Chapter 74: Dinosaur Gauntlet 4

Carl didn't have any set schedule that he followed, but he spent a large majority of his time training. He would go out on a hunt every couple of days to keep his larder of meat stocked. Occasionally he would go watch how well the humans were doing, and occasionally drop some meat off for them if it looked like they were doing too poorly.

While Carl didn't get bored anymore, spending some time watching the humans was an interesting diversion. He was there to see their first attempt at fishing from the lake.

Carl could only shake his head at the human's decision to try to fish from the lake. Yes, there was plenty of fish there. But there were also plenty of predators who would see the slow moving humans on the shore as a good snack.

And sure enough, not more than a half hour of sitting by the lake, and the humans were attacked. They were lucky enough to have seen the shadows of the crocodile type dinosaurs approaching, and fled before they were ambushed.

After seeing the size of the dinosaurs in the lake, the humans made the smart decision to avoid the lake from then on. Carl couldn't blame them, even though he was looking at the crocodino with a bit of drool dripping from his mouth. When he got a bit bigger, he would feast on seafood…

The speed at which the humans built their shelter and a wall surrounding it impressed Carl. Especially because this was the modern age, where such construction skills were usually not practiced.

In addition to the three meter tall fence, they added plenty of sharpened stakes to the top of the wall to make sure the dinosaurs couldn't climb. There were plenty of sharp bramble brushes with sharp thorns that they used as another deterrent. It worked pretty well. Carl saw on more than one occasion when some scavengers tried to climb the walls to get to the free food inside and couldn't get past the bramble thorns.

Occasionally Carl would follow the humans' hunting teams, watching them as they tried to catch enough food for the entire group. He was impressed at their survival savvy as they also found plenty of tubers and nuts in the forest to supplement their diet, in addition to the plentiful fruit.

After several weeks, Carl started letting one of the humans get short glimpses of him. He found great entertainment in the practice, feeling like he was playing a game of bigfoot.

Carl only allowed one man to get a glimpse of him before he faded back into the shadows. It was a great set up.

When he started babbling about the six foot tall dinosaur that he saw, everyone in the group got a bit excitable. Maybe they were a little bit on edge at the idea of a dinosaur that could become invisible at will.

But when they found absolutely no evidence of a dinosaur present, no tracks, no spoor, no nothing. Well, they started thinking the man had gone a little crazy from the stress and fear.

After a couple weeks, Carl started feeling a bit bad about the joke he was playing on the dude, since he seemed to be cracking under the pressure. He was actually starting to think he had gone mad.

So Carl generously let himself be seen by more members of the group. He even went so far as to present some newly hunted meat as a gift to the guy he had been playing a joke on. Carl guessed the guy had been so overwhelmed by gratitude at his favor, he had passed out.

'Eh, maybe I went a bit too far to pass his present to him in his own tent?' Carl thought as he idly scratched his jaw as he ran and jumped over the wall, ignoring the racket and panic of the humans he left behind. 'Nah, I'm sure they'll understand that I was apologizing for the joke.'

Carl chuckled a bit as he paused just before entering the tree line, letting the humans get a good look at him, but no pictures, before he disappeared amongst the trees.

The monitoring charms he left behind in the humans' compound gave him hours of entertainment as he listened to the panicked babbling and freaking out of the men. He could re-watch it several times and he still didn't get bored of it!

Carl looked up at the sky and asked himself a question that all pranksters were forced to ask themselves. 'Did I go a bit too far on that last prank?'

It had been a couple weeks since that terrifying morning where a freaking juvenile T-Rex had dropped the carcass of a Stegoceras outside Tom's tent. Sheffield exited his own tent to check on how the night had gone, and if there was anything to report.

As he walked the perimeter, he thought about the strange incident.

Tom had been making everyone nervous for a couple weeks with his talk about a large dinosaur that only he ever saw. But sure as hell they all saw it that morning. Tom's scream had them all running to find out what was wrong, and they saw it there clear as day with his head inside Tom's tent.

