“Oh hey, Charlemagne is on again. He just let the pangolin Champion get away,” Grimfalk called over to Longclaw as he tried and failed to scratch an itch on his flank. There were now a total of five screens tracking various different feeds that had been affixed to the wall. Four of those five were devoted to Grimfalk’s Champions, with the exploits of Ricardo, who had just hit level twenty, up on the biggest one. Charlemagne no longer had his own screen, but had happened to appear on the fifth. That particular screen was set to the GOD highlight channe, which was doing a segment on best escapes.

  “I thought you were still mad at him?” Longclaw said without looking up from the spreadsheet she was working on. Tracking the inflow and outflow of divinity from the Champions that Grimfalk had chosen to empower was more complicated than it looked, but Longclaw was nothing if not thorough. Pulling up the relevant records, she noted that Charlemagne’s return on investment was by far the highest of the theropod Champions. She wisely chose to keep that fact to herself.

  “Yeah, we missed out on a lot because he decided to take a nap for over two weeks. It was only supposed to take him three and a half days! What was he doing the entire time? And how did he choose the class he wanted instead of the one I wanted? That ungrateful little scaleless…”

  “He has some scales now, actually,” Longclaw rebutted, hoping to derail her companion’s rant before it got out of the station. “I think his devolution was more thorough than we expected.”

  “Hmmmph. He’s going to have to do better than that if he wants to get any more favors from me. I spent a lot on him, you know.”

  “Are you going to raise up another Champion in the area? There are a lot of chickens not far from where he is now, or at least there were…”

  “No, I’m soured on West Africa. The humans have really locked the area down since converting Lagos into an enormous fort. I’d rather shoot for some less populated areas.

  “Afghanistan, maybe?” Longclaw suggested.

  “Yes and one in the Pacific islands. That one can concentrate on speed and island hop its way to dominance.”

  The smaller theropod looked up from her work for the first time in a while and eyed her boss with approbation. Grimfalk was definitely set in his ways, but he did have good ideas now and then. Longclaw felt it was important to recognize those moments.

  “That is a wonderful idea, and you could give it some sort of camouflage to help it run from creatures it’s not strong enough to kill with a surprise attack.”

  “Yeah, kind of like…like that pangolin Champion that Charlemagne was fighting. After its ally was killed, it engaged some sort of stealth skill and cheesed it.”

  “Live to fight another day, just like us, huh boss?” Longclaw added with a smile. Seeing the look that passed over Grimfalk’s face, she instantly regretted her choice of words.

  “Yes, us…” Grimfalk answered sadly. “The last two survivors out of millions.”

  Oh great, he’s triggered again, Longclaw thought to herself. It’s going to be all day with him.

  It took Charlemagne the better part of a day to finish eating the important parts from Francois. For some reason, his Special Ability wanted him to focus on the gorilla’s bulging muscles. The reason became clear as the rooster finally gave up the carcass and stalked off into the brush for a short nap.

  The rooster was pleased with the squiggles message, understanding that the upgrade would make it easier for him to fly and make it harder to damage the soft squishy things inside his chest. The appearance of the squiggles now partially made up for them not showing up when Charlemagne killed Benedict, but Francois had told him at least three times not to expect System messages after every combat.

  Charlemagne thought a bit about his short-lived companionship with the gorilla as he made his way toward the city of Parkou, intent on fulfilling the third item on his agenda. Having another being around, even one as chatty as Francois had been, wasn’t all that bad. Well, as long as the other being knew their place in the pecking order. He still had standards to uphold, after all.

  The journey to Parakou took quite some time, as Charlemagne was continually distracted by his urges. It seemed that there were plenty of chickens that had survived the hazards brought by the System’s integration, most still living on small farms run by humans. Charlemagne obliterated any humans he ran across, not understanding that the relationship between those living on the land and their previously domesticated animals were actually still largely symbiotic. The chickens received experience from finding food, laying eggs, and generally comporting themselves in a chicken-like manner, while the farmers gained levels from providing food for the chickens, using their droppings as fertilizer, and collecting their eggs.

  Eventually, however, Charlemagne found himself passing by the Torou airbase, which had been renovated shortly before the System arrived and had served as a rally point for the Beninese military after the integration. The area was still heavily fortified, with mana-enhanced weaponry now being fielded by soldiers who had received System-enhanced items that mirrored the equipment they used to use. From this stronghold, the humans could launch attacks against a number of threats to the north, such as the wild herds of cattle that used to belong to the Fulani.

