What To Do, Now? Part II

And again he was left alone. This time as something less than a cell.

'What am I?'

This question popped into his head.

'What am I really? I can't be a cell. I am more than a molecule, for sure. I have some proteins and lipids.'

No, carbohydrates, though. All the sugars are long gone. 

'All that work! If I could have just survived I would have been set for life. ... Or at least for a little while.'

Some of his old feelings came back. His soul wanted to hang on to them, but they came and went easily as if they had been from a dream. His body, or whatever this current existence was, couldn't even hang onto a single emotion. Once all the emotions came and went his soul was left with nothing.

No desire, fear, or anger just a sense of being. 

'What to do?'

The only thing he could will to do at this point was to look at his profile.

[Profile

Name: Jim

Species: Non-determinate

Title: Autoimmune Disease

Level: 1

Experience: 2.010 (1/3)

Health: 1/1

Critical Health: 1/1

Physical: 1

Mental: 1

Spiritual: 1

Talent: Meditation III [0], Concentration II [8], Memory II [2], Self-examination II [2] 

Skills: None

Evolution point(s): 1

Organelle: None

Mutations: Double Plasma Membrane

Neutral biomass points: 0

Poison biomass points: 0

White blood cell biomass: 2,178,339

]

'Okay, well a lot of things have changed. But that autoimmune disease title is not fair!'

Even without a body Jim's soul felt a moment of pure animalistic fear. Autoimmune disease was one of the great terrors of modern society back in his home world. 

'I kind of don't want to see what that title is all about. Let me save it for later.'

He thought to himself.

It was nice to have the extra levels in his talents. It is too bad that Cassandra wasn't giving him any skills. Talents were nice to have, but he hadn't seen any benefits to them yet. It was all a little bit too general. Maybe they would become more useful later. Right now he was fighting and dying. He would really use something to stay alive.

'Wait! My goddess wouldn't give me something useless.'

On the other hand, maybe his talents were what was keeping him alive at this point. He had had terrible luck in his original life. If transmigrating kept his luck then he should have died already. Actually, I have technically died quite a few times already. So maybe it is just his talents that were keeping him alive. Talents could be changing his luck.

'But, I only have these talents because Cassandra has given, blessed, bought them for me. I don't know what Cassandra's gifting process entails.'

It didn't matter how Cassandra was doing it. All that mattered was that she was the one who was sustaining his life from moment to moment. Probably as a result of these skills he was still in the game.

'I have to show her more appreciation and love! … Wait! Ewww, gross, … if you are listening to this. I don't mean romantic love! I mean just normal love. Besides, I am just a collection of molecules right now, I don't have the hormones that are needed. I am sorry! Errr, wait, why am I saying sorry?'

Jim said to himself. His feelings for Cassandra were so messed up. He just hoped that she wasn't too revolted by his musings. 

'Wait, why didn't she send me a [Concentration II +1] upgrade just then? I could have used another concentration upgrade.'

Thinking about it Jim realized that he wasn't at risk of dying just at this moment. He could probably survive for a long time. As just a rag of molecules floating through this substrate of aqueous liquid. 

'I suppose I have to remind myself to concentrate this time. Right, I can do that!'

After giving himself a good shove in the pants he got back to analyzing his profile. 

'Let's see, I also lost my only organelle.'

It was a little bittersweet to loose his one and only organelle. He had had so many organelles there for a little while. Of course they hadn't been recognized by the system. Yet, at the same time he had felt like a millionaire! Spoiled for choice he could have done a lot with them, even if that just meant recycling them for spare carbohydrates. Well, all of that is gone now. 

'Maybe if I ever meet, or erm, for sure meet that poison entity he will give me another poison sac. I don't know.'

Moving on to the next change in his profile he contemplated what he could do with all that spare biomass. He had quite a lot of it. There was so much here. Technically though, he could only use 25 biomass to get his maxed out double plasma membrane again. 

'I mean, I guess I could play around and see if I can get a triple membrane or a few super vacuoles?'

Still even then, playing around wasn't going to put a dent in two million biomass. There was not much he could do with all of those precious points of biomass.

Of course he still had that one evolution point. That could be useful. But again same as before he didn't know what would be best to use it on. And now that he had lost the poison sac, he had also lost his method for gaining experience. It wasn't likely that he would level up again anytime soon. Killing almost another 10,000 cells was not going to be easy with just his membrane as an attack method. 

His experience points had gone up more than they should have. Only about 200 of the white blood cells had died last time he checked. However, maybe the poison he had originally released was still working havoc somewhere.

'That was probably it. Now I just have to decide whether to max out my membrane again or not.'

Tricky question, whether to upgrade or not. The problem that Jim was feeling was that he wasn't sure how the white blood cells had found him in the first place. If he upgraded his membrane back to max would his cell signature be the same as it was before? If so then the white blood cells would hunt him down and kill him again. 

'I am not prepared to deal with another couple waves of white blood cells. Especially those killer T cells. They were bad, just bad.'

Jim thought and then realized that it was time to review his new title.

'Here goes.'

[Title: Autoimmune Disease (Negative)

Received after targeting and attacking host's immune system over 100 times.

Effect 1: 15% increase in detection by other cells.

Effect 2: Other cells will have a higher likelihood (10%) of alerting the immune system to your presence.

Effect 2: Other cells will receive a bonus to attack in battle (10%, 20% if it is a while blood cell.)

]

'Great, just great! This is just the best thing to wake up to in the morning. Can't this negative title also give me some positive boost! Even if it just against the immune system? Isn't that how this is supposed to work?'

Jim wanted to give up! Go back to the endless nothingness of nirvana since he didn't have enough karma sounded good right now. Even if he had to wait millions of years to reincarnate again. Wouldn't that be better than this?

'Fine, Mother of Nirvana, I don't care. I will just use my evolution point to upgrade my membrane. Just to get this over with. I am so dead anyways. Why try to game the system? I'll just do what I want and hopefully speed up my death!'

Going into the system he went to the evolution point screen and selected his double plasma membrane, which wasn't much of a double plasma membrane right now.

[Confirm: Use evolution point to upgrade the 'Double Plasma Membrane' - Y/N]

'Yes!'