Chapter 9

I didn't know if it was because I was in this strange world governed by a game-like system of skills or because I was a single-celled organism, but I didn't go through some process of existential dread upon realizing that there were two of me. Instead, I tried to use Binary Fission again. It didn't work. Perhaps, that was for the best. I had already split up my resources in half, did I want to risk splitting them up again?

I didn't have any real way of communicating with, well, myself. I thought about doing a dance or waving my Pilli, but it all seemed kind of silly. I just had to believe that my other self was probably thinking much the same stuff I was thinking. In which case, he'd realize that while our HP and stamina were less, our attack and defense hadn't changed. That meant we could double our damage output if we worked together to bring down eukaryotes.

I used my Chemotaxis to discover the nearest eukaryote. I took the left, and the other me instinctively took the right. We both initiated our Water Jet and fired at the same time. Two streams of fire struct simultaneously, and damage occurring in two places rather than one seemed to cause that much more damage. The eukaryote is twice as fast as usual. Once it was destroyed, I used Phagocytosis to consume all the remaining chunks. Compared to hunting little prokaryotes, this was far more profitable!

There was only one setback. My stamina and HP weren't the only things cut in half. For whatever reason, my regenerative speed also seemed to be divided between those two bodies. For HP, it only meant that my health didn't restore nearly instantaneously. However, for stamina, my regeneration had become a crawl. Presuming my other half was like me, then we very nearly exhausted ourselves in that fight. I didn't have the buffer that I had hoped I had. Stamina usually regenerated reasonably, so I found myself waiting longer than I expected.

My reserves were filled after organizing everything. That's when a thought occurred to me and I initiated Cellular Growth. I noticed that my other self was doing the same thing. After a few phases of Cellular Growth followed my Phagocytosis and back, I checked my status to see that I had recovered quite a bit of the HP and stamina I had lost after the split.

That's when I realized that Binary Fission didn't have the drawbacks that I thought it had. After my division, my stamina was low, but once I grew a bit I would have my stamina back up to full again. We began to locate and target Eukaryotes, and soon we were both back to our original size as if we had never split into two. That was when I leveled once again.

Congratulations! You have reached level 2.

You have unlocked the skill, Fermentation.

I immediately checked the skill, and that skill was labeled as an endurance skill. Just because it was labeled as endurance didn't mean it would just be a replacement for Glycolysis though. After all, Photosynthesis and Binary Fusion were Health skills, but they had almost nothing alike in how they functioned toward health. One divided health into two bodies, while the other slowly recuperated health in the presence of sunlight.

In biology, Fermentation was a process that worked in tandem with Glycolysis. In the absence of oxygen, it allowed the waste products of Glycolysis to rejuvenate, usually producing a product such as alcohol. I didn't work that way. I discarded those ingredients and made new ones with Chemosynthesis. I only realized now how inefficiently I was running my Glycolysis. Taking Fermentation into account, my stamina started to increase at a much higher rate.

I was able to make some room by discarding some of the chemicals I kept around for Chemosynthesis. Thus, sugar went in and then a waste product came out. I'm not sure what waste product that was. I didn't know what type of Fermentation I made. I kind of liked to imagine I made ethanol, although it didn't make me drunk. Could be lactic acid, but I just didn't know. The only reason I even knew what sugar looked like was because I knew what Glycolysis did. For every other chemical, while I could recognize them with Chemosynth, I only knew them as they related to me as a bacterium.

Speaking of which, since I leveled, that gave me another curiosity. I activated Binary Fission again, and once again my body split in two. I noticed at roughly the same time, my other body split in two as well. Since I was level 2 and my status had just doubled, this wasn't as stressful as the last doubling. I was back to the same hp and stamina as I was before I leveled. I also knew that with a little bit of Cellular Growth, I could fix that.

There were four of me now. This was getting trippy. I was starting to grow a little worried. If I kept making more me, at what point would I stop being me? If their experience started to deviate from my own, wouldn't they go on to become their intelligent bacteria? If we did become individuals, couldn't that eventually lead to me needing to destroy the other mes. I had a feeling the other three mes were looking at me suspiciously in the same way I was looking at them.

That's when I realized that if I was thinking this, then they were likely thinking the same thing. Since I had no intention of attacking them, they had no intention of attacking me. I started to calm down and start aiming for a new eukaryote. With my group of 4, we attacked and brought down a eukaryote in record time. I then proceeded to grow.

This became a group hunt. We worked perfectly together because we were the same person. Although we'd play roles, who played what role was random and seemed more a product of who just happened to be in the most convenient place. We could hunt down and fight more aggressive eukaryotes now too. One of us might act as bait and drag the eukaryote into a trap set by the other three. Like this, we started taking down creature after creature. It was no wonder that we leveled a short time later.

Congratulations! You have reached level 3.

You have unlocked the skill, Phage Tail.

At first, I was a bit confused at what the Phage Tail did, but all it took was looking at my fellow mes to see that it was an upgrade to the Pilli. It was marked as an attack skill. Not only was it longer and more flexible, but it could inject stuff. It sort of reminded me of a scorpion's tail in some ways. I activated Binary Fusion again, and then there were 8 of me.

I could do the math. By the time I was at the end of my biological colony, I'd be able to create 512 copies of myself. That was quite a bit less than what lived in a real bacterial colony, but I wasn't going to fret about that. If Binary Fission continued to grow stronger like Chemotaxis, I'd be able to create nearly infinite copies of myself.

With eight copies of myself, we randomly split into two groups. It no longer seemed important that we work together. Four went after one eukaryote, and four went after another. We all tested out the Phage Tail, and while it was effective for close-range attacks, the eukaryotes were still a bit large. We found it better to deal with them using Water Jets, even if they did require a substantial prep time. As a result, we'd usually load up, unleash the water, and then finish them off with the tails. It was an efficient system.

After breaking in two, I would have thought we would have finished twice as fast, but it took about ten times the number of enemies before we finally reached out next level. This led me to suspect that the leveling here had a ten-fold increase. Every level was tenfold harder to obtain than the previous level. Of course, experience scaled with your evolution. Killing larger organisms netted more experience. So, if one level took 1 eukaryote, it might have taken 100 prokaryotes. If I leveled, the next would take 10 eukaryotes or 1000 prokaryotes. What is higher than a eukaryote? My senses were starting to notice some larger disturbances in the water, but I had been ignoring those.

If I wanted to level faster, I'd need to take risks. Thankfully, I had a buffer I didn't have before. A group of four headed out toward one of the disturbances. It was a massive eukaryote! I only realized now that the eukaryotes I was hunting were on the small side. I felt as dwarfed by these things now as I had felt when I had first encountered the eukaryotes back then. The four of us got into position and then activated our Water Jets.

They each struck the surface, but it seemed to heal nearly as fast as we damaged it. Suddenly, the entire surface rippled, and several tentacles shot out. We turned around and ran, but the tentacles were too fast. I had thought we had this, but I watched as tentacles bound up one of those with me. Then another, and a third. At least, I was able to get away.

That's what I was thinking, but then I felt myself get grabbed, I was pulled into the eukaryote. I fight relentlessly, but I might as well have been fighting gravity.

HP-100

No! I had to survive!

HP-100

Your HP is critically low!

I could do it if I just-

HP-100

You have died.