Tom's cry had cut off abruptly, and Sheffield had thought that was it for Tom, right there. The juvenile T-Rex had pulled his head out, looked around casually at everyone gathered there with no fear. The T-Rex had then casually kicked the Stegoceras carcass lying there that everyone had ignored until then, and suddenly broke into a run for the wall.

Before anyone could do anything or bring their weapons to bear, that T-Rex had cleared the wall in a single leap. Not even touching the top of the wall on the way over.

Everyone was flabbergasted. That was about the right word for it. No one knew exactly what to think, especially when they found out that Tom was just fine, even if he was embarrassed to have pissed himself and passed out.

None of the guys gave him grief about it, though. "Try to wake up with a T-Rex head in your lap and see how you do." Tom had almost cried that out in relief when he said that. He was just relieved to be alive and no longer considered crazy, considering everyone else had finally seen the ghost dinosaur he had been babbling about.

The strangest thing about the whole encounter? Everyone had claimed they heard the Jurassic Park theme song playing in their ears.

Da Dum Daa Dum Dum. Da Dum Daa Dum Dum.

That more than anything had made the scene so surreal no one could react in time to having a freaking T-Rex right in their midst. Even he had paused as his mind was trying to reboot.

Sheffield shook his head in disbelief once more. He could understand the cutthroat nature of survival here among the dinosaurs. It was normal, natural. Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that.

But having a weird dinosaur that drops off presents to them so they have meat to eat, only let's himself be seen by one man until he wakes him up with a scream, and has a theme song?

It was just…unnatural.

Sheffield had just finished his tour around the perimeter and was pleased that everything was secure. He was on his way back to his tent when he saw something that was unusual. It was a bright blue egg sitting half hidden by a tent flap.

"What the hell? Where did this come from?" Sheffield said out loud as he picked up the foot tall egg to inspect it.

Barnes, who was just walking back from the latrine when he heard Sheffield's words, also noticed something out of the corner of his eyes. He picked up a bright red foot tall egg from nearby.

"Sheffield, do you know what this the hell this is?" Barnes asked as he moved over to Sheffield so they could look at the eggs in each other's hands.

"Boss, where'd you get the egg from?" Manny said as he walked up holding a green egg. "I found this one outside my tent. Strangest thing though, is that today is Easter."

The three men looked at each other, then looked down at their brightly colored eggs.

"No way. No way is someone leaving us Easter Eggs. We would have spotted them, right?"

At just that moment, the three eggs blew up into different colored whipped cream that splattered all three men completely.

They reached up and wiped the whipped cream out of their eyes. Absolute disbelief would be evident in their faces if they weren't completely covered in multi colored cream.

"Are…are we being pranked, boss?" Manny asked.

Barnes' mouth was just gaping, opening and closing like a gold fish.

"I do believe you're right, Manny." Sheffield finally gritted out from between his teeth. "And they have a horrible sense of humor."

Several months had passed, and Carl continued to grow larger at an accelerated rate while training. It was now nearly impossible to sneak up on the humans without magic, because of his size. He was now about seven feet tall at the hip, nine feet tall at his head when standing normally, and 22 feet long.

He was also moving on to larger and larger prey with his increased size. He hadn't moved onto hunting full grown adult Apatosaurus, let alone Brachiosaurus, because of their sheer size. But by the time he was fully grown, Carl figured he would have practiced his control over magic enough to be capable of transporting that much meat. He would have to expand his larder's size a bit before he got to that point, though.

Carl was quite pleased with the program he had released into the internet. He was getting all kinds of important and interesting information back from it. And more importantly, he had been able to track down his Monopoly properties and contacted the managing VIs.

He was relieved to find out that when they arrived on the planet and realized they didn't have access to the Farms output, they had immediately sought to replace their supply chain. They still had access to his Monopoly bank account, so funding hadn't been a problem to get things back up to speed.

