Chapter 73: Dinosaur Gauntlet 3

From his perch overlooking the camp the next morning, Carl shook his head while growling a bit. Stunned at how the growl actually came out of his mouth, he paused and shook his head. Looks like it was time to start Occlumency meditations to control his predator instincts. He had been acting a bit impulsively lately.

Carl returned his attention to the human camp where they were preparing for an outing to capture their samples. Apparently this Sheffield didn't take his warning to cease their activities to heart. Sheffield was obviously a stubborn man who was used to success and overcoming obstacles, so it made sense he wouldn't give up easily, especially with so much money on the line.

Listening in on their conversations, Carl found that they planned to spend today capturing eggs and small dinosaurs, and they would depart in the morning, since it was apparently too dangerous to fly out of there at night.

Carl was pleased with that information. If they planned to leave immediately after snatching some eggs, he would have to act precipitously when all the humans were awake to prevent them from taking anything out of his land. But since they gave him a full night to work, he had plenty of time to plan and act.

After leaving some monitoring charms behind, Carl departed the area to go grab a bite to eat. He would have a busy night, so he would have to ensure he was fully prepared and rested today.

His hunt didn't take too long before he had a small meal. He wasn't looking for anything too big, and he found a small Chilesaurus that was wandering in the wrong place that was just right for Carl to fill his belly. The two legged plant muncher was about 9 feet long from nose to tail tip, but only 3 feet tall at the hip. He never saw Carl coming; its nose was buried deep in the fresh green leafy buds of a shrubbery when he landed on its back.

By the time the human hunting crew was finished with their egg hunt in the afternoon, Carl was cleaned up and back at his post overlooking the group of humans. He was amused to see that they had set up a more active night watch. They were no longer depending solely on their technology to alert them to any night time activities.

Of course, it helped Carl that the human in charge, Sheffield, thought it was a human saboteur that ruined their equipment. All his preparations were meant to catch any humans that tried to move around and do anything to ruin their success. Which meant they were completely ignoring outside the fence, where he would come from.

Not like they would see him coming anyway, with his stealth spells.

As Carl waited for the afternoon to pass, he realized he really liked the perk that ensured he would never get bored. Spending hours watching the group of humans as they scurried around the camp was surprisingly entertaining. He felt fine just lazing about in the grass, hidden from view and watching them.

After dark fell over the camp, the human activity slowed down and came to almost a halt by nine at night. All the humans seemed to have sought their bunks for the evening.

It wasn't until shortly after midnight that Carl made his move. Employing his stealth spells, he easily breached the perimeter and slipped past the guards to do his work. It didn't take him long, not even an hour, to do what he came for and depart with a few extra items.

Carl didn't even bother to stick around to watch the commotion in the morning. He did leave some monitoring charms so he could enjoy their reaction, but he wanted to get his loot somewhere he could stash it safely.

Sheffield made sure to be up before the sun rose in the morning. He had made sure to triple their guard at night, to make sure that no one among his crew would have a chance to sabotage the operation.

But now he was positive that it wasn't any of his men or Barnes' men that sabotaged their efforts. No matter how much a traitor might have been paid to prevent them from gathering samples, they wouldn't have been foolish enough to do what was done last night.

Sheffield stood looking at the wrecked helicopters that were now useless. All of their rotors had been wrecked. They were trapped in this huge lost land of dinosaurs, with no means of escape.

He sighed in frustration. He knew he should have listened to his gut and escaped yesterday, but the sheer amount of money was too much for him, overcoming his common sense and gut feeling.

"That's it man. Game over, man. Game over!" One of Barnes' men started wailing in despair.

"Shut your mouth!" Sheffield barked angrily at the man, looming over him with the threat of physical violence, cowing him into clamping his mouth shut. Sheffield then strode forcefully in front of the men, making sure their attention was on him. In order to have a chance to survive, he needed to take iron control. Panicking meant death.

