《Evo-Gaming》 Chapter 1 He lifted his head and let out a mighty roar that made the air vibrate around him. It was the time ¨C the day he will take over the nearby jungle territory. He felt his body raise in temperature as it realigned and became more adept. After consuming the invading tyrant, he was more than ready. ======= Do you want to play a g¡­ ======= He shakes his head in annoyance and concentrates on his target while the box slowly dissipates. Another roar, this time in annoyance escapes his jaws. It''s still there ¨C the headache-inducing blue thing. He hoped his meal had finally fixed this problem, but it seems he needed to hunt a bigger prey for that. Yes¡­ It was finally time to consume and grow. He gets up, life-water cascading down his back, which now held new spikes after his growth subsided. They glistened in violet undertones, making them look not onlythreateningbut also informing any would-be predator that he was more than just a good bite. Deadly toxins ran deep within those spikes. Slowly he moves out of the water and towards his next target. He holds in a growl of annoyance as the blue thing again moves into his vision, covering part of his precious view - a weakness in his growth, a weakness that might prove deadly if not fixed soon.Growingnew set of eyes hadn''t helped. ======= Do you want to play a game? *Yes *No ======= Ignoring the blue nightmare, he stalks forward, no reason to alert his next target. A multitude of shapes and forms run from the sight of him. He pays no heed to smaller ones; they hold no more means of advancement for him. With the side eyes, he spots a red coloured creature with five appendages scuttling away. Memories of different times flash. One leap and the red one is down, using his six-fingered claws to hold it down, humongous jaw clamps down on it, red carapace making cracking sounds as it breaks apart revealing flesh inside. Revenge is sweet. He still remembers how the same creature made him spend a whole cycle hiding, while the pain from its toxins, wrought havoc in his body. He''s better now, the growth came and with it, the pain left,onlymild sting in tongue reminds of the old times. Even that fades and is replaced by savoury taste of flesh. He can already feel his body adapting, the new violet spikes on his back becoming slightly red at the ends. While the change minor, he knew it could become a deciding factor in the upcoming fight. New power kept coursing through his lithe body. It felt good to consume, to grow, it always did. ======= Do yo¡­ ======= As always, the annoyance still came back. Deeper into the jungle he went. The beast could already feel the pressure coming from the distance - a conscious act of a predator undergoing deep change. It would keep most at bay, too scared of the wrath that would follow if disturbed. He was not most.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Dark jungle trees made way forclearingup ahead. In the middle fleshy egg was pulsing. It''s size dwarfing even the beast himself. Still, it was time to act. He would fight, consume, grow just to fight some more, and any stop in this cycle would mean that it was his time to be consumed. With a roar, he leaps at the egg - claws extended, toxic bile already coating the teeth, droplets of it falling and burning the ground beneath him. Before the leap connects, the egg explodes in a gory fashion. He lands, claws and teeth connecting with the target - a creature twice his size. He smells it.Weaknessis shown, by its failed growth attempt. It''s now or never, the opponent will never forgive his intervention. Massive claw connects with his back, tossing him aside, but the damage is already done. He sees it for a second - a huge black creature with grey plates covering its back. Biomass of failed growth still covering some of the greyish plates, slowly rotting away as the growth potential was wasted. Another second passes as he assesses the damage done and tries to find a better position for another leap. Chance comes as the black beast tries to attack, but finds its appendage unable to hold weight. The same one it used to smack him away. Another dash, and this time he has a clear target. Powerful jaws close in on the less protected neck, yellow blood gushes and just like that, the fight is over. He can still feel his prey convulse underneath him, but it''s already too late. He consumes, fresh flesh providing him with the needed biomass for the next deep change. He can already feel it coming. A roar of victory resounds. He has done it! This time, he doesn''t even care about the fact that the blue thing is still not going away. Deep change will make him better. It might even fix the annoyance. ======= Do you want to play a game? *Yes *No ======= As a passing thought, before the egg like shell engulfs him to providean environmentfor the deep change, he reaches out and touches one of the lesser parts of the blue menace. ======= -*No selected -Finding new host -New host not found -Executing: "reserve plan" -Using soul bank -Host soul found -"Precise soul override" commencing: -Error-$& -"Precise soul override" failed -Executing: "backup plan in case of backup plan''s failure, seriously how did it fail?" -"Not so precise soul override" commencing ======= The skyburned as huge asteroid split the atmosphere. As it fell, multiple beings, far stronger than the beast, took to hiding wherever they could. Ground shattered and a wave of energy pulsed outwards, killing all beings nearby. All that was left of the once green jungle territory was a huge crater that was slowly filling in with water. ======= -"Not so precise soul override" completed -Warning, host body not found! -Finding suitable carriers -Soul stored ina suitablecarrier -Startingthe gamephase ======= "I think I''m alive." I would open my eyes, to look around, but somehow this body feels wrong. "It''s dark." I try speaking, but the words just don''t come out. A flash and a blue boxshowup. ======= Do you want to play a game? *Yes *No ======= How am I seeing¡­ you know what? It doesn''t matter. Might as well play, not much else I can do right now. I focus on the *Yes and the blue box rewards me with more nonsense. ======= -*Yes selected -Welcome user and thank you for participating in our new alpha test program. Please be aware that (?!,();!? corporation holds all rights of terminating your avatar permanently without further notice in case of ?,?)!(?)(!(''b -Let the games begin! ======= "What the Fuck?" Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Bored I¡¯m totally bored out of my mind. Oh, don¡¯t get me wrong, this whole situation is amazing and all, but the overwhelming amounts of nothing actual to do, is mind-boggling. ¡°Display status¡± ======= -Showing status screen /Name: ??? -name not selected /Race: Mutated microorganism /Title: The little cell that could /Age: 2 weeks /System skills: /Current mods: ======= What would you do if you saw this kind of status? No health bar, no energy meter, no map indicators, no explanation of skills or mods. Nothing. ¡°But mister cell, what about the inventory or crafting? Aren''t those amazing?¡± - Someone might ask. No, currently they are not, and one of those almost killed me already! Okay, okay let me explain. As a person with gaming experience, after noticing that I feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing except the blue boxes, I did the first reasonable thing I could - try to experiment with my skills. I actually got a nice surprise, as it seems whoever created this system left gifts for newbies. There, in my inventory, sat a blue coloured box with a red ribbon on it.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. It was a gosh darned gacha machine. Really? Incredible design choices here. Instead of fixing all the other issues I Already listed, we have a gacha machine. Oh well, after taking it for a spin (it disintegrated after one use) I¡¯m now a proud owner of my very own tiny energy generator, that I immediately put to work in creating more energy for me. ¡°Yay, free energy,¡± - Is what I would say if I had anywhere to put the bloody thing. That leads me to the crafting system. It¡¯s empty except for the choice of building more tiny energy generators. ¡°Cost¡± - you might ask? Half of the elements in the periodic table¡­ What¡¯s with this over realistic setting? Name one game where you need to build everything from the atomic base up. What¡¯s wrong with just going by magical McGuffin element ¡°plotdevicium¡± as a basis for all crafting? I want a refund on this game. Anyway, once I saw that the list made it clear that 90% of the total is covered by water, I thought I at least got that covered. How hard could it be to collect water anyway? Apparently, if you don¡¯t kill yourself in the process, not that hard. So, you know how gamers like to know their limits clearly? How would you test the limits of your inventory? That¡¯s right, you pull as much stuff inside as possible. I presumed I had some water around me and as I tried pulling in some, it really happened. I was a proud owner of 1 nanolitre of H2O. So here is where things went wrong as my gamer mind screamed - ¡°Dude, you got to test this shit out! Push the limits, abuse the system!¡± One litre of water coming right up! Done, just like that, I had litre water and I was basically committing suicide. Here are some questions for you -¡°How small is a cell compared to a litre of water? What would happen, if you were a small cell floating in liquid under the mass of water and a litre of H2O around you was replaced by nothing?¡±If you can answer all these questions, or better yet, figure things out before rushing like a moron - good for you! CauseIsure as hell couldn¡¯t. So for the last 2 weeks, I was greeted with a new message right next to the status screen: ======= -System warning: ======= As far as I could tell, I was a broken wreck floating somewhere in the Pacific ocean, with no land in sight. Chapter 3 Chapter 3 ¡°Captain''s log 234: Still no land in sight, food supplies ran out weeks ago. The crew decided that cooking the cook was only reasonable.¡± Boring ¡°Captain¡¯s log 250: We ran out of cook to eat. The boatswain will be next, as we still need our surgeon to cut the bones.¡± Bbboringngng ¡°Captain''s log 267: We found 3 barrels of apples, few rolls of cheese and some jerky, hiding under the staircase. Huh¡­ so we did get enough food for the trip. Crap.¡± I ran out of songs to sing on repeat inside my head. I think I¡¯m a little crazy. It¡¯s week 4 and Istil¡­ ======= System notice: -Recovery mode disable -All systems ready -Compensating system recovery by penalising player: =======A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. What? Yes! Oh, Cthulhu all mighty, yes! I don''t even care that the system is apparently published by EA games. I can finally do something else than sing Africa - by Toto on repeat. ¡°I bless rains down inAaafricaaa! Gone take som¡­¡± Oh right, where was I? ¡°Show inventory¡± Bastards! They took everything! Not Just the Men, but the Women and Children Too! Oh wait, I think I¡¯m mixing up references. Anyway, back to topic. Apparently, material deduction included all my already collected stuff. Time to start anew! So last time, before the global stock market crashed on me, I was using the area around me and my own cellular excretions as a steady source of income. As most people know, there is no such thing as clear water outside of special lab filtered one. So what does cell do with all the things it collects, but never uses? Either discards it outside or degrades in smaller, more useful elements. This is where I come in and target a tiny area outside my cell as inventory opening. Not all of it, else it might lead to cell death, as the useful elements are filtered out by me - aka another suicide attempt. I target around 20% of the total area. ¡°How does a blind, deaf, unfeeling cell know about the area around it and what to target?¡±- A clearly not crazy voice in my head might ask. Well, I''m glad you asked Kevin. I try to collect stuff around me more or less and see how fast the materials are being generated inside the inventory. I approximate, the current material collection speed as 20%, of what I would get if, I filtered everything. Still, all is not okay in this battlefront, as this only leads me to the same old problem, that the only craftable thing right now is tiny energy generator. So let''s quantify stuff, as I''m sure everyone loves numbers and it will never get tiresome or contrive to see those. I got 20 energy out of 20 possible. If anyone can tell me how much exactly is ¡°one energy¡±, feel free to do so. Right now, I only know that to create another tinyener¡­ Fuck it, let''s be real, its mitochondrion the powerhouse of the cell as of this moment. ======= System notice: -Renaming ¡°Tiny energy generator¡± to ¡°Mitochondrion¡± ======= Well, well, well. This could be useful. Where was I? Oh, right! I was explaining to Kevin, that to make more mitochondria, I need 15 energy and some other materials. Currently, I¡¯m only missing phosphorus. It seems the hardest element to find around here. Still, at the rate it¡¯s collecting, I think I will have enough in the next hour or two. ¡°...With so many light years to go And things to be found (to be found) I''m sure that we''ll all miss her so It''s the final count¡­¡± Crap. I thought I timed it better. Anyway, seems like phosphorus hunt has ended for now. ¡°Open crafting¡± ======= -Currently available mods: ======= I select itaaaandnothing happens. Scratch that, something did happen. I now have 5/40 energy. Yay? Why is it so anticlimactic!? There should be fireworks! I should at least get something more¡­ please? I think something just broke. I''m broken. Chapter 4 Chapter 4 ¡°No Dr Phil I don''t think my llama addiction is ruining my family. I think they should just accept who I really am. In the first place, how is it my fault that they can''t appreciate true beauty and chose to live in a world where llamas are not welcomed house pets? I think I had enough with this show, Oprah has already invited me for discussing llama based cleaning soluti...¡± Huh¡­ my energy is declining. It was 97/100 a minute ago and now it''s down to 92/100. Am I dying again? Do I even care? 89/100 88/100 ¡­ 70/100 Fuck, I still care. What to do? What can I do? Kevin, any Suggestions? Okay, okay calm yer tits. I think I got this. I can just craft more mitochondria. Wait no, that will spend what little energy I have left. How much will it offset the drain tho? Would crafting 2 more be enough? I don''t have materials for more. Eh, as my neighbour used to say ¨C ¡°Fuck it, go big or go home.¡± 40/140 Come on little fellow, you can do it! 39/140 Whelp, I guess I''m dead. 38/140 It¡¯s quite a bit slower tho. I think I can collect enough elements for another mitochondrion soon. 25/140This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Bought another one 10/160 Yes? 9/160 No! -A few hours and couple hundred thousand swear words later.- It has stopped at 3/160 for some time now. ======= System announcement: -A foreign element has been absorbed: ======= $&@&$?!, how am I supposed to get to Malibu?! ¡°Open crafting¡± ======= -Currently available mods: ======= As always, no description of what things do. At least I understand the movement spirals. Those sound like flagella¡¯s. This is getting too complicated already, I should just stick with movement spirals, else I forget the names and need to consult my non-existent dictionary. Besides, Kevin is only pretending to be smart. He''s actually ¡°Flat Earther¡±. I can''t trust a guy like that with my bio-term handling. Still, quite a way to go until I can afford the mutation chamber. ¡°Why not craft movement spirals,¡± - you ask? Da fuk does a blind, deaf, unfeeling cell need a movement spirals? How will I even know if I¡¯m moving? Besides, I''m saving up for some cool mutation action. At this point, all mutations would be positive. Okay, now I should patiently save up for muta¡­ aaand I bought 6 movement spirals. I¡¯m not spending another second waiting and not being able to do nothing else! ¡°Activate cosmic thrusters, we''re going in deep!¡± Is directionless charge bad idea? Yes! Will I still do it? Also, Yes! Did I just completely contradict my own decision? Mind your own business! Alright, from what I can tell moving takes energy, so it should mean that there is finally somewhere I can drain my energy into (well except more mitochondria). It¡¯s a really slow drain, but thankfully I now know I''m moving. As for the direction? Well, I tried imagining adding spirals around my cell - 1 top, 1 bottom and 1 for each side. Let''s, just hope that adding mods work as I''m intending. Huh¡­ I wonder what''s in the bottom of this pond. Wait a minute, I just had an amazing idea. Okay, hear me out. Remember how there are mineral particles in the water supporting me? What if we reach the bottom and directly start absorbing some from there? We can increase this production by 9000% percent! Though, I''m sure Kevin pulled those numbers out of his ass. Now the only thing left is to wait for results¡­ wait¡­ ugh¡­ fuck... Chapter 5 Chapter 5 ¡°We''re all living in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yell..¡± Oh, I¡¯ve finally reached the bottom. How? Yes, yes Kevin I¡¯m getting to that part. I noticed a huge increase in my SiO2 compounds. That being said, I found another use for the crafting system. I can actually split and combine elements to create compounds, based on what I remember from school chemistry class. Which is summarised as barely anything, and nothing useful. That being said, am I even carbon-based lifeform? I might be right now. I currently see no new elements, and yes, I checked the spoils from my last life and death situation. I did get quite a nice amount of proteins, carbohydrate and lipids. What kinds of? Dunno. As I said, my knowledge ends at pointing out that it is some kind of protein. Well, I did get a great surprised tho. It seems I just collected, one of the most evasive things on the basic mutation chamber list - biomass. No clue what it is though, it doesn''t allow me to split it into base components. Anyway, it¡¯s time to get this party started! ¡°Open crafting¡± ======= -Currently available mods: ======= Whelp, there goes two weeks¡¯ worth of stuff and most of my prize for the fight I barely noticed. ======= -System message: =======Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Okaaay¡­ Not even going to comment on the last part. ¡°Open R&D¡± ======= -Available blueprints: ======= You have no idea how fast I selected primitive sensory systems. You just don¡¯t. All you bloodymin-maxerscan go take a dive in my shoes and spend 5 weeks in total complete silence with only your mind as the company. Even Kevin is going nuts at this point. I think I''m the only reason he is holding on to sanity. So even if going something else would be better/safer/cooler. I DO NOT CARE! ======= You don''t have enough energy ======= Aaaaaarghhhh!!! How much do I need then? Oh, it¡¯s actually written here. The total energy required for starting research 200, thus I need 2 more mitochondria. I can do that now, as this ground swallowing strategy, I have going on, is quite profitable. 130/200 Let¡¯s try this again. Primitive sensory systems - BUY! ======= -Primitive sensory systems research - 1% done ======= It has wait time¡­ Obviously, how did I not see this before? This whole game was a way to let you discover the value of patience. I have seen the light Oh Lord! You have blessed me with your almighty wisdom! Now that, I, your faithful servant, have understood this ultimate truth, can you, you know¡­ HURRY THE FUCK UP? ======= -Primitive sensory systems research -2% done ======= I¡¯m so 100% done with this bullshit. Now, where is my gacha machine? Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Ugh, the inventory has turned into a huge clusterfuck of items with no search bar function and no sorting mechanism. I could sort it before opening my prize, but waiting for things is for suckers and I already sucked hard enough. Should rephrase that¡­ A red box with green ribbons? Innovation! What a time to be alive. So now they implementing cosmetic skins too? Yup, the device itself looks the same. Kevin, this spin goes to you. ======= -Useful materials received: ======= Harr harr, laugh at the salty boy. Why would I expect anything more? It''s alright, seems like this biomass is useful for building the complicated parts. Not to mention that 1kg salt is a great source of sodium and chloride. That being said, how far we are on the research? ======= -primitive sensory system - 4% ======= Deep breaths, deep breaths. What can I do in the meantime? Hmm, I could travel around. Still, travelling would lead to no actual information for me. Besides, I got a good gig going on right here. Digging the bottom of his pond has been rewarding. How about more energy? I''m pretty certain that some of the rest of R&D options will require even more energy. Oh look, It offers me to use biomass for crafting mitochondria instead. What a deal, just by paying with biomass I can skip all the boring steps of collecting resources normally¡­ Yeah, nice try System. I know a rare resource when I see one. Let''s just spend good old chemical elements for this.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. 2 mitochondria bought! Come to think of, isn''t biomass the great McGuffin energy source I''ve been looking for? So it does exist, it was just too good for the previous noob like me. Wonder if there are more ¡°main¡± resource types out there. Maybe biomass isn''t even a main resource, but something similar as proteins are for humans. The system doesn''t define it, as I would lack the necessary knowledge to act on the information. Or maybe I''m just giving too much credit to system sensibility and it just isn''t programmed to handle such information. Yeah, probably, the latter guess. Checking on the primitive sensory system and¡­ woah! ======= -Primitive sensory system - 11% ======= How come it''s 11% now!? Not that I''m complaining of faster results, but now the system is inconsistent too? Wait a minute! I think I just hadan Eurekamoment! Let''s check in a bit. Okay, it''s now at 50% and I have enough resources to try out my plan. Another 2 mitochondria - BUY! 100/280 Yes! Success! It''s definitely going faster now. 95% hype! 100%!!! Now I just need to buy it. ¡°Open crafting¡± I knew it! Those bloody bastards! It cost 2 biomass (and crap-ton of other elements) to even start making the thing. I shudder to think if I had wasted them buying mitochondria. Crap, I still need to wait a while for the other elements¡­ Oh, right research freed up. Hmm, what to pick? Cell division sounds important. Aaaand it needs 900 energy total to even start the research. What can I afford now? Okay, so I can afford ======= ======= and ======= ======= cost too much; respectively 550, 900 and 300. Not even sorted by cost or alphabet, ''tsk, tsk¡¯. Oh boy, so many choices! Do I want to glow like an idiot and attract all the dangerous beings nearby? Or do I want to put my stuff in small packets and send them outside, so random passerby gets it? Maybe I want to take a big risk and start producing toxins, that might kill myself. Yeah, safe to say that none of these 3 choices amuses me. Let''s just go with good old defence. There is always a bigger fish(cell) out there, and I want it to choke the moment it tries to bite me. Chapter 7 Chapter 7 I¡­ I need a moment¡­ I can feel. If I had tear ducts, I would be crying now. You always take the simplest things in life for granted. Until they are gone and you have to spend 7 weeks in total darkness. Kevin, I hope you understand how I feel. Oh, silly me, of course, you know. You''ve been with me all this way. Sometimes, I forget things like that. Okay, let''s focus on how and why. So why do I see and feel? I don''t know, I just craft stuff, you can''t expect me to know how it works! Explain to me how seeing as a human works. See?... I don''t have access to an anatomy major or google. Sorry about that, I went on ranting spree again. Honestly, I blame Kevin for that. He brings out the worst in me. Where was I? Oh, yes - how much I can actually see or feel. So I don''t really hear anything, which is fine I guess? How much can you hear as cell anyway? As for seeing? Well, I wasn''t expecting to suddenly start seeing without even a vision organ. So what did I get? I can feel things now. It¡¯s strange, but I like it. It''s like I can feel things comings inside the cell constantly. I can feel something shifting around inside me. I can even feel the emptiness radiating from the spots where the always working inventory is gobbling up stuff. There is even a feeling of loss as something breaks and is remade anew. I can''t really pinpoint what, but I know it''s there. Then there is the neverending feel of movement coming from the spirals as they flail and help me stick to the bottom of the pond.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Unfortunately, I can''t feel anything outside of me. Still, at least I can start guessing from which side the chemical particles are coming from. Maybe that could give me a general direction of where to find more. Suddenly, the feeling of something large entering from the topside,finds me. What''s that? Is that another cell? No, it feels smaller than a cell. I can feel my body quickly start tearing the package apart. I feel the loss of energy from the process, but it''s minimal and my passive energy regeneration doesn''t even show a dent. It''s open; I don''t know what''s inside though. I got a bunch of new organic molecules in my inventory, but have no clue what they do. Strange, why would anyone or should I say any cell send out good things this way. Oh well, free stuff for me, I guess. -Day later- Okay, I got good news and bad news. The good news is that basic inner cellular defence is done researching and I even almost have all the parts to build it. The bad? Oh, nothing horrible, it''s a teeny tiny thing. You see, it seems that I have caught a virus. Okay, I''ll stop pretending, this is horrible. My energy reserves are almost dry and if I didn''t have cheat-like inventory, which pulls things from outside in, I would have been resource-starved too. Even now I can feel my body bloating up on a brink of bursting, as I try to discard the virus as quickly as possible. That and the fact that this virus uses my energy when reproducing, has been a huge drain on my energy reserves. I''m down to 30/280 energy and I can''t even make more mitochondria as I think the virus would just use that to spread even faster. Cell death by bursting from virus overflow is a real thing. Seems that package wasn''t as innocent as I Thought. At this point, I should have always expected the worst, but my newfound sense of feeling has left me happy and forgetful of this shitty place. ¡°Open crafting¡± ======= -Currently available mods: ======= Basic inner cellular defence - BUY! Wait, not cool. My energy is dropping even faster now. 25/280 I can feel something small being created. 20/280 It''s small, but it''s endless. Even more so than the virus. 15/280 I can feel virus particles popping, waves of it radiating outward and colliding. My body is a battlefield where a ruthless, unending number of ants swarm and destroy everything foreign 10/280 Oh¡­ it stopped. Chapter 8 Chapter 8 ¡°In the left corner, we have the best of the best. The beast himself. The killer of cells, Theeeeeee Suicidal Maniac! In the right corner, we haaaaave.... some random asshat''s excrement... Fight!¡± To the winner goes the prize. At least, so the saying goes. All I got, was a chance to clean up the stadium after Shrek had an orgy in it. Yes, yes it''s that bad. Okay, the aftermath is as follows:
