Chapter 6

Name: ???

Evolutionary Form: 2

Evolution Level: 3

Species: Heterotrophic Prokaryote

HP: 30/30

Stamina: 30/30

Attack: 32

Mana: 0

Defense: 33 (57)

Agility: 32

Skills:

Absorption Skills: Active Diffusion, Pinocytosis

Attack Skill: Pilli

Crafting Skill: Cohesion

Defense Skills: Encapsulation, Cellular Wall

Endurance Skill: Chemosynthesis

Health Skill: Photosynthesis

Movement Skill: Cilia

Perception Skill: Chemotaxis

Storage Skill: Selective Permeability

Support Skill: Osmosis

The ability to bind something to itself?

That was Cohesion in a nutshell. The word was usually used to describe water or, specifically, the way water liked to stick to itself. It was why droplets formed on windshields. My status said that this was a crafting skill, which was a new skill criterion I had never heard of before. I fiddled around with the skill, but I couldn't seem to figure it out. After a while, with my energy running low, I put the crafting skill away and went back to hunting.

Hmm? It's big!

The things I had been killing were all little autotrophs. I supposed there was something to say about karma and picking on the little guy, but I never cared about such things. If the little guy didn't want to be picked on, then he should work hard and become big. That's what I had to do when I left home early, and that philosophy had worked well enough for me. These little autotrophs were only there so that a heterotroph like me could eat them.

That's why I was a bit shocked to encounter something larger. I probably wouldn't have been able to sense it if I hadn't levelled up. At every level, not only did I learn new skills that allowed me to interact with my environment, but my existing skills grew more potent. Sure, that was accompanied by increased energy demand too, but my body would adapt to it.

Should I try to attack it?

This was the question I had to ask myself. I knew that my capacity to level decreased after my evolution, and every level I gained seemed to be harder than the previous. I had only made progress because my capacity to gain experience also increased with my levels. That said, my only choice would be to increase the risks.

After thinking about it like that, I decided it was time to try my luck. I headed over to the large object. It was so large that my senses couldn't see around it. It felt a bit like approaching a mammoth. I went ahead and pierced it with my Pilli. At first, I was afraid that its skin would be too thick to pierce, so I was relieved when my Pilli punctured through. To my surprise, the organism barely reacted.

I then activated Pinocytosis. I brought in a lot of stuff, including junk I didn't need. I used Selective Permeability to remove the components I didn't want, and then began to process the components I did want. I was shocked at how much more I was able to get. Compared to the passive diffusion or even the Active Diffusion I used before, Pinocytosis seemed to suck everything up like a straw. Compared to the puddles I had been used to sipping, this was more like an ocean. Was this what was known as parasitism? I was feeding off of some unrecognizable larger lifeform. Thankfully, I was so small that it didn't react to me at all.

The host organism was so large that the resources seemed infinite, and it wasn't long before I reached the next level. This time, I unlocked a new movement option. It was more like I developed an entirely new limb. I gained the skill Flagellum. Although I couldn't see my body, I became aware of a whip-like tail on the back of my body, not unlike those seen on sperm cells.

Because I was curious, I temporarily abandoned my Pinocytosis and gave the tail a whip. Where my Cilia could be fast and mobile, the Flagellum seemed to be pure speed. I was shocked at how fast I was able to move. My senses had grown a bit, but my speed was now so great that I could reach the end of my senses with a few beats of the tail. Despite that, it sort of felt like I was stumbling in the dark, able to move fast, but hesitant due to fear I'd run into something.

After playing with it for a while, I realized the demand of those speeds was pretty high and ended up returning to my Pinocytosis. Once I maxed out my inventory, I'd burn it off by doing a couple of laps and then returning once again.

This became my life for a while. Now that I had solved my resource accumulation, I began to notice a new limitation. I still required time to metabolize all of the items through Chemosynthesis. In short, I was using my stamina faster than I could produce it.

This hadn't been a problem before because I was never able to have enough resources that my Chemosynthesis could run continuously for long periods. That threshold had been reached by parasitization of another organism, and my new limiting factor was that Chemosynthesis couldn't keep up. Even my base metabolic demands without using the Flagellum were so high that using Chemosynthesis constantly caused only a slow rise in stamina. Since I had to constantly burn chemicals, it also meant I couldn't afford to let my stores go empty or my stamina would drop and I would die.

Thus, I found myself trapped next to the giant cell. Whether I intended it or not, its surface had become my new home. I would use my tail and swim around a bit, then use Chemosynthesis until my stamina returned, fill up the chemical tank, and then I was off again. After a bit, I grew bored and curious about this massive organism I had begun to depend on, and I decided to start moving alongside it.

I realized that, as long as I stayed along the object, I could always have a meal. I just needed to swim around it, and it'd be my way of traveling around and exploring. Thus, I left my spot and began my trek. I would flick my tail and move until I got hungry, and then I would pierce a new hole and feed until I was ready to go again. As I swam, I began to realize that the membrane of this thing that I was piercing was more complicated than I thought.

The texture seemed to change based on where I was. Some areas were harder and stiffer, while other areas were easy to pierce. Some parts seemed to react by changing as a result of my puncture, however, none were able to throw me off and I was able to keep going. There were various other structures along the membrane. Some of them were attached to it, while others were embedded in it.

Some of these I recognized to be creatures like me: opportunistic prokaryotes. None of them had any interest in me when they were so close to the massive food source, and I didn't have a lot of interest in them, either. Most were piercing or taking bites out of the host organism, although a few seemed to attach with no intention of leaving.

This was only a small part of what I witnessed. There were many more structures on the surface. They were so vast and so complex that I felt a bit like a spaceship flying over an alien world. There were valleys and crevices, uprisen rafts that seemed to flux and ebb. It was an incredible mosaic of structures that served innumerable purposes. Some mountains shot out fountains of water, gases, or other chemicals. Meanwhile, there were sink wells that seemed to suck in materials of a certain type.

The only thing that told me this was a living thing, and not a world, was how fluid it all was. The mosaic seemed to shift and twist under my senses, and, within minutes, the structure under me might be completely different than what I had sensed a short while prior. That's when I felt a powerful suction force. My mind had been wandering as the ground under me had shifted once again. This time, it shifted into some kind of pore-like cavity. Immediately, everything around me started to get sucked in.

I watched as countless prokaryotes were sucked into this hole that was nearly the size of my senses. I wasn't being sucked in so much as that the very environment I was swimming in was being sucked in, and I was being taken with it. Still, I refused to be some massive behemoth's lunch, and I kicked my tail as hard as I could. I watched helplessly as my stamina dropped. I was burning chemicals, but it wasn't nearly enough to match the high use. The second stamina reached zero, I knew I would pass out and end up being swallowed by that whale of an organism.

I didn't know if it was luck or divine intervention, but I managed to last until the mouth had its fill and closed. I had almost no stamina left, but without spamming Flagellum, it started to rise once again. The land underneath me shifted until it looked like harmless terrain once again. At that point, I realized my chemicals were running low too. I swam down and used Pinocytosis again, sucking up and metabolizing ingredients. It felt awkward sucking sustenance out of the same place that had just tried to eat me, but I had no other choice if I wanted to quickly restore my lost stamina.

A moment later, I leveled again. The new skill seemed to activate immediately, and I felt shocked as my body started to kick into motion. My stamina began to swell up. I felt like I had just been jolted with a metric ton of energy. I quickly checked what I had just gained.

Glycolysis.

The skill was part of the endurance category, so it had to be involved with energy production. It felt like an engine was roaring inside of me. I found that the chemicals it used were far more selective than Chemosynthesis, but it created far more energy too. My stamina nearly erupted to full after running it for a few seconds. I could still use Chemosynthesis, but it seemed irrelevant compared to Glycolysis. After adjusting my Selective Permeability, I started absorbing these magical chemicals.

In this case, I knew what I was absorbing. It didn't take a genius; I was consuming sugar molecules. Glycolysis burned sugar and sugar adjacent molecules. I made sure to absorb specifically sugar through Pinocytosis, sorting out and removing everything else. Soon, my inventory was filled with this molecule, and I launched off. This time, I started kicking again, and my body moved off like a rocket. I was able to swim around the entire cell. It took a couple of minutes, but that was just how much larger this cell was compared to me.

Part of me wondered, if I continued to level up and evolve, would I one day be the size of this larger cell? The name of that cell would have to be a eukaryote. Eukaryotes were the rulers of the microscopic kingdom. If I achieved that status, then I would probably want nothing more in this life. At least, that's what I was thinking.

However, things always had a way of escalating, and this week's goals might not necessarily be next week's goals. The only certain thing was that I still had a long way to go. I returned to parasitically snack on the eukaryotic cell. I would conquer this space, one cell at a time!