"Listen up if you don't want to die!" Sheffield's voice carried, automatically catching the men's attention. "We are now in a survival situation. Everyone will listen to my orders, and follow my commands if you don't want to die." Sheffield's words captured the men's attention. They were all focused on him and his words. Good.

"The first thing we'll do is assess the actual situation and what we have to work with."

Sheffield began barking out orders to the men, assigning some to make an actual inspection of all the equipment. Others to make lists and gather their supplies. And some to stay on guard and watch the perimeter.

That last one was very important, since it seems there was someone or something out here with them. And it was smart. Too smart.

Sheffield himself then made his way with Barnes to the tent with the communication equipment. They were shocked to find it all missing, with no sign of where it went. There was no way to send a message back to base and arrange a rescue.

They were cut off, with only what they had available to them. No way back to civilization. It was going to be difficult to survive.

"What do you think our chances are?" Barnes asked in a quivering voice.

"Not good. But not horrible either." Sheffield answered grimly, already gathering up the physical maps they had made, and thinking of the next step. "We'll survive. As to whether we can even make it back home anytime soon? Too many variables to say for sure."

The first of the men with reports on their situation arrived, cutting off whatever Barnes had been about to say. He subsided and paid attention to the plans and orders that Sheffield was giving. Whatever the situation had been previously, with Barnes having an important role in the expedition as the paymaster's representative, was no longer the case. Now he had to rely fully on getting along with the group to survive. He had to work closely with and under Sheffield if he too wanted a chance of survival.

Swiftly traveling through the forest, Carl soon arrived at his destination. There was a cave that he could make use of that he had found a bit ago. He hadn't moved in yet because he didn't have any things he needed to keep safe.

With his daily hunting and training days prior, it had been easier to just anchor a notice-me-not spell to any tree he was lazing under at the time when it was meditation time, rather than coming all the way back to a cave.

But now that he had a bundle of communication gear, he needed a place to put it. And so he was going to make use of the cave as a fixer up.

He arrived outside the cave and stretched out his senses. After some time, Carl came to the conclusion that there was nothing currently inhabiting the cave. Since he didn't need to evict anything, Carl entered right in.

Looking around the cave, he found that it was quite dirty and rough. It was totally unsuited for his current project of connecting to the human's communication network. So he gathered his magical energy, and started casting cleaning spells. With each casting, dirt and debris were wiped away, leaving bare stone behind.

Once the place was cleared of the loose dirt, Carl looked at it in satisfaction at its potential. The cave itself wasn't very large at the moment, which meant he needed to expand the cave for future growth. There was no way a full sized T-Rex would fit.

But the cave had the potential to be a decent home, and it had enough for him to work with for now.

The next step was to even out the floor. Making use of the stone cutting techniques he knew, Carl started leveling the floor and shaping the walls and ceiling. It wasn't long before the cave looked like a proper house. He also shaped some stone tables, perfect for the stolen equipment that Carl purloined from the humans.

He levitated the shrunk equipment to the table and returned it to its normal size. Carl then moved outside the cave, and cast some temporary wards and notice me not spells to keep anything away from his new home until he could fashion some more permanent wards.

Before the humans arrived, he was content to roam around without a nest, taking things a day at a time, living the predator lifestyle. But now that he had some of the human's equipment, he needed a good place to keep it safe.

Now that his cave was temporarily clean and safe, Carl once more entered his new home base. Looking at the purloined equipment for a moment, Carl then walked past it. He had several more things to do before he started playing with the communications gear and laptops.

Looking around the cave, and extending his weak magical senses, Carl started planning just how to expand the cave so he wouldn't outgrow it in the next few years. He also didn't want it to be inherently unstable.

Many of the wizarding homes in the HP universe had not exactly conformed to physics. The Weasley's home for example had been a ramshackle thing held together by magic. It really was the antithesis of the Dursley cookie cutter home.