  1. I¡¯m still bloated with all the clumped up virus parts
  2. I lost 3 mitochondria and the R&D is temporarily offline.
I do say temporary because the alternative would be too awful to even think about. I''m down to 220 energy. I hope most parts of the structure still remain inside me, as then I can just reabsorb them and build it anew. Something tells me that it won''t be so simple. I was pretty desperate at trying to push everything nonessential out. It''s kinda gory if you think about it. Parts of me are now swimming around, looking for other prey. All I need is time to recover. At least time is something I don''t lack. -week later- I now have fixed all the damage and the R&D is back online. I say that as if I had an active part in the repair process, but, honestly, everything just automatically fixed itself. Nothing like testing out a new defence spell than by diving the last boss. I sure hope that was the last boss. I''m ready to end this game and retire in my Malibu mansion. Ok, I''m ready for the credits to roll. No? Oh well, seems like I''m stuck with keeping Kevin company for a while longer. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I wonder how basic the basic inner cellular defence is? What''re the numbers? How much damage can it absorb until stronger virus busts it down? This is the problem with a shitty UI. They need to add this in the next update. Together with a fix for randomly forgetting what you needed, when you walk in the room. While I''m at it, switch for getting a song unstuck from your head. I''ve been singing the llama song for the past 2 days. ¡°Happy llama, sad llama. Mentally disturbed llama. Super llama, drama llama, big fat mama llama.¡± Okay, enough of that. Next plan - get enough energy for speeding up and unlocking other research. Something tells me that cell division is the next big thing. Imagine all the lame fish puns I could tell if I ever get to that. What am I researching now tho? Glad you asked, Kevin. I''m going for the advance cell membrane. Figured that for once, I can keep shitty things out. It should act as another defence layer. Truth be told, I think that with enough structural integrity, I could raise inventory range without putting myself in too much danger. My gamer side might be showing there. You should always start with building more workers to increase resource production, only then focus on attack units. Base rush is for the bronze league. Still, real life does not work that way. That''s why I''m going with toxin production next. I can''t keep living in fear of killing myself. I''ll get nowhere otherwise. Worst case scenario, I''ll greet the Reaper with a smile on my face and hit-list in my hand. The first names on it might be the whole tech support team of this broken piece of shit system. They might be dead already tho. That would explain so many things. ======= -Advanced cell membrane - 44% ======= On a side note, I''ve been sorting out inventory and found a bug. I now have glitched empty field. I don''t want to try to discard it; in the off chance, it creates some kind of singularity in reality. I can move it around, and the inventory currently seems endless, so it doesn''t mess anything up. I give no props to the system for the inventory size, it must be harder to program limit for it, rather than let it stay endless. They were probably too lazy to change it. -A few days later- Kevin told me that his aunt Susan is going to visit soon. I think she will enjoy the amazing progress the progress bar has made in the last few days. It should be soon done. ======= -Advanced cell membrane - 100% ====== Speak of the devil, it''s done. ... I just checked and it costs biomass to build. ... I don''t have biomass anymore. ... Fuck. Oh wait, it can be built normally too. It costs... an arm and a leg. Not literally, mind you, but close enough. I will need another few weeks to get that much. In the meantime, I''m putting Toxin production up for research. What else is new? Oh right, I had parts of myself revisit me, some of the virus balls came back. It''s quite harmless for me tho, as every time it enters, my swarm of ants decimates it. It was a nice boost to my inner cell economy. I managed to write it down as a charity, so it won''t affect my tax policies. I also increased the total energy have to 340. It''s one of the reasons why it took half as long for advanced membranes than it took for basic inner cellular defence. Yeah, that''s all I''ve been doing. I could have gone exploring, but what''s the point? It will be faster to just stay here and mine. I think I will explore after getting toxin production. At that point, I should be considered dangerous enough individual in cellular society. I already killed one with just pure willpower, persistence and energy. Okay, mostly the latter. Besides, I need biomass asap. I''ll, probably, get it all done by the time Susan gets here. We can then explore together as one happy family. Chapter 9 Chapter 9 ¡°Oh, you are so funny, Susan. Kevin told me you had excellent humour, bet he didn''t really do you justice. What''s that? You have to leave for now? Ah, you had lot of work piled up. Well, if I do say so, I''m kind of hard worker as well. Why yes, it was a pleasure talking with you. See you soon, I hope?¡± Oh pity, I kind of liked her. No, I was not crushing hard on her, Kevin! You saw wrong! Bah, what do you even know about feelings? That''s it, I have work to do, stop distracting me! Okay, back to business. We now have both, the Advanced cell membrane and Toxin production, up and running. We are ready to leave and it only took us 2 weeks to get here. Thankfully Susan was here to pass time with, else I might have gone mad if I had to spend even more time in this sausage fest. Kevin is a nice guy, but our relationship is only friendly at best. ¡°Alright, activate FTL capabilities! All hands brace for ludicrous speed!¡± So we are officially off! It took few tries at first to get me out of the hole I''ve dug myself into, but we are currently heading¡­ somewhere in front of us. I''m kinda expecting some random encounters. They do have those in games. Wonder how many steps I have to take to start one. Oh, by the way, the first thing I try to craft with the resources was not the advanced cell membrane, but primitive sensory systems again. Maybe they stack and boost the effect - was my thought. Turns out you can''t even buy it anymore. The option just stays there to taunt you. They didn''t even grey it out or something. At this point, I''m not even mad, just disappointed. I also started researching extracellular transport system. Mostly because all the other options open, were kinda lame. Not planning on glowing or visiting surface this soon. Could get upgraded spirals, but I want to try out things I don''t have yet. ¡°Display status¡± Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ======= -Showing status screen /Name: ??? -name not selected /Race: Mutated microorganism /Title: The little cell that could; Antibiotic /Age: 11 weeks /System skills: Inventory Crafting Research & Development /Current mods: Mitochondrion Miniature movement spirals Basic mutation chamber Primitive sensory systems Advanced cell membrane Basic inner cellular defence Toxin production ======= Hey, not bad for a cripple! Mom must be so proud right now. Jokes aside, the - I didn''t do anything to get this far - part, is mostly true. Seems like all the encounters up until now, I survived based on luck. Well, no more, I say! It¡¯s time to grab destiny by its proverbial balls and get my life back on the track! So, about bloody time, I caught something! -1 day later- How is it so empty? I swear they are avoiding me. -Another fucking day later- Finally, we have a catch! ¡°Reel em in, boys! Let''s give gunners some work.¡± ¡°Take no prisoners!¡± ¡°Quick, they are trying to outmanoeuvre us! Deploy the torpedos!¡± ¡°We have a confirmed hit! Those poor bastards didn''t even know what hit them.¡± ¡°All hands, brace for impact!¡± ¡°Boarding party, when they go to meet the maker, make sure they remember our smiles as we carve them!¡± ¡°Good job, lads. The ship is ours!¡± It wasn''t really that interesting. Okay, here we go. I felt something impacting the membrane and slide off. I had few precious seconds of stupefaction, as I realised that the advance cell membrane, was, probably, responsible for it. I quickly tried to move in the general direction that the target escaped while willing the membrane to become more porous (a control granted by upgrading it). It took 10 seconds of intense waiting before I felt the impact again. This time, it didn''t bounce off but stuck to me. I could feel the membrane working and pulling parts of the target inside. I felt no struggle, as the other cell, probably, didn''t have conscience defending it and was fully automatic. The parts pulled inside, became a huge protein and lipid bubbles, carrying the good parts inside. My toxic body quickly went to work and degraded the protective shell to a pitiful amino acids soup. While my antibiotic swarm went to work on the core, pulling it apart and integrating its contents into my own structure. It went on and on until I had nothing more left to take and the cell outside was fully assembled into my own being. I didn''t get anything for crafting tho¡­ ======= /Enemy absorbed: -Biomass - x1 ======= It didn''t let me down? What''s this? Is it my birthday already? Chapter 10 Chapter 10 It''s been a few days already, since the destruction I''ve wrought on that cell. Kevin and I kept exploring the deep reaches of spac¡­ water. I completed the research on Extracellular transport system and thanks to the loot we got last time, quickly managed to craft it. Well, long story short, I now have vesicles. If that doesn''t ring a bell, it''s, basically, as it was said - transportation system. Think of lipid balls, covered in protein ¡®hooks¡¯ that contain something. That something can range from simple elements to complex RNA structures. The best part of this, however, is that I can fully control them, at least, while they are inside me. Yes, Susan, I can now shift stuff around inside me. So next time I get a cell kill, I could theoretically collect more than just single biomass. No, the other stuff didn''t just disappear, Susan. My body apparently treats all excess good as building blocks. With blueprints being already built elements. After that battle, I noticed a strange increase in energy levels, jumping from 340 to 380, an increase of 2 mitochondria. Which is still less than a full cell should have, but if I''m guessing, the answer lies in biomass. Where does it come from? What is it made off? It is called biomass, so it might be a combination of all the life-building elements, concentrated into one Bio-mass. Oh, Susan is so sweet, but I wish she knew more about biology. She does make up for it with amazing skill in crowd management. Next on the list - experimenting with torpedoes/mines. Yes, I now have real torpedos/mines, or, at least, close to that. So I got myself thinking - ¡°what if you load some toxin inside the vesicles and toss them outside at your enemies?¡± The answer is that you waste a bunch of resources. The problem still lies in me being blind as a bat, which is a totally bad comparison, cause bats have good eyesight. Why is this considered a common saying? Anyway, the blind part makes sure I don''t even know if I hit anything. Not to mention that It''s easier to absorb the target, while it is still in one piece. Even the cost is nothing to laugh about. As with all system crafts, I spend resources directly from my inventory (my body creates some by itself, but those are important and used in gene expression. The upside is the increased control in some parts of me.) So why experiment in the first place? What if somebody chases me? I can always release a swarm of them behind me. You wanna get to me? Survive the minefield first!This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Enough about my obsession with lethal weapons, I should decide on my future research paths. As it is now, it''s either Christmas light decorations, star power or gotta go fast meme. After spending 2 days just to find prey, I''m more keen on getting the lighthouse upgrade. Still, I''m not sure that I can deal with the kind of beings it would attract. Spiral upgrade it is. It will be the last thing I will buy, before focusing on pure energy production. I plan on rushing small energy generators and cell division. They seem important. Alright, back to hunting we go. -A day later- We caught another. Kevin suggested we allow them to parley, but I think that taking prisoners is for weak minded. You have to be strict with discipline, else the crew will forget their place. We can''t have mutiny on or hands, not when we are so close to our goal. The fight was anticlimactic. Mostly, because it almost went the same way. Something bumped into me, I bumped back. Something became a snack. Yada, yada same old, same old. I got my biomass and tried out the new transport system collection capabilities. Managed to snatch half the resources. I''m mostly guessing here, as I can''t really be expected to notice all the numeral changes into so many elements. I did notice, that there was some increase and that I only got 1 mitochondrion auto-built, bringing the energy total up to 400. Finally, as I now had enough spare parts, I built larger sails for my ship. The upgrade was a one-time thing. It simply replaced the previous building option with the new one. It did ask me to spend some more on upgrading already existing spirals, but, thankfully, that didn''t require biomass. Even though I don''t really plan on building the other upgrades, while I wait for enough resources for the power cores, I''m researching them anyway. ======= /Luminosity - 10% ======= Hunting had been a great source to rear in the boredom, not to mention that it''s the only place I managed to get biomass from. No, gacha doesn''t count. Never trust a rigged lottery. Rigged? Yes, rigged! Did you think that salt just showed up randomly as one of the prizes? I''m 70% sure that I was a part of some inside joke. If the slug people behind the wheel decides to give me worthless stuff next time, there is nothing I can do about it. Where was I? Ah yeah, hunting is profit, but I also have a chance to speed up mitochondria production by trying out mining again. The question remains if I was lucky these few days or is the enemy spawn rate 1~2 days, and I''m okay with just hunting. I get the nagging feeling that my mind will twist even more if I have to do something that tedious ever again. I''m half sure Susan is a figment of my imagination, but Kevin insists she is real. I trust Kevin, but I don''t know if this journey hasn''t made him too crazy. An insane person giving another insane person tips. Is this what has been going on? I can''t believe in that. I need to keep my mind in top shape. At least, one of us needs to be sane. Chapter 11 Chapter 11 ¡°Multikill¡± ¡°Quadra kill¡± ¡°Penta kill¡± ¡°Player is on a killing spree¡± Okay, I won''t bore you with details of those encounters. Safe to say, I''m currently the biggest fish in the sea. At least, as it comes to single cell organisms. It''s been a week and I''ve scored 3 more kills to my name. Energy levels at 560 and I''ve begun my research into small energy generators. ======= /Small energy generators - 10% ======= 3 enemies also mean that I''m richer by 3 biomass. I''m obviously saving those up, you never know how much will the big things cost. I had to change my direction several times already as I seem to reach the edge of the playable map. Currently, I''m starting to think that this really is a pond. While that does mean it limits the size of any possible boss spawn, it also limits my growth potential. I hope I get to land before I run out of things to consume. -3 days later- Research completed on small energy generators, or as I like to call them - Mitochondria v2.0. I also managed to catch a shiny Mewtwo. Okay, it was another cell, but I can always dream! At this point, I ran out of R&D options. Well, I still have cell division, but that''s a long energy grind ahead of me. I do have a way around the grind. At least I think I do. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Upgrading energy reactor! It asks for 1 biomass to upgrade all the existing ones. Oh well, I''m rich enough. Buy! ======= /System warning: -Player has overreached current energy cap! -Energy core meltdown initiated! ======= Oh shit, that can''t be good. ¡°Core meltdown stop?¡± I just felt a part of me liquify. Fuck my life. I don''t want to die now. ¡°Core meltdown inactivate, pretty please with sugar on top?¡± It''s still happening. More parts stop responding and become soup. ¡°Hey, if you don''t stop it now, I''m writing a strongly worded complain on twitter! See how you like that PR disaster!¡± After a while, it did stop. I''m kind of ashamed for worrying so much. It seems the energy cap is at 1000 and once you reach over it. It melts down some energy sources to compensate. If I counted correctly, I''m sitting at 25 mitochondria v2.0 and each gives 40 energy. I even managed to collect the melted down parts, as true the norm, my body was pushing them outside. This time, I was ready and increased the inventory cover to 100%. I got so much power now. You could even say that I have - ¡°Unlimited powaaaah¡± Cell division research is on its way. ¡°Sleep for 1 week¡± It didn''t work, but it was worth the try. Back to hunting, I go. -Week of singing only Beatle songs later- It''s finally happening - I''m going to be a father. Mom will be so happy to have grandkids. I wish I could introduce my wife to her, but sadly, she doesn''t exist. That''s right, boys and girls, I''m ready to reproduce! Pay attention or you might miss the kinky details. The research on cell division is done. I¡¯ve unlocked all the R&D options. I didn''t get any system prize for it, but we can''t have all our dreams come true. Cell division straight up costs 3 biomass. It''s a government propagated inflation, I tell you! Brothers, grab your tinfoil caps and join the resistance! You can only get a single biomass from killing a cell (excluding basic stuff enough for 2 mitochondria). I currently have 5 biomass though, so I can afford it. ¡°Alright, open crafting!¡± ======= -Currently available mods: ======= ¡°Cell division start!¡± Woah¡­ --- In a single voice they call: ¡°Fear us, for we are many.¡± ¡°Fear us, for we are many.¡± --- Chapter 12 Chapter 12 I now have Bob. ¡­ Oh, context to that? Where do I even begin? -A few hours ago- Have you ever been hugged by a bear? No? Oh, well, it felt like that is happening to me. All my insides twisted as they made way for the nucleus. The nucleus itself split as chains from somewhere reached inside and pulled my very being apart. Just as my mind became hazy and darkness started to reach for me, I felt a stabilising force. My cloudy thoughts became clear as two new nuclei formed inside me. Just as I thought the worst was over, I split again. This time my mind remained intact, but my cell self had a gash running from one side to the other. It became wider as a sense of loss overwhelmed my being. It quickly faded as new information was received by my primitive sensory system. I was now two. Technically. It felt strange, like discovering a new limb. I could control the other part and even receive weak feedback from the sensory system, but it was not ''me¡¯. I was still shackled to this cell, while the other was like a proxy base I commanded. So I named it Bob. What can Bob do? Everything I could, that didn''t involve being ''me¡¯. We swam around a bit, as I got used to controlling Bob. I checked up on my status and systems. For the most part, everything was the same. I now had less energy (500), but the lost part, probably, went to the other me. I also noticed a missed system announcement, I don''t quite know the content, hence, I saidmissed, but I now had a yellow box with a green ribbon on it, sitting in my inventory. Would system message log be so hard to implement? It was another gacha machine. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Guess you can'' teach an old dog new tricks. Spin to win! ======= /Dev team''s hidden easter egg - x1 ======= It''s a picture of a cat doing a backflip. It''s not even that funny. I hate this game. ¡­ Where was I? Oh yeah, I need to hunt for more stuff so I can make more Bobs. It should be easier now. I expect twice as much biomass gain. ¡°Let''s go, Bob!¡± Now we just need to cover lar¡­ Something''s not right! I''m losing connection with Bob. It''s getting harder and harder to get a feel from him. I can''t even make him turn back now. ¡°I''m coming, Bob! Don''t you dare to die on me! I spent too much to make you!¡± I rushed in the general direction Bob went. As I grew closer, just like if you slept on your arm for too long, the feeling I was getting from Bob slowly came back. Finally, I was close enough and my control returned. I still had a lingering feeling of tiredness. After checking, I noticed that my energy had dropped down to 50/500. After experimenting a few times, it seems like I need to spend energy depending on how far Bob is from me. The further he is, the faster my energy drops. While I''m too scared to test it now, I presume that losing all my energy would break my link to Bob. Whether he becomes a new cell on his own or just goes on standby mode, will have to be tested later when I have the resources for it. Still, while he remains close, the drain is negligible and can be covered by the basic energy regeneration. Byclose, I mean 3 cell length close. Out here, not much else to compare distance with. With this out of the way, we can go back to farming creeps. -10 days later- Um¡­I founda bug? A big one at that. I have biomass for the division, but the button just doesn''t work. Am I missing something? What do I nee¡­ Wait, do I need max energy for this? I''m currently still missing 2 mitochondria v2.0 (800/920), to bring me up to 1000. Let''s try it out. Ah yes, after crafting them and using cell division, the familiar feeling of becoming brain dead, is back. ¡°Bob 1,2,3 report for orders!¡± This won''t work. If I need 10 days to divide, by the time our count has grown enough, I''ll become crazy. That''s 2x2x2x2¡­. A lot of times. Each taking 10 days¡­ We are talking about years here! Solutions, solutions¡­ Kevin, I need solutions! What do you mean - ¡°Ask Susan¡±? She''ll think I''m incompetent if I can''t even solve such a simple problem. Alright, stop nagging, I''ll ask her. ¡°Finding solutions in places yet explored.¡± - What does that even mean? It didn''t help at all! What am I missing? Oh! I guess I can try that. Still, we need resources for that. ¡°Team Bob, move out! Chapter 13 Chapter 13 ¡°...and so, in our greed, we consumed the stars themselves.¡± In reality, however, we just installed solar panels. Honestly, I''m sorry I dissed on them before. They have been an immense help in shortening the time needed for division. Not because they somehow generated the missing materials, but they made my energy regenerate at high speeds during the daytime. How does that help me? Well, it helps Bobs move further away from me. Remember how it all started? How I spent quite some time in horrible darkness, just because I dug too deep? A litre of water gone and I was reduced to a broken shell. What if I could do that again, but with a safety net in place? Remember how I said the Bobs are a part of me? I can use them as a medium for the inventory. Combine that with the length they could move alone, and the fact we now have upgraded cell membrane, I could start my experiments on suicide bombers. First of all, I would send one of Bobs close to the bottom, as far away from me as possible; without losing our contact. Then, slowly, expand the inventory collection range. For science, it''s a sacrifice I''m willing to make. Sorry, Bob-2. