Chapter 22

I evolved once again. That would be my 6th evolution since appearing as a microscope bacteria, and still, I was a single-celled organism. However, I only remained depressed about it for a very short time. That was because I quickly noticed the next skill I had unlocked. It was called Parallel Processing, and it was exactly what I needed. It was a Perception Skill, and it allowed me to be able to control my allies with ease. I no longer struggled to guide them. It was almost like I could compartmentalize my brain, allowing me to function as several entities at once.

This was a skill I could not perform as a human, so knew I was moving away from humanity. Even though I evolved, I retained all the skills I had before, so I could guess that I couldn't be considered human any longer, but knowing my mind could do things a human mind couldn't only solidified those thoughts. I also tested my Mitosis and was able to split into 1,024 cell bodies. I suspected that number was only going to continue to increase from hereon.

If these numbers continued to go up like this, I'd be breaking a million cells by the time I reached the next evolution. I wanted to say that was a lot, but then I remembered that a human body was composed of thirty-six trillion cells. Suffice it to say that I had a lot to go. Therefore, there was no reason not to get started. I began to send out my many cell bodies. The killing had sped up considerably. Even though my enemies were many times larger, the ability to coordinate a group made bringing them down much easier.

I was now able to kill anything smaller than a fish. I could now recognize fish, and they came in all shapes and sizes, but even the smallest was too much for me to take. I once tried to battle a fish, and it ended up being a massive battle of attrition. I wasn't even fighting the fish. I realized I was fighting the fish's immune system. Various white blood cells attacked as I tried to fester on the fish's wound site. After battling for countless weeks, we were stuck at a standstill and I realized that without killing the fish, I wouldn't get any experience.

Thus, I had given up battling fish for the moment and instead conquered everything below it. Thankfully, if I wasn't trying to actively invade the wound of a fish, they all ignored me. The only time I died by one was by accidentally being swallowed as it was trying to eat the thing I was fighting. Thankfully, my cell bodies were spread out and if this happened, I only lose at most half of my stock. It only took a single Mitosis to completely restore my fighting ability and then continue.

Congratulations! You have reached level 2.

You have unlocked the skill, Signal Transduction.

Signal Transduction was considered a buff skill. It allowed me to give broad commands to my units, which freed up my Parallel Processing and made fighting even easier. Even though I doubled my units again, I felt I had even more control. At this point, I couldn't turn back. After having to control my cell bodies slowly and obnoxiously, this was so much easier. It was no wonder that our bodies developed the ability to send signals.

I doubled the number of teams I sent out, and while it still took longer before I reached my next level than before, it didn't take as long as I would have thought, given the ten-fold rule. The massive increases in attack strength coupled with my extra units seemed to be able to bridge that gap.

Congratulations! You have reached level 3.

You have unlocked the skill, Fibrinolysis.

This was a skill marked as defensive, but I was sure what it did. After experimenting for a while, I wasn't able to figure it out. I eventually decided it likely had to do with something I would develop down the road. It didn't matter much to me though, because I had doubled the number of cell bodies again. At this point, I practically had an army marching through. I was also starting to gain an understanding of the shape of my universe.

There was a limit at the top. The light-oxygenated zone at the surface eventually reached a layer I just couldn't pass. Meanwhile, it sunk deep, deep down. I eventually hit the ground, but that ground was tilted. If I traveled in one direction, it got deeper, and if I traveled in the other direction, it became shallower. I had not been able to reach the maximum depth yet. In other words, including the presence of freshwater creatures and fish, I was fairly confident that my universe was a body of water. I was likely on some calm shoreline.

Knowing my position in the world didn't depress me. Oceans covered seventy percent of Earth, so even if I did evolve to become king of the ocean, wouldn't that be more impressive than anything I accomplished on Earth? Humans only lived within a small dome of oxygen, on tiny patches of area above ground. That couldn't be more impressive than my current environment.

I continued my daily battles, and if anything, I swore my leveling was increasing in speed. This was because every day I grew better at controlling my forces.

Congratulations! You have reached level 4.

You have unlocked the skill, Filtration.

I understood what this ability did. It allowed me to separate water from everything else. It was a crafting skill. I could use it to create a new type of weapon. I liked to call it a hypotonic bomb. I used Filtration and Osmosis to create a vesicle filled with pure water. I then released that water through Endocytosis like a giant burp. It had a fairly strong destructive ability, especially when dropped by a thousand cells at once. Organisms would desiccate within an instant, and I could clear out the area in waves.

I picked up tricks like these every day, but it was the increasing amounts of body clones that changed the game for me. With eight thousand cell bodies that combine senses with Cloud Control and are controlled by Parallel Processing, we almost constantly killing now. Experience was being earned with every second, and every time I leveled my organization only grew larger and larger. I was like a harvester harvesting wheat.

Congratulations! You have reached level 5.

You have unlocked the skill, Eutrophication.

As my numbers hit sixteen thousand, I finally realized what Fibrinolysis was. It was a fundamental beginning of an immune system. With so many cells, I found that the prokaryotes and smaller eukaryotes had started to try to parasitize and live off of me. They tied up and damaged my cells. I hadn't noticed at first when it was just a few, but now a significant amount of my operation was being put into jeopardy.

Thankfully, Fibrinolysis was a countermeasure. I could release fibrins which helped capture and remove enemy cells. I could create a lot of enemy cells and my own, and then eat them all. Normally, prokaryotes were too small to eat, but if an infection of them formed, I could use Fibrinolysis to ultimately capture and consume a large number of them.

That brought me to Eutrophication, which was given the identification of an attack skill. It was similar to the weapon I had created with the Filtration, but it worked in reverse. I released a bubble of nutrients, which would then attract a large quantity of creatures. Then, I could gather them up and consume them using Fibrinolysis. When I was finished with Eutrophication, this seemed to create a dead zone, forcing me to move to the next location. Either way, this aggressive form of leveling didn't seem to come to an end.

Congratulations! You have reached level 6.

You have unlocked the skill, Luminal Storage.

Although every cell could store stuff, I was limited in that the collections of goods had to be passed from cell to cell. Luminal storage created a shared space where all of my chemicals could be freely exchanged. I wasn't sure how it worked on a biological level, but for me, it felt like an inventory space one might find in a video game. All of my cells could pull from and release anything within my luminal storage.

At this point, I also had about 32,000 cell bodies. I was quickly spreading around the shoreline. I was hoping if I stretched myself out long enough I could get a feel for the entire size of the body of water I was in. It was at that point that I ran into some old friends. I finally encountered some of the clones that I had descended from. Most of them were still in the Protista era. A few had made it to coenobium. However, even though they had numbers, they didn't have the processing power I did. I was able to control my units and react before they could think. My clones were all eliminated in an instant.

I finally reached a point where I had spread far enough that I was confident I was the only one left in this body of water. Conquering it all was only a matter of time now. It wasn't a question of if, but how long it would take.