Which is why the Burrow was a totally cool thing that he and many other kids absolutely loved when they first read the stories. But as fun as the Weasley's house was, it required quite a bit of magic to hold it together. If it was built solidly in the first place, the magic in the area could have gone to more productive uses. Like wards to keep the property safe.

So Carl was going to make sure his cave wasn't so destabilized by hollowing out the stone that he needed magic to hold it up.

There were some basic measuring and sounding spells that returned information on the density of stone and its composition. After using those spells, he had an idea of what he had to work with.

Once he had worked out a plan in his mind, Carl began cutting the stone, making sure that the ceiling was well supported and wouldn't collapse. He began at the back, cutting deeper into mountain to increase the size of the cavern.

Carl temporarily shrunk the stones he cut, and laid them outside the cavern to get them out of the way as he expanded the inside. He found that he had to rest occasionally. His dinosaur body wasn't completely used to channeling large amounts of magic, or doing it for so long.

And while he had to generally wait for his magic to mature on its own, the more he trained his body in the Ki techniques, the quicker his magic was maturing, having been dragged along in its development due to his rapidly growing body.

Once he finally had the cavern cut the size he wanted, Carl temporarily paused his work. Looking outside, he saw that night had fallen. Because of his incredible senses, he could see just fine at night. So he decided to go on a hunt before resuming work.

Within an hour travel of his cave, Carl caught the scent of some Bonitasaura. They were a four legged duck billed dinosaur that grew to 30 feet long as adults. Carl didn't try to take out an adult, since they weighed 10 tons. He would have a hard time dragging that much meat to his cave, even if he used his magic to lighten the load.

So, like the predator he was, he targeted a juvenile Bonitasaura. Due to his excellent stealth skills, he was able to sneak within 20 feet even without his magic. He felt that it was a good test of his skills and kept him from getting complacent.

He was on the 14 foot long Bonitasaura before the herd knew it. At first the adults tried to scare Carl off by mock charging him. But he had already ended his prey's life. Quick and merciful deaths was easy enough for Carl to manage, but the adults of the herd didn't realize Carl's prey was already dead.

So Carl let out a mighty "WAAANG!" They were suitably frightened by his perk assisted roar, even if it wouldn't have really been that scary normally. But it did the job and broke their nerve. The herd beat feet and relocated somewhere else for the night.

Casting a lightening charm, Carl dragged his food back to his cave. Normally it would have been quite a bit more difficult for such a small predator to take down something that was several times his size, let alone drag such a heavy load so far. But Carl didn't plan to play by normal rules when he had magic and Ki strength. He still had to conserve his Profound Energy, since he had no practical way to replenish it for now, but the other forms of energy were free game to cheat with.

Carl did have some questions about just why he wasn't able to gather Profound Energy in this world. But since there was no one to answer those questions for him, he was fresh out of luck.

On the way back to his new lair, Carl saw plenty of predators that showed up because of the bloody smell and commotion. They were all hoping to get a free meal out of the deal. The predators that showed up had some uncertainty about whether they should make a play for the meat. But Carl's accurate stinging hexes convinced them to be on their way. It would be more trouble than it was worth to mess with something so out of their experience range.

Carl then cast some smell concealing charms, and was no longer bothered by opportunists on his way back to his lair, due to the smell of blood being contained.

Sitting just outside his cave lair, with large blocks of stone stacked nearby, Carl ate his meal while enjoying the ambiance of the night. The moonlight filtered down through the trees, the insects were droning on in their night ramblings, the night was peaceful.

After finishing his meal, Carl cast a series of grooming spells on himself. While he usually kept up the habit of brushing his teeth developed from when he was a kid the first time, now that he had access to the mouth cleaning and freshening charm he sometimes just lazily used magic to take care of his personal hygiene. But now that he was a dino he could only resort to magic to keep himself properly cleaned and groomed.