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Up until cubic millimetre, it was fine. After that Bob-2 received injuries I deemed lethal. So he sacrificed for the greater good by sucking in a cubic centimetre of mass. I got a little bit caught up in the wave that followed but sustained no real damage. Here is the best part -There is biomass in the earth! It''s not much, I only got 5, but that''s almost twice what I just lost. Not to mention all the chemical elements collected. To be on the safe side, I kept on testing with Bob-3 (Bob-1 is my favourite, I don''t want him to die. Don''t tell Bob-3 that), and it seems that the maximum safe drilling distance is one-tenth of a cubic millimetre. This is still an incredibly large amount compared to before. Bob-3 does receive some amount of damage, but it can be healed in under an hour. With the experiment over, I made them divide again and keep working on mining materials. I made some really approximate calculations and this could mean it would only take a few weeks or so, to grow by the billions. -15 hours later- Fuck, I forgot how boring and tedious this is. Even with the occasional interesting mishap (We lost many Bobs in the last one), I hate this. Oh yeah, I now have an army. Honestly, I lost the actual count, so I just started to keep the number of cycles the division has happened by now. We are close to 1000. That''s 8 times of division, from 4 starting cells. I didn''t join, as I rather dislike the feeling of being torn apart. Still don''t know the total loses from little mining accidents, just a general feeling and it''s hard to calculate based only on that. The accident itself? Well, let''s just say that I didn''t think of what would happen if every cell, once we reached over a hundred, activates inventory power at the same time. I have to suspend mining for now, as the sun has gone down and the energy strain on me is too large to handle anything more than Bob blob around me. Thankfully, the Bobs themselves work as an energy relay and increase the general range with only a small cost. As Kevin kindly put in - we¡¯re having a sausage party here and as I kindly put in - Kevin can go eat a bag of dicks, for all I care. Anyway, it''s time to show the rest of this pond, who''s the real boss around these parts. Chapter 14 Chapter 14 I''ve come across a problem - I''m not a computer. Rather, I should say that I''m incapable of individually giving commands to 1000 other units. Is my APM that low? I can still move everyone in the same direction, but when, at random intervals, I feel parts of myself encountering another cell, I need to slow down all 1000 of us to wait for that one guy to finish digesting. It''s quite inefficient to move and do so, so I''m stuck as slowly floating tiny ball that can only hope for the prey to be unlucky enough to run into it. I already upgraded my glowing capability, but it doesn''t really help when the thing you are trying to bait is blind. I''m starting to regret doing so, as now my fears of encountering something I''m not ready to meet, might become a reality. That being said, where is anything larger than a cell? How is it possible to not encounter anything big, after all this time? A question for a different time. Currently, I''m at 1045 biomass, enough to split a third of us. I''m holding off, though, as I want an approximate knowledge of how many we are, and if I do so now, well, let''s just say I''m not that great of a mathematician, not when I have nowhere to write notes on. Much easier to just multiply 1000 by 2. Besides, having a good amount of reserve, in case of emergency, seems like a smart thing to do. Kevin disagrees and calls me resource hog, but what does he know. I don''t have any ''build'' and ''timings'' I need to follow, so I rather am safe than sorry. I just had an idea! What if I outsource my cell control to Susan? She is great at micromanaging stuff, so it might be easy for her. Yes! I can already see the improvement. I had to give her partial control and now I have a splitting headache, but it''s worth it! We are now operating at optimal capacity. Cells that are consuming something, move to the middle of the ball, while tendril-like cell structures are extended outwards and comb the surroundings. I say structures, but they are just cells stuck close and in line formation. Still, while it seems complex, it doesn''t increase the energy consumption that much. I feel like a tentacle monster, straight out of some questionable source material.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Bah, the headache is not really getting better. I wish the day would come sooner when we can finally leave this fucking pond. I want to sleep. It has been so long since the last time I had a good sleep. Currently, I''m only able to drift in thoughts. There is no biological need for sleep and my mind is not really shackled to something like a brain, so it refuses to rest. It can''t be good for my mental health. -20 years later. Or was it hours?- "Ehh macarena!" I don''t know the rest of the words, so I just hum the melody inside my head. It doesn''t help the headache, in fact, it made it worse, but I can''t control it. I''m stuck with macarena for the foreseeable future. At least, until the next song comes along. It''s day time, baby! You know what that means - we get to collect some dirt! Hunting is too inefficient to handle my current needs. In all this time, I was only able to increase the Bob count to 16000. Which is impressive and all, but my headache grew worse with each time, rendering us crippled and unmoving until Susan got used to it. Even then, after the last split, I took back the control and ''enjoyed the scenery'' for a few hours to rest. That''s where macarena took control and a different kind of headache wason me. I tried to probe every hour or so and it seems the Sun is now up and running. My power, vast and overwhelming, I was ready to do some digging. As I descended into the abyss, I relinquished my control to Susan, who split the Bobs in an orderly manner based on sectors. All that''s left for me was to internally scream -¡°sector A1 detonate!¡±- wait for few seconds, then do the same for sector A2. It takes 3 minutes to go through all sectors, and hour of repair time in between. I can see a problem with doing things this way in the future tho. The sectors will grow in number drastically, while the cell durability remains the same. I might need to sacrifice a few thousand cells in the future, just to be able to dig properly. Using my incredible reasoning skills, I made Kevin solve this problem by the time a solution is needed. He was not particularly happy, but that''s now his problem. Finally, I will have someone else to blame, if we manage to fuck up this whole operation. Chapter 15 Chapter 15 We¡¯ve reached millions. 14 million to be exact. To be even more exact, I''m just guessing at this point. We managed to divide 10 more times in the last 16 hours, and it was only thanks to my ingeniou.. alright, alright. Sheesh, talk about a touchy individual. It was only thanks to Kevin¡¯s ingenious idea of turning Susan¡¯s tendrils into a bomb delivery system, that we managed to get this far. As 3 minutes turned to 6 and 6 turned 12, and 12 to 24, and, well, you get the idea. We quickly realised that sector strategy ain''t gonna fly no more. So in my desperation, of having to call out so many sectors, in comes Kevin, with a smug smile on his face, and tells us his plan. Long story short, we extend the maximum range of the tendril, available to us in the daytime, and make the largest explosion we can safely do. Most of the tendril doesn''t survive, but we get plenty of biomass to offset the losses. As my cell ball grows bigger, the tendrils can reach further and I can proportionally increase the area of the blast radius with it. So, while, theoretically, we should have 16 million Bobs, I''d say that we are closer to 14. In other news, the Sun is down and we are back to hunting. My headache is overwhelming and, at this point, I try to keep myself occupied while Susan controls the Bobs. I''m back to organising the inventory, which, after the mining expedition, has again become a clusterfuck of random stuff. Based on size the largest thing I have is NaCl, it is still at 999,9 grams, followed by the picture of a cat and H2O. There is still the bugged out part, but, thankfully, it''s not spreading to other icons. I should be able to..¡°Aaargh¡± They divided again. Every bloody time it''s like an ice pick stabbing my brain, as Susan has to try harder to control them. Kevin, I need solutions! I can''t keep going like this. While you figure it out, I''m taking a vacation. Susan, make everything stop, control only the tentacles. The rest is going on standby mode, while we search for a fix. Ah, much better. I can finally concentrate on more important matters. Like figuring out the lyrics I forgot of ¡°Bohemian Rhapsody¡±. Don''t you just hate it when you know you¡¯ve missed a part, but you can''t remember which part it was? -Thus, the morning came.- ¡°G2 detonate!¡± Aaand I''m back to sectors. I''ve reached a limit of possible length for a single cell line tendril. Thus, I''m starting to use multiple tendrils. Multiple tendrils lead to Susan, while Susan leads to headache.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. At least she is, although slowly, getting better at this. Controlling a million Bobs is a piece of cake for the current her. Problem is, we¡¯re well over a billion, right now. Hey, at least, Kevin had a suggestion. It was along the lines of - "stand in the minefield and watch the fireworks around you," - kind of suggestion, but it was a suggestion nevertheless. Safe to say, we aren¡¯t going to do that, well, not until we get better defence. I think I can only handle a few more splits. After that... I don''t know. -Darkness engulfed the land and the dark lord raised theundea... yeah, no.- I''m trying out new things. Not much else is left for me to do. My best approximate of our current count is 10 billion. It should have been 4 billion more, but as the night fell and energy levels started to fade, I quickly realised that the outer layer of my cell ball is starting to die off. It seems I can''t keep control of so many cells when the sun is not up. I managed to reabsorb most of the dead layer, but it would be pointless to divide more right now. In the weakness of the moment, I said ¡®fuck it all¡¯ and let go of my control. The cell ball dissolved and Bobs started to cover a larger distance. Free from my influence, they started to float up, and as I didn''t want to see all my hard work gone, I followed. At the surface, they started to spread out evenly and as I was about together those dumbasses back together, I noticed that my energy didn''t drop anymore. Moonlight is diluted sunlight... Elementary school physics = mind blown! It''s not fair, I got this far on my own! Kevin, I''m not just lucky! It was all planned! I tested out and I can still recall the Bobs. Now it just feels like they are in their natural state. Guess basic cells are not supposed to make complex structures without having specialised cells to do the heavy lifting. Have I¡¯ve been skipping a few steps along the way of evolution? Like Icarus, I flew so high that my wings got burned. All that remains is to wait for sunrise and see what I can do with this unit configuration then. -With first rays of the morning Sun, the evilwas vanquish¡­ again, no.- I can grow again! Without spending energy on making pointless ball structures with complex tentacle appendages, I can just make Bobs descend and evenly cover the ground. My reach is so much larger than with the tendrils, letting me increase the inventory blast range. Susan asked me if she could help, but I turned her down. Honestly, I¡¯m grateful for the offer, but I rather not have a migraine. She is hiding it, but I know that she is sulking. I have to think of something I could do for her. Maybe I can make a body for her in the future? A thought for another day. Grow, grow, grow! Consume and grow! Baby, we are reaching population levels never seen before! By my totally approximate calculations, we should be close to 300,000,000,000. Okay, Kevin, hear me out. I¡¯ve been thinking about how much ground we can cover now. Let¡¯s say that each cell is 10 micrometres large and we have 300 billion cells. I take the total volumeof..Okay, I already forgot all the steps I did, but I ended up with 3 to 4 square meters. That¡¯s a lot, and based on my luminescence, I should be visible to larger lifeforms, when I surface. Aaaand suddenly I''m starting to think that growing this much was not the best idea. No, I can¡¯t start to think like that! I need to evolve and get me some pair of eyes. I hate darkness! I hate not being in control of myself and, most of all, I hate being lonely! Alright, I¡¯m sorry Kevin, Susan, I know I still have you. It..it just gets hard sometimes. Sometimes, I feel like I¡¯m imprisoned inside my own mind. Enough of this sulking, time to call it a day. I think the Sun is going to set soon. Chapter 16 Chapter 16 Danger! The small creature shot to her feet. Carefully surveying her surroundings, she sniffed the air. Something was wrong. It took her a moment to figure out exactly what, and by then it was already too late to hide. It had been too quiet. She was used to the surroundings being filled with buzz, as countless smaller beings, fought to survive and grow. They wouldn¡¯t bother her, they knew better than to annoy the strong. Still, it was quiet now and a steadily growing unease was filling her thoughts. If only the poison was not clouding her senses, she would not be caught so unprepared. Unfortunately, the last hunt didn''t go well and all she had to show for her effort, was paws full of poisoned spikes. *Thud* *thud*¡­*crack* Whoever was coming, had noticed that she was aware of it. The beast had dropped any pretence of trying to sneak up on her and was now running this way. A split second decision and she was off, dashing into the nearby thorn covered shrubs. Her lithe agile body finding the path even when the previous still bush, now closed in on her. Some of the thorns still managed to leave a mark on her, but it was a price worth paying, as based on the sound of its steps, the one chasing her would have a harder time passing. At least, she hoped that was the case. The small being kept running, sparing a single glance back, just to see a large beast with 3 horns on its head, bulldoze right through the bush. To her dismay, it didn¡¯t even slow down, its hide too thick to even notice the annoyance. She knew that one, it had been eying her territory for some time now. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. There was no time to think, it was a do or die situation. Thus, making a decision she might regret even more. She ran towards the forbidden zone - a place that no sane beast would travel to. A long time ago, it was a land for the greatest of creatures. Now, only smouldering ash remained, spewing poisonous gasses that killed any invading plant life and creatures alike. There was no other choice, weakened like this, she could not put up a fight, and there was nowhere else to run. It would catch up and devour her essence. Soon, the ruins of the once beautiful jungle lay before her. Smoke was still raising up as the earth burned, but it couldn¡¯t stop her. Not now, when the only chance of survival, lay in there. She passed the first hole, sparks flying outside as the fire inside consumed what was left of the thousand cycle old plants. There were more holes ahead, all of them just as deadly as the one before. She heard the pursuer hesitate for a moment, but just as the hope started to rise in her, the thundering footsteps resumed. She kept going, agile legs carrying her to the safe spots among the false earth. One misstep and she would tumble down into the burning abyss, never to be seen again, she would lose her chance of becoming something greater. A roar sounded as the 3-horned monster stumbled, but her happiness only lasted a second, as it regained the footing and kept chasing her. Faster, she needed to go faster. Her only hope lay ahead of her. Soon she could see it, a large pond in the middle of the fire. It was all that remained of the once great lake. There was only one safe road to cross this hellish landscape and while she didn''t want to go back to her former territory, she didn''t have much of a choice. She just hoped that the 2 legged creature, who drove her away, was gone by now. Her plan was to use the water to slow down the pursuing menace. She might not have fins like the river beasts, but she knew that she would be faster than the big one behind her. With a last look behind her back, she leapt. In her haste, she forgot the most important rule for her kind - vigilance is the key to growth. She didn''t notice that the water, compared to the time before, now glowed slightly. She managed to cross half the pond before things turned from bad to worse. After that, there was only burning pain and darkness. ------- He watched as his prey leapt into the water, and anger almost overwhelmed him. The beast knew she would be gaining ground on his this way, but there was nothing he could do. He stopped short just before the water and gave a last glance in the small beings direction. While it annoyed him to lose the prey, he already got what he wanted - a new hunting ground. Now that the small menace was gone, the 3-horned killer would finally be the greatest in these lands. He would gain what she had lost. It was the way of this land. A screech brought him back from his thought as he watched in horror as something consumed the small being in the pond. Billions of tiny lights gathered and flowed towards it, and while the creature seemed fine at first, it was becoming clear that the lights were endless. They flew inside her and soon nothing remained. Danger! - his senses told him. Not looking back anymore, he turned and walked away. He still had to cross the burning plain before he could savour his prize. Chapter 17 Chapter 17 I''m out of ideas. There is nothing left to try, and the stupid system has not given me anything to progress towards. Why not just explore the whole pond and find something bigger to devour? I AM THE POND! Almost literally, as now the Bobs cover every corner of it. I lost count of how many there are, as we, probably, crossed over billions some time ago. There is nothing in here that hasn''t been explored or killed. No fish, no plants, no nothing. There were, all in all, only a few million random cells that all died the first time I went for a mass crusade. I''m stuck, I can''t find the last missing piece of this evolution puzzle. I tried sending the Bobs to dry land but they just died. No random leg growing mutations, just plain old death. In fact, it''s amazing that no such thing has occurred by now if you think about it. At this point, we are so many that there would inevitably be some deadly mutation that kills some of my Bobs or make them evolve different things, but there is nothing. They are copies of each other, biologically impossible, perfect unchanging copies. At this point, I don''t even see the point of dividing them anymore. We are already covering the whole surface, and any more of them would just die if they need to live in each other''s shadow. Last week was spent digging deeper and collecting materials. I don''t even know what I''m saving up to build, but I have to at least do something. -Few days later.- ¡°Kevin, I''m not insane! I can make this work. We just need to destroy enough land to make a path towards future progress!¡± ¡°Who cares about the dropping water levels, if we are gone by the time it starts to matter?¡± ¡°Yes, I thought this through. We first need to sacrifice a third of Bobs, and then we c..¡± What the fuck? I just lost contact with billions of Bobs at the same time. It keeps on happening and judging by the direction, whatever it is, it''s getting closer to me. Fuck, it''s moving too fast to escape! Goddamit, I''m not ready for this. ¡°Susan, Bob ball ASAP!¡± This was the best defence strategy I came up with after thinking of how I should defend against larger threats. Whatever the thing coming this way was, it struck us and I lost 3 layers of Bobs on the contact, and I keep losing more as time goes on. Alright, bitch, you want to take me down? Let''s see who dies first! ¡°Call in all personnel! We will hit it together!¡± I could feel a reverberating headache as Susan took control and made every Bob gather to my location. Kevin was giving helpful suggestions in the background. Unfortunately, they were all but useless, as I couldn''t find any baseball bats, or aim them at the general location of the opponent¡¯s crotch.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Another layer fell, and I started to feel a dread set in. Can I swap my consciousness to another Bob, or will I die the moment my last layer of defence falls? The previous experimentation led me to believe I''m shackled to my main cell. I hope the transfer process is automatic in case of imminent destruction. Finally, it seems the Bobs were gaining ground, as I could feel a new layer enforce my Bob ball. There were only a few hundred billions of us remaining, but it was enough for finishing this foe. Together with Bob power, part by part, the enemy melted and turned into precious biomass that got instantly absorbed by my still active inventory, and after what seemed like a century, we won. ======= /System announcement: -Conglaturazion!!! -You just cleared the currently available content in our Alpha version of release! -The (?!,();!? corporation would like to thank the Alpha tester on his hard work. -As part of our never-ending support of our playtesters efforts, we gift every player on content completion with system skill ¡®Suicide¡¯ to provide the needed morale boost! -We also include a free single use gacha machine spin to the top 100 fastest playtesters! -Warning, content after this point is still in a pre-Alpha state and is subject to game breaking bugs. /Do you want to keep playing?(Warning, on selecting ¡®no¡¯ your player avatar will be deleted!) *Yes *No ======= Okay, first of all, that''s not how you spell congratulations! And what''s up with the suicide skill? Can''t they make it less obvious that they don''t really want people to keep playing after this point? ======= -Warning, a choice required! Upon not selecting anything for 30 seconds, the player avatar will be deleted. ======= Calm yer tits. I''m taking the ''yes¡¯ option just to spite you. ======= -*Yes* selected. /Player input needed: -Would you like to use system automation to proceed with evolution? *Yes (Price - 90% of collected biomass) *No (Estimated time for player''s manual evolution - 13 million years) ======= Yeah, fuck that, I''m not waiting. ======= -*Yes* selected. -Starting automatic use of skill ¡¯suicide¡¯. ======= Wait, wut? That wasn''t what I chose! No, the Bobs are dying! I could feel every single Bob I had dissolve at the same time. It didn''t hurt, but the sense of loss, which came with losing every limb you had, was quite overwhelming. As I tried to think of a way to fix this mess, my own cell body started to melt from inside out. I lost all my hard earned senses and was back in the darkness, with only a blue screen keeping me company. ======= /Player input required for ¡®ev;#€&+)n &;€ect+&n¡¯ *Seg:¡±)+#€ €&rm *A;&#+&pod *V!