Had it been the day before, James might have hesitated to challenge this colossus solo. But with his newly restructured, dense skeletal foundation humming with raw power, his blood was boiling with a relentless urge to fight.
The mature male *Bison antiquus* standing before them was a mountain of muscle—over 3 meters long, 2 meters tall at its heavily humped shoulders, and easily weighing a full metric ton. Beyond its staggering mass, the bull was shielded by a dense, matted apron of coarse, shaggy hair that covered its neck and chest like a heavy woven mat, topped by a thick pair of sweeping horns.
They weren't quite as long as those of its giant relative, *Bison latifrons*, but a single thrust from those thick, upward-curved tips would still split a predator completely open.
James and Aurora slipped through the low brush, flattening their bellies to the dirt as they closed the distance from the rear.
"MOO——"
The bison's ears twitched. It lifted its massive, broad snout from the grass, its dark eyes scanning the area with sudden suspicion.
The two cats froze instantly, pressing themselves into the soil until they were indistinguishable from the shadows of the juniper bushes.
James waited, his eyes locked on the bull. After a long minute of silence, the bison found no immediate threat and lowered its massive head back to the ground, resuming its rhythmic chewing of the tough needlegrass.
James signaled Aurora. They moved out again.
Splitting their trajectories, James anchored himself directly behind the blind spot of the beast's hips, while Aurora tracked wide along the flank to act as a distraction. The grueling crawl across a few hundred yards of open ground consumed more than half an hour of meticulous movement.
But the discipline paid off. They were within striking distance.
"ROAR——"
A sharp, violent challenge shattered the breeze. Before the bull could even swallow its forage, James erupted from the brush. He launched himself forward in a single, explosive bound, landing squarely across the bison's broad, sloping spine.
His wide forepaws hooked deep into the bull's massive neck, his reinforced claws tearing through the coarse hair to leave ragged, bright crimson channels across the thick hide. Simultaneously, James opened his jaws wide, driving his heavy sabers downward into the dense muscle of the neck.
He shifted his center of gravity, hanging his compact body tightly against the bison's flank like a parasitic growth. No matter how violently the titan bucked or spun, James held his anchor, refusing to be shaken loose.
"MOO!! MOO!!"
The unexpected impact sent agony through the bull. It squealed, thrashing its hindquarters and pivoting violently in circles on the rocky soil, desperate to throw the golden nightmare off its back.
James braced his limbs, compressing his spine into a tight, immovable knot as he maintained his lethal clamp on the neck, holding his ground like stone.
In that exact heartbeat, Aurora executed her strike from the flank.
Unlike James's top-down anchor, Aurora utilized the specialized, high-risk throat-lock of her lineage. She drove her body low beneath the swinging head, dropping almost completely onto her back against the dirt. She hooked her powerful hind legs over the bull's massive jaw and slammed her belly flush against its chest, driving her jaws upward into the underside of the windpipe.
This "sandwich" formation was the defining tactical execution of a *Smilodon* pair against large megafauna—one cat binding the top, the other locking the bottom, pinning themselves to the prey like an inescapable vise.
Under the combined weight of nearly 350 kilograms of predator force pulling down on its head, the bison found itself physically unable to raise its head. The structural strain on its forelimbs was immense. The bull's front legs splayed outward under the pressure; its eyes rolled back into its skull, its upper lip curling outward to expose a row of teeth as it wheezed for air.
Both sets of sabers had bypassed the thick hide, buried deep within the soft vascular channels of the throat.
Yet, the prehistoric bull's vitality was astonishing. It refused to drop. With its explosive leg muscles bulging under its hide, it made a desperate, straining push to break into a run, trying to use raw momentum to dislodge the cats.
"Damn ,The sheer power on this thing..." James thought, feeling the violent vibrations of the muscle fibers beneath him. "No wonder these monsters could flip a vehicle without much effort."
James didn't panic. He had the structural density to take the strain now, and he had plenty of patience. He held fast, turning the struggle into a pure war of attrition, waiting to see which organism's battery would drain first.
Slowly, the catastrophic blood loss took its toll. The explosive power faded from its limbs, replaced by a desperate, stumbling gait. Realizing the end was near, the bison gave one final, blind lurch, crashing its shoulder heavily into a pine trunk before its legs buckled. It collapsed into the dirt with a massive, thudding impact.
Just as the mountain of meat hit the ground, James and Aurora rolled clear with practiced coordination, untangling their limbs in a fraction of a second to avoid being crushed beneath the ton of falling bone.
Once down, the bison was finished. Its long limbs twitched sporadically against the grass, its breathing slowing to a ragged, wet gasp until the life left its wide eyes completely.
Confirming the kill, James pulled his wet sabers from the wound, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.
The entire engagement, from the initial stalk to the final collapse, had taken over an hour of absolute physical output. His stamina reserves were severely drained. Compared to the lumbering Ground Sloth, this bison was a far more dangerous and exhausting opponent.
Aurora was in even worse shape. Given her lighter frame, a solo hunt against a beast of this magnitude would have been an impossibility. She had thrown everything into the struggle alongside James. She lay flat on her side in the grass, her ribs expanding and contracting rapidly as she tried to recover.
For several long minutes, neither cat moved toward the carcass. They simply lay in the shade, their breath returning in slow, heavy synchronization.
"The system is going to list this as an 'assisted' kill," James thought, looking at his partner's pale fur. "But honestly? The result of our coordinated pair is unbelievable, Considering it our first duo hunt."
The deep, genetic architecture of the Smilodon was never meant for the isolation of a lone hunter. They were designed for the synergy of the pair.
While James and Aurora were recovering over their prize, an American Cheetah (Miracinonyx inexpectatus) was slipping through the deeper timber on the opposite face of Mount Elbert.
The sleek, long-limbed cat was hunting solo, but its luck had been wretched. It had spent the better part of the day tracking through the ridges without finding a single vulnerable yearling or pronghorn. If it didn't locate a target before the mountain shadows lengthened into night, it would be forced to endure another freezing evening on an empty stomach.
Suddenly, a strange, potent scent drifted across its nostrils. It was rich, heavy, and entirely alien to anything the cheetah had encountered in its life.
"GROWL~~"
The starving cat's mouth watered instinctively. It tilted its head, its wide nostrils twitching as it pinned the trajectory of the scent. To its ravenous senses, that rich aroma was far more enticing than the scent of a female in estrus.
Without a second thought, the sleek predator broke into a low, agile trot, following the trail through the rocks. It knew these mountains intimately; within five minutes, it cleared the high ridge and reached the source of the smell.
Ahead, nestled against a steep limestone cliff face, was a shallow, sheltered cave.
In front of the cave mouth, a bright, crackling fire was burning. Balanced over the dancing flames on a crude wooden spit was the thick, roasting leg of a moose, its fat rendering down into the coals to release that intoxicating aroma.
The meal was right there, unguarded. But the American Cheetah didn't dare to step into the light.
Because gathered around the perimeter of that fire, wrapped in the thick, coarse skins of beasts, was a group of tall, broad-shouldered apes.