Carl then put the remnants of his food off to the side on a stone block and cast a preservation charm on it. It would keep until later and wouldn't be spoiled. While his animal body wouldn't be bothered by a bit of spoilage or rot, Carl still felt fastidious from his long time as a human and wasn't willing to eat spoiled meat or roadkill that had been sitting around for a while.

With that taken care of, Carl then levitated one of the stones from excavating the cavern in front of him. He had the idea of what he was creating fixed in his mind, and began carving the stone block with ancient runes.

It didn't take him more than a couple hours to finish carefully carving out the ward scheme on the stone. He levitated the stone inside the cave and placed it in the location he had set aside for the ward room.

The next several hours Carl spent carving several more stones, before levitating them to the perimeter of where his wards would be, and burying them in the ground. The ward scheme would actually benefit quite a bit from having all the stones come from the same source. It created its own sympathetic resonance, which made the job easier.

Some of the perimeter was a bit more difficult to get to and place the stones properly because of rocky and mountainous terrain. But with levitation charms and effort, Carl eventually managed it.

Once the perimeters stones were set out, Carl returned to his cave and began pouring his magic into the main ward stone, charging up the initial startup. It was made from a normal stone, not magical in nature. So without being connected to a power source, like a ley line, it would need to be charged up daily to work properly.

It was a good thing then that Carl had chosen this particular location because a ley line passed almost under it. He reached out with his magic and guided the workings of the ward stone to reach out to the ley line. Once the ward stone connected with the ley line, Carl could immediately feel the power charging up the ward stone, activating the various defenses and functions.

The magic from the main ward stone reached out and connected with the perimeter stones that Carl had laid out, extending the ward stone's functions to the whole area that Carl had laid out.

Once the wards were stable, Carl used a simple spell to cause a drop of his blood to exit his body and floated it to the identifying location on the ward stone. This keyed Carl's blood and magic into the ward schema as the owner, giving him complete control. Without his permission, no one would be able to enter, or even really notice, his cave lair and the surrounding land for several acres.

Any that tried to enter his land would have their attention drawn away and wander off. It would work just as well for dinosaurs as it did for humans. So his new home was as secure as he could make it for now.

With that accomplished, Carl left the cave once more and made a tour of his new "estate". He was amused to see that there were some dog sized dinosaurs that had been pushed out of his new land by the wards. Birds and bird sized dinosaurs, small mammals, and insects could still travel around Carl's property, unless they were an animagus. Then they would get zapped. But anything larger would be diverted and kept away.

Once Carl was satisfied that his ward scheme was working properly and with no mistakes, he returned to his cave and began working on interior decorating. He carved a smaller ward scheme stone that would power a preservation/refrigeration room so Carl could store food there.

Once the refrigeration room was complete, and Carl's left overs was placed in his new fridge, he moved on to the next room. A bathroom.

While Carl was currently a dinosaur, he wasn't going to be uncivilized. Indoor plumbing was necessary, since he didn't plan on crapping all over his nice new lawn. Not to mention a shower was nice, even as a T-Rex.

Carl decided to make each fixture of his bathroom duplicated. One set of facilities he would keep human sized, which he could currently use with his small size. The second set would be adjusted as he grew larger, so that he would always have comfortable facilities.

A few rune schemes later, Carl had a shower, bath, and toilet. The water was easily produced, and the vanishing runes sent the waste away.

Next up, Carl made himself a large stone bed that was big enough for an adult T-Rex. He gathered plenty of grass from outside, and weaved it with his telekinesis into a nice nest. With cleaning, cushioning, and preservation charms, it would last him quite a while. And he could continually add to it to make sure he was comfortable as he grew.

Carl chuckled to himself as he realized that he had been doing all this in the dark. So he added magical lighting to his cave. He didn't especially need it, but it felt like the thing to do.