¡¯&(+#ate *P¡¯!+t ======= Hey, fuck you system. I know what you did here, I''m not stupid. ¡°I''ll take the option that starts with ¡®V¡¯¡± ======= -*V!¡¯&(+#ate selected -Suspending player''s conscience ======= Wait, no! I still want to... ------- The wind howled, as huge amounts of dark clouds covered the sky. Then began the endless rain that threatened to flood the land. One by one, the burning craters surrounding the pond snuffed out, as more and more water collected in them. Soon, the whole place was flooded, and instead of a small pond, there was now a lake. A blast of thunder reverberated and with it, came the lighting. It struck the land ceaselessly, and unlike ordinary lightning, this one tore the earth apart. Soon, a huge web of deep canals sprouted from the lake. They connected it to multiple nearby rivers, and from them, came the new wildlife. As everything started to finally settle, the remaining clouds gathered together in one point. From it, the last lightning bolt, larger than the ones before, struck the middle of the new lake. At the point of impact, a bloody red egg formed. ------- ¡°Guess who''s going fishing now?¡± Chapter 18 Chapter 18 ¡°Congratulations, you just won a lifetime supply of instant coffee!¡± ¡°Now, if only you could sign here on the dotted line to receive the prize.¡± ¡°Oh, ignore the part about selling your soul, it''s not a big deal anyway. These days, is there anyone who hasn''t already sold their soul one way or another?¡± ¡°Do you even believe in that nonsense anyway? It''s just my boss being weird.¡± Hey, in my defence, it was good coffee. ------- I stared hard at the grey screen before me. I liked to think that my stare, full of incredulity and fury, was making the screen shake, but it was obviously the pre-programmed interface that caused that. So now we are going for noir, film grain and old tv static look? It was a mess, but it wasn''t what annoyed me so much. ======= Finally grow a spine - 7499.9 kg biomass (Limited Time Sale - 25% Discount) ======= I had about tree fiddy. Okay, I had even less than that - I had 0,001 kg. Just when you think you have outsmarted this shitty system, it comes up with new ways to torture you. To even start to explain what has been going on, let''s take a small step ¡®back to the future¡¯. I really need to keep these references in check¡­ -Few days prior- Slowly, my thoughts returned. It didn''t feel like waking up. No, it felt more like you¡¯d tuned out at one point and now someone poked your side to see if you are still following the conversation. The last thing I remembered, was darkness enveloping me after I avoided that silly system trap. I would have snorted at that if I had a mouth. Did they really expect me not to notice the obvious ¡®Plant¡¯ choice on that list? As if I will ever go back to not being able to control myself. You can''t trust anyone these days. Well okay, scratch that, Kevin seems like a good pal, and, until now, Susan has been a good sport at working as my community manager. I guess that means I have at least two - People? Persons? Beings that are on friendly term with me? Yes, I''m aware that we are kind of sharing a body, but it''s on the ¡®things I will need to fix in the future¡¯ list. Right now, I need to survive long enough to get to that.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Speaking of surviving - where the heck am I? It''s quite dark here, I can''t even see my fingers¡­ Self-deprecating jokes for the win! The mute guy told the deaf guy that the blind guy saw a legless man walk on water. Enough jokes ¡°Open status.¡± ======= -Name: ??? -name not selected -Race: Mutated multicellular organism -Title: ¡®NULL¡¯ -Age: ¡®STRING OVERLAP¡¯ -Energy: 78/100 /System skills: -Inventory -Evolve -Suicide - (Currently active) /Current evolutions: ======= ¡°Um¡­ disable suicide?¡± It doesn''t work, it''s still active. Is it stuck? Crap, I don''t want to die right now. Wait¡­ I don''t? Yes, I don''t! Then, is it bugged? Maybe it''s broken. Hey, as long as it stays that way, I''m fine. On a side note, where did R&D, Crafting and Mods go? ¡°Open evolve¡± ======= /Skin shop: -luminescence ($1 kg biomass): $Puke green $Neon (I just murdered people) red $Emo black $Shit brown $Dirty laundry white $... -Body patterns ($1 kg biomass): $Slutty butterfly $Chinese hieroglyphs for bread $¡¯No ragrets¡¯ $Badly drawn lion $Incoming lawsuit mouse $¡¯Omelette au fromage¡¯ $... /Available evolution paths: -Finally grow a spine - 7499.9 kg biomass (Limited Time Sale - 25% Discount) ======= Huh¡­ So anyway, it seems my system clock has stopped functioning. Not to mention the emptiness in the Title part. Did I lose everything including my mods? Nah, I don''t think so. I can still feel something going on inside me. Should mean I still have my primitive sensory systems. Still, something is different, I just can''t put my finger on it. ¡°What''s that, Kevin? Bobs?¡± Noooo! Where are my Bobs, I can''t feel any! I need to look for them! I activated my thrusters and went up. It didn''t take long to reach the first obstacle in my search as my multicellular body shuddered from the impact. There was something covering the top side of the water. Is that ice? Must be winter outside. How much does cold affect me anyway? Okay, no time to think, I need to search! Choose a side and go! I feel like I''m missing something important. The feeling keeps growing stronger. ¡°Kowalsk..Kevin analysis!¡± ¡°Stop snickering and just tell me what''s wrong!¡± Oh¡­ Multicellular organism¡­ I''m not dumb! Mother says I''m special! Shaddup, stop laughing! Another impact shook me. Am I really this close to the side? Last I remember, I was in the middle of the pond. Well, now that I know what''s up, I don''t need to rush anymore. My energy is getting low, however, if I take it slow from now, I should be fine. I need to be careful though, if I''m this close to the side, I might accidentally leave the water. I''m not sure if my new state can survive outside it. Let''s just slowly float to the middle for a few hours and figure things out in the meantime. -10 minutes later- Oh no, this is bad! Is the water already this shallow? I already reached the other side, so I tried going down and, lo and behold, I reached the bottom just as fast. ¡°Okay, I don''t have time for any elaborate plans anymore. Operation ¡®Panama¡¯ starts now!¡± ¡°No Susan, I''m tired of being trapped. I''m tired of not being in control! If I must die, I will do so on my terms! I don''t care if the plan is borderline insane, the best plans always are.¡± I activated my inventory digging powers and rammed my body into the pondside. It was time to dig myself out of this prison. If luck is with me, I will find another body of water. If not, well, I already beat the main game, this is just a shitty DLC. Chapter 19 Chapter 19 So, I might have been too overdramatic. ¡°Shut up Kevin, stop laughing at me. You freaked out, just like me.¡± Anyway, after digging for only a few minutes, the feeling of being pressed close to a wall was gone, and I was free to move about, as it seems that the previous place was some kind of cage around me. Immediately, I began to explore the place. It took exactly 10 minutes (I lied, I don¡¯t keep count of time anymore) to get my first enemy encounter. Goddamn random battle encounters, where¡¯s the good stuff with a convoluted plot about peasant uprising due to heavy taxation by local lords that lead to the summoning of ancient evils? Okay, here¡¯s the slightly glorified version of what happened ¨C In full might, I met my foe on the grassy field. With my great cunning, I dodged the first blow. Implementing my vast knowledge of ancient Chinese martial arts, I once saw in some movie, I struck the ¡®Mighty eagle crouch like snake¡¯ pose, and released the gathered energy through my palm techniques. The grand martial art struck clear, but alas the enemy had adopted the ¡®Turtle dives in latrine¡¯ tactics, and I had to chase the dishonourable foe (May heavenly tribulations strike down on his nine generations) for a while. In the end, that bastard had managed to forge a blood contract with the local demon clan, as I was assaulted by multiple hostiles. Distracted, I lost my way and had to reach for enlightenment of my whereabouts inside the grand Buddhist temple. Yeah, I was hiding inside a cave now. Contrary to what some shady individuals might think (looking at you Kevin), I was actually thrilled by the outcome. I¡¯ve finally found something more complex than a simple cell. I don¡¯t really know what happened since I fell asleep, but it seems there are more prey to be had around these parts! Ugh, all this chasing around has made me tired, I should increase my daily calorie intake and exercise more. ¡°WHAT!?¡± I feel tired!? This has never happened before! Does that mean I can finally feel something else than the obscure pressure of my surface and inner workings? Hurray, for evolution! Energy - 18/100 Nay, for the lack of energy. It¡¯s not recovering even if I sit still. Does that mean that my passive energy gain is disabled? I should still have photosynthesis available, but it doesn¡¯t help me while I¡¯m down here. I, probably, lack the necessary material for my body functions. Let¡¯s see what¡¯s left inside my inventory.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡­ It¡¯s just some leftover salt, a picture of a cat and the bugged field. I do have a small amount of biomass remaining, but it seems that the system robbed me of pretty much anything it deemed useful. How do I drop stuff from the inventory? I kind of always used all I had absorbed straight for crafting. Can I drop the remaining biomass inside me? Okay, it seems I got what I wanted. A bit too much, really, as I¡¯m now bloated. At least, the energy is rapidly rising. I have enough biomass to do this 3 more times, by then, I will need to hunt something. Darn it, I still don¡¯t have a proper health bar. I hate this over realistic simulator. Why is it always some convoluted source, with convoluted rules? I rather live in a porn game. That¡¯s more of my style. I made my way out of the crack, I dug myself into, and carefully moved up. I was kind of torn between choosing sunlight, free energy and nowhere to hide, or darkness and safety. Finally, I decided to move closer to the bottom. With so many variables in play, it just seemed like the right thing to do. There must have been some higher power listening, as not even ten seconds later, I ran into my first obstacle. Or should I say obstacles? There was one thing all through my journey that made me constantly question the true limits of my inventory system. It seemed capable of devouring anything not currently alive, but then it got stuck, and couldn¡¯t swallow the same simple cells, I¡¯ve been killing by the millions. Thus, comes a basic question ¨C where do you draw the line between something alive and something dead? I couldn¡¯t collect my own vesicles, but I could take every single component that made them. Do we draw the line between complex organic molecule structures and organic molecules? Would mean that the limit is the complex structure part? Then what about the elusive biomass? It¡¯s BIO-mass for fuck¡¯s sake. Is that not a structure? Is it just organic molecule soup without meaning? I didn¡¯t just start a rant out of boredom, though, I did have that in spades. No, I started it because the current obstacles were quite immune to my digging prowess. Are these things alive? Are those plants? Last I remembered, there was no such thing in my old location. Something fucky has been going on here. I tried to hug the supposed plants with my body, but I couldn¡¯t really tell if I was absorbing any material inside my body, outside of the usual stuff in the water. I still had 100/100 energy and that didn¡¯t help either. Honestly, it would se¡­ ¡°Enemy attack! Brace for impact!¡± I felt my outer membrane engulf another organism. This time, the process was easy, as it didn¡¯t even try to escape. Probably, because it couldn¡¯t fathom such a complex notion. Yes, it was the same old cell type I¡¯ve been eating this whole time. Nothing new, nothing changed ¨C was what I thought before a screen opened. ======= /Absorbed: -Basic cell -1x /Evolution option added: -Additional basic modules ======= Fuck yeah, I love to be proven wrong! Ignoring the stupid skins, my evolution screen now contained additional options. For the price of 10 cells, I could add one of my own¡­ If that wasn¡¯t blatant overpricing, then I don¡¯t know what is. Trying to ignore my rising anger, I switched to more productive things ¨C absorbing half of the degraded cell inside my inventory. It was a pitiful amount, all in all, but the hunt was on. If I could gain something from a simple cell, think of what I could gain by devouring the guy that escaped. Hey, a few more and I can grow my spine! Biomass - 0,1 micrograms This might take a while¡­ Chapter 20 Chapter 20 Red lights flashed as my ship took a direct hit. The hull was breached, and in came the alien swarm. I gave my controls over the defenders to my second officer Susan, and she guided them towards the best-flanking positions. Every enemy soldier engulfed three of mine before finally perishing, and while the battle seemed lost, we had cheats. My first officer Kevin was handling the offence and our own troops filled the enemy vessel. We had a hard time gaining any foothold, and at this point, defeat was just a matter of who ran out of resources first. While it seemed that the fight on the enemy soil was going horrible for us, unfortunately for my enemy, we had cheats. I released a new wave of resources inside my ship. Biomass and other molecules flooded everywhere, and soon they were collected by the ship¡¯s worker bots for processing. More and more clone troops flooded out of my hangars and flew towards the enemy¡¯s ship. Finally, the fight was over as the enemy¡¯s space cruiser lay in ruins. We closed in for pillaging, and on contact, my ship engulfed the remains. ======== /Absorbed: -Multicellular organism -1x /Evolution options added: -Extracellular offence system -Advanced inner cellular defence -Movement flagella ======= As per usual, I collected half of the parts and left the remaining for fixing the ship¡¯s hull. This was our first victory against the cowardly pirates, and the loot we gained spoke for itself. Increasing movement, defence and offence, exactly in that order, should make this whole journey simpler.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. I chose movement first as, truth be told, I was getting sick of my prey escaping right before my proverbial eyes. This was the 6th multicellular enemy we had encountered after escaping the dreaded plant zone. All the others escaped on the first contact, and, unfortunately, they were faster than me. In my rage, I came up with an amazing idea on how to utilise my inventory better. The next time I met one of them, I released all the SiO2 I had collected and buried us both. While it was a death sentence for any ordinary organism, I could always dig myself out, leaving my opponent imprisoned. The next step was finding the guy, but I had plenty of time for that. All in all, my plan was a great success! Now it¡¯s just a matter of repetition until I have enough for all the upgrades. ======= /Available evolution paths: -Finally grow a spine - 7499.9 kg biomass (Limited Time Sale - 25% Discount) -Additional basic modules ¨C 0,3 micrograms -Extracellular offence system ¨C 1,2 micrograms -Advanced inner cellular defence - 1,4 micrograms -Movement flagella - 1,3 micrograms ======= I had 2,2 micrograms already, so I bought the ¡®Movement flagella¡¯ or, at least, I tried to, before a system screen interrupted my fun. ======= -Cannot purchase ¡®Movement flagella¡¯ no available modules. ======== Happy thoughts captain, happy thoughts¡­ I bought another module and felt that on one side, my own body split open and out came another part of me. Great, I¡¯m getting fat. Anyway, I bought the ¡®Movement flagella¡¯ and selected my new body part as the build place. I dub thee ¨C Bottom side. Kevin, from now on, you are responsible for keeping my bottom in perfect condition. Once I was over my childish snickering fit, I steered us into the deep blue in search of more prey. Learning to turn the ship using my new appendage was a pain in the ass, but after a few minutes of eating dirt, literally, I managed to aim for what I thought was the sky. I have no way of judging our current movement speed, but I¡¯d like to think that we went from horse carriage to a sports car. It took only a few minutes until we bumped into a new enemy and I immediately used our new found speed to run away. Why? Well, for starters, we lost almost all energy in the first few seconds and half of my side is now missing. I have no idea what that was, but I¡¯m not going to fight with that monstrosity. Thankfully, whatever that was, it didn¡¯t think we were worth chasing. All that¡¯s left for me, is to slowly recover. I bought 2 more modules and dumped the leftover biomass inside me. This is going to take a while, I wish there was a fast repair button or something. The ‘almost a chapter’ 20,5 The ¡®almost a chapter¡¯ ¨C 1 There might come a time when you lose all hope in life. There might also come a time when you lose your hope in specific things. I guess there are people out there who love things like gacha systems. I was not quite a fan. Always held a belief that it was cheaper and smarter to buy the thing you want online and skip the whole waste of money you do by spinning a wheel. Not to mention that the wheel is modified to make you lose more than it would otherwise be possible. Yes, I¡¯m the guy who plays free-to-play games without spending a single cent. Screw being a money whale for a shady gaming company. The irony of me still playing those games, is not lost on me. That leads me to my current situation ¨C I¡¯m going to spin a wheel! I¡¯m giddy with anticipation as I pull the imaginary lever and watch the slots align. ======= /System UI upgrade ¨C x1 ======= Finally, something I could really use! I was getting sick and tired of this old shitty UI, where, most of the time, I had to guess what the heck anything does. Not to mention that menu navigation is a piece of shit, and it takes too long to do anything productive. I happily activated it, and soon my proverbial smile turned into a frown.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Fuck this, I¡¯m never using gacha again. Nothing had changed. At least, nothing useful. It was the same old UI, but now, instead of blue, it was grey and it flickered like an old TV. Now, where is the undo button? Darn it¡­ ------- The ¡®I had this stupid idea once¡¯ fake chapter ¨C 1 ======= /Player input required for ¡®ev;#€&+)n &;€ect+&n¡¯ *Seg:¡±)+#€ €&rm *A;&#+&pod *V!¡¯&(+#ate *P¡¯!+t ======= Hey, fuck you system. I know what you did here, I''m not stupid. ¡°I''ll take the option that starts with ¡®V¡¯¡± ======= -V¡­Plant ¨C selected ======= Wait, no! That was not what I had in¡­ Then, the darkness took me. -------- My future life was spent unmoving and in total darkness. After few weeks Susan grew tired of my constant singing and left me. Kevin joined her soon after and I was left alone. The rest of my days were spent calculating the root of Pi and singing a horribly mutated version of ¡°Who let the dogs out¡±, where I replaced the ¡®dogs¡¯ part with Kevin and Susan. I managed to last a few more weeks until my energy bar started drastically dropping. I do notice these little changes as without sleep there is nothing else to do than to cycle my menus around and pray for anything to change. I knew my time had come. Something bigger than me was chomping on my leaves and there was nothing I could do to stop it. As a last desperate attempt of getting back some control in my life. I activated the suicide button. If there is an afterlife, I will spend all my free time torturing the sickos who came up with this shitty game. ======= -Game Over ======= Chapter 21 Chapter 21 I put down my earphones and stretched. The flickering screen in front of me showed an image of a strategy game. I tried to focus on the replay, but the screen was getting blurry. Strange, my eyes might be too tired. A marathon of gaming does that to you. I looked up at the clock and was surprised to see that it was almost morning. My stomach rumbled and I remembered that my last meal was 18 hours ago. Ugh, I guess I need to eat sometimes. Darn, I wish I had enough money to order something online. I¡¯m too lazy to cook. Finally, I got up and got dressed. The plan was to visit the nearby petrol station for a hotdog. It was still dark outside and the fresh morning air did wonders to wake my tired mind. For the last 18 hours, I¡¯ve been trying to get into the gold ranking. I played multiple games, watched pro replays, but it was all in nought. I was still silver by the end of it. Even sticking to my main race, couldn¡¯t fix my lack of finger coordination. How am I this bad? I wish I knew how to play ********* better. ------- I spent the next few hours carefully combing the bottom of the pond in search of smaller prey. The wound on my side closed by itself as time passed, and the modules or, in this case, cells that I bought, relocated and replaced the dead ones. This did mean that I had found a way to speed up the healing process, but it also meant I had no free modules for the next evolution upgrade. Overall, my hunt was uneventful. I did find some random cells, which I immediately used for repairs, but I didn¡¯t chase anything larger that I met along the way. I wanted to be in top shape for the confrontation, and I needed to collect sand for my trap. Finally, the last damage was replaced by new protein and lipid tissue, and I was ready for my next target. I kept low while I searched, as anything dangerous should be higher up. At least, that¡¯s what I hoped.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. A while later, came the soft bump I knew to recognise as my prey. Without waiting for it to start to escape, I activated my sand trap and let it cover us both. This time, it buried us close by. Even now, I could feel my outer membrane being eroded by the foreign toxins, however, it was at a manageable pace. As before, Kevin took control of my attacking forces, and while he was not as good as Susan at multitasking, he knew how to exploit the weak spots. He searched for a structural weakness on the opponent¡¯s membrane and focused most of the vesicles in that direction. Soon my own walls were breached, and it was time for Susan to shine. At that point, the fight was a repeat of the last time. It was all about the Benjamins, baby. I had plenty of biomass to spare inside my secret stash, while the enemy captain only kept what little he had collected on his small bedside cupboard. As per usual, my multicellular cell engulfed the remains and I absorbed half of them via my inventory. It was honestly a lot, and when my energy filled out there was still plenty of biomass left inside me. That¡¯s when part of me died, literally. A small part of my body just rotted away and was quickly being replaced by new parts. The process kept repeating with other parts of my body until the rest of the biomass and molecules were spent. It took me a moment to understand what was going on - the bugged ¡®suicide¡¯ was still working. At least, that was my best guess. That begs the question ¨C why now? What was so different from the usual? Was the system just randomly trolling me? Surprisingly enough, the new parts seemed nimbler or more efficient? It took less energy to move the spirals on the replaced sides, and the whole metabolism was quite sped up. So many questions, so little answers. Alright, back to digging sand as I need enough for another hunt. I could always try to chase them down with my new speed, but something tells me that rushing randomly in the open, will end in embarrassing death for me. -And after a millennium, the planar wars ended with a defeat on both sides- An hour later and I had enough biomass to upgrade my defensive capabilities. It still required a free module to do so (those fucking money eating bastards), but now, we no longer took so many losses on our side. All those brave soldiers can feel safer with our new and improved chainmail vests. Really, it¡¯s just what you need in space battles. Long story short, I was ready to rumble. With my increased defensive capabilities, I finally left the plant field. The sand strategy might be the tried and tested plan, but it was also horribly boring. 