Chapter 28
Days became weeks, and weeks became years. I had lost all of my motivation. I had dedicated so much time toward this sole go. I was going to evolve into the apex of this world. In my previous world, I had been killed like a dog, but I decided in this world, I’d become so powerful that no one could ever betray me. Yet, after fighting countless enemies, traveling through countless places, and evolving to the peak, even defeating the most powerful being within my world, I came to realize that my world was only the size of a pond.
Sizes were difficult to figure out when you were really small. I understood I was a single-cellular organism, but even then, I didn’t anticipate just how much the size difference truly was. I had been thinking I was roaming a vast ocean. I had become an entire biota, the complete biological ecosystem of a location. I thought that when I finally reached a multicellular form, I’d be like some eldritch horror emerging from the depths.
Well, it wasn’t like I wanted to kill anyone. I didn’t even know if there were any people to kill. I had never seen a human in this world, and the first person I had ever even had a conversation with was a fish. That fish didn’t last very long either, and I felt no pleasure in killing it.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have killed it either way. The Kingfish was too much of a threat to me. Others could not be trusted. Every time I thought about living harmoniously, I remembered the look in my sister’s eyes as she stabbed me in the back. I had given everything to save her, and she saw me as nothing but an inconvenience. That was what caring got you.
Only by being more powerful than everyone else, by being beyond threats, would I be able to live a peaceful life alone. Well, I managed the alone part, but my strength was nothing. If the wrong creature came along, I could be destroyed in an instant. It wasn’t a matter of if I could survive, but how long.
There were other ways I could die too. I seemed to be stuck within the confines of the liquid that held me. In other words, I couldn’t leave the pond. If the pond dried up or was destroyed in a flood, I would go with it. Maybe a flood would be the best option. Maybe, I could be carried away to a larger body of water. Someone could dump chemicals in my pond, and those chemicals could potentially destroy me. That’s assuming someone didn’t just suck me all up in a single gulp.
Was that ridiculous? Well, a short time ago I thought I was a monolith within a vast sea, and now I realized I was a pond scum. In a world of evolution, for all I knew there existed mountain-sized beasts where my single pond was a gulp of water. I wouldn’t survive the plummet into their stomach, that was for sure.
Who was I kidding anyway? I only had a hundred million cell bodies. A human has 36 trillion cells. If I clumped all of my cells together, I’d make a single human toe. That was how pathetic and weak I was.
In the end, I had cut off every avenue of growth. Sure, there were still bacteria and protista that I allowed to exist within the pond, but they were mostly just extensions of myself, cells I allowed to remain alive to serve me. They were a snack, and the experience they provided was so negligible that it could be a thousand years before I evolved.
Thus, I had nothing to do but continue this existence. Worst off, I had made so many changes that even if I stopped maintaining my own body, it would mostly maintain itself. I couldn’t kill myself even if I wanted to! I mean, I could use Apoptosis to explode every cell of my body at the same time. However, the more of my body I destroy through Apoptosis, the more painful it is. To annihilate myself would be extremely painful, perhaps the most painful way I could go.
Since I couldn’t kill myself, I just continued to live. My universe which had been so vast and I had so eagerly worked to fill had become a prison, restraining me from seeing beyond my little nook. Year after year passed by, and nothing ever really changed. I played around with Mutation and Adaptation. I created approximations for organs. Eyes that allowed me to see, ears to hear, and even a nose to smell. Yet, no matter what I did, my evolution never came.
Perhaps, if I hadn’t wiped out the fish, I could have slowly raised them as experience. I realized I could use Mutation on other creatures, and with time and patience, I could have made some kind of warrior fish that I could breed to battle. Instead, my sloppiness had caused the last of my fish to die out, and with that any hope of change. I couldn’t just leave my pond and get some new fish.
Of course, this was all realized in retrospect. At the time, I believed this pond was so much larger. I also thought the kingfish would grant me enough experience to evolve. I didn’t know the true power of Mutation until I had unlocked Adaptation. I had no clue I was pushing myself down an empty path.