Looking around at his bare and stoney new house, Carl actually felt quite satisfied. It wasn't nearly as luxurious as some of the places he had lived in. But there was a certain amount of charm present in a bare stone dwelling's aesthetics for a dinosaur. There was also satisfaction in having built his new dwelling all by himself. Something to be proud of.

The next item on Carl's agenda was setting up his computer room. He built a stone table to place all the equipment he had stolen from the humans. Carl then spent a couple hours carving some special rune schemas into several stones.

One set was specially designed to siphon off the magic in the room so that the electronics wouldn't be destroyed by magic's normal effects of destroying electronics that weren't specifically protected.

Another set he carved to convert that magic that was siphoned off to electricity and store the electricity to power the electronics. Another schema was used to act as a communications relay. Since he was effectively under a mountain, if he didn't have some relay to the outside, the communications gear wouldn't be able to get a signal under all that stone.

So one half of the relay stones he placed inside his communications room and the other he placed up on top of the mountain hill his cave was located in. Having the link outside and a decent height allowed it to pass on a decent signal for the communication gear in his cave.

But before he activated the communication link, and while there was no signal, Carl powered up the laptops and communications equipment. Peering at the screens, Carl carefully reached out and started interacting with the machines.

While normally any magic that touched the laptops while they were running would have fried them. But Carl had an advantage with the perk he had gotten from the HP world. Setup Wizard gave him a knack of naturally melding of magic and technology.

So while the wards and other magic that flowed around such a wizarding home setup would fry electronics, Carl's direct magic was well suited to interacting with electronics, allowing him to play at being a technomancer hacker.

A short time later, Carl had hacked into the machines and started reprogramming the computers and communications gear. It wouldn't do if his link to the human's internet was compromised because he let the equipment automatically connect to their home base and send some reports back and ping his location for them.

Until Carl could access his pocket dimension and pull out his own tech and really go to town, this was the best equipment he had to work with. It was still pretty easy to sneakily connect to the internet through the satellites in place. It would just be incredibly slow, since he had to hide his activity and couldn't just demand a large data transmitting chunk be assigned to him.

Eventually, Carl finished writing the programs he would upload to the human's internet to keep track of certain matters for him. His programs would be sneakily inserted into many databases, and continue to grow and monitor the goings on of the humans. It would alert Carl if the humans were gearing up to make another expedition to his land to exploit his hunting ground.

That would give him enough warning so he could be prepared to act.

It would probably take several days to weeks to upload and propagate his program secretly, a bit at a time, to the internet. Then it would take several months to fully infiltrate everything in a slow and secretive manner.

But Carl was fine with that. The sheer isolation and difficulty in getting into his Lost Land surrounded by mountains ensured that the next attempt by the humans would take a while.

Once Carl was ready with his infiltration programs, he connected the communication relay. After seeing that everything was running properly, Carl left behind his communications room.

It had been a couple days since he had acted and spoiled the human's efforts to smuggle out dinosaurs. He was kind of wondering just what they were up to now.

Carl almost skipped through the forest as he made his way towards where he last saw the humans. He was feeling pretty good about having finished his new home the previous day. Once everything was finished, Carl had crashed and slept the night away instead of training. It felt good to relax every once in a while.

Waking up in the morning, he had gulped down a few pounds of meat before exiting his house and looking around. The morning light gave the forest a pleasant feel as the various small creatures were just waking up and going about their day.

It somewhat amused Carl to see regular modern day birds living amongst the dinosaurs. This land must have been a special place that preserved the dinosaurs while allowing new species to continue to wander in. There had to have been some kind of magic shenanigans to have that happen, but Carl wasn't going to worry about it too much.

The important thing was that it was here now. And he was going to enjoy his time here.

After some time, Carl silently exited the forest, and snuck his way to a nearby hill to observe the humans. Looking down at the camp, Carl could immediately see that the place had been abandoned.

The fence had been packed up and carted off. Several of the Rhino off road vehicles had been stripped of engines and anything unnecessary and used as carts to transport various items. The helicopters sat abandoned in the fields, along with anything that wasn't immediately needed.