99% of the time was spent digging for sand, and that meant too much time on my hands, for me to get into thinking up new words for ¡®Barbie girl¡¯ song. Yes, I know, boredom can lead to some scary stuff. ======= /Current evolutions: -Unused additional basic modules x0 -Movement flagella -Advanced inner cellular defence ======= Chapter 22 Chapter 22 I wonder how much time has passed. The system clock doesn¡¯t work anymore, and my sense of time is crap. Right now, as usual, I¡¯m chasing down another prey. I stopped using sand trap tactics, as I deemed them boring, and tried to develop my own sense of direction by keeping up with my enemies. So far, I had zero success in that regard, but I did get plenty of kills. My body shuddered as I again bumped into my target. Kevin spared no time in sending more toxic vesicles at the enemy, and I could already feel victory close at hand as the target stopped moving. All that¡¯s left, is to finish it off for good. This was the new strategy we came up with ¨C we target the outer layer until the vesicles find any outward growing structure, and then they dissolve it. Apply snare, deploy a nuke, profit! We¡¯ve been doing great so far, but there is still more biomass to collect until I get my ¡®Extracellular offence system¡¯. I don¡¯t even want to talk about the other options I have for spending biomass. It just makes me angry every time I look at them. I close in and my membrane envelopes the creature. ======= /Absorbed: -Multicellular organism -1x /Evolution options added: -Upgraded energy storage ======= Oh cool, I love new stuff. Is this like a health bar upgrade? Right now, energy has been fulfilling an almost identical role. However, there are some key differences that make it worse. Should I still focus on the attack before this one? Ugh, hard decisions are not my forte. It even costs the same as the offence system. Meh, I¡¯ll decide when I get enough to afford it. Time to hunt some more. I turned my body in what I thought was the middle of the pond and swam on. Not for the first time, I imagined myself in a real space ship with plenty of REAL CREW I could command. I love the stars, just thinking about seeing the infinite universe, in all its glory, right outside my spaceship¡¯s window, makes me shiver from excitement. None of that light polluted sky you get in big cities, but the pure and untainted starlight, stretching as far as the eye can see.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. *Bump* Another encounter, another packet of biomass to my collection. Before the target could escape, I rammed it once more, and this time, released a swarm of my little attackers onto it. I kept ramming its side, trying to stick close enough to catch any attempt to escape, but it made none. Frankly, this should have been the first red flag, but I was still half lost in my star fantasy. Soon, Kevin informed me that he couldn¡¯t quite surround the target fully as the vesicles were being destroyed before that. Seems like our strategy still has its flaws, I will need to figure something out in the future. A second red flag flew past me, and I still didn¡¯t notice the glaring problem. I bumped it once more, and, this time, I didn¡¯t get enough time for another red flag, as IT bumped us back. The result was something close to when I used my inventory in full power. Back when I was still an unevolved single cell. Thankfully, while the damage I could feel was extensive, I have grown a lot since then. Finally, I was pulled out of my daydream, and immediately tried to flee, hopefully, downwards. I didn¡¯t get far as I bumped into a soft substance, so I tried to change our directions. Nope, no exit. I can only presume that the fucker ate me. What now? I was starting to lose feeling in multiple parts of my cellular body, and despite my immediate biomass supply, I couldn¡¯t fix all the damage in time. In my struggle, I managed to find an unobstructed direction. Fingers crossed it leads out of the mouth, and not the other way around. Nope, wrong door, this is clearly the wrong way. I tried to turn back, but as soon as I stopped to turn, the walls started closing in and were crushing me. They kept pulling me deeper inside and blocked any way of retreat. A wise man once said ¨C¡°To move forward, you have to learn to let go of the past,¡±- So let us march onto the future, Kevin! If we die, we can always beat up that old bastard in the afterlife! Yes, it¡¯s not you who ate me, it¡¯s me who chose to be in your stomach! I swam deeper, the walls closing in behind us until we reached a place with a lot more room to manoeuvre about. ¡°Finally, Safety!¡±¨C Yeah, not really. Stomachs tend to contain all kinds of things to dissolve the food better. One of those things is acid. And, oh boy, and it¡¯s not the fun kind of acid. ======= /Absorbed: -Degraded biomaterial -Crystalline mineral structure molecules - x3 /Evolution options added: -Advanced defence system -Advanced offence system -Advanced movement system -Intermediate sensory system -Primitive conversion system /New skin shop options: -luminescence $Piss yellow -Body patters $Blood stripes ======= Ha, take that! I¡¯m like a tapeworm now ¨C devouring food inside your own body. Wait, did that say something about upgrading my sensory system? OMG YES, YES, YES! Wait, I can¡¯t die now! Not when I¡¯m so close to my dream! Alright brain, don¡¯t fail me now. I can think of stupid stuff AFTER I get out of here. That being said, what do I do now? "Guys, I need good ideas right about now!" Chapter 23 Chapter 23 Okay, calm yer tits. We can figure this out. First, we need to deal with the most imminent danger ¨C the acid. It has been gnawing on me since I got here, and my energy reserves are running low. What are my options? Alright, when I got here, I received new upgrades. I think I saw a defence upgrade among them. Let¡¯s see. ======= -Advanced defence system -Advanced offence system -Advanced movement system -Intermediate sensory system -Primitive conversion system -Upgraded energy storage -Extracellular offence system -Additional basic modules ======= Alright, first things first, buy advanced defence. ======= -Cannot purchase ¡®Advanced defence system¡¯ no available modules. ======= Okay, deep breaths, I already knew this would happen. Let¡¯s buy a module first. ======= -Purchased ¡®Additional basic modules¡¯ ¨C x1 ======= Now for the defence. ======= -Cannot purchase ¡®Advanced defence system¡¯ insufficient amount of free modules. ======= You evil motherfuckers¡­ Okay, after checking, whatever I absorbed before, came with large amounts of biomass. I can afford plenty of new modules. Let¡¯s just go with 20 for now and try again. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ======= -Purchased ¡®Additional basic modules¡¯ ¨C x20 -Cannot purchase ¡®Advanced defence system¡¯ not enough resources. ======= I give up. We are just going to lie here until we die. This is the end, guys. I''m glad we met. If I must die, I want it to be something more than slipping away in unfeeling darkness. ======= -Purchased ¡®Intermediate sensory system¡¯ ======= ¡°Arrrghhh¡± Well, that was a fucking horrible idea. It hurts, it burns. Pain in every part of my body. Why didn¡¯t I stick with the unfeeling option? Can we speed this up? I can¡¯t take any more of this torment. Where was that suicide button? Oh, right, it¡¯s still stuck. It¡¯s like I¡¯m inside a volcano. I wish I had some water to¡­ Oh¡­ If there is one thing I have enough it¡¯s water. Every time my inventory works, it keeps on sucking inside more and more of it. Release the floodgates! Down with the Nazgul riders! I started to empty my collected water reserves outside of my body. The effect was immediate as instead of constant burning sensation, I was left with mild stinging pain. I slowly increased the output until the surrounding raising water pressure made me stop, and then changed it to a slow trickle just around me. First things first, I tried to search for an exit, but it seems the module I used for the movement was lost, dissolved by acid. I could only float and wait for my body to regenerate my missing parts. At least, the bastards didn¡¯t ask me to buy them anew. As long as I had enough biomass, my body tried to recover to the optimal state. I should not give those bastards any more evil ideas. Hope they can''t read thoughts. ======= /New options added for evolution choices: -Advanced defence system - updated -Advanced offence system - updated -Advanced movement system ¨C updated -Upgraded energy storage - updated /Evolution options added: -Photoreceptors ======= Woah, I swam into more free stuff! Yay for the team Kevin! Oh no, I can¡¯t believe I said that! I hope I didn¡¯t encourage him. He kept using ¡®team Kevin¡¯ all this time, and I guess it stuck. So much biomass tho! I need my movement back so I can collect it all. I just need to wait a bit more and all of thi¡­ WOAH. What in the bloody hell is happening! Who turned on the carousel? We are floating somewhere and it¡¯s going fast. My newfound sense of direction and the continuous bumps on my sides are a pretty clear indicator of that. Did I just cause a fish to experience explosive diarrhoea? I don¡¯t want to become a poo stain! I will never be able to tell this to anyone. Remember that guy from our class? I heard he came out of fish''s ass. Eww, nobody would want to date a guy like that!. I¡¯m taking this secret to the grave. Whoever speaks of this, and I¡¯m talking to you Kevin, will get castrated by a chainsaw. The tunnel is getting narrow, and at this point, I''m sure this is the opposite way of the entrance. Figures, I got teased of all that loot, and in the end, I''m crippled and forced to watch as it floats by. "Uff" I just got launched into a wall. Where am I? ======= /Absorbed: -Single cell organism ======= Heh, nice landing. I even got a pillow underneath me. Has the danger passed? I don''t feel any acid around me. I feel..''normal''? Sure my sides still hurt, and my leg will never be the same (there goes my football career), but overall, it''s a great improvement! Time to recover and upgrade my weapon arsenal! If I don''t get nukes by the end of the day, then Kevin has to do 20 push-ups. "No, I''m not being unfair here. The ''team Kevin'' needs a strong leader." "Yes, I might be slightly resentful because of that team name, but I admit nothing. Your lawyer can talk to my lawyer." Chapter 24 Chapter 24 God dammit it itches so much! The repair job was taking its sweet time, and in the meantime, I was left with a feeling of a thousand ants crawling on my body. It seems that general movement is not recognized as a primary system, and thus, I''m still stuck here. Alright, nothing more to it, let''s get upgrading! ======= -Advanced defence system - 10 grams biomass, 5 crystalline molecules, ??? -Advanced offence system - 25 grams biomass, 8 crystalline molecules, ??? -Advanced movement system - 20 grams biomass, 10 crystalline molecules, ??? -Primitive conversion system - 0,01 micrograms biomass, 1 crystalline molecule -Upgraded energy storage - 2 micrograms biomass, 1 crystalline molecule -Extracellular offence system - 1,2 micrograms biomass -Additional basic modules - 0,3 micrograms biomass -Photoreceptors - 3 micrograms biomass, 1 crystalline molecule ======= So many choices, and only one that I truly want. Just in case, let''s buy 20 more cell modules to avoid that stupid message. ======= -Purchased ¡®Additional basic modules¡¯ - x20 -Cannot purchase ''Photoreceptors'' insufficient amount of free modules. ======= REEAALLY? Even after 20 more? Can''t you just show me how much of them I need beforehand? Alright, here goes 20 more modules. Now, I should have 40 or more, free. Would be cool if I knew the exact number, but we can''t just get all the nice things in life. Blah, blah, blah, something, something a life lesson. I mean, I can currently feel so much more, but that doesn''t mean I know specifically how many of them are free. ======= -Purchased ¡®Additional basic modules¡¯ - x20 -Purchased ¡®Photoreceptors¡¯ ======= And Kevin said - ¡°Let there be light¡± - and there was fuck all. Point being, there''s no trusting Kevin with playing God. Seriously though, I can''t see shit. This was supposed to fix my inability to notice that there is a freaking shark right in front of me before I decide to bump it on the nose. Let''s be honest, that has to be a shark, else it makes the whole thing even less cool. If you have to be a shit, you should aim for being a¡­ I honestly don''t know where I was going with that joke. I can''t be a professional comedian in every situation, sometimes, even I suck. I can''t be all that bad, there are still two persons hanging around me. Maybe they''re stuck? Well, sucks to be them. And if you have to ask, yes I''m being an escapist by distracting myself of the fact that I just had my hopes crushed. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ======= -Purchased ¡®Primitive conversion system¡¯ ======= Oh look, I found something I had a use for ages ago. Looks like this thing automatically converts materials into biomass. That seems useful, right? Wrong! The conversion is a small pittance compared to what I currently have. I shouldn''t have expected anything more from a ¡°primitive¡± conversion system, but I''m getting really desperate here. Well, where is the more advanced one then? Okay, let''s look at this from a bright side - if I finally get to sleep for decades it might come in handy. Who needs work anyway, when you can just take a nap for a few hundred years and come back to a full bank. "Neeext!¡± ======= -Purchased ¡®Extracellular offence system¡¯ ======= I guess it makes my offence better or something. I dunno, I find it hard to be excited about anything anymore. It''s like my midlife crisis all over again. How did I survive the last one? Oh right, mom told me I''m only 22 and I couldn''t be having a midlife crisis and it was more of teenage angst, so I magically became better¡­ No, not really. I went hard into living a solitary life that consisted of mundane work and gaming. I stopped trying to contact my friends and after a while, they stopped trying to contact me. Before I realised my mistakes, everyone had already moved on, and I was alone in my apartment. Everything else was a downward spiral from that point onwards. ¡°Sorry Susan, I didn''t mean to sound so depressive. I''ll try to go back to silly jokes and lame comments about the situation at hand.¡± Hey, good news - I got my basic movement back. My tail, aka flagella, is still being repaired, but at least I''m not a sitting target anymore. Let''s just slowly search for anything interesting. Worst case scenario, I call always resort to humping plants with my improved ¡®touch¡¯. It''s what animals do, right? Or was that only my neighbour¡¯s dog that did so? And after raising my body from the ditch I was in, I see a light. Graced with new hope, I rush to surface. Up there, is my last hope. No more of this horrid game. I either finally get what I want, or we are dive bombing the next shark that comes by and ending this nightmare. It''s beautiful¡­ That tree or stone or flower or hill is so pretty. It could be any of those, but that grey indistinct shape is amazing. I can finally see. Granted, I currently only see vague grey shapes in a field of black and white, but it''s more than I could have hoped for. Turns out that if you have your head stuck under the sand, all you see is darkness. Who would''ve known? I''m currently at surface level, looking outside. Everything I see requires a degree in modern art to even start to guess at what is what, but it''s enough for the current me. I''m thankful for the lack of tear ducts, as manly tears would be shed otherwise. I look down and the abyss looks back. It''s pitch black, and only the surface area has some semblance of shapes, that I can see, moving through it. They too remain indistinct, but at least I can judge their size. I''m not returning down there, I think my fear of darkness is resurfacing. Sometimes, not knowing is the best you can ask for, but I would never go back to the state before. It''s time to turn a new page on my journey. It''s time to take matters into my own hands! No more random encounters! We are upgrading this old JRPG to a western ''Choose your own adventure'' style. I look at the surface level and spot a shape my own size. I see it moving away. It hasn''t noticed me. Scratch that, I don''t even think it can. I swim closer, ready to turn tail at the sign of any danger. No murderous crocodiles so far, and just like that, I''m near it. Even before the first bump, my improved combat drones, aka vesicles, swarm the enemy. At first, there is no reaction, but soon it dashes away and I follow it closely. It seems so obvious, now that I have sight, that the running away mechanism for all these creatures, is not based on any conscious thought, as it starts to move in circles with no obvious tactics behind the manoeuvre, sometimes even closing in on me. A few bumps later and the grey thing stops moving. I go in for the kill. *Bump* - The target slides away from the impact. Okay, what is it now? Why does every time I finally have fun, something inevitably fucks up? As I try to move in to swallow the thing, it keeps bouncing off my shell without being pulled in. Why, why, why??? Just die already, for fuck''s sake! Let me eat you! I keep on assaulting the bloody thing, but it just doesn''t go in. Am I too small for the job? Will I keep going with even more sexual innuendos? All these fine questions and no answers in sight. Why now tho? It almost always worked before? The only things I couldn''t absorb were still alive and too big. This thing, already lost one-third its mass from my toxic attacks. It''s a hundred and ten per cent dead. By coincidence and sheer madness of my assault, some part of it finally gets pulled inside. I feel my left side absorbing the floating parts, and just like that, I got my answer - you can''t eat with your eyes. It might sound stupid, but if I think about it, I''m 90% eyes and nerve bundle. Most of the new modules went for housing my sensory systems. If I had a mirror, I would look like a giant eyeball connected to neural bundle with a tail behind it. Behold the beholder. ======= -Purchased ¡®Additional basic modules¡¯ - x100 ======= Yes, let''s just skip the unnecessary hassle and spend all my money in one go. I will keep some biomass for emergencies, but that is most of it gone. I try to imagine where the new parts should go, and either It worked or my body knew where to best place them, even without my input. I could feel my sides widening and stretching, trying to better adapt to this dangerous environment. I hover my body near the rest of the dead cell mass, and, finally, can feel the usual sensation of engulfing a new prey. ======= /Absorbed: -Multicellular organism - x1 ======= There was nothing new I could currently do, and everything else I could, require too steep of a price. I didn''t quite pay enough attention at that moment as my thoughts lingered on my impending doom, but those crystalline molecule thingies must''ve come for the food inside the fish that ate me. I never did get any of it when I dug the ground, but as a cell, it was only a few centimetres deep hole. It''s probably one of those rare elements like uranium or unobtainium. I was lost in my thoughts when a shadow crossed my vision. It was twice as large as my last foe, but seeing as I easily took care of that one, I should have no problems upping my game. Meh, let''s go for it! Susan, Kevin let''s show these peasants, who''s the real boss around these parts! Chapter 25 Chapter 25 As I like to say - ¡°Size isn''t everything.¡± The big guy put up almost no fight. It was probably all fat and no muscle. Would I get fat by eating this thing? Maybe I should diet and eat only the fast ones? Nope, *Chomp* into my stomach you go. ======= /Absorbed: -Multicellular organism - x1 ======= Hmm, I think I need to search for even bigger prey. With these small fries, it will take ages to collect enough for the upgrades. Though, the question remains - ¡°How large of a target, should I go for?¡± It only takes a single mistake for everything to end. I look around myself and judge the grey shadows moving through the water nearby. It¡¯s really hard to tell the size from afar. I think my single eye is not giving me any depth perception. Need more of them or at least upgrade the already existing one. Well, that¡¯s all in the future, for now, let¡¯s just keep harvesting life. I rush towards one of the countless shadows, absorbing an unlucky stray cell in the process. As always, right before the impact, my little fighter drones are already outside and ready to rumble. The fight goes similar to the last one until my target decides to take a dive. ¡°Oh, no you don¡¯t! You became my food from the moment I laid my eyes on you.¡± I keep up the chase, knowing that the wounded animal, can¡¯t outrun this vessel. My vision dims from the speed of my chase¡­ ¡°No, that¡¯s not right!¡± I stop, my prey forgot as I take in my surroundings. Darkness covers most of my vision. Only upwards, can I see daylight shining. The next few minutes are gone from my memory, and as my mind relaxes, I find myself floating at the surface. My mind wanders, forgotten memories of my childhood flashing by, as I become aware of how silly I must have been right now. It doesn¡¯t take a genius to realise that I somehow regressed to worse than childlike fear of the dark. I hear snickering as Kevin asks me if I would need a helping hand to visit the bathroom. This time, however, I have nothing witty to say back. Realising my abnormal state, he stops laughing and a worried tone is now heard in his voice. It¡¯s joined by a female one, but for now, I ignore the questions and reassurances and just float while looking at the bright sky. What is wrong with me? ------- I keep floating for what feels like hours. Occasionally, I absorb a random cell and fight back anything larger that decides to snack on me. Still, my thoughts are hollow and my mind sluggish. It takes spotting a larger predator to finally shake me out of this stupor, and after escaping its grasp, I finally dare to do the thing I¡¯ve been avoiding - I look down. Through the greyness of my vision, I see rays of light - shimmering with intensity as they flow downwards. Yet for all their glory, they are soon consumed by the dark expanse. I can¡¯t see the bottom. I don¡¯t know why that fact scares me so much. I¡¯ve been blindly swimming here for months. Going up and down, as the night turned into the day and the energy production picked up. Never noticing, never caring. Yet, here we are, suddenly all too aware of the possible dangers that might lurk down there. No. No, that¡¯s not right. It¡¯s not the fear of the unknown that made me run for the light. It¡¯s the fear of going back to my old shell. The fear of returning to that crippled state. Unable to feel, unable to see. All alone in the darkness with only my mind keeping me company. I turn back - towards the light. I¡¯d like to think I¡¯m a stronger person than this. But as with every problem in my life, I push this one away. Safely cataloguing it as something to deal with in the future.