Carl had then sent out orders to the VIs to contact a lawyer that would remotely handle his affairs for him so that he never had to show up in person. That would be awkward. Once his lawyer, one Hiram Fetterman, was hired, Carl tasked him with setting up a company that would do business for him in the human world.

He had a lot of money that followed him through the jumps, so if he applied that money to the businesses of the human world, he could have quite a bit of influence in what happened there.

Once his influence was firmly established in the human world, he planned to start establishing his claim on the Lost Land that was his. Carl knew that with the nature of the spying in governments and the business world, it was only a matter of time before the information about his land was spread. So it was better to get ahead of the matter and work multiple angles to keep control over who he allowed in.

And using the legal system he could keep the corporations that wanted to plunder his land gridlocked for years in red tape.

Over the past few months while he sent orders to his lawyer and managing VIs and trained, he hadn't had to do as much to help the humans to survive anymore. They had finally learned enough of the rules and territories around them, and how to hunt, to survive on their own.

He had still occasionally played some light hearted pranks on them. Like permanently transfiguring some wood into toilet paper and tp-ing their base. It amused him greatly, and the people involved were actually happy to have some toilet paper to replace the leaves they had been using for some time.

Crouching down, Carl eyed the small screen, reading the reports from the monitoring AI. It was a good thing his sight was so good, or he would have a hard time reading such a small screen. He really needed to figure something out to make the web surfing a bit more comfortable.

Skimming the report, Carl saw that the big boss of the humans, Whippleton, had sent another expedition. It had taken him several months to organize another expedition because of several considerations.

When the first expedition lost communications, he had to wait to see if they ever returned. When they didn't he had to settle with the company, insurance, and their families, all while trying to keep things under wraps. He didn't want word of what they were doing to get to competitors.

And finally, he had to move slowly to gather, train, and equip another group so word wouldn't get around. From the reports of his AI, Carl saw that Whippleton had failed to keep everything completely quiet. His competitors knew he was up to something, even if they didn't know what it was.

Scrolling through the report, Carl saw that the group that Whippleton sent was stationed just on the other side of the mountain range that kept the lost land isolated. They planned to make their entry in another two days.

Cocking his head in thought, Carl thought about what he was going to do. He was going to stick to his idea to keep the humans from bringing anything dinosaur related out of the land and kicking off a gold rush that would see his land exploited and destroyed in their greedy rush to profit.

Over the past few months, aside from Ki practice, Carl had been using his stored profound energy to advance his cultivation.

He estimated it would be another year and a half before he once more attained the Sovereign Profound realm and regained access to his pocket dimension. The second time around cultivating from scratch was much easier to do, and he had all the energy needed in his inner world, so it was much easier than pulling it in from his surroundings.

Once he had access to his pocket dimension, he would bring out the Yamato and a bunch of the spider-like Pete builder bots so he could start building some large scale tech and magic protections around his land.

And once he had complete control over his land, and could ensure that no one would destroy his land in their greedy rush to profit, he would consider partnering with someone like Whippleton. They could then slowly introduce dinosaurs, "extinct" plants and medicines, and other such marvels to the world in general.

By then Carl would allow his captive playmates to return home. But until then, Carl would have to make sure that this second group disappeared just like the first.

With his decision made, Carl departed his communications room and continued fiddling with a project he had been playing with for the last few days. He didn't have access to all the fabric materials that flying carpets were made from, so he was improvising. He had been modifying the runes that allowed a broom to fly, and trying to create a dinosaur sized flying raft.

The idea of a T-Rex standing on a raft, flying around and harassing the human's helicopters was a visual picture that just amused the hell out of him. So he had been trying to get it working properly. Just a few more adjustments should see the project complete…

Over a dozen helicopters came flying over the mountains, making a circuit around the old campsite of the humans where the sabotaged helicopters were, and landed nearby.