Carl was intrigued that Sheffield had his group leave immediately. While their choice of camp had been fine for a short term in-and-out job, it was obviously not very good for long term survival. He was impressed that Sheffield recognized that fact and worked so quickly.

Since there was no one nearby, Carl circled the camp, looking for tracks to find out where they had gone. He was impressed to see that the group had cooked the eggs they had captured the previous day. Smart.

Sheffield already realized that they weren't going to be able to deliver the eggs, and decided to use them as food to stretch out their non-perishable food supplies.

As Carl followed the tracks of the humans, he saw more than one predator's tracks that told Carl they were intrigued and investigating the presence of the humans. After traveling for a couple kilometers, Carl saw the sight of one ambush.

If Carl was reading the signs correctly, one human died and another two were injured in the attack before they could rally and drive off their attackers.

Carl continued following the trail, and a few more kilometers later came to the new camp site of the humans. They had set up on the edge of the forest where they would have access to wood to build tools and a sturdier camp. There was also a stream nearby to provide a source of water.

When he arrived, Carl saw the humans were in the midst of building their camp. The current camp wasn't much to look at for the moment. They had the electric fence up, but it surely wouldn't be of much use for very much longer. They had a finite source of fuel for the generators.

Sheffield had them organized in two groups. One group was working at chopping trees down that they were going to build a wall out of. The second group was on guard, watching for any predators.

After some time, Carl saw the groups switch places. He noticed that even Sheffield was working hard to build the camp. That increased Carl's appreciation for the man as a leader even more. In a survival situation everyone needed to pull their weight or resentment set in.

Resentment caused the monumental problem of disunity.

"United we stand, divided we fall" may have become a cliché saying, but it had a very real kernel of truth.

Carl had seen in Sheffield's mind that he usually ran his unit with military style discipline. Generally speaking in a military type organization the officers and enlisted had different roles and responsibilities. It was rare to see an officer doing grunt work. But obviously Sheffield had realized that in the survival situation they were currently in, it was no time to be hung up on things like who was the boss. Work needed to get done fast, and all hands were needed.

Seeing that Sheffield was a stand up kind of guy that tried to do his best for his men, and was resourceful, Carl almost felt bad about stranding him in this dangerous land. Almost.

Sheffield was the exact kind of man that Carl would have recruited for his own forces in a different world and situation. So he decided that he would give some small amount of aid to the man in his efforts to keep his men alive.

Carl intercepted the group of four Utahraptors that was about to attack Sheffield's men. The four raptors were a quite a bit bigger than Carl at the moment, but like the honeybadger he didn't care. He was tougher and meaner than they were.

After a couple slashes on the flanks of two of the raptors with his hind legs, and latching onto the neck of a third, crushing its throat and killing it quickly, the rest of the group ran quickly. They really weren't ready for such a vicious attack coming from nowhere.

Seeing that the three surviving raptors fled, Carl dragged his kill closer to the humans, and left it for them to find. They could enjoy the taste of dinosaur for dinner.

With his good deed for the day done, Carl departed the area. He was willing to provide some help for the humans when he was around. Saving them from an ambush, leaving some meat. But Carl wasn't going to hang around and babysit them. He had other things to do, like stocking his larder.

With a last look at the spooked humans who had just found the raptor, Carl left the area for his own hunt.

Sheffield and three of his men were standing over the remains of a bloody big raptor. The thing must be 20 feet long and weigh nearly 2,000 pounds. Sheffield felt a sense of despair go through him for just a moment before pushing the feeling deep down inside.

Looking at the huge predator that had obviously been on the way to ambush his men, Sheffield wondered if he had any chance to keep the majority of his men safe in this dangerous hell hole.

Sheffield firmed up his will and cast away his doubts. Now wasn't the time for him to have a break down. If he faltered in the sight of his men, they would soon lose hope in him and the possibility of their survival. And if that happened, they were as good as dead.