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Humming a light melody, I turn towards the next grey shadow. Violence never solved anything, but then again, have you ever used enough of it? -Three days later- I near the target and my vesicles circle around it. It¡¯s still blissfully unaware of the destruction that awaits it and keeps swimming while I match its pace. Without further warning, my swarm goes to work. In just seconds, dismantling it into smaller pieces that I absorb. This is the reward of my unrelenting hunting expedition for the past few days. While I didn¡¯t get any cool, new upgrades, I managed to amass large quantities of biomass. Which, while storing some for rainy days, went to fattening up my body. I raised the total cell module count to way over 2000, and, as an upside, it got incredibly easy to hunt smaller organisms. Every module acted as an unspecified standard cell that included factories for attacker production. While the attackers themselves didn¡¯t grow stronger, the sheer amount of them made short work of anything that was under my size. Speaking of size. As I grew, so did my targets. I worked out a system, where my enemies were always no more than twice my size. Though more frequently than not, I tend to not go that far. If they are too large, they get a chance to escape, and if they head down while doing so¡­ Well, suffice to say that I made sure to go for the ones that couldn¡¯t survive my initial attack. There was something ¡®zen¡¯ about all this hunting. Now that I could see, it was much more fun. Then again, I always did like to do things, rather than wait for them to happen. Sometimes, I still can¡¯t believe how well I handled the ¡°dark¡± period of this life. Most people would have gone insane. At least, I only invented 320 new ways of singing ¡°Macarena¡±. It¡¯s fortunate that the human mind can¡¯t store all that ¡®useful¡¯ information and right now I only remember 65 of them. At this point, I should count as a historical song archive. So if any desperate art/history/music students want to save this little old me. My coordinates are - ¡®Fuck-knows-where-a-town, at the bottom of piss-puddle-street¡¯. Alright, that reminds me, I wanted to upgrade some stuff. Probably because of the larger prey, I got better loot. The biomass increase was self-explanatory, but last leviathan class organism I killed, dropped another crystalline molecule. I was on my way upgrading when the previous asshat bumped into me. Well, he learned the price of that the hard way. ======= -Purchased ¡®Upgraded energy storage¡¯ /Notice: -Player may choose from the following upgrades: $Increased capacity $Power generation ======= Woah, I get to choose? That¡¯s so unlike you, system. Where¡¯s the catch? ======= /Notice: -Warning, choice required. If nothing selected in 30 seconds. The upgrade materials will be lost. ======= Ah, there it is - the system I know and hate. I knew you had it in you. While increased capacity sounds good, there is no way I¡¯m skipping my chance of being able to use force lightning. There was never a question of whether I was a Jedi or a Sith. One has to stick by strict rules and the other can shoot lightning out of their fingers. No comparison, Sith wins hands down. I¡¯m obviously only guessing the use. For all I know, it could turn me into a car engine. ======= -Selected ¡®Electricity generation¡¯ ======= Somewhere, in the middle of my body, something shifts. There a feeling of emptiness, and a spike of pain when the nerve cords connect to the new organ. I can feel something building up inside me. A pressure rising at a steady pace. ¡°Okay, how do we do this?¡± I try to channel the built-up energy towards my sides, but nothing happens. I search for one of the nearby grey targets and ram it. Nothing happens. As I consume the leftover parts while thinking of how to channel this power, whatever it is passes the critical point. *Zap* - ¡°Ouch! Fuck, motherfu...¡± My whole body convulses from pain. For a moment, even my vision fades and I start to panic, but soon it¡¯s restored. ¡°What the fuck just happened?¡± I check for damages and find my innards partly liquefied. Okay, I make it sound worse than it is, but it seems the energy pulse fried some of my cells. I quickly send a wave of biomass towards the most damaged spot and wait as the cells start to repair themselves. It¡¯s clear that something went terribly wrong. Whether it was the way I specified the target or something else entirely, I couldn¡¯t tell. Well, whatever it was, it also fried the system that generated it. For now, there is no more building pressure. Still, I will have to find out how to deal with this sooner or later. Crap. What if I¡¯m becoming that terrorist Pok¨¦mon? I don¡¯t want to be a suicide bomber. -7 Seasons of Game of Thrones later- Nothing really changed in my daily schedule, other than the constant stinging pain. Thankfully, I was large enough for it to not disable me completely and could keep up my hunting expeditions. It took some time to fix all the damage, but when it was done, I was less than happy as I still hadn''t figured out what went wrong the first time. The power organ remained offline all through the repair process, so I couldn¡¯t experiment. Currently, the last repairs are being made, and I go through all the hypothesis I came up with on how to manage this power. As soon as the last remains of damage are fixed, the previous feeling of pressure building up inside me comes back. I quickly look for another enemy and have my drones encircle it and make sure it remains stationary by cutting through anything outside its shell. I go close and personal, and as I purposely chose a smaller target, its attempts at injuring me and fighting back are laughable. Steering myself to touch the thing, I will whatever energy that is building inside me towards the target. I picture inside myself a path. A wire that leads towards the outside and connects me with the grey creature¡¯s shell. Here it comes. *Zap* - ¡°Bloody, fucking hell!¡± Suffice to say, it didn¡¯t work. My body was fried again. Chapter 26 Chapter 26 I kept walking, lost in my thoughts as I passed my classmates. I considered greeting them, but they didn¡¯t seem to notice me, too caught up in their own discussion. ¡°Maybe another time then,¡± ¨C I thought, moving past them. There¡¯s currently too much on my mind to deal with the social awkwardness of trying to insert myself into an ongoing conversation. Ugh, that bitch! There was never enough for her. ****** do this, ****** do that. Worst of all, I couldn¡¯t tell her no. She had me eating out of her hand just because she had some dirt on me. Granted, finding out I¡¯ve been secretly visiting cyber caf¨¦ instead of going to school, is a great blackmail material, but at this point, I was just about ready to face the fire and confess my crimes. ¡°Fuck, mom¡¯s going to kill me. Yeah, I¡¯m not brave enough to do that.¡± - I shook my head in denial. I look up to see even more shelves of products. Now, where is that coffee she ordered? ------- The past few weeks were horrible. I was either in constant pain or getting ready for it. No amount of experimentation fixed this ¡®shocking¡¯ situation, and on top of that, I became aware of a new underlying problem - I was getting too fat. Alright, that''s simplifying the issue a bit, but I think it fits the symptoms. My current module count is way above 100000, as even with fixing all the damage, my hunting brought more than enough for expansion. The downside was the loss of mobility as, currently, my singular flagella, couldn''t keep up. The more I grew, the slower I became. I would buy more of them, but as with all upgrades, except ¡®more modules¡¯, it disappeared after the initial purchase. Well, modules and the energy upgrade which now increased its price to include the mystery element and ten times the crystalline molecule cost. My only hope at this point is the advanced version upgrades. Unfortunately, they require the mystery material I''ve yet to find.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Alright, it¡¯s not that I have no immediate solutions. It¡¯s just that it requires me to¡­well¡­ I look at the dark expanse underneath me, for what seems like 100th time today. Fuck my life. There was a major problem with living this close to surface, I needed a larger prey to have a better chance of gaining new materials or upgrade. For better or worse, there are none to be found up here. I''ve outgrown every organism near the surface and while this safe environment is awesome, it also means that my drops are still within the range of biomass and occasional crystal. Why state the obvious thing at this point? It''s because I¡¯m trying to convince myself that the thing I¡¯m about to do is the right path towards the future and not just insane manifestation of my twisted sick fetishes. I look at the carcass that lies next to me, in comparison, enormous body. For the past hour, I¡¯ve been using my workers to drill holes all throughout its body. I imagine it resembles an ant colony at this point. This was my newest creation, which I dubbed v167 or ¡®Vick¡¯ for short. Yes, I might have failed a few times making this thing. The first few models were shredded before I managed to reign in the little warriors. It took way too long to learn to blindly control them with enough grace to not destroy the host, and even now I¡¯m struggling. Thankfully, Susan¡¯s been a great help. As soon as I gave up most of my control and she took the reigns, I¡¯ve been seeing great improvements in every new prototype. This one might be good enough for a test drive. I hear her issue a simple move command and my mind hurts in response, but it¡¯s nothing I can¡¯t handle. The wreck slowly tilts and moves to my left. A huge success! We spend the next few hours completing simple manoeuvres, and just like that the first part of our plan is completed. The next part is a little bit insane though. I steady myself for what¡¯s to come. Then order the attack. Sharp pain blossoms as a huge chunk of my flesh is torn out. I can see it slowly floating away from my body, slightly glowing with the luminescence upgrade. Despite it once being a part of me, my control over it is gone. I order my drones to intercept and pull it back. The pain in my side keeps pulsating, almost overshadowing the damage the energy burst left, however, if this succeeds, it¡¯s a small price to pay. I send some biomass towards the damaged side and start my work on remodelling the cut-off flesh. My aim is to make it into multiple small balls of glowing light. At least, as small, I can make them without their light disappearing. Armed with our trained finesse, Susan starts working towards stuffing the small light globules into the dead husk. I¡¯m so tempted to make a sexually themed joke, but I¡¯ll refrain for now. There is nothing funny about stuffing my balls inside another body. A few minutes later and I¡¯ve finally completed my goal. It''s a re... "Aglowing remote-controlled teddy bear substitute for the boy who is afraid of the dark. " - Kevin interrupts. ¡­ Okay, I hear you snickering Kevin, and I can¡¯t say that I blame you, but if you don¡¯t stop in the next few seconds, I swear - heads WILL roll. There was a perfectly good reason why I was desecrating the dead and cutting myself like some kind of emo kid. Like almost every person, I tend to deal with my problems by treating the symptoms and not the root of the cause. I tried to think of a way to get myself enough courage to visit the deep dark and this is what I came up with. I needed something nearby that I could see. A reminder of my progress, a reminder I¡¯m not back to how I used to be. My own luminosity did nothing when there was no reference point around me, so I needed to create one. Thus, Vick was born. He is going to be my companion in this escapade. I was ready to go down. Chapter 27 Chapter 27 Dark splotches crisscross the glowing body. My eye trails a singular globule of light detaching and floating away, into the dark surroundings. Susan orders the workers to flock and block the opened part with dead material. My so-called teddy bear is falling apart and I still haven¡¯t reached the bottom. A shadow moves near, trying to take another bite out of my guardian, and I move my body to protect it. Before the cretin manages to escape, I tear it to pieces and consume the leftovers. Already 8th bastard that tried this. Thankfully, I got good at playing the guard so the losses were minimal after the first few encounters. Why is it taking so damn long to reach the bottom? I guess time can crawl when you are stressed, but I swear it¡¯s taking forever. My hundredth complaint is finally met with a sight of swaying tubes, illuminated by my own body. Good, plant life means I¡¯m close to the ground. I steer deeper while trying to keep my artificial moon from entangling into nearby seaweed. Soon, I can see the ground or at least a grey circle that expands and casts away the dark as I get closer. I really need to get some better sight. The first order of business is checking if my newfound size can handle some explosive digging. I park my satellite near one of the plants, safe from any harm that might come from me, and start up my drill. -Hour later- I give up, there¡¯s nothing valuable down here. My best gain was a singular crystalline molecule, and I get that much by hunting on my own for a few minutes. I guess this means I need to switch to my original plan of trying to look for larger prey. The only problem is that as with the surface, the bottom too is barren. I know there are bigger fish out there, but it seems they like to play in the middle ground. I hate this so much, but I don¡¯t have any choice. I hug a vine while moving upwards, Vick slowly stumbling behind me. While I still need him for my way back, for now, I could count on the shadowy plant figures to keep me ¡®grounded¡¯. As I reach the top, I can see the grasslands spanning along the pond¡¯s floor. It¡¯s the first time I can really judge the sheer amount of ¡®greenery¡¯ in here. Last time I left, I was a little bit distracted. Come to think of, while I was blind, I only guessed that these were plants. Now that I know it for a fact, it begs the question ¨C just how long was I sleeping while evolving into this form? Weird, but I guess everything is, in my new life. Oh, here comes the first customer! Shame it¡¯s so small, do I really need to swim higher? I look at the grey blob as it moves past me. Yeah, it doesn¡¯t see me, even with the glow. I leave the flower stem behind and zero in on the threat. This little bee is going for some meat. My body moves in front of its path and with light *Bump*, it bounces off. AAAAnnnd it goes apeshit, trying to dislodge my little parasites eating it alive. Unfortunately for the small guy, I spent plenty of time training in Sun Tzu¡¯s Art of War. ¡°To eat the enemy, you must first become the enemy.¡± - Yeah, I never read the book. All my knowledge comes from internet memes. It didn¡¯t really matter, as the target barely got a few steps in before succumbing to the wounds. Slurping up the remains, I was ready to head back, but for a few seconds got a panic attack as I couldn¡¯t see Vick from this angle. Thankfully, as I got closer, I noticed a bright spot in the swaying ¡®greynery¡¯. Sudden urge to hug a shining corpse aside, I need to move him closer to me. Else, the next time I won¡¯t be so lucky. To think that I was one of the people who complained about waypoints ruining my RPG immersion. Right now, I¡¯ll take the most handholding game of all the time over this crap. Heck, you can even play it for me, I¡¯m all for some good old ¡°walking simulator¡±. He, hey! We got a new challenger! Disappointingly, it¡¯s even smaller than the last one. Well, come to papa. Wait, I could have sworn¡­ ABORT, ABORT!Stolen story; please report. I dive to the left as huge shadow pass me in a trice the speed I¡¯m capable of. Right, a single eye with no depth perception, duh. I turn around to see where it went and in my horror witness the end of Vick. THAT FUCKING BASTARD! You shall die a painful death! I charge the motherfucker straight up, while it¡¯s still busy chewing on my favourite toy. In full speed, I impact his side. It does no substantial damage, but my warriors are already chewing through the thick skin on its side. It takes a few seconds, but soon the beast starts thrashing around. My glee of its misery abruptly stops as something impacts me. Flying uncontrollably, I try to orient myself towards the beast, and in horror, realise that I¡¯m out in the open waters. I can still see the swaying kelp, but there is nothing nearby I could cover behind. I snap back towards the still trashing beast and for a second, I can swear we make eye contact. ¡°Crap!¡± I reorient towards the sea floor and dive. Swimming as I¡¯ve never swum before. I''m almost there when in the back of my mind, I feel a shadow hanging over me. ¡°Dude, can¡¯t we just talk this out like grown-ups?¡± *Snap* The teeth close around me, cutting off part of my body. ¡°Goddammit, here we go again.¡± Thankfully, this time I¡¯m armed with vision. I scan my surroundings and dive towards what I presume is the throat, before anything teeth-like can grind me to dust. A shadowy tentacle I dub tongue, lashes at me, but I evade it and keep going. The opening is small, enough for it to feel cramped, but I manage to stuff myself inside. I know I usually seem crazy, but I do have a plan. I just need to be a little deeper for it to work. No more poo-stain, this time, I¡¯m taking the fucker down. It takes a little bit more tunnel diving, but I finally get there. In front, I can see a place where the tunnel opens up into a large cave. An acidic burning sensation slowly grows stronger as I move towards it. I stop right on the border and open my inventory menu. ¡°Sorry, Vick. This is the best burial I can get you.¡± Sand starts flooding out from the space in front of me. A trickle at first, but I enlarge the flow, as soon as I judge it safe. While the consistency is muddy at first, it soon becomes clear that there is enough sand to absorb all the liquid this creature has inside its stomach. ¡°Choke on this, bitch!¡± This should stop it from puking me out, once I start working. It would probably die anyway from all the sand, but I¡¯d rather speed up the process. I block the other end of the tunnel too and turn my attention towards my core. Alright, the energy discharge is still offline so I shouldn¡¯t have problems with that. Time to work guys. We split up our workforce - Susan managing the inner cell stuff, making sure every part has enough biomass to sustain the increased production, while Kevin goes balls to the wall with driving our vesicles to impact and release the toxic waste on the surrounding walls. I¡¯d like to say that in the meantime I¡¯m being a quality control manager, but truth is that I¡¯m nursing an ever-growing headache, and it gets hard to think about stuff. Soon, we are rewarded with sweet, sweet ichor of the Gods, or just blood for simplicity sake. This bastard even has an enclosed blood system, I¡¯ll be sure to put it to good use when I devour it. Oh crap, it stings a lot more now. Right, the creature has its own defence systems for any parasitical intruders. Unfortunate for my host, I got so much spare biomass that I don¡¯t think I will ever run out. Praise the magical McGuffin element! Alright, we are inside! I can feel my vesicles flowing inside one of the walls and disappearing somewhere, as I lose control of them. Now, I just have to slowly flood his system with my toxins, while that bastard chokes on the sand. One way or another, I already won. ======= /System message: -The system will be undergoing maintenance in 1 hour, due to the new patch release. -Please be advised that system functions will be disabled while the maintenance occurs. ======= What¡¯s with the sudden arbitrary time limit? I swear you are doing this on purpose. I had weeks with nothing better to do and you chose this moment. Good news - it won¡¯t take that long to get out. The outside movement has already stopped, the beast crippled and drawing its last breath. It shouldn¡¯t take long before my cells degrade it enough for me to absorb the parts. It takes only 30 minutes until I see the walls around me disappear. I increased the suction range and soon I can see a sight that I can only describe as wire mesh. Its body lacking the absorbed parts, I can see the outside kelp fields. The mesh itself is built from sturdier stuff, as it takes 10 more minutes to suck it in. Wait, that¡¯s not right. It should be counted as alive to not be absorbed, not sturdy. So what¡¯s the last thing that is considered alive when everything else is gone? Was that ganglionic neural network? Did I finally score gold? ======= /Absorbed: -Multicellular organism - x1 /New molecule discovered: -Vespine x2 -Updating prices /New options added for evolution choices: -Advanced defence system ¨C updated x2 -Advanced offence system - updated -Advanced movement system ¨C updated /Evolution options added: -Advanced control system ======= ¡°Goodbye Vick, your heroic sacrifice won''t be invain.¡± Chapter 28 Chapter 28 Hmm, there are some quick decisions to be made. I don¡¯t have a clock, so I don¡¯t precisely know the countdown for the system maintenance, and the headaches didn¡¯t help with keeping time. Time, in general, is a lot of guesswork on my part since the system bugged out that part. That being said, do I stay down here or rush for the surface? Do I upgrade now or wait for the new patch to come in? Maybe it would give me more options to choose from. I did gain a new molecule to experiment with. Scratch that, I got 2 of them. Apparently, they are called ¡®vespene gas¡¯. For a moment there, something surfaced from my memories, but it was gone by the time I could focus on it. Right, I¡¯ll just stay low and wait for the update. Need to find a safe spot until then as my main weapon will be disabled. I check my surroundings ¨C I¡¯m inside a comparatively huge crater. As always my inventor lacks the intelligence to distinguish between what I want inside and what is collateral damage. I¡¯m just happy I get the power to aim its size and direction, else I would have never got past the cell stage. I reach the top of the hill and the ¡®greynery¡¯ is revealed ¨C undisturbed by our fight to the death. Directing myself to the closest cluster of kelp, I dig myself a cosy cave and fill in the entrance behind me, leaving just enough open for me to watch the swaying sargassum. If only my botany teacher would see me now. Using all these highly specific names for what I¡¯d like to call seagrass. I don¡¯t even know the difference between any of them. Am I even on Earth? They are probably called sldgkjsfg in the native language, so I¡¯ll just mix it up, so I don¡¯t have to be ¡°plant this¡±, ¡°plant that¡±. ¡­ ======= /System message: -Maintenance period started. -Estimated downtime ~10 min ======= Well, that¡¯s not that bad. I was scared for a moment that it would be something stupid like 3 billion years, or till the heat death of the universe. Maybe I¡¯m being pessimistic and nobody is actually out there trying to mess with me. They are just trying their best, but coming off as an asshole to everyone else. Yeah¡­no. It took 20 minutes for the system to boot up again. I know, I counted. ======= /System message: -Version for the pre-Alpha server updated to V0.42 -Due to crowd demand, we¡¯re reintroducing ¡®Titles¡¯ from the Alpha server. -Class and level system are now available, ask for ¡®class¡¯ to be given one based on your compatibility.