Carl was invisibly hovering a short distance away on his raft, waiting for the group to land. He had eventually given up on the idea of shocking the humans by harassing them with his flying raft because they still had their satellite phones and radios available. The only current method Carl had to make sure they couldn't report back the presence of a flying T-Rex would have destroyed their electronics, causing them to crash.

And since Carl didn't want to cause their deaths, he decided to simply monitor them invisibly. It didn't mean that he wouldn't be buzzing the human's settlement sometime later when they had no communications.

Who would believe them about a T-Rex flying on a raft when they finally got back to civilization if they had no proof?

Once the group of humans exited the helicopters and began investigating the old camp, Carl flew down and began stunning them. He had decided not to pussyfoot around and just get the job done.

Carl started with the group of men that were immediately around the helicopters. The moment that his first stunner landed, the group of humans were freaking out. Yelling and running, diving for cover. Trying to find who was attacking them.

It was amusing, really.

Carl ignored their antics and kept shooting the fish in the barrel. Anytime one of the men tried to get to a radio or sat phone he prioritized stunning them.

A few minutes later Carl had the entire group subdued. He finally landed his raft, satisfied with his work. He first gathered all the humans together so he could make sure they wouldn't become a snack of any dinos while they were out of it while he ransacked their equipment.

Carl then began sorting through the gear they had brought with them. He saw they had brought a bigger supply of weapons and ammo. It seemed that they were nervous about how the previous group disappeared without any word.

He didn't mind if they had ammo and weapons, so Carl put it off to the side for them to gather later. Carl took any communications, photo, or recording equipment and set it aside to bring to his lair later.

He made sure none of the helicopters could fly again, so they couldn't just fly away.

Carl thought about it carefully, but eventually decided to sabotage the off road transportation Rhinos. If the humans weren't able to get around easily, there would be less of a chance of them getting into mischief. They would have to focus on surviving.

Once Carl had finished disabling all their equipment, he gathered up the group of humans and was about to bring them to the settlement that Sheffield had built. He stopped though, because he saw that Sheffield and his men were making their way over.

'Well, that's convenient. They must have spotted the helicopters and were making their way over, hoping for a ride home.' One side of Carl's muzzle lifted in a gruesome looking grin. 'Guess I'm going to have to disappoint them.'

He gathered all the equipment that he didn't want the humans to have and departed on his flying raft. The humans he stunned would wake up in less than an hour, and Sheffield and his men would arrive in five minutes. So he felt everything would work itself out just fine.

After arriving back at his lair, Carl stashed his newly liberated equipment away. He thenlooked over the reports from his AI about what Whippleton had learned from the transmissions from his most recently sent team.

Carl was amusing himself by watching the freak out of Whippleton over another group losing communications, when he was startled to hear an argument escalating over at the human's camp over his eavesdropping charms.

Apparently the leader of the new group of humans, Dwayne, didn't want to cede authority to Sheffield and the conflict was getting more and more tense. Carl was kind of wishing he had some popcorn right about now as he watched the drama.

Tempers were running high among the new group, as they hadn't had much time to adjust to being stranded. It was probably a good thing Carl had stunned Dwayne and his men so that Sheffield and his men could gain control over the armaments the new group had brought.

Otherwise Dwayne and his men might have stubbornly and pridefully taken control of the group with their firearms and gotten a bunch of them killed while he learned the ropes and rules of living in dino country.

Eventually the arguments got settled and the people were settling down. Sheffield would be in charge, with Dwayne and Barnes the number 2 and number 3 men.

It was an amusing thing to see that Barnes resented being relegated to number 3, even though the decision to assign Dwayne as the number 2 was a matter of politics that allowed him and his men to settle down and stop kicking up such a fuss.

It was really strange what the human ego and pride would cause people to do, even in a life and death survival situation.