At least it seemed that something was going right for them, since something had intercepted this beast and left it for them, apparently. He certainly wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Mario, Stu. You two get to work on this carcass. We've got meat for the next few days. Rob, you and I are on overwatch. Let's get this done quick and get back to camp with our food before anything else comes sniffing around." Sheffield ordered.

His men acknowledged the order, and jumped to work. Sheffield then began looking over the signs left behind by the scuffle. If he was reading it right, there had been four of these big raptors. He shivered inside at the thought of the four of them bursting in and attacking his men.

There would have been at least one death, probably more. He needed to take better precautions for security. It would take some work to do, but that was for the best. Work would keep his men's minds off their situation.

It would keep his mind busy too, which was for the best, Sheffield thought as he looked over his surroundings for any sign of ambush. He had a momentary thought, wondering if the same thing that stranded them here had just protected them. But he threw that thought away. It wasn't important in the grand scheme of things. Survival for him and his men was, and he needed to keep his mind on the ball.

After Carl left behind the humans, he wasted no effort in hunting down another meals on wheels, er…feet.

Predators in the wild usually had a pretty low success rate in their hunts. There were all kinds of reasons, but one of the main reasons in Carl's mind was that the prey was evolved to escape the predators that evolved alongside them. The prey was designed to be able to either get away quickly, making them difficult to catch, or they were defended well enough that catching them was as dangerous to the predator, if not more so, than to the prey.

The prey struggled just as hard to survive and escape as the predator struggled to catch them to eat and live.

Carl on the other hand had many advantages that made up for the usual difficulty predators had. His metamorphmagus abilities made him able to blend into the environment easily. It was difficult for Carl's prey to spot him coming.

And if Carl was having too difficult a time on the approach, he could "cheat" and use magic to mask his smell, sound, and visual presentation to make the approach to the prey even easier.

And lastly, Carl had an outlandishly strong body, which let him kill the prey very quickly. As a result, once Carl got a hold of them with his teeth, there was no hope of struggling free, or having the rest of the herd group together to attack him and free Carl's prey.

All this added on with his enhanced predatory abilities from perks, and enhanced senses from the body mod made it difficult for Carl not to catch a meal whenever he went out.

So while there was no real suspense or sport in catching his prey, Carl still felt satisfaction in his successes. Every time he caught a large enough prey, it meant that he could have another one or two training sessions without starving his body of the nutrients needed to continue growing.

After successfully catching some napping Hadrosaurus, he had enough meat for several meals. After dragging the carcass to his fridge, he decided to focus on training his Ki technique for the next couple of days.

Carl sank gratefully into a training fugue. He enjoyed the sensation of progress. His physique improving moment by moment, his magic strengthening alongside. His body growing larger due to the Ki energies washing through his body and fortifying it.

It was only a few days later, when Carl polished off the last bit of meat and bone marrow, that he realized he needed to go hunting again.

While Carl was wandering about, looking for sign of prey, he was pondering in his mind about martial arts and fighting skills.

His current body was vastly different from his human body, so he couldn't directly use the martial arts skills he had learned as a human.

But the interesting thing that stuck in Carl's mind was that at one point in the history of martial arts, many martial artists borrowed moves, ways of motion, and techniques from animals they watched in nature. They adapted them to the human body, and used them as techniques to overcome an enemy's defenses.

So while those techniques were used to distract, overcome, or overwhelm an enemy's defenses, they weren't the most efficient ways for a human to punch, kick, and strike. Later on the martial arts started including scientific study of the way a human's body, skeletal structure, joints, and muscles worked. They learned the way to transfer the most power. The ways to move most efficiently and maximize the speed of strikes. And more importantly, how to build up the power of the body.

That was especially the case of the Masters of Ryozanpaku. They weren't just martial arts nuts. They were brilliant and intelligent masters that continued their practices, their studies, and their learning.