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. -New skin shop items available: $Hairstyles $Boot styles ======= Hey, we finally got le¡­ ======= /System message: -Due to the player¡¯s efforts, he has been granted the following titles: $Necrophile $Puppet master $Thor¡¯s little bitch -Reminder to all players that while the (?!,();!? corporation won¡¯t deny any player¡¯s access to certain fetishes, we still need to point out that some of you are sick, sick bastards. ======= Alright, don¡¯t fucking pretend that wasn¡¯t aimed at me! Your mom¡¯s a Necrophile! Come, I promise I will only follow my fetishes while I desecrate your corpse to my heart¡¯s content. Ugh, one day, I¡¯ll kill whoever came up with this. Now, what did it say about classes? Hope they are more useful than the titles. ¡°Acquire class¡± ======= /Class acquisition in progress: -Scanning player¡¯s data -Searching for compatible Player Class. /Class acquired: -The player is now LVL 1 Bard -Special class skill ¡®Musician¡¯s soul¡¯ acquired ======= A bard? But I don¡¯t even know the music notation, and the last poem I wrote was in 5th-grade literature. Scratch that, I didn¡¯t even write it; stole it from a fantasy book. Can I, at least, know what my skill does? ======= -Musician¡¯s soul ¨C Increases the overall quality of all music pieces created. ======= Fucking useless, is what it is. How is that going to help right now? I¡¯m sure I can use my non-existent vocal cords to impress the local barnacles. Together, we will raise an army the likes no one has seen before! As thanks for this opportunity, let me sing you a song of my people: ¡°Fuck off, if you think I¡¯m a punk, Your face looks like an elephant¡¯s cunt. Fuck off, if you think I¡¯m crass, You can just shut-the-fuck-up and wipe my ass. Fuck off and without any reason, I hope you get butt fucked in prison¡± I stole about 50% of that one, but I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll be glad that I made some changes for you. ======= /Level Up! -Bard LVL 2 reached! -Increased effectiveness of all Bard skills ======= That¡¯s it, I¡¯m done with this Bard crap. From all the useful classes I could have got, I¡¯m stuck with this. Wait... ¡°Change class!¡± Nothing happened, well, it was worth a try. I¡¯ll try to focus on things that really matter ¨C using my newly unlocked resource to increase my chance of survival. I love the feeling of growing stronger, overcoming my obstacles, and, most of all, I love destroying an enemy that was too strong for me just a while ago. It¡¯s the only reason I even tried to climb the game ladders. I¡¯m mostly a story over gameplay guy myself. ======= -Purchased ¡®Advanced defence system¡¯ /Notice: -Player may choose from the following upgrades: $Skin cancer $Bone cancer ======= I want to cry, but the tears aren¡¯t coming. ======= /Notice: -Warning, choice required. If nothing selected in 30 seconds. The upgrade materials will be lost. ======= Fuck. Chapter 29 Chapter 29 Okay, skin cancer it is. Call me crazy, but I think it¡¯s the least harmful of both. Besides that, I¡¯m not sold on the whole cancer part. It just seems unlikely that, after all this time, the upgrades suddenly are bad. Oh, right¡­ the electric shock upgrade. Now I¡¯m even more confused. Should I skip this one? Ugh¡­ the investment was HUGE. I don¡¯t want to miss out. ======= ¡°20¡± ¡°...¡± ¡°15¡± ======= Alright, alright. Let¡¯s get on with it. ¡°Skin cancer, it is.¡± ======= /Select evolution path (selecting one will lock the other): -Actinic keratosis -Basal cell carcinoma /Notice: -Choice required -Time left - 12 ======= I, wut, wat¡­ Google translate, please? I don¡¯t know what either of those mean! How am I supposed to decide based on some vague Latin phrasing? Fuck it, let¡¯s pick the first one. ======= /Selection made: -Locking Basal cell carcinomaThis text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. /Upgrade conditions met: -Advanced defence system ¨C updated x1 ======= Hmm, this is a peculiar feeling. Not pain, per se, but a slight pressure on my skin. Quite similar to having a patch of dry skin, but the patch is the size of your whole body and you¡¯re slowly becoming a dry grape. What did that even accomplish? Do I now have ¡®defence against blunt weapons +5¡¯? I need a mirror for this shit. I probably look like an old woman''s mouth on a lemon diet. How do we test this out tho? Should I ram some stuff and check for damage? I can¡¯t make comparison charts based on approximate feeling. Forget it, I¡¯ll just assume it did something good. You heard it here first! Cancer ¨C It, presumably, did something good! Should I go for another upgrade? I still have one vespine molecule left. Should I save it? It might come in handy if I unlock more reliable stuff later. Nah, saving is for losers. We are speedrunning this shit. Cool kids, get cancer and die young. Let¡¯s just go for it! ¡°Woah, what the¡­¡± The ¡°Advanced defence system¡± upgrade, now costs 10 vespine molecules. What¡¯s with the price spike? Thankfully, the rest of the upgrades didn¡¯t change and hover at 1. I guess it¡¯s a system where every next upgrade in the same sector, gets progressively more expensive. Or someone might be screwing with me. It¡¯s fifty-fifty at this point. Well, that¡¯s a problem for the future me. My instant gratification monkey demands more sacrifices. ¡°Advanced movement system - BUY!¡± ======= -Purchased ¡®Advanced movement system¡¯ /Notice: -Player may choose from the following upgrades: $ $E=====: $=>---- /Notice: -Warning, choice required. If nothing selected in 30 seconds. The upgrade materials will be lost. ======= I figured out. IT feeds on my reactions. I¡¯m sure of it. I won¡¯t give in. You won¡¯t even get a peep out of me. No more hate-filled comments. No outrage in general. I will be as calm as a lake. ¡°Second choice, final answer. Lock it in.¡± I got a sudden urge to pee. Yes, it¡¯s the best way to describe it. Only this body doesn¡¯t have the necessary parts for the job. Ugh, I got to release it somewhere. Crap, it¡¯s getting worse. Can¡¯t I just open a hole in my body and let it out? How do I even do that? Something¡¯s happening! The pressure is rising and it¡¯s starting to itch. Uh, oh - I¡¯m getting bloated here. *Puff* In a burst of gore, the built-up pressure releases. My backside hurts like hell and a strange sensation overcomes my sensors. I try to focus on the new feelings, but my mind slips in and out of dizziness while I flail around like a maniac. Pain blossoms as I faceplant into the nearby wall. Okay, deep breaths... I somehow manage to realign and reach out with my awesome space bending powers to remove the dirt in front of the cave entrance. Bringing my body outside of the cave, I feel some part of me dragging along the cavern walls. Vision - check. Sense of touch ¨C dulled a bit, but still working. I don¡¯t see anything wrong. The things I¡¯d give for a mirror. Scratch that, I don¡¯t want to see my grotesque form. As far as I can tell, I¡¯m now a cancer blob. I remember people saying that looks aren¡¯t everything when searching for a partner. I hope those same people keep to their world views, because, oh boy, I¡¯m all about that personality. I swim toward the nearby seaweed and another impact greets me. ¡°How the...? For a split second my mind wanders towards the possibility of high-speed moving plant, but in reality, I just grew a tail. That was the only explanation I could come up with, and until I finally see my form, it¡¯s the explanation in sticking with. Now I only need to learn to operate it better, before I break my proverbial neck. Chapter 30 Chapter 30 The water grows turbulent. The camera zooms in on a good-looking smaller creature being chased by a huge pile of shit with teeth. The viewers notice it¡¯s the amazing protagonist. Screen freezes. Narration ¨C ¡°Now, you might wonder how I got in this situation. Well, it all st...¡± *Chomp!* ¡°Ugh! Gosh, darn it! I¡¯m trying out a real-life sitcom parody! Do you mind not messing this up for me?¡± Apparently, the bastard did mind and with a flash of searing pain. I now had a new hole on my left flank. *Swoosh!* I dive towards the swinging canopy, tail flailing at full speed. The local greynery blurs in my vision, turning everything into one giant optical illusion. Still, I persist, fear driving me to use my newfound agility in ways I''ve never thoughtabout before. By sheer luck, I barely avoid another lunge from the grey shadow I dubbed ¡®sawface¡¯, while fresh pain blossoms from the hole left by it. What was a curious amusement before, now turns into dread, as the fact that I might actually die, hits me hard. ¡°That¡¯s it, there¡¯s only a little bit left until I¡¯m safe!¡± ¨C An unwelcome bad-luck remark crosses my mind, and a few seconds later I find myself being swung around. Sharp teeth tear through my backside and with a horrible snapping feeling, the rest of my body is thrown upwards. Further from the safety, and this time, without a way to escape. It takes a moment for the world to stop spinning, and when my vision returns ¨C I¡¯m staring right into the jaws of death. There¡¯s no time to think. In a last-ditch effort, I activate the one real cheat I had from the very beginning ¨C Inventory. A sea of sand blurs into existence between sawface and myself, while the water, having nowhere to go, separates us. In a flash of genius, I release some of the collected water in a concentrated point above me. The pressure blast clears out the surrounding foliage but also throws me downwards ¨C closer to my intended target. At this point, I¡¯m not even sure if the thing is still following me, but once I reach the ground, I activate my drilling powers. ¡°I need to hide!¡± Deeper and deeper I go, while the ground fills up behind. Darkness envelops my vision, as my natural glow gets matted in the surrounding dust cloud. But for once, I don¡¯t mind. It will only improve my chances of survival.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. I don¡¯t know how long I¡¯ve been digging until I¡¯m finally interrupted - ¡°It¡¯s okay, you can stop now. It¡¯s gone,¡± ¨C A voice I haven¡¯t heard in a while calms my tense mind I stop, taking a moment to collect myself. She¡¯s right, the threat is gone. And while, currently, a large part of me now is in someone¡¯s stomach, I get to live another day. It¡¯s time to reflect on this disaster. It¡¯s obvious that plan A ¨C ''the rinse & repeat'' is a failure. I really should¡¯ve known that if a plan sounds insane from the get-go, then it probably is. But Blinded as I was by my last hunting success, I was in a rush to get more of the mysterious element X ¨C also commonly known as vespine. That¡¯s when a little devil whispered in my ear; suggesting a fool¡¯s proof plan, which, in a hindsight, had no proofing and was meant for a fool. ¡°Yes, I¡¯m blaming this on you, Kevin!¡± Long story short, the plan only works if you¡¯re small and lucky enough. There was a reason why every movie ¡®slash¡¯ book, where a hero kills a monster this way, never repeats the exercise. Come to think of - They would¡¯ve made a monster movie with dedicated ¡®eat me¡¯ crew, as the main heroes if it was such a viable strategy. Oh, got sidetracked again. Well, my new cancer upgrade together with the tail made me too large to swallow whole. And after I found my next target, instead of complying and becoming my resource node, the bastard bit me. ¡°Here I sit broken boned Came to rule, but was dethroned. See the enemy ¨C unguarded! Thought I¡¯m smart, but was retarded.¡± Oh, no! It¡¯s bad! When have I ever tried to think in prose? Something must be wrong with my mind. ======= /Level up! -Bard LVL 3 reached! -Increased effectiveness of all Bard skills ======= You know what? If you¡¯re still insisting on going on with this bard bullshit ¨C how about giving me something useful? Like a chance to charm enemies with my movement. Or how about my songs having a real-life effect? I¡¯ll sing AC/DC all day if my enemies get struck by it. I look at my dwindling supply of biomass. One inconvenience of gaining more specialised stuff meant that I couldn¡¯t just buy a replacement instantly. I was left with a need to supply a constant stream of biomass to the injured places, while my little worker bees, automatically repair the damage. In this case, complexity meant expenses. My savings should last for now, but I need to work on my emergency reserves. It¡¯s quite fascinating, feeling everything in great detail as my body regenerates. A cell is born from another, as the biomass gets collected inside. I concentrate on the cancerous tissue and even with my mind unlinked from the actual cell, I feel its growth. More and more bumps, bud outward and grow in size until they could be considered a separate entity, and then the process gets repeated. It¡¯s quite unlike the normal meiosis, but then again, it¡¯s what I expect of the so-called cancer tissue. I turn my attention towards the never-ending battlefield. Dead bodies litter the land. Millions of soldiers die every second while the ravenous beasts feast on the remains. From them, the dead are born anew. Ready to continue the fight. A land of death, but also survival. My survival. There, my body¡¯s defenders are fighting against the nasty infection the sawface¡¯s teeth left in my flesh. Similar to the repair work, I¡¯m sending a stream of resources there. However, I soon learn to be more vigilant, as part of the infection quickly discovers the cache and use it to spread. Nevertheless, after some basic resource management, victory draws near. On a side note, I think my sense of time is a little bit broken. The last time I spent heavily injured, I almost lost it. I¡¯m either getting more entertained by stuff that could be described as watching paint dry, or, clearly, something fucked up inside me. And on another side note ¨C ¡°IT FUCKING HURTS!¡± I can only do so much to distract myself from the fact that every place in my body feels like hell. Of course, I¡¯m trying to distract myself! There is nothing fucking wrong with my sense of time. I still get horribly bored and I still want an inbuilt TV in my brain. I would give a lot for some pain pills right now. Seriously, I would name my firstborn after anyone who could provide. Heck, I¡¯ll give you my firstborn for them. Why stop here? I¡¯ll even make another one for something to ease the building pressure in my stomach. ¡°Goddammit, not now!¡± *Zap!* Chapter 31 Chapter 31 I grab a coat and head outside. At the doorway, I hesitate and toss the coat back inside. It should be warm enough. The empty street greets me with its quietness, while the polluted city air feels fresh in my lungs after the stale room air. All-in-all I would say it¡¯s quite pleasant outside, but not pleasant enough for me to consider waking up this early to repeat the experience.Mom always did say that my middle name is ¡®Laziness¡¯. Finally, I see my target ¨C a 24/7 open petrol station. Let¡¯s just hope they are not out of hotdogs. Last time I was here, they hada sale of 2 for 1 price. By the time I got there, I was left empty-handed. A bell rings as I open the door and the overly warm shop air, flows over me.There are already people in line, beats me why would anyone be here this early. Are they gamers too? On their quest to fill their stomachs, they stop at the local Inn for a glass of mead and bowl of stew. I wait for my turn; the shopkeeper tells me that the meat is not yet ready. So, I sit in the corner and browse some journals in the meantime. As I¡¯m getting intimately familiar with the latest agricultural feats of ¡®Farmers Digest¡¯, loud shouts turn my attention back towards the cashier. Some drunk punks are displeased about the quality of their burgers. Goddamn teenagers, when I was their age¡­ Nope, I¡¯m too young for the old guy impression. This keeps up for 10 minutes until they finally leave and I get my order. A few minutes later I¡¯m sitting on the sidewalk a few streets away, finally munching on my less than satisfying hotdog. It took way too long to get what I wanted. Next time, I should just order some food. As expensive as that would be, at least I won¡¯t have a problem with drunkards ruining my morning. My vision refocuses as I leave my reverie and I notice I¡¯m not alone. Under one of the parked cars, I see glowing green eyes, looking at me or rather at what I¡¯m eating. Another stray cat, trying to find food. This one chose the wrong neighbourhood. There are no old grannies around to feed the animal. It¡¯s full of industrial buildings and pipelines. With a sigh, I pluck the top of the hotdog, getting my hands dirty with ketchup and mayo and toss it under the car. My aim is off and with a loud hiss, the cat is gone. I can only hope it doesn¡¯t think that I¡¯m an asshole who tosses rocks at animals. Welp, if it¡¯s that hungry I¡¯m sure it will find the dropped piece later. I finish the last bite and head back home to sleep. I really should fix my daily schedule. These gaming marathons are killing me. ------- The repairs sure are taking their sweet time. While the basic cells are mostly fixed and the cancerous shell, while expensive, grows fast, it¡¯s the tail that¡¯s problematic. It¡¯s taking forever to heal and not due to lack of materials. Either the complexity of the object plays a huge role in fixing the said thing or there is some kind of arbitrary respawn time limit on movement skill. Welp, that¡¯s it! I¡¯ve decided to just roll with it. Bitch gon¡¯ heal while I¡¯m hunting. I carefully dig myself out of the small cave I made while hiding and look around. I can finally let go of the proverbial breath I¡¯ve been holding. It seems I won¡¯t need to dig an escape tunnel ¨C there¡¯s no sight of the sawface. Slowly, I keep moving along the seabed, paying close attention to my surroundings. The lack of tail is quite noticeable. Like going from 2k gaming rig to office PC. Currently, I¡¯m the old guy in a tractor - moving 30km/h on a highway. I¡¯m the sloth family¡¯s husband ¨C on my way to visit the mother-in-law. I¡¯m the¡­ Yeah, I think I got my point across. That being said, at least got something good out of this fight - knowledge. I can finally handle using my inventory offensively. Sure, the resulting pressure wave might be too much for some of my cells, but my new cancer coat does dampen the blast. Not to mention that with my lifestyle, I should work on my masochism fetish. I¡¯ll take pleasure over pain every day of the week. I only need to reach an enlightenment point where such sensual change is possible, and then I¡¯m golden. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Alright, let¡¯s drop the stupid fetish talk. Let¡¯s get hyped! We can finally go dynamite fishing! Honestly, this excites me more than it should. I can already hear Susan murmuring something about men and their stupid love for explosions, but frankly - I don¡¯t care! Besides, I¡¯m way too deep in shit right now to care for any impending lawsuit so let¡¯s just go for it - ART IS AN EXPLOSION! Speak of the devil ¨C I found my new test subject. In front, was what Ican only describe asa cash-cow. Something large enough to provide plenty of biomass, but without the pesky complexity that comes with the dangerous organisms. It¡¯s blind and relies on the touch. With the only defence being its lame poison ¨C also known as the same kind of individual, which I hunted by the hundreds on the surface. It was time to test my pressure bombs. Test 1 I near my target and copy its pace. Now, how much do I use for this? Let¡¯s go with halfa gram of sand. I choose the body part closest to my enemy as the exit point and release. A small wave later, there was a gram of SiO2 cloud floating nearby, and my enemy was happily floating away unhurriedly. Test 1 - Fail. Test 2 I relocate closer to the slowly moving cow, and this time up my charge to 5 grams. This should be enough to at least nudge the bastard. Point my big toe forward - RELEASE! Ugh, okay I felt that. I hope the effect was worse on it though. A quick look tells me that I lost my quarry due to resulting blast sending me spinning around. The target, probably, was sent flying somewhere else. A quick search confirms my suspicions ¨C it¡¯s alive and kicking. At least, I presume so by the lack of obvious body parts lying nearby. Test 2 ¨C fail Test 3 I found my next test subject hiding on one of the nearby plants. Or rather than hiding, it''s stuck. Clearly, the perfect test subject. Hmm, it¡¯s time to raise my payload even more. Though, how much would be okay? I don¡¯t want to waste even more sand than I already have. It takes time to collect more and time spent digging, is time spent fighting off waves of boredom. Would twice the amount do it? Maybe I should up it a little bit mor¡­ Ahh, what the hell?! I try to turn my body to see who is biting me, but for some reason, my visionremains static. The only thing my efforts manage to achieve is the swaying of the nearby plant. Goddammit, any more of this and my thrashing will release the prisoner. The burning feeling in my side grows worse by the second and I¡¯m still stuck. What in damnation is holding m¡­ oh right ¨C carnivorous plants. Deep in my thoughts, I didn¡¯t realise that my body had drifted towards the plant. Now, something was either holding me with vines, or the whole plant was covered in a glue-like substance. I¡¯m telling you now, the feeling of being slowly digested alive is not the most pleasant of experiences. Believe me, at this point I¡¯m a pretty good judge on these things. One day I¡¯ll make a top 10 list of the worst ways to experience being a cellular creature. Though, I¡¯m sure there are already 3 videos with that title on YouTube. Eh, fuck it! Let¡¯s just blow this whole place. 