipedal creature.

The being was the strangest animal they had ever seen: it looked like a monkey, but it was bald (except for the head) and covered in something else than its fur or feathers. It was just one meter and eighty centimeters tall, not very muscular, didn't have much fat on its body, and its skin was pale. The pyroraptors were able to recognize it thanks to the memories Sobek had shared with the [Contract]. 'Human!' they both thought widening their eyes.

The human was trembling at the sight of them, and from the smell of him it was clear how scared he was. "Ssshhh... stop... stay calm... don't move...". Too focused on his words, the two pyroraptors didn't realize that his hands were reaching for a strange iron rod on his back. As soon as he managed to grab it, the human pointed the iron rod at them. The pyroraptors recognized it: it was a weapon of the humans!

Delta felt her blood run cold in her veins and started to back away, but Echo was a hothead. The pyroraptor at the sight of the weapon began to growl and show her claws. Her sister's attempts to restrain her were useless: Echo threw herself at the human with a scream. And at that point the human fired.

The noise was so loud that Delta felt deaf. Echo was hit in the face. With [Reinforced skin] she would have been immune to such a bullet if she had been hit on any other part of the body; instead she was shot in the eye, the only part not protected by [Reinforced skin]. Fortunately the bullet was held back by the flesh and didn't penetrate the brain, but it was enough to bounce the pyroraptor back and drop her to the ground, when she remained still and rigid like a stockfish.

Delta ran over to Echo and quickly checked her wounds. The blow wasn't fatal, but Echo was unconscious. She had to take her away quickly, but she didn't know how: the human was still there and he still had the weapon, and she was sure that if she tried to move he would shoot her. She decided to ask for help: she raised her head and began to emit the sharpest noises she could to signal her position.

More than two kilometers away, Sobek's eyes widened with a jolt. Human ears couldn't hear the sound of a shot beyond 150 meters away, but his hearing was thousands of times more efficient and he could perceive sound vibrations even below a certain acoustics.

He jumped up and growled in the direction from where he had heard the shot coming. He could hear sharp cries signaling his position as if they were Morse code. "Buck!" he roared. "Take two hundred of your soldiers and follow me! You too, Rambo!"

At the same time Delta was still desperately trying to revive Echo, who showed no sign of awakening. A few moments later she heard a soft footstep and new smells entered her nasal cavity. More humans were coming! Delta tried to think of something, but before she could do it five other humans had appeared in her field of vision.

"I shot it!" the human who hit her sister screamed. Delta stared at them and let out a warning hiss, puffing out her chest and raising her feathers trying to seem more intimidating.

The humans that just arrived had mixed reactions. Some were indifferent, but two had a dejected look and one, a very large, dark-skinned guy, was even frightened. "We have to leave now!" he exclaimed.

"Stay calm, Abe, there are only two" a guy with the hat said, while he looked at Delta bending over her sister's body.

"There aren't just two! Pyroraptors are social animals!" the black man protested. "Their herd mustn't be too far away, they will be here fas..."

The trees shifted and with a roar several triceratops entered the scene, followed by torosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, and then also carnotaurs, allosaurs, t-rex, charcharodontosaurs, and many others. The humans panicked and pointed their weapons in all directions, but the dinosaurs literally surrounded them. The humans stood in a circle and raised their rifles, but there were so many animals that they knew they would run out of bullets before they could take out even a quarter of them. The dinosaurs bellowed and roared fiercely, fueling their fear even more.

Suddenly a large animal arrived and moved the branches of the trees. No one didn't remember ever seeing such a large predatory dinosaur. By comparison, even sauropods would have been considered normal in size. It was at least ten meters high and more than thirty meters long. Upon his arrival, the dinosaurs subsided and fell silent.

Abe noticed that the dinosaurs had drawings on their foreheads. The one who presumably was their leader had a sun, while the others mostly had stars and lines on their cheeks. He also noticed one with a moon. They almost looked like... tribal signs?

'Could Jackson's father be right? Are dinosaurs already develop some sort of civilization?'

So many types of dinosaurs gathered in a single herd was already something inconceivable, but the fact that they painted their faces was to underline a form of culture. It meant that there were specific hierarchies and traditions within the pack, and consequently probably also laws, social classes, battle strategies, and much more…

Sobek snorted and looked at the humans. What were they doing so deep in the forest? He had had the pterosaurs watch the river, so if a ship passed he would know. They must have come in a vehicle. But why?