And especially their use of Ki with their bodies was a field that they constantly learned and innovated in.

Carl had learned a lot from them in his time there. He had then continued learning and practicing on his own. He had then learned even more when he began to teach students of his own.

He thought he had mastered the field and principles of Ki and Martial arts, until he had to explain it to his students. That was when he felt like he was learning the principles all over again, when he had struggled so hard to find the words to describe it to his students.

So now, while Carl was out hunting and moving according to his body's instincts, Carl focused everything he had learned in the past on exploring his new dino body. He focused on how his muscles, joints, and skeletal structure moved all together. He paid attention to how his tail moved to counteract the weight of his head, and how small shifts in different muscle groups affected his movements.

He kind of regretted having such small arms that couldn't really be used for grappling. But they were strong enough to act as hooks or anchors at key times. So there was still plenty of things he could do with them.

After catching meal after meal for the next couple of days and bringing it back home via levitation, Carl began figuring out how to use his new body to maximum effect.

While doing so, Carl kept in mind that he would one day be a full grown T-Rex. There would be plenty of smaller dinosaurs, or humans with weapons, that could swarm him, trying to overwhelm him. So mobility and the ability to attack in 360 degrees at a moment's notice was important.

There would also be many larger dinosaurs that he either hunted with or tangled with as they tried to protect their herds. There were the Triceratops that had straight stabbing/piercing attacks while they charged, or sweeping slashes as they threw their heads around.

Ankylosaurus with their low clubbing attacks with the bony weight on the end of their tails, with their bony protected backs.

Then there were the large Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus with their long tails and necks with their sweeping attacks that carried weight great enough to break bones and smash heads.

There were the Stegosaurus with their low slashing/stabbing attacks from the spikes on their tails and their plate-like defenses on their backs.

And finally there were the other predators that he would have to deal with. Pterodactyl that would harass and swoop down from above.

Utahraptors that would surround and attempt to hamstring him.

Other T-Rex or other large bipedal predators that would use their large jaws to clamp down in an attempt to get a strangulation hold on him.

And always the threat of sweeping tail attacks to knock him off balance and gain an advantage.

Carl visualized and kept all these methods of attack and defense in mind as he trained his body in how to move, how to attack, and how to evade.

It was awkward at first. He had various different memories and instincts that wanted him to react in different ways at first. Even his T-Rex instincts didn't want to cooperate with how he tried to train. So sometimes he jumbled up what he planned to do, and ended up face planting. Over and over again.

But eventually, he began to have success in programming his new body in the new movement patterns. While training, he used the mental discipline of Occlumency to separate out the various instincts and programming in his mind for his different bodies. It wouldn't do for him to mess up all the training and instincts he had for his human body when he returned to it, so he started keeping different sets of instincts and reflexes in his mind.

But this practice also made him aware that he really hadn't gone through this type of training for his Shadow Panther animagus form. He had taken his Shadow Panther form as just a lark, a fun thing to do for an hour or two. But now, Carl was thinking he had neglected a serious part of his training, and left a huge weak spot in himself.

Now that he was thinking of his Shadow Panther form, Carl attempted to employ his magic to shift forms. The magic was easy to channel in the memorized pattern, but when he tried the last step, Carl was still stuck in his dinosaur body.

Carl sighed in regret. It looked like the jump chain fiat ensured that he would be in his dinosaur body for the entire time he was in this world and wouldn't let him shift forms. A bit of metamorphmagus color or size alteration was fine. Full body animagus shifting wasn't.

Since he couldn't shift to his panther form and practice in that body, Carl made a mental note that in the future he would put in the time to develop a set of moves and martial techniques for his panther body.

With that resolved, Carl got back to work in developing his abilities in his T-Rex body. It was exhausting, but rewarding at the same time. He couldn't wait to go out and put his new skills to the test, to see where he needed to brush up on them.