The pair of sabertooths that had materialized from the juniper brakes carried a distinct visual profile: the male possessed a standard tawny hide, while the female sported a striking, snow-white pelt.
As the wind shifted across the limestone shelf, James's optimized olfactory receptors immediately registered their specific chemical markers.
They were Aurora's parents.
"ROAR~~"
Aurora recognized her parents the exact same millisecond. She gave a sharp, high-pitched rumble of excitement, her ears pinning forward as she took a step toward the clearing.
Under normal conditions, crossing paths with familiar individuals in a distant mountain corridor might be a positive variable. But tracking the alpha pair's immediate movements, James realized the situation was shifting toward a disaster.
They were preparing to launch an attack against the mastodon yearling trapped in the asphalt mire.
They were leaping straight into a grave.
James's human memory retained deep records of the La Brea excavations. The most staggering metric of those ancient tar deposits was the ratio of organisms recovered: carnivore outnumbered herbivores by nearly nine to one.
The underlying engine of the trap was simple, yet absolute.
An isolated herbivore would blunder into the masked bitumen, its heavy mass sealing its fate. As it thrashed against the suction, its frantic distress calls would broadcast across the valley for miles. Local carnivores, entirely ignorant of the asphalt's properties, would view the pinned animal as a free food—an effortless harvest. They would lunge into the perimeter to claim the meat, only to have the surface tension clamp onto their own limbs, converting the predators into fresh bait for the next wave.
"ROAR——"
James couldn't afford to waste a fraction of a second. He exploded from the scrub, unleashing a massive, booming challenge designed to shatter the alpha pair's focus before their paws touched the black crust.
The sudden, high-pressure roar startled the adult pair. They snapped their heads around, their pupils dilating with suspicion as they locked their vision onto James's position.
An instant later, their bodies stiffened.
They recognized Aurora immediately; How can parents not recognise the child they nurtured for years.
But their eyes stalled when tracking the massive golden male standing directly beside her.
It was impossible for them to connect this heavy, broad-shouldered sovereign with the scrawny yearling they had encountered months ago. Within the brief window of their separation, James's physical scale had expanded, his attributes clearing the adult threshold for his species.
James and Aurora closed the distance, stopping five meters out on the rocky shelf. The tool cheetah held its position back in the high branches, intelligently keeping its slender framework clear of the confrontation.
"ROAR!!"
Instead of demonstrating a trace of recognition or social tolerance, Aurora's parents tensed their muscle sheets, their expressions twisting into pure, territorial aggression.
They bared their long curves of ivory, letting out a synchronized, low-frequency warning. It was the standard acoustic signal Smilodon utilized to define a resource boundary against kleptoparasites.
During the time of the Pleistocene, this interaction was completely standard. Once an offspring separates from it's parents to establish independent family of his/her own, the familial bond terminates. They will become strangers to each other .
Re-entering their area didn't guarantee a peaceful integration; it guaranteed a violent struggle for territorial dominance.
The behavioral shift was mirrored in Aurora. She locked her frame right behind James's left shoulder, matching her parents' aggression with a fierce, resonant challenge of her own. Her eyes remained fixed on her mother's face; the moment James issued the command, she was fully prepared to launch a lethal assault against her own parents.
"ROAR~~"
James emitted a low, calculated chuff, attempting to project a submissive, non-threatening frequency to bridge the communication gap.
His objective was basic: force the alpha pair to abandon their trajectory toward the mastodon yearling. If their pads breached that black pool, even he can't save them.
Had this been an anonymous pair of wild rogues, James would have remained in the brush, watching them sink into the bitumen to balance the local ecosystem while contributing their skeletons to future human science.
But these were linked to Aurora. Preserving their lives was a direct investment in her stability, and a live sabertooth pair was far more valuable to his long-term regional plans than a pile of bones in a tar pit.
However, complex environmental calculations were impossible to translate through primitive feline vocalizations.