He immediately considered killing them on the spot, but that would have been a mistake. The humans had numerous devices with them, and many of them seemed expensive. Furthermore, the weapons they wielded were quite powerful, even if they would still have lost against the numerical majority. Those humans had to work for someone important, so why were they there? A bad feeling started to make its way into his brain. The tools the humans carried looked like seismographs, the kind used to locate oil wells. Human expansion proceeded faster than he knew.

Delta's scream brought him back to reality: "He shot Echo! He shot my sister!" she screamed, luckily using only [Linguistics] and not [Linguistics (2)] in order to not be understood by humans.

"Stay calm!" Sobek growled in the same language, then gave Echo the [Regeneration] ability. In a few moments the pyroraptor recovered, but Sobek stopped her immediately: "Don't get up! They don't have to understand that I can heal you. Keep pretending to be unconscious!"

Echo obeyed and didn't move. Delta kept pretending to be worried about her. Sobek turned his gaze back to the humans.

If oil researchers were there, then it meant humans were ready to invade the forest. Why hadn't he heard anything about it? He had kept up to date with the news thanks to the Internet... well, it had to say that Odaria wasn't exactly a nation that shone with transparency, so perhaps they were planning to speed up operations in secret to keep the advantage over other countries.

But if that was the case, he had to know right away. With a nod of glances he made it clear to Rambo, who was perched nearby, to follow the humans without being seen. The rhamphorhynchus nodded and flew farther to where their vehicle was and hid inside.

Sobek now only had to send the humans away. But before he could make any move what presumably was their leader he spoke: "We don't want to hurt you!"

If Sobek found that reaction strange, surely other humans saw it as insane. "They're dinosaurs, Malcolm! Do you think they understand what you say?" Carver asked behind him.

Malcolm shook his head. "Do they look like simple dinosaurs to you?"

'No, they don't look like simple dinosaurs in the slightest' was Abe's thought, even if he didn't say it aloud. Looking into the furious eyes of the dinosaurs that surrounded them, he could see something inside them. Not just anger, but also a strange form of awareness. Normal animals, even the smartest ones, didn't have that look.

Sobek knew the damage was now done. Killing those humans would get him nowhere: he would just lose a source of information. If he had killed them he would have found himself unprepared for the human invasion of the forest because he couldn't have anticipated them. He could have sent spies who would have infiltrated the human outposts using [Ambush], but they would have taken time to find out what was coming; instead, having that group of humans followed meant immediately finding their mandator and therefore the information he needed. However, not killing humans meant exposing oneself.

Malcolm took his silence as some sort of challenge. "Ok... put your weapons down" he said in a whisper. To the 'you can't be serious' of one of his companion, he simply replied: "Do it"

The humans lowered their weapons. Malcolm spread his arms wide, as if to say 'See? We are not enemies, there is no need to fight'.

Sobek gritted his teeth hard. If he was going to do the damage, he might as well do it in the best way. So he opened his jaws wide and shouted: "GO!"

Humans froze as soon as they heard him. Someone whisper 'fuck', but Sobek paid no attention. He stamped his foot on the ground and roared again: "GO AWAY OF OUR TERRITORY!"

"Yes... Yes, now we go!" Malcolm exclaimed starting to back away, but the other dinosaurs started to pursue them. "GO!" Buck roared, followed by the whole legion.

"GO! GO! GO!"

The humans gave up all resistance and fled. They quickly reached the vehicle and rocketed off, unaware that Rambo was hiding inside.

Sobek watched them go, then called out to a pterosaur perched nearby. "You!" he roared. "Follow them and wait for Rambo at the edge of the forest! As soon as he arrives, let him get on your back and return immediately! I need to know what they were doing here!"

Rambo had wings, but it remained a small pterosaur; a pterosaur was much larger and could fly much faster. For this motive Sobek had sent him: he had to know immediately what was happening. "Buck, send a message to Carnopo, Al, Apache and Old Li. Tell them to reunite the entire herd and call up the patrol squads! No one can leave until further notice!" he ordered.

"Yes, pack leader!" was Buck's istant reply.

Sobek looked to the direction where humans had fled. Something told him that hard times were ahead.