100 grams away! *Boooom* When my vision finally returns, I find myself lying near a crater. The burning sensation in my side is still growing stronger by the minute and it¡¯s joined by what I presume feels someone who stepped on a landmine. I guess I should be happy I don¡¯t have any bones, fractures can be a pain in the ass. Oh yes! I just thought of the perfect analogy! You take a bag and put some small animal inside, then you smash the bag with a baseball bat for about 100 times. The result should look similar to my current predicament. I hate that stupid jokes are all that is left to me, but¡­ I¡¯m just too tired to feel sad again. Let me be a clown for a little while longer. I can always wallow in despair later. Anyway, I¡¯m free from plant and only a small piece of leaf is left clinging on my side. The digestive fluids it emits is just another thing I have to keep an eye on while dividing my dwindling resources. ------- Similar to last time, while it still takes a lot of resources, my thick hide is the first to regenerate fully. Next, are the regular cells that make up my bulk. The tail is still in repairs, but, thankfully, the blast came from the opposite side so it only got a few new scratches. *sigh* Now even the plants want me dead. It must be some kind of divine punishment for the time I managed to kill my cactus by forgetting to water it for a year. My fat slob of a body, slowly rises from the excavation site I¡¯ve dug while rehabilitating. I managed to refill my sand stockpile, but the dent repairs left in biomass only grew worse with time. I shudder, thinking about all the things I¡¯ve been through. Even now, my skin feels unnaturally tight on my body. As if being half-shredded has become my natural state of being. As I make my way back towards the treetops, my body absorbs another stray cell. These guys are becoming less and less relevant. I need to find something bigger to refill. I survey the nearby plantation, my glow only barely highlighting the surrounding plant silhouettes. Thankfully, it¡¯s currently a day and the sun above makes it easier to navigate. Wait, sun? I stop and look up, into the brightness above. There is no sun there ¨C only a huge glowing serpent slowly slithering above me. I freeze, unable to muster up any proper plan of defence. It¡¯s, frankly, awe-inspiring. I¡¯m like an ant watching an elephant. Where did this beast come from? At this point it¡¯s quite clear I¡¯m somewhere different than the small puddle I was before, but still, this is some Jurassic park bullshit. I¡¯m unsure of what to do if the beast decides I¡¯m a nuisance. No amount of sand that wouldn¡¯t kill me, would stop it. I won¡¯t be able to escape it by diggingor running. So, I do the only thing I can - sit still and watch as it slithers away while I pray to whatever deity out there that it doesn¡¯t take a fancy to the insignificant me. Thankfully, it seems it was only interested in the disturbance my experimental bomb made. For the briefest moment, its head turns towards the crater, but then, just like that, it turns away uninterested. As the beast¡¯s main body passes, sweeping waters herald the arrival of its tail and I¡¯m swept away from the crater, and when the water finally calms ¨C the beast is gone. For the sake of my sanity and future, I¡¯ll make a promise right now: ¡°One day I¡¯m going to kill you and I¡¯m already looking forward to the loot you will drop.¡± We all need a goal worth living for. Chapter 32 Chapter 32 ¡°Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Out of the doorway, the bullets rip To the sound of the beat¡± *Boom* ¡°Another one bites the dust.¡± I hum while collecting the broken parts of the enemy, my repaired tail giving me the speed necessary to collect everything before it hits the ground. Seconds later, I¡¯m diving at full speed, and just before I hit the ground, I adjust the angle of my tail and zoom into the ¡®greynery¡¯. I pass the plantlife, manoeuvring between the leaves, trying not to let even a single one of them touch me. I learned my lesson before and while most of them are relatively harmless, there are few that hide their predatory nature until it¡¯s too late for you. However, I¡¯ve made my plans already. All the recent bombings have led me to this moment. For a second, my evil plans are interrupted by a water wave coming from the previous blast zone. It seems it¡¯s as relentless as ever, but the things predictability will someday be its downfall. I still need to build up my arsenal before I¡¯m ready to tackle it, so in the meanwhile, I¡¯ll execute the plan - ¡®Alpha vegan¡¯. But before that, I have to get back to the operation zone. I turn in the approximate direction of where I need to go and go over my plans. I remember when I first thought of it. When I made this plan there was that small nagging voice telling me that this was a waste of time, but I told Kevin to shut up. Alright, I¡¯ll skip the preamble - I think I¡¯ve discovered the rules of the game¡­ maybe. Well, okay, I¡¯m 80% sure I did, and that¡¯s good enough for me. ¡°You grow by eating things!¡± - see? How cool am I? It only took a few months to come to this amazing conclusion! I¡¯m sure I¡¯m 90% faster than your average mentally disabled person. So, anyway, I obviously understood the concept while I was still a cell, but I¡¯ve been going over my arsenal and asking things like - ¡°what is my greatest weapon?¡± When do I get nukes? Is this purgatory?¡± - and the conclusion I came upon is that while the inventory still holds untold possibilities, I¡¯ve been neglecting that my survival mainly stems from being too large to be eaten in one bite, and most importantly, there was this one thing I¡¯ve been neglecting all this time - eating stronger foes unlock cool stuff. Yes, I¡¯ve been capitalising on it recently and almost dying in the process, but most of the time, it was more of a random encounter, rather than deliberate action on my part. That being said, I realised that there was one thing in particular, that while dangerous, I could kill with only a little bit of time and effort - the carnivorous plant. Yes, the same bastard that glued me to it and almost consumed me alive. So let¡¯s go through the checkmarks: Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. We have the trifecta of a lootable mob. Finally, I near one of the craters I left as a landmark while exploring. I started doing this to mark off an already explored territory, but when I realised the sun-snake kept being interested in my ongoing landscaping projects, I started doing it for fun and research. I wanted to see if at one point it would grow bored of it, but it always came. Anyway, I always hit the road just before it came, as tempting faith should only be done in small portions and in a regulated environment. I slowly look around and pick out a grey silhouette swaying slightly. It wouldn¡¯t be out of place normally in an underwater fauna, but if you watch closely, its movement differs from the surrounding plant life. I position myself above it and slowly lower my altitude until my bottom touches it. At first, I get the profound feeling of something filling me and then comes the burning sensation. It starts to spread my... ¡°Ah, fuck it really does burn.¡± Shit, it never is easy. I start sending the previously collected biomass towards the damaged parts, while Susan actively mass-produces antibodies against the intruders. Kevin refused to take part in this, according to him, this is clearly the gayest event in the history of mankind and he wants no part in it. At least, that was the official explanation. I think he is sulking because I was the first one to come up with this idea. Besides, he is obviously a raging homosexual. I evade the mental kick from Kevin as I collect the small flakes of biomass - shed from the plant where my soldiers have gained the ground. It doesn¡¯t cover the cost of doing this and even now I¡¯m investing a hundred times the amount I¡¯m getting back, but I¡¯ve collected enough biomass to ground this thing into a smoothie. My improved cancer shell helps to keep the toxins in one place, even as it slowly melts. I got more and more used to the sensation of having a ¡®skin¡¯. But now, when it¡¯s peeling off, I almost feel like an invisible pressure is being relieved. Incredible, how stuffy you can feel behind an armour. I really hope I¡¯m not becoming some kind of exhibitionist. I already have too many fetishes to count. Despite my efforts to keep my mind on pointless things, the occasional spike of pain still makes my body convulse, but by now I¡¯m almost done with one-fifth of the plant. I have yet to receive anything for my effort, but I remain hopeful. The harder the task - the better the prize! Right? ---------- I refuse to yield! This is not the end! One more, no, two more and it will happen! I strengthen my resolve and rush towards the next plant. It only takes minutes until the plant turns into biomass and is stored safely inside my inventory. At least something good came out of this - even without the system upgrades, it didn¡¯t take long before my body adapted to the plant toxins and started to produce the perfect soldiers to counteract them. Though, it was quite scary at first. I honestly thought my sense of pain was growing dull and I would soon become unfeeling glob. I watch in indignation as the last pieces and plantlife disappears underneath me. Not yet! I¡¯m not done yet! I refuse to believe that my hard work won¡¯t be rewarded! ======= /System message: -Due to the player¡¯s efforts, he has been granted the following title: $Goat -Reminder to all players, that a title is the mirror of your inner being. You should treasure each and every one of your hard-earned titles. ======= Ten minutes, and 12 plants later, I finally receive the system¡¯s acknowledgement. Though, as always, it¡¯s completely different from what I am hoping for. I promised I wouldn¡¯t give them the satisfaction of watching me freak out. It¡¯s hard, but I think I can manage. Let¡¯s just take this as a win. We still managed to upgrade my toxin resistance and while the plants give less biomass overall, it¡¯s a steady source in case I get disfigured enough that I can¡¯t hunt anymore. Yes, instead of feeling failure, this new feeling of fulfilment should be what I aim for! *Zap!* (¥Î?Òæ?)¥Îáê©ß©¥©ß Chapter 33 Chapter 33 Operation Alpha vegan - not a complete failure? Yeah, if I think about it, I did catch on an important fact - my growth is not fully dependent on the system. I¡¯m still unsure of how to effectively use this information, but it¡¯s a step in the right direction. Who knows, maybe there are even deadlier plants lying around somewhere. The key is finding them, and it¡¯s quite hard when you have a single eye, that barely sees shapes. However, it does beg the question - why didn¡¯t the system think of this as an upgrade opportunity? I would like to think there¡¯s a logical explanation for it, but it might be something that¡¯s there just to mess with my head. Welp, let¡¯s go hunt some more. I¡¯m sure another genius idea will find me soon. Or I¡¯ll die. It¡¯s clearly a fifty-fifty chance. ------- I watch in awe as the target of my subjugation melts before my eyes. All that¡¯s left is a paste of biomass, which I quickly absorb before it disperses. Whaddya know, turns out I gained more than simple protection against the local plant life. ¡°What doesn¡¯t kill you, makes you stronger, eh?¡± That¡¯s right, without any help from the system, I took a step forward. One way or another, not only did I get decently durable against plant toxins, but I also integrated them as a weapon. Or should I say that my own toxins got upgraded? I still remember the poor fool that got caught before me and it clearly didn¡¯t degrade this fast. Rather, the difference is so stark, you can¡¯t even compare the two. What now? Does this open a new opportunity? Let¡¯s check on things I can work towards. Hmm, what else? Anything location-based? Something I could only do on the surface level? Try to leave water? Nope, it¡¯s too soon for that. I¡¯m still small enough to get killed by a slight breeze. The same goes for land animal hunting. Too small to do anything productive in a fight, and even if I win, I would have to bet on the system to provide an upgrade for living outside of the water. I think I¡¯m going about this the wrong way. I need to look at something I could do without any noticeable downsides. So let¡¯s cross out things I know doesn¡¯t work. Killing the glowing snake beast is out of the question until I can survive a direct hit by its tail. Looking for more plants is a fool¡¯s errand. There¡¯s no guarantee that the plants I already found are not the apex plantlife around these parts, and I don¡¯t remember seeing more unique specimens. That leads me to the last point - simply increasing my size is what I¡¯m constantly doing already, and if history has taught me anything, in the long term, it won¡¯t solve anything. So I¡¯m stuck? No, no, no. I¡¯m still going about this the wrong way. Let¡¯s check on what I CAN do. I can upgrade myself with or without the system¡¯s help. So for system upgrades, I need vespine. The only place I know that contains vespine are the insides of the tail-biter fish. While dangerous, I already escaped twice in confrontation and even killed one of them. Alright, that¡¯s one side done. The other is more abstract. It all comes down to - do something the system doesn¡¯t expect from me. What if I started experimenting with my skills? I got the primitive conversion system, but as far as I can tell it only works on blueprint bases. It came with biomass conversion installed, but the rate is so slow that it barely covers its running expenses. Can I change the blueprint to minerals or vespine?This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. I tried, and the short answer is I can. The long answer - It takes ages and is not worth it. At first, when I tried to change the output to minerals or vespine, I thought it simply didn¡¯t want to work, but apparently if you wait long enough - around a day or so - it completes one mineral molecule. As for vespine? I dread that it will take months if not years. Ain¡¯t nobody got time for that. Obviously, I wasn¡¯t idle all this time. I got my second project working, and for now, while it¡¯s a bit of a mess, Kevin¡¯s making it work somehow. The main thought behind the project ¡®A helping hand¡¯, was to create a safer way of killing the tail-biters. With my ever-growing size and the fact that it is suicidal, I already discarded ¡®being eaten¡¯ as a possible strategic solution. That meant I had to focus my attacks on the outside. While technically doable with my upgraded toxin catalogue, the fact remained that my opponent will never sit still while I¡¯m killing it. I needed a way to attach myself to it. Far from any deadly teeth and in a perfect position to dish out an unlimited supply of venom. Now that I think about it, calling it project ¡®Bull rider¡¯ sounds way cooler. Anyway, we needed something that would work in such a situation and the only possibilities that I thought of: glue, cables and arms. If I had the necessary knowledge, I might be able to make superglue using the primitive conversion system, but my knowledge mostly consists of MOBA character skill and item builds, outdated meme references and the timings for **** rushes. Could try the plant glue, but, honestly, I can¡¯t even differentiate between the things in my inventory nowadays. When I absorb anything organic, I get so much stuff, and all I can go for are their chemical names. I might know the periodic table, but what the fuck is C257H383N65O77S6. Now imagine thousands of slots, all filled with these random names. Nope, the glue is lost to the stash Gods. The best I could think of for the cables was seaweed, but I would never get the chance to tie myself to my target. As for arms, well, that opened a whole new room of possibilities. I¡¯ve been putting aside any plans of an active evolutionary step since the system approximated my chance of manually completing such a thing in 13 million years. While it might have been a joke on my expense, it¡¯s true that I had no real knowledge of how to make that next leap on the complexity ladder. This time, hoverer, it¡¯s something doable. All-in-all, it¡¯s just stacking cells in one line. How hard could it be? ------- Yeah, it was pretty hard. The whole module system is not really self-explanatory in the first place. And the placement of said modules mainly involves me hoping they would spawn in the general location of my target. Makes shaping my body possible, but denies any precision work. It all came down to trial and error. You do it hundreds of times and delete any off-target results. Here''sthe gist of it:
  1. Make a thousand cells in the same place.
  2. Realise that making cells on the cancerous carapace is a bad idea and that they now lack the necessary nutrients to function.
  3. Scratch them off using hard surface.
  4. Scratch off the cancerous skin. Which involves pain as you are using sandpaper to scrape off your own skin.
  5. Try to target the same place with another thousand cells.
  6. Get a bit scared as you now have a huge lump on one side of your body.
  7. Use ¡®passive cell suicide¡¯ actively and try to destroy the off-target cells, by guiding the antibodies to the necessary sites.
  8. Repair the multiple holes you now have in your body.
  9. Repeat step 5-8 over and over because you suck at what you are doing.
  10. Get happy about smaller protrusion outside of your body that, honestly, looks like a penis.
  11. Realise you cannot move the so-called penis contraption.
  12. In panic cut off ¡­ skip this point, trust me.
  13. After the agony is gone, start thinking of a way to control said protrusion.
  14. The answer lies in indirect control. On the outside, we use a layer of movement spirals, which, after some intensive headache-inducing training, can be used to slowly fold said protrusion around the target. Tested successfully on nearby plants, but require too much time to be effecting in real combat.
  15. On the inside layer, we use a chemical salt mix which, when sent by inventory to specific places, induce cell shrinkage. Therefore, if implemented on one side of the protrusion, can make it curve in one direction.
  16. Tests reveal that said protrusion¡­ you know what. I can¡¯t keep avoiding this. It¡¯s a fucking tentacle. I need to call it as it is. Yes, I¡¯m slowly becoming some kind of horrible monster straight out of Lovecraftian horror. Bite me.
  17. Anyway, tests reveal that the TENTACLE is strong enough to not break under strain. Test conducted while holding on to a plant and swimming away from it.
  18. All that¡¯s left is prolonging the tentacle until it can effectively circle larger opponents and, maybe, I could add more of these if my mind can handle it.
We got the hook, all that¡¯s left is the bait and the sucker that eats it. Chapter 34 Chapter 34 Alright, let¡¯s do this. ¡°Start the recording of test subject 12. This time, restrain the subject. We can¡¯t afford another escapee. Operator, bring it closer. Nurse, make the incision. Let¡¯s start with one-fifth of the previous dosage. We don¡¯t need another puddle. Operator, hold it steady, the nurse can¡¯t work if you let it struggle so much. Alright, slowly, slowly. Yes, we got a hole! Halve the dosage for now. We need to let it permeate the tissue. Alright, steady now. It seems to be working. We can keep.. Oh! It¡¯s starting to thrash about, we can¡¯t lose him now! Increase the toxin concentration. Yes, that¡¯s right, just like that. Good, it¡¯s slowing down. Alright, keep going like this. We almost got it. Alright, it stopped moving, now, quickly, lower the concentration even more. Nurse, we are ready for the carving process.¡± My assistant hands me a towel and I wipe the sweat on my forehead. The operation was a success. At one point, we had a leak in one side, but we managed to plug the hole using some quick patchwork. It seems the worst has passed and the mission can proceed. Long story short, we caught one of the cash-cows, held it down and slowly degraded it using toxins. Now we are trying to turn the remaining insides into mush so we can add glowing parts of me. We actually did this once already, It¡¯s the same process that gave birth to my illegitimate son Vick - may he rest in peace, far from this horrid place. The only problem is my upgraded toxicity, as most of our test dummies melted before we could make any modifications. It took us 12 tries to adjust, but I think we got it this time. Alright, now for the hard part. ¡°Arghh, you fucking cocksucker!¡±Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! I watch as a cut-off body part slowly floats in the wrong direction. I really need hands. ------- After some trial and error, we stuffed the carcass with enough flesh to make the glow noticeable from afar. By that point, we were at subject Nr. 14 and I was feeling sore all over my body. I push the bait toward the darkness above and position myself nearby. Some might wonder why would my prey chose the smaller/darker target over myself, but my genius mind is clearly one step ahead of such a silly question. From my inventory, I slowly release sand around me. The cloud doing a good job of masking the enemy and my vision¡­ I didn¡¯t think this through. ¡°Abort the mission!¡± Um, what now? Crap, I thought I had this. ¡°Oh, thanks Kevin, I¡¯ll buy army camouflage in the next shop I see. You are very helpful.¡± ¡°Ah, you mean dirt? But it¡¯s hard to make dirt stick on you underwater. Everything kind of washes away.¡± ¡°Alright, I got it. So you want me to find the glue plant. Get covered in the sticky substance. Ignore the pain of getting digested alive and cower my body with sand. That sounds like a great plan. I¡¯m sure any sane person could work it out by themselves!¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯m being snarky! It¡¯s me who suffers, while you watch the show!¡± ¡°Fine, fine. I don¡¯t have a better solution. You win.¡± It took me a while to find another carnivorous plant and by then, I modified our strategy a bit. Instead of multiple layers of dirt that would act as cement coffin around me. I let the plant¡¯s leaves stick on my body. By the time I was done, the only part not covered in layers of leaves was my eye. I look at my freely floating tentacle and suddenly I realise how stupid I¡¯ve been. In the first place, I could¡¯ve always covered myself in leaves, and they would¡¯ve glued me to anything I touched. ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ Riiight, let¡¯s just get some leaves on my tentacle to help it stick to things. I¡¯ll pretend this was all an elaborate plan on my part. Yes, that¡¯s it! I will need both the tentacle and the leaves to ensure complete success.I¡¯m truly a natural-born genius! ¡°Now let¡¯s try this again.¡± Again, I position myself nearby, this time only releasing a little bit of sand. Not enough to cloud my vision completely, but enough to hide anything that isn¡¯t covered. I ignore the pain and patiently wait for anything to take the bait. Two minutes later, I realise a slight oversight in my plans, but it¡¯s too late to change anything as a shadow shoots past me. I can¡¯t let this mistake doom our hunt so I dash after it. A few seconds later my fears come true as the shadow grabs the bait and shoots away from here. Furry overtakes me as I keep chasing, unwilling to admit that all my effort has been wasted, and, finally, after all this time, the stars align to help me. The shadow starts to thrash about. As I arrive, I waste no time figuring out what happened and extend my tentacle. Thankfully, the wrapping is a piece of cake. The slightest touch makes it stick to the tail-biter and it¡¯s thrashing works against it as it gets more and more tangled. I let the inertia do its work and soon I¡¯m stuck against its skin. There is no time to waste. Susan unloads every weapon in our arsenal. Toxins, mixed with antibodies, flood out of my body, covering the nearby water with acid-like clouds. Everything organic degrades at a visible speed. Kevin splits his attention from the tentacle, and, under his command, hundreds of vesicles, each containing concentrated venom, bud out from my cellular surface. Where they make contact, they leave holes in our enemy. My only eye can¡¯t discern everything that¡¯s happening. Still, I can feel the thrashing intensify, but, most importantly, I feel my tentacle and body dig deeper inside my enemy - where its flesh has been turned to mush. Strange protrusions stab my body. It must be the creature¡¯s bones. It takes a while, but soon thething calms down. It¡¯s clear that the small remaining outbursts are nothing more than its last death throes. With a satisfying snap, even the bones give way and my enclosing stranglehold splits its body into two parts. ¡­ We did it.