However, the charging female was intercepted instantly by Aurora and the cheetah, who locked their bodies into the lane to block her path toward James.
Although the two secondary companions might have been mismatched against a fully grown, wild adult female in a protracted dispute, holding her ground and purchasing a brief window of time for James was an easy task.
On the adjacent path, James showed no mercy toward the pinned king beneath his paws.
In the wild, a predator only achieved the title of king by carving its path through the bodies of its own kind. The two slaughtered adult sabertooths down the trail and the mangled young cub were the ultimate proof of his rule.
SNAP!
Within moments, a sharp, sickening crunch echoed through the brush as James's massive jaws cleanly fractured a segment of the king's neck vertebrae.
The white tigers's strained to tilt his heavy head upward, his jaws gaping wide as he unleashed a strangled, agonizing shriek.
But James maintained the pressure, methodically crushing the remaining vertical joints. The intense, blinding pain left the tiger king completely paralyzed in the dirt, his heavy torso resting like unformed mud, his chest heaving frantically as he clung to a final, fading breath.
The absolute rule of this once-untouchable mountain monarch had come to a definitive conclusion.
---
[System Alert]
Target Eliminated:Smilodon fatalis.
Gene Points acquired: +120.
--
Before the echo of the notification settled within James's consciousness, the tiger king closed his green eyes for the final time, relinquishing his grip on his northern empire.
"ROAR——"
James swiveled his head, unleashing a massive, booming challenge toward the white female. Seeing her protector killed and realizing she stood no chance against the golden giant, she broke off her assault, turned her shoulders, and fled into the dark timber.
James didn't care to chase her down.
The clearing was now quiet, scattered with the remains of the tiger king, the original resident breeding pair, and the tiny cub.
Since they were members of his own kind, James naturally refused to view them as a food resource.
Glancing at the small, broken form of the cub, a distinct wave of somber reflection crossed his mind. Its body had already grown cold and rigid under the frost, its tiny paws extended stiffly toward the canopy as if trying to grasp a hand in the empty air.
This was the unyielding reality of a primitive world governed by raw strength; an apex rival would never show mercy simply because his target was young.
Pacing through the grass for a brief moment, James used his front claws to hollow out a shallow depression in the earth, before gathering a few broad leaves from the low brush.
Lining the dirt with the vegetation, James gently deposited the small cub into the space.
Using his heavy paws to sweep the soil back over the remains and covered the grave.
Once the soil was set, a small mound marked the spot, and James pressed a limestone rock into the crest to serve as a primitive marker.
Perhaps in the coming cycles, a starving scavenger might locate the scent and dig through the dirt. But he had fulfilled his respect to his bloodline. He could only hope that by then, the small cub's essence had cleared these frozen tracks to find a soft renewal elsewhere.
With the task concluded, James turned his shoulders, guiding Aurora and the cheetah out of the blood-stained thicket.
On the morning following their departure, another sabertooth group cautiously entered the same drainage corridor.
It was the family of four that James had encountered at the nursery cave days prior.
Sensing the heavy concentration of fresh blood and tracking the scattered remains, the two tiny cubs scrambled behind their mother's flanks, their fragile body shivering against the scent of death.
The adult parents maintained an exceptionally guarded posture, automatically preparing to redirect their line away from the clearing.
But as he scanned the grass, the resident father froze, emitting a low, vibrating growl through his teeth.
Before him lay the undeniable corpse of the white king that claimed the heights of Mount McKinley.
The resident male could barely process the visual. Yet, that monstrous skeletal frame and the unique white-and-black coat left no room for misidentification.
Only a few seasons past, he had engaged in a brief boundary dispute with this very monarch, an exchange that had concluded in a catastrophic defeat. Had he been a fraction slower, he would have been dead on the spot.
Staring at the remains of his past enemy, the father cat experienced a sudden mixture of intense relief and deep anxiety. The relief was clear—a massive threat to his litter's survival had been permanently removed from the range. But the anxiety was far heavier; a secondary, unknown sovereign now occupied the territory.
The architect behind the king's demise.
The cause of death was perfectly clear to his feline tracking senses: the spine had been completely shattered by a massive, high-pressure bite, scored with the unique markers of a rival Smilodon.
What kind of a nomadic tiger possessed the power required to kill him so easily?
As the question ran through his brain, the resident male suddenly remembered the young golden tiger that had entered his nursery cave days ago—the stranger whose raw physical presence had made the king look ordinary.
"ROAR~~"
The realization sent a sudden chill down his spine. He emitted a sharp, urgent call, guiding his mate and cubs to accelerate their pace and clear this dangerous sector immediately.
Out across the sprawling mountain plains, a solitary giant camel moved across the open grass, its heavy limbs pacing with a slow, rhythmic gait as it casually chewed its cud.
The general profile of Camelops closely matched a modern dromedary, but its behavioral programming was entirely distinct.
These ancient giants held no tolerance for arid, water-starved deserts, relying completely on high-yield grasslands and lush alluvial woodlands to sustain their systems. Because their structural scale demanded a massive volume of moisture and choice vegetation, their ecological function closely mirrored that of a modern giraffe.
This particular adult specimen cleared an immense length of 4.3 meters, its standing height soaring past 4 meters, with a total mass tracking at a heavy 1.5 metric tons—precisely double the scale of a modern camel.
Since the earliest epochs, North America had functioned as the primary evolutionary crucible for the camel lineage. The lineage had ascended from primitive ancestors no larger than a common sheep, expanding through dozens of specialized variations across millions of years before generating these final terminal giants.
Yet, despite their deep history across the continent, the North American camelids would fail to survive the impending evolutionary filter of the late Pleistocene, vanishing entirely from the face of the earth.
As the daylight dissolved into total dark, the giant camel halted its advance, selecting a clear patch of ground to rest.
It refused to lie completely flat on its side. Instead, it folded its long limbs beneath its chest, settling into a compressed, kneeling posture. This position ensured that if a high-tier threat breached its immediate perimeter, its mechanical levers could launch its mass into a sprint without a single second of delay.
Before long, its eyelids closed, and the giant Camel slipped into deep slumber.
Yet, even within its resting cycle, its acoustic and olfactory tracking systems remained active, prepared to read any sudden movement in the low grass.
A short distance away, hidden beneath the shadow of a low ridge, James and his companions were actively monitoring the target.
"The vertical height on this Camel is ridiculous. Trying to launch a high jump to clamp onto its neck is almost impossibile," James thought, his mind analyzing the strategies.
A standard wild sabertooth would rarely target a 1.5-ton animal carrying this level of height leverage.
But James was a complete anomaly; his body consistently demanded the testing of new hardware.
Yet, traditional Smilodon hunting mechanics were entirely useless against a target that stood four meters above the grass.
Suddenly, James's peripheral vision pinned a thick, heavy vine twisting tightly around the trunk of a fallen conifer. A sudden, human-derived tactical concept sparked within his brain.