There's Dwayne and his men who felt the need to jockey for position and power, even though they had no real idea how to survive without the help of Sheffield's men.

Then there was Barnes who felt resentment for losing some undefined and ephemeral amount of power. It wasn't like the men who had been with them for the past several months would suddenly trust Dwayne over Barnes just because Dwayne had the title of "Second in Command". So it was really illogical for Barnes to be butthurt about the decision.

'But, hey. That's humans for you.' Carl thought sarcastically, conveniently ignoring the fact that he, too, was human. Most of the time.

With the addition of more humans, they would need more food. And Carl wasn't sure if they would be able to hunt enough food for the whole group. Since he didn't want the group to starve to death, or kill each other over resources, he generously donated a Parasaurolophus he hunted to the relief funds of the humans. Several thousands of pounds of meat should last them for a decent amount of time.

Who said Carl wasn't a philanthropist? He was obviously doing charity work, here.

With the arrival of the second group of humans, Carl decided he would focus more on his profound cultivation rather than his Ki and magic training. The sooner he could arrive at the Sovereign Profound Realm, the sooner he could access his pocket dimension and retrieve some advanced tech to protect and ward the lost land of dinosaurs so humans couldn't randomly enter whenever they wanted.

And the sooner he could get rid of his house guests.

From then on, Carl paid less attention to the humans and focused solely on his profound cultivation. Since he was using the energy from his inner world, it took practically no effort to gather and absorb the profound energy. So his cultivation level started shooting up quickly.

Additionally, since Carl wasn't practicing his body cultivation with the ki techniques as much, he didn't need to eat quite so much and so he spent less time hunting. His body growth slowed down to a normal rate for a T-Rex.

By the time a year had passed, Carl was once more able to access his pocket dimension. He had arrived at the Sovereign Profound Realm quite quickly. But it seemed that the jump chain was determined to force him to experience life as a dinosaur. Unlike when Rover attained the same level and gained his human form, turning into Feng Ra, Carl was still stuck in his T-Rex form. He pretty much expected that to happen by now, so he wasn't too bothered by it.

The first thing Carl did after gaining his new rank was to immediately pull out the Yamato and had it hover over his land in stealth mode. The stealth satellites he had in stock on board were launched to monitor every inch of the planet.

With the placement of the satellites he finally had a decent connection to the internet with plenty of bandwidth.

With some Petes and a stockpile of basic supplies that were in his pocket dimension, Carl soon had his lair upgraded. He had a large computer installed that became the home of the VI that he had uploaded to the internet to help him monitor the humans.

He sent probes to inspect his new dinosaur land to get the exact specs. With the exact measurements of the land, Carl was able to design a defense and warding schema. With the Petes help, he had the whole system built, installed, and running within a couple weeks.

It really was amazing what advanced technology could do. And how fast it could do it.

Once he had the defenses for his lost land up, Carl had the Yamato teleport the humans from their camp in his lands and transfer them back to their home country. With a little bit of hacking they were undeclared dead. As compensation for what Carl put them through, he had some funds transferred to them or their surviving families. Carl made sure that the humans who survived could enjoy the rest of their lives in civilization.

And if he found out they were looking for work, he had Hiram send them invitations to join his company. His company was just starting but already making waves in the technology industries. Especially because they had working, 100% sensation, full dive virtual reality technology. It made the video games quite immersive.

With everything taken care of so that he would have complete control of his dinosaur lands, Carl then put the Yamato back in his pocket dimension. It would remain in there until he left this world. He wasn't going to use any more profound energy during his time here if he could help it. With his magic, ki, and technology available to problem solve, he was sure he didn't really need his profound energy or pocket dimension for anything.

He still wasn't sure why he wasn't able to access profound energy in this world. He thought that since he got cultivation as a perk, then he would always have access to profound energy. The only thing Carl could figure was that because it was a challenge gauntlet world, some things were made more difficult than usual.