The single-track processing of the adult pair could only interpret James's presence through one way: he was a massive competitor attempting to hijack their five-ton food prize.
Their fur stood on end, their shoulder humps rising as they compressed their hind limbs, shifting into an active attack posture.
"Fine. If you refuse the soft exit, we'll do this the hard way."
Having been within this predator body for a year, James understood that debating with wild animals was a redundant exercise; their behavioral loops were dictated entirely by instinct and dominance hierarchy.
Attempting to explain the chemical hazards of an asphalt seep to an ancient carnivore was an exercise in futility.
To force a primitive asset into compliance, the methodology was universal.
Phase one: establish absolute physical dominance.
Fear was the only instructor that never failed a lesson.
SWISH!
James didn't execute a preliminary display. He went from a still crouch to a full-speed launch in a fraction of a second, his upgraded musculature driving his mass forward with the force of a runaway train.
Confronting two mature, wild Smilodon simultaneously, his psychological confidence didn't register a single dip. He reared his torso up, preparing to handle both targets alone.
The alpha pair reacted instantly to the launch, splitting their direction to flank him.
"ROAR!!"
"ROAR!!"
An instant later, the clearing erupted into a brutal, high-speed melee. Heavy paws clashed in mid-air, while their jaws sought an opening to drive their sabers into critical vascular zones.
BAM!
The initial collision concluded in a split second. The alpha male was violently deflected backward, his rear paws sliding across the loose gravel as he broke off the head-on assault, his confidence shattered.
Within that brief contact window, the male had experienced the reality of James's hardware. James's foreclaws were uncommonly long and reinforced, effortlessly slicing three clean furrows across the male's chest.
Furthermore, James's 130-point Strength attribute completely overwhelmed the male's mass, leaving the senior tiger compromised and defensive after a single exchange.
With her mate displaced, the white alpha female gave a furious scream. Utilizing her superior mass and tracking the opening, she closed the gap immediately, launching a heavy, downward paw strike at James's cranium.
"ROAR~~"
Aurora moved to intercept her mother, but James cut her off with a sharp, authoritative roar.
Forcing Aurora to attack her own parents carried too many psychological risks; it was an inefficiency he preferred to handle personally.
"ROAR!!"
During their first encounter months ago, James had possessed enough structural leverage to dominate this female. Now, backed by comprehensive upgrades to his hide, skeleton, and global muscle sheets, his combat capacity was operating in an entirely different level.
His packed muscle groups felt as though they had been forged from cold iron. James reared onto his hind legs, his forelimbs uncoiling in a high-velocity sequence of strikes that descended over the female like a storm.
The female managed to parry the first two impacts, but as James's speed accelerated, his raw force completely broke her guard.
BAM!
James's right paw landed against the side of her cranium.
The heavy, muffled impact sent her head snapping sideways. Her neural system stalled under the concussion, her vision blurring as her internal balance collapsed.
Before she could reset her stance, James delivered two secondary body blows to her ribs, the sheer weight of the force dropping the 140kg tigress flat into the dirt.
Seeing his dominant mate completely grounded in less than a minute, the alpha male froze. The territorial arrogance in his gaze vanished, replaced by an intense, shivering dread as he backed away from the golden tiger.
"ROAR~~"
Holding an absolute monopoly over the clearing, James ceased his offensive. He held his body steady, lowering his head to project a calm, authoritative frequency toward the defeated pair.
The white female slowly scrambled back onto her paws, huffing weakly. James had intentionally moderated his final strikes; had he committed his full 1.5-ton strike to her skull, she would have died on the spot.
With the hierarchy established, the wild pair cooled down, their instincts reading the giant's lack of lethal intent as his kindness.
" Yeah , that's great "James thought, his lips curling into a satisfied feline grimace. They were all members of the same high-tier genus; there was no reason to waste blood when the real enemy was the black muck behind them.