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  The rooster didn’t know why the humans had gathered in a large group at the airbase, nor did he care: it was time for him to scratch item number three off of his list: get revenge for Francois.

  Charlemagne found a minaret that was high enough to provide a clear view to the airbase and began charging his long-range mana ball attack. His recent influx of levels given him a massive boost in attributes, and he put them to good use as he condensed more and more blue energy into glowing ball that was coalescing in his open mouth. He was just about to launch the attack when the wind suddenly shifted, causing him to reabsorb the mana gathering in his throat and zoom off to the southwest. Something more important than a good battle had caught his attention.

  The intrepid rooster ran full tilt down the nicely-paved highway, which eventually turned into a cobblestone road, which eventually turned into a dirt road. He stopped short in front of a massive compound hidden behind a brick wall. A large sign advertising baby chicks was attached to a sturdy metal gate. Charlemagne leaped over the gate, using his wings to descend somewhat slightly more gracefully than a straight-up fall would have allowed. He inhaled deeply. Yes, there were chickens here. So many chickens.

  The facility was one of several that had been constructed in the hopes of boosting Benin’s domestic chicken market. Every year, the country had imported millions of dollars of frozen chicken from other countries like Brazil and the United States. Some of this chicken was consumed in country, but the majority was smuggled through the nation’s porous border with Nigeria to help sate the nation’s appetite for the tender white and brown flesh.

  The genetic stock for these chickens came from France. The eggs fertilized by the stock were carefully placed into large incubation machines, where they hatched in about three weeks. The baby chicks were then vaccinated, sorted, and sold to various other farms. The best of the hens were kept on the farm to serve as the next generation of eggs layers.

  After finding and dispatching a half-dozen humans on the premises (who had been taking good care of the flock and were leveling up nicely), Charlemagne was finally rewarded by the squiggles for his efforts in combat.

  Charlemagne did not recall asking the System to make that change and vastly preferred the unadjusted numbers. The squiggles understood, as they always did.

  Charlemagne continued his search of the compound, coming across a couple of roosters during his search. Each of them took one look at the enormous devolved chicken-dinosaur hybrid and ran away immediately. The rooster was pleased that the other roosters recognized his dominance and allowed them to retreat with their dignity intact. He had more important things to do, anyways.

  After using his strong beak to break over a dozen locks, the rooster knew that he was in the right place the moment that the final door swung open. The cacophony of thousands of healthy, genetically superior hens squawking was music to the young rooster’s ears. There were so many that, despite his prodigious reserves of stamina, Charlemagne was not able to mate with all of them at once. He was going to have to stay here for a while.

  The next morning Charlemagne woke up at dawn happier than he’d ever been. He stretched out his now enormous wings and went for a walk outside, his loud cries letting the world know it was time to get up. He then retrieved sacks of stored chicken meal for his mates, which took the better part of two hours since he had over twenty-thousand hens to feed. After eating came the morning mating session, which ended around 1:00 p.m.. After gorging himself once again on high quality feed made with enriched corn, soy, and locally-produced black soldier ant larva, Charlemagne took a long nap. Then, having had his fill of romance for the day and needing something different, the rooster decided to go hunting in the ruined city of Porto Novo.

  Taking to the skies, Charlemagne was happy to see that the speed boost he had received from eating Francois was substantial, and the flight went quickly. The rooster did not have the best sense of time, but there was still plenty of daylight left when he arrived at the northern part of the ruined city, the soot-covered ground providing a very clear delineation between the safe zone and the radioactive areas.

  This time using the advantage of altitude to scout a little bit, the rooster soon found a pack of more than a dozen of the creatures just standing around. Activating his Strike skill, Charlemagne dove straight into the one that appeared to be the most isolated, crushing its round skull with his talons and rising back into the sky with a few powerful beats of his muscles. His wing bones protested a bit from the increased strain, but a bit of mana was enough to keep them reinforced for the moment.

  The other walking corpses exploded into action as their comrade dropped, chasing the rooster as he circled above them, looking for another chance to drop in on them. After a few seconds, however, the entire group stopped, their burning green eyes glowing dangerously bright. Then over two dozen beams of sickly green light stabbed out, most of them finding their mark. Charlemagne, his feathers burnt and his skin riddled with holes, went down. There was a sickening crunch as the devolved bird hit the scorched earth.