Chapter 15

At least, I wasn't losing more health. One had to be optimistic when they face oblivion. I was attached to something that moved far faster than I could conceive. That mostly had to do with its size. I was just a single cell, and this was a multi-cellular organism. That means that it was made of millions upon millions of me. Then again, for all I knew, I was living inside a multi-cellular organism right now and would have no clue. I had never attempted to reach the edges of my universe, so I had no clue what lay beyond.

Everything I knew so far about my world only came from predictions and inferences. The status system and the various skills I unlocked were the only reason I even knew I was a single-celled organism. Otherwise, I might have thought I was some kind of space alien floating through space, or a creature in an alien ocean. I could only guess that I was a single-celled organism in a spot that contained liquid. Furthermore, the large object I was holding onto moved quickly and was composed of cells as far as I could detect which created its scales or skin, if it even had those. As it moved, so did the environment outside of it.

Chemicals were whipping by as quickly as I could sense them. That's when a thought struck me. I started trying to absorb some of them. I used Osmosis to suck in a large amount of liquid and then slowly ejected it, using Selective Permeability to decide what I uptook and what I expelled. What I found was that I was able to bring in quite a few chemicals that way. It wasn't as good as when I was hunting, but there was no danger either.

I had very nearly died thanks to the clones of me. I no longer felt like hunting was necessarily the safest course of action. I originally had no choice. If I wanted to make energy, I had to hunt. Hunting involved putting my life on the line. Yet, this organism didn't seem to notice me. I was too small to notice. I was getting used to clinging to its surface. Its speed wasn't so great that I was in danger of being knocked away.

As long as it moved, my environment would be constantly changing, giving me more and more potential to absorb chemicals. The organism had created the perfect environment for me to take care of myself without needing to move at all. Thus, I began to absorb and process chemicals. I stopped focusing on hunting and instead started playing around with building materials. I was using the Crafting skills to try to create new things.

I was surprised to find my crafting was more successful. My mind seemed to be filled with all kinds of various recipes. There weren't just toxins. I could make a large assortment of different chemicals now, I could make proteins. I found I could create chemicals that expanded my senses, and others that increased my abilities temporarily. Using the right batch, I could increase speed, attack, or even defense. I could use some to obscure enemy vision, allowing for stealth, and others to expand my senses, acting like a tripwire that alerted me if anyone came close.

I knew that these were coming from the skilled Transcription and Nuclear Envelope. Nuclear Envelope seemed to give me the knowledge on how to assemble proteins, and Transcription gave me the ability to tell my body to make those proteins. Adding vacuoles to store these things, and each one was like a potion I could brew. Some healed me or recovered stamina, while others temporarily enhanced my stats in the same way Encapsulation could increase my defense.

Certain brews affected my body in different ways. Some had little side effects, while others might have a backlash. For example, I could rapidly heal myself with one chemical, but it would come at the expense of stamina. Another would increase my attack power, but I would be slowed down in speed. There were hundreds of these recipes and as I remained on the organism, I had time to play with and experiment on dozens of them.

[You have reached the maximum level for a simple Eukaryote. If you wish to proceed, you must evolve. Your level will return to level 1. Do you want to evolve into a Protista?]

I was a bit surprised. I had assumed my leveling would decrease on account of my not killing any creatures. Yet, if anything, I had leveled even faster. It must have been crafting. By crafting, I was earning experience. It turned our experience was more complex than I originally thought. At first, I had thought it was merely an act of depleting stamina or HP, and then killing organisms stronger than me. Yet, I had killed nothing, and my stamina depletion had been minimal as I didn't need to move anymore.

Experience must simply come from complete challenges. Anything that requires work to do could theoretically earn experience. If it's difficult, you gain a lot of experience, and if it's simple, you gain less. By defeating harder enemies, I gained more experience, but I also could gain that experience by developing complicated chemicals through crafting. It's something I never would have realized if I hadn't been trapped on this multicellular organism.

I had truly been worried that while I was trapped on the organism, my other selves would continue to level and eventually, I'd be left in the dust. Yet, my other selves didn't have the experience I did. They won't have figured out the true advantage of Transcription. They were already set on leveling by defeating others, so this was my chance to change things.

"Yes," I ordered in my head.

Congratulations! You have evolved into a Protista. 

You have unlocked the skill, Replication.

