Mom pressed her chin against Carlo, shielding him behind her massive frame.
Carlo opened his eyes and slipped out from behind her. He could see the bloody wound on her right thigh. Stricken with anxiety, he quickly checked her status panel.
[Name: Caroline]
[Health: 1360/1660]
Good, good. Just a bleeding wound.
Carlo let out a small sigh of relief.
"Roar."
Mom gave a soft huff, signaling Carlo to go and help Dad immediately.
After one last glance at the panel to confirm Mom's status was stable, Carlo sprinted toward the Diplodocus's other forelimb.
Mom looked at the gash on her side and tested her right leg. Finding it only slightly shaky, she lunged back into the fray, snapping at the Diplodocus's right hind limb.
The Diplodocus, receiving a relentless barrage of pain signals from multiple sites, probably wished she could just amputate her own tail. It was bleeding non-stop, and the Gnashed status Carlo had inflicted made the agony linger, periodically stabbing at her nerves.
In that brief moment of her hesitation, Carlo had already maneuvered to her forelimbs, slipping well outside her immediate strike zone.
Before biting down, Carlo noticed something and took two quick steps forward.
There it was… the weakness he had been dreaming of.
The Diplodocus's thoracic cavity.
While the skin here was as thick as that on her belly, it was full of folds and creases, making it much easier for Carlo to get a grip.
In an instant, his mind was made up. He unhinged his jaws and clamped down on the area just below the neck, right against the chest.
Then, he began to thrash his head violently, attempting to rip a hole right through her.
The hide here was unexpectedly resilient; tearing through it was no simple task. Sensing a terminal threat, the Diplodocus began to heave her body again, trying to throw Carlo off the same way she had dealt with Mom and Dad.
Not enough... still not enough...
The Diplodocus's frantic struggling acted like adrenaline for Carlo. He loosened his grip for a fraction of a second, only to snap shut on an even larger chunk of skin.
Howling in renewed agony, the Diplodocus began hammering the ground with the foot closest to Carlo, trying to crush or deter him.
But this gave Carlo an idea.
He followed suit, lifting his own leg on the side facing her. He raised it higher, higher, and then...
He slammed his foot against her flank!
He gritted his teeth, swearing to tear her chest open. Using his leg as a lever, he shoved off her body with all his might, pulling his jaws away simultaneously.
Squelch... squelch...
Blood began to spray in rhythmic spurts. The Diplodocus no longer cared about the other two predators; in her world, there was only Carlo.
She whipped her tail against the ground and the air. She stomped and thrashed.
Almost... just a little more...
Her tail whistled through the air, but it couldn't reach him. It was a tantalizing, agonizing distance. They were like a pair of star-crossed lovers; even though Carlo was so close to her, she still couldn't have him.
Skkrllsssch—
Carlo was sent tumbling to the ground, sliding several meters away, his mouth still full of the flesh he had just ripped away.
The Diplodocus stopped caring about Carlo. She stopped caring about everything. She tried to let out a mournful wail, but all she managed to cough up was a spray of blood.
The front of her chest was gone. In its place was a crimson ruin: pulsing muscle, spraying blood, and the faint, white glimmer of bone.
I'm dying...
The thought echoed hollowly in her mind.
"ROAR!"
Carlo dropped the fresh meat and let out a loud call to Mom and Dad. The two Giganotosauruses released their hold on the prey and quickly converged on Carlo.
Mom's gait was slightly unsteady. As soon as she reached them, she slumped down onto the grass. Seeing this, Dad began to gently lick her wound. Wincing from the sting, Mom could only vent her pain through occasional low growls.
As for Carlo? He remained focused on the Diplodocus. He licked the scraps of meat stuck between his shark-like teeth, swallowing them along with his bloody saliva to soothe his parched throat.
Drip, drip.
More and more blood pooled from the cavity in the Diplodocus's chest. Her breathing grew rapid, then agonizingly slow.
Lifting her head, she saw her kin gathering together, her entire family.
Why me? I was following everyone... I did everything right...
"Aunnng—"
"Aunnng—"
Her companions were calling to her, wave after wave of cries echoing from the herd. She wanted to answer. She desperately wanted to call back.
But in the end, her mouth only filled with blood.
She was so tired.
Slowly, she pulled her limbs inward and rested her body on the earth. She curved her neck, head drooping, clinging to the last of the world's air.
There are so many bugs here... it's so uncomfortable. I wish I could take one last bath.
Blood flowed steadily across the ground, staining the grass and the nut bushes she loved so much. She saw her own blood, but she didn't dare look at the wound.
Sensing the end, she drew one final, deep breath, turning the red on the grass even deeper.
"Aunnn—cough"
She let out a final, mournful cry to her family. It was part complaint, part farewell, part longing.
But all those emotions were cut short by the sound of the cough.
The giant collapsed, hitting the earth like a falling mountain. From that moment on, her favorite nut grove became her nursery, her mattress, and her coffin.
Her eyes remained open, but she had stopped breathing.
Carlo sat down beside Mom while Dad continued to clean her wound, over and over again. He watched the dead Diplodocus and her herd, watched them in silence.
As a predator, the greatest mercy he could offer was not to consume her carcass in front of her family. Fortunately, he was patient with his prey, especially the dead kind.
He could afford to be generous.
Her kin stood there for a long time, like an eternal forest of towering trees, keeping watch over her. At first, there were constant calls and cries of grief. Then, the sounds gradually faded.
Eventually, one, then two, then five... they moved away, one after another.
The hunt was over.
Carlo stood up, intending to call Mom and Dad to enjoy the meal. But he froze as his eyes fell back on the wound on Mom's thigh.
After a moment's thought, he picked up the chunk of thoracic meat he had torn from the "Miss Diplodocus" and brought it to Mom so she could eat and regain her strength.
Looking at the exhausted Mom, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
Why didn't she let me take that hit?
He wasn't a child anymore. With his health pool, he could take a tail swipe; he could probably take a tank shell and keep walking. But Mom had protected him anyway.
Regretting it now was pointless. He couldn't exactly blame the Diplodocus: "You were going to die anyway, why didn't you just stay still and let me bite your neck?"
The most important thing now was preventing infection.
With his human knowledge, Carlo knew how lethal a wound in the wild could be. No matter how strong Mom was, infection was a silent killer. Since he didn't know if the humans would step in to treat her, he had to find a way to help her himself.
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