In an instant, the Ground Sloth was bristling with projectiles, transformed into a massive, bleeding pin cushion. The sight of the crimson rivers staining its fur was a visceral shock to the senses.
"YURRR... YURRR..."
Yet, the sloth's tenacity was legendary. Despite the staggering blood loss, it refused to fall. Realizing it was cornered with no hope of escape, its primal survival instincts flared into a desperate, back-to-the-wall ferocity. It was ready for a final, suicidal stand.
The Clovis hunters didn't rush in blindly. They reached into their leather quivers and drew their primary weapons: the Clovis Spear. The flint tips were dense and obsidian-sharp, ground to a lethal edge that could make a predator's skin crawl just by looking at them.
The hunters fanned out into a semi-circle, a tactical formation designed to divide the sloth's attention. Their movements were a choreographed dance of death—some feinted to draw a strike, others harassed the flanks, while the primary attackers waited for the perfect opening.
James watched with a growing chill. This was the same pack logic he had seen in the Gray Wolves, but refined with a terrifying level of foresight and intelligence. Humans were truly the ultimate students of the wild.
RUMBLE!!
Lacking any sophisticated technique, the sloth relied on raw physique. It dropped onto all fours and launched a death-charge at the closing hunters. The impact of its massive feet shook the earth, sounding like an armored tank crushing everything in its path. Mud flew in heavy clumps as it carved deep furrows into the soil.
The Clovis hunters reacted with fluid grace. They had anticipated the charge, breaking their formation and rolling out of the way with the agility of cats.
As the sloth's momentum carried it past, the hunters struck.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
The experienced killers lunged forward in unison, driving their stone spears into the giant's vulnerable points.
Two spears vanished into the sloth's armpits;
Two more buried themselves in the soft tissue of the abdomen;
And several more were driven with bone-crushing force directly into the creature's skull.
"YURRRR!!"
The blood-soaked giant erupted in a final, hysterical scream of pain. It reared up on its hind legs, its massive forelimbs swinging in a blind arc toward a nearby hunter. The man tried to twist away, but he had underestimated the sloth's reach.
Each of the sloth's three main toes carried a curved, 40-cm talon. They weren't just claws; they were organic scimitars.
SHINK!!
The talons caught the hunter's head. With the weight of several tons behind the swing, the claws sheared through bone and tissue, taking half the man's skull with them. He collapsed into the mud without a sound, dead before he hit the ground.
"OOH-OOH!!"
The grizzly end of their comrade didn't break the line. If anything, it galvanized them. The other hunters gripped their spears with white-knuckled intensity, leaning their entire body weight into the shafts, driving the flint deep into the sloth's vitals until the wood was slick with gore.
"Yurrr..."
Finally, the mountain of flesh gave way. The sloth collapsed like a falling tower, its sightless eyes fixed on the hunters who were already dancing and chanting in triumph around its cooling body.
They immediately began reclaiming their weapons, wrenching the spears from the carcass. While the sloth was still drawing its final, ragged breaths, they drew stone knives and began the butchery. With a prize weighing five or six tons and no pack animals to carry it, they had no choice but to disassemble the giant on-site.
James watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the hunters systematically decapitated the beast, severed its massive limbs, and hollowed out the abdomen, carefully collecting the organs and blood. The process took over an hour, turning the clearing into a slaughterhouse.
Scavengers, drawn by the overwhelming scent of iron and fat, circled in the shadows. But one look at the spear-wielding sentries was enough to send them slinking back into the dark. No one was brave enough to challenge these upright apes for their prize.
Suddenly, James's eyes locked onto the lead hunter.
The man wore a mantle of thick, tawny fur—Smilodon hide. Hanging from his neck was a trophy that made James's blood turn to ice: a matched pair of foot-long sabers.
This man was a specialist. He didn't just hunt for food; he hunted the apex. In the Clovis culture, killing a great cat was the ultimate proof of courage, a rite of passage that granted a man supreme status and the pick of the tribe's resources.
Eventually, the hunters packed the meat into leather slings and began the trek home, leaving behind a mangled skeleton and the body of their fallen comrade, which they carried with them.
James stayed frozen in the canopy long after they had vanished.
The Upright Apes. They really are as terrifying as the stories say.
Even the mighty Ground Sloth was just another meal to them. There was no creature in the Americas safe from their coordinated lethality. When the coast was finally clear, James slid down the tree and bolted in the opposite direction. He had no interest in a confrontation.
But a dark, intrusive thought flickered in his mind.
If I killed one of them... how many Gene Points would a human be worth?
To James the cat, a human was just another animal. But to James the former human, the idea carried a heavy, existential weight.
If it ever comes down to it—if I'm cornered like that sloth—I need to be stronger . I can't afford to be a creature with human mentality in a cat's skin. Because they certainly won't see me as one of their own.