With nothing else to do, I worked on expanding my senses instead. With time, I slowly gained a good grasp of my environment. My pond was located in a hilly meadow. To the east was a forested area, which was at the border of my sight. To the west, there were endless meadows filled with flowers. It was all rather pretty. It was completely natural though. There wasn’t a sign of a manmade structure in sight.
There was only one sun and the sky was blue with big billowy clouds. In other words, it wasn’t some strange alien world. The grass looked like normal field grass, and the trees looked like standard trees of a temperate zone. What? I wasn’t a botanist. I had no interest in naming trees or going bird-watching.
Oh, hello. My eyes brightened as I noticed some birds circling overhead. As they flew down, I noticed they were ducks. They immediately landed on the surface of the water. Had I ever encountered birds before? It was hard to say. I had mostly been focused on things residing in the water, and the birds were outside of the water. Their feathers were even covered by waterproof oil that kept them from getting wet. All I could truly grasp was their legs as they peddled.
I waited patiently as I could. Five ducks landed on my pond, and I planned to claim them all before any escaped. I made sure my pond was as calm as possible. Meanwhile, under the water, I prepared strands of cells, long strings of tissue which I could move about. I would grab their feet and then pull them under.
“Attack!” I grabbed them and pulled.
The ducks were surprisingly resistant to being pulled under. Even though I had folded my tissue up multiple times, the claws at the end of their webbed feet still managed to cut away at it. I ended up losing one duck, and then another. Soon, I was down to one left. I concentrated everything on grabbing it and pulling it down.
I finally managed to bring it underneath. It thrashed desperately, trying to use its claws, beak, and wings. However, once I had it underwater, it was in my element. I used Water Jet to force water down its throat. It fought desperately for a few more moments, but then it died. I waited a moment, and when the familiar text appeared, I very nearly collapsed.
[You have reached the maximum level for a Biota. If you wish to proceed, you must evolve. Your level will return to level 1. Do you want to evolve into a multicellular organism?]
After so long, I had finally done it. I clicked yes, and my body exploded with light.
Name: ???
Evolutionary Form: 9
Evolution Level: 1
Species: Coenobium
HP: 199,999,900/19999900
Stamina: 199999900/199999900
Attack: 199999902
Mana: 0
Defense: 199999903 (299999855)
Agility: 19999999902
Skills:
Absorption Skill: Active Diffusion, Endocytosis, Phagocytosis, Pinocytosis,
Attack Skill: Calcification, Electrogenesis, Eutrophication, Phage Tail, Pilli, Water Jet, Spores
Body Modification Skill: Cellular Growth, Chromatophore, Metamorphosis, Shape Modification, Specialization
Buff Skill: Anatomical Separation, Decoupling, Signal Transduction, Toxins
Crafting Skill: Adhesion, Cohesion, Decomposition, Filtration, Glycosylation, Lysis, Transcription
Control Skill: Autobiokinesis, Cloud Control, Differentiation
Defense Skill: Apoptosis, Cellular Wall, Encapsulation, Fibrinolysis
Endurance Skill: Aerobic Respiration, Chemosynthesis, Fermentation, Glycolysis
Experience Skill: Conjugation
Health Skill: Autophagy, Binary Fission, Gastrulation, Growth Factors, Homeostasis, Mitosis, Photosynthesis, Regeneration
Knowledge Skill: Adaption, Nuclear Envelope, Replication, Succession
Language Skill: Translation
Movement Skill: Cilia, Flagellum, Pseudopod
Perception Skill: Chemiluminescence, Chemotaxis, Parallel Processing, Photo Sense, Thermoception
Storage Skill: Endocytosis, Exocytosis, Luminal Storage, Selective Permeability, Vacuole
Stealth Skill: Crypsis, L Form Switching
Support Skill: Acidify, Antibodies, Mutation, Mutagenic
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