Maybe there was a Jump-chan up there somewhere messing with him? Maybe Spere 037 was playing a prank on him? Who knows.

He was just glad that he had his inner world full of profound energy so he could upgrade his cultivation level and pull out his technology, or he might not have been able to so easily solve the issue of humans encroaching on his land.

Now that Carl didn't have to worry about the humans, he settled into a routine of training his body, ki, and practicing his magic. He continued to hunt since he enjoyed eating meat, not to mention that any animal he ate would end up populating his Hunting / Grazing Grounds. So the more he ate, the bigger his reward would be.

Eventually Carl had finished exploring all he could on land so he turned his attention to the salty ocean lake. He was more than large enough by that time to not be casually targeted, and he was more than strong enough to end any of the threats big enough to come after him.

When he finally slipped into the water, it was an interesting experience. His body shape and structure lent itself quite well to the back and forth motion needed to swim through the water, like a crocodile. But his legs were just too big and in the way.

So he used his Metamorphmagus powers to temporarily shrink them so they were out of the way. He then flattened his tail a bit vertically to make it a better fin for propulsion. A little bit more changes here and there, and he was a streamlined underwater hunting nightmare.

Carl had a grand time for the next couple years lurking in the depths and catching all the fish and dinosaurs he could find.

He found that the deep ocean lake did have a large passage through the land and into the deep ocean. While swimming in the depths, Carl found many of the deep monsters. He had no idea why they didn't come up to the surface more often. Even that enormous Megalodon was just chilling in the depths, hunting smaller fish and being really lazy.

Turns out its metabolism was slowed way down so it didn't burn much energy or need to eat that much while it was in the deep water. Bullshit answers like that work in alternate universes. Carl just shrugged and accepted it.

At any rate, it had provided a lot of sushi for Carl to devour.

Because he never felt a sense of boredom, his sense of time seemed to come unhinged. The years seemed to slip by with hardly any notice on Carl's part.

He never did reach out to Whippleton or any humans to sell or trade any dinosaur products to the humans. He just didn't feel the need to after he set up his company and protections on his land.

Occasionally he would look over the reports about the men who spent two years stranded in dinosaur country. He was amused to see them tell their grandchildren stories about their time among the dinosaurs.

When the first snot nosed brat called his grandfather a liar to his face about his stories of the pranking T-Rex that would sometimes provide them food, Carl frowned. Something about that just didn't sit right with him. So he did something about it.

The next time that snot nosed brat visited his granpa, he happened to get a face full of whipped cream to the face. When he wiped clear his eyes, the thing he saw hovering over his grandfather's head was a giant T-Rex head smirking at him.

When Sheffield saw his grandson scream, piss himself, and pass out, he sighed.

"Is that you Prankster-Rex? Did you have to do that to my grandson just because he didn't believe my stories about you?"

The only answer Sheffield got was a deep chuffing laugh and hearing the sound track to Jurassic Park once more.

Da Dum Daa Dum Dum. Da Dum Daa Dum Dum.

"Dammit, how am I going to explain this to my daughter?" Sheffield sighed at seeing his grandson lying in his own piss, unconscious.

Using a pensieve, Carl made a home video of his memories of watching the human's time in his land. How they survived, how they built their base, and their hunts. And he especially included his pranks on the humans.

With enough copies for each survivor, Carl made the deliveries in person. He didn't want to cause the old men survivors to have heart attacks, so he invisibly delivered the packages. At least this way their families knew what good and hardy men they had been. That they were someone to be admired.

Standing at the front door of Sheffield's house when his family was visiting, Carl knocked quite loudly on the door, leaving the package on the steps.

The knock was loud enough to shake the house.

The entire group of relatives inside got up to go to the door to see what was happening. Carl was laughing inside when he saw Sheffield rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache coming on.

After all, he had just started hearing the Jurassic Park theme song, so he knew who was at the door.

Carl chuckled his T-Rex laugh at the people who were looking out in vain for who was there. He kicked the package forward, causing their jaws to drop open at the large box that seemed to appear and move on its own.

Then he stepped over to where the bicycle of the rotten kid who had called his grandfather a liar lay on the lawn and took a big stinking dump on it. It was a little crude, but if that didn't get the message across to the kid that Carl didn't approve of his hurtful words to his grandpa, then nothing would

With a last laugh, Carl invisibly flew away from the home and vanished from the family's life.

Later on Carl enjoyed watching through his spy bots the family's discovery of the tapes and watching what their parent/grandparent had gone through. He was pleased to see that the bratty kid now looked up to his grandfather as a hero.

By the time Carl had gotten to the 10th man on his list, the word had gotten around to the group of survivors what Carl was doing. It made it a fun diversion for Carl to see the preparations the group of men made. Most of them simply invited their family over to be witnesses. Some of them set up cameras.

Only a couple of groups of men tried to set up ambushes to try to capture Carl for profit. Carl disapproved of those yahoos trying to ambush him, so he stunned the group of yahoos and put them in embarrassing positions in public. They would be quite shamed when they woke up naked and all tangled up with each other.

They also didn't get their copy of their adventures as a punishment.

With that diversion finished, Carl returned to his dino lands and continued his life there while his company expanded into all kinds of businesses.

Carl found that one of the best perks he had purchased was the anti-boredom one. Even if he sat still for an entire day just looking at a tree, he felt perfectly fine. But since he didn't want to become lazy, he took up a few hobbies that he indulged over the years.

One of the hobbies was people watching. Or, more accurately speaking, watching over their technology development. He would occasionally introduce new breakthroughs through his company when it looked like they were getting stagnant and not advancing any.

By the time he left the Dinosaur Gauntlet world behind, he had left behind quite a legacy. A large portion of the solar system had been visited by the humans. They had a colony on a couple of moons and Mars, and they were pushing to expand even further.

He never allowed another human to visit his lost land of dinosaurs. It was his, afterall.

But those who played in the virtual reality world could visit a copy of the lost land and experience what the land of dinosaurs had to offer.

And he continued pulling his pranks on people he felt deserved it. Just because he didn't get bored didn't mean he didn't appreciate a change of pace every now and then.

While the presence of the Lost Land of the Dinosaurs never made it into official records, certain families had plenty of proof of their relative's time stranded there. Many among society questioned how it was possible that with our advanced technology we were never able to find any evidence of the existence of such a 'Lost Land' filled with dinosaurs. At least no evidence beyond a few dozen videos and preserved samples of Tyrannosaurus Rex excrement.

But more lasting than any rumors concerning the Lost Land of the Dinosaurs was the cultural phenomenon of the strange dinosaur alternately fondly remembered, or vehemently cursed, as Prankasaurus-Rex.

It has been sufficiently documented as an actual phenomenon that many a school bully has found themselves with a cream pie in the face, or other such pranks played on them, when they took their bullying too far.

If they didn't soon amend their ways then some beloved item of the bully's would find itself buried under a ton of dinosaur excrement in their yard. If they changed their bullying ways, the pranks on them immediately stopped, and they would receive a gift certificate for a gallon of Firebird brand ice cream, in a flavor of their choice, on the anniversary of the end of their anti-social ways.

This pranking behavior was certainly not limited to schoolyard bullies. Several notable government officials found themselves at the butt end of the ghostly dinosaur's pranks. At least until they amended their corrupt ways and endeavored to publically make amends for their corrupt malfeasance. Those who didn't amend their ways found that their dirty laundry was aired to the public, thus ending their career as a public servant.

Because of Prankasaurus-Rex's habits of light heartedly correcting people's behavior, he has become something of a folk hero to many. And many sought to emulate him, to very mixed results.

-Excerpt from History of Folk Tales and Heroes: The Truth Uncovered.