I evolved into a Protista. I was still a single-celled organism, but I was the king of the single-celled organisms. Protistas came in all shapes and sizes. They were the one-stop organism type in the single-cellular world. When someone looked a dirty water under a microscope, it was mostly the Protista that they saw dancing around. Protista could form almost any shape. Protista could even have a loose multi-cellular function, such as the case with slimes. To be part of the Protista family, I guess I was going places.

Thankfully, my evolution went fine. I was worried while I was evolving I'd fall off the organism, but I had been clinging for so long that I didn't seem to be at risk of budging at all. The new skill I earned was Replication. This didn't allow me to back clones of myself like Binary Fission. In fact, since evolving, I still haven't been able to use that skill at all. I didn't like the idea of my skills going obsolete, but there was nothing I could do about it. Either way, Replication wasn't a Health or a Body Modification skill. Replication was another knowledge skill. That was the second knowledge skill in a row.

"Hmm?"

I noticed that I was no longer the only organism clinging to the wall of this multi-cellular organism. There was another cell nearby. It was clinging as well. No, it was more accurate to say it was burrowing into the skin of the organism. As it did so, it seemed to be sucking chemicals out of the organism directly. I had some experience with this when I was targeting the large eukaryotes and I was a measly prokaryote. Just how many chemicals did a multi-cellular organism have? Even if I killed a cell, it had millions more to use in its place. It was an inexhaustible supply of food.

When I sucked the food in from the outside, I got many unwanted things too. Some of those things caused damage, while many others I'd have to waste time and energy expelling. However, if I burrowed into the organism I was on top of, couldn't I feast until I'm satisfied? Without a relevant burrowing skill, I reckoned that it'd be impossible. That's when I realized how to use my new skill.

Just by seeing how the other organism was able to use its burrowing skill, I quickly figured out the principles. I then began to use my Phage tail in a way I hadn't before. By swirling it around, I slowly started to sink deeper into the organism. The tail acted like a drill tip, slowly pulling me farther and farther in. Now, I had no risk of falling for us. Furthermore, I was surrounded by cells on every side. It was a much better contact than I had before.

Like this, I began to consume some of the cells. Floods of chemicals entered my body. Some of them were new, while others were well-known to me. I processed and stored them quickly. This new batch allowed me to explore even more. Thus, I realized how Replication worked. I could find ways to emulate skills I didn't have with the skills I did have. There were probably limits to it, but it did mean I could copy skills from anyone else.

Time passed by and I became a full-time parasite. I continued to process chemical after chemical, making everything under the sun. I wanted a lot of stuff just in case anything came up. All of that work paid off.

Congratulations! You have reached level 2.

You have unlocked the skill, Regeneration.

Regeneration was the first skill I ever unlocked that sounded like it belonged in a video game. It functioned exactly how I thought it would. It quickly repaired parts of my body. Alongside my stored chemicals, I now felt like I had a few trump cards in case something came up. This was good because I felt like I had already earned as much experience as I could from making chemicals. The list that came with Nuclear Envelope only consisted of a few thousand chemical combinations, and after running through each one and testing them a bit, I was no longer getting the experience I needed.

I understood I was in an arms race. There might be other versions of me out there, and if I couldn't level faster than them, I could only watch as I was destroyed by them. The longer I survived, the more such a thing worried me. I was my person at this point, filled with my own experiences, and I didn't want those experiences destroyed, let alone shared with my other selves, thus destroying what made me unique.

The organism I was attached to had seemingly been slowing down the last few days. Countless other cells like the one I had seen had seemingly shown up and bonded to it. Other than me, there were millions of cells slowly sucking the life out of this organism. It had to be some kind of infection. I was starting to feel crowded out, so I was planning on finally letting go.

However, I didn't want to be destroyed in the vortex, so I prepared several chemicals. As the creature had an unusual slowdown, it was my time to leap. I took something that increased my speed, and then ripped the Phage Tail off and pushed. Using my Flagella and Cilia, I beat as hard as I could to break free of the speed vortex. I was thrown around a dozen times, unable to find up from down. Something struck me hard from the side.

-10,000 HP

After that last strike, things settled own. That was close. If I hadn't evolved first before releasing, I might have lost my life. At the least, I was free of the organism. I had no clue how far I had gone from my original spot. So much time had passed that I had lost track. Using Photo Sense, I started working my way back to the light zone. At the least, I was still alive.