What To Do, Now?
'Well, I guess I need to see what my status looks like now.'
[Profile
Name: Jim
Species: Non-determinate
Physical: 1
Mental: 1
Spiritual: 1
Talent: Meditation III [0], Concentration II [0], Memory II [0], Self-examination II [0]
Skills: None
Skill points: 0
Organelle: Poison Sac
Mutations: Plasma Membrane
Neutral biomass points: 0
Poison biomass points: 131
]
'Nice, I am rolling biomass! Let's see what the options are for upgrading.'
[Mutations
Locomotion - 0
Attack - 0
Defense - 0
Specialization - none
Auxiliaries - none
Available biomass:
Neutral - 0
Poison - 131
]
And then to the upgrade menu.
[Available mutations with 131 points of poison biomass:
Plasma Membrane Level 20 (Max)
]
'Mother of membrane! So I have all these points, but no where to spend them?'
This was a repeat of earlier his starting point from before. But this time he had nothing but the plasma membrane. All the internal organelles and structure was gone, either ejected when the cell ruptured or canabalized for parts during his fight. Besides the poison sac the inside of the cell was completely pristine. Actually this was a worse starting point than before.
'What? Do I have to wait till the poison entity comes back? This is crazy.'
Waiting around for some other entity to come bump up against him again was the only thing he could do.
Jim settled down to begin the waiting game again when suddenly an idea hit him. Concentrating on the poison sac he initiated it to begin producing poison.
Promptly it activated. Out into the cell a little horde of proteins grouped up. And that was it. The sac stopped processing any further. However, it was clear that the proteins were very dangerous. Jim could clearly tell that they were not very harmful to him, but that they would be extremely potent against his original cell body.
'I guess it paid off that my current membrane was made from poison biomass. Maybe it is granting me immunity? Yes!'
However, the poison sac was done. No more proteins were made. Carefully Jim caused the membrane to open. It was frustrating, but besides opening the cell wall he couldn't do anything to move the proteins along. His original thought was to release the poison into the environment. Doing so might spread the poison out and kill something, hopefully granting experience points. It was a slim hope, but it was better than nothing. Waiting around to starve to death again was not high on his list of important things to do.
A few proteins aren't going to kill anything though. Well maybe if the proteins run into a particularly weak cell.
'Most likely, I am going to have to figure out how to create more poison. What can I do? Sacrifice my new max leveled membrane? ...'
The last thing Jim wanted to do was sacrifice his membrane. He had worked so hard to get it. Just thinking about breaking it up to provide energy and materials to the poison sac was too much. There had to be another way. Slowly Jim went through his status screen again.
[Profile
Name: Jim
Species: Non-determinate
Physical: 1
Mental: 1
Spiritual: 1
Talent: Meditation III [0], Concentration II [0], Memory II [0], Self-examination II [0]
Skills: None
Skill points: 0
Organelle: Poison Sac
Mutations: Plasma Membrane
Neutral biomass points: 0
Poison biomass points: 131
]
'Please, please, please let the line here about the poison sac organelle by interactive!!'
Sure enough when he willed it the status screen allowed him to look at the details of the sac.
[Poison Sac Level 1
Available biomass: 131
Upgrade: Y/N
Supply: Y/N
]
'I have 131 points, let's do some experimenting! Upgrade!'
[Upgrade cost: 10 poison biomass points Y/N]
Unfortunately for Jim the upgrade cost way too much.
'What kind of amazing poison sac is this? Mother of poison! No, no, no. Let's hold off on the upgrade, please! This is way to rich for my blood. What happened to the upgrade cost being 1 point?'
Carefully Jim canceled out of the small upgrade screen and went back to see how much the supply would cost.
[Supply cost: 1 +/-
Y/N
]
'Excellent, I can choose my confidence level. Great, this is much better!'
Selecting yes, he carefully watched to see how much poison the sac would create this time. Jim was not disappointed. About 100 X times the amount of poison eventually made its way out into the inner area of the cell. By this time a greater portion of the poison was flowing out of the cell. Osmosis was a great thing. Just like water spreading after spilling on the floor, the poison was moving from high concentration areas to low concentration areas. In this case and fortunately for Jim the high concentration was inside the cell and the low concentration was outside.
After only a little bit of poison left the cell he realized that he would have to raise the concentration within the cell a lot more before he could see any poison distribute thick enough outside.
'This is the only thing I can do! I have to pump it out! 10 more points, go.'
Ten more points went into supplying the poison sac. Then ten more and ten more after that. But still no notifications, no movement could be sensed from outside the cell.
'What am I thinking? This is all I can do. I might as well gamble. It is succeed or die anyways!'
All the rest of the poison biomass points were sacrificed to the poison sac. It shuffled a bit and then started to spit out protein after protein. Hours later it huffed to a stop. Hopefully it was hours. It definitely felt like hours.
At this point the inside of the cell was packed with poison protein so tight that the plasma membrane was again straining in places. Threatening to explode, the membrane was once again compromised. Yet, the cell held tight.
'Ha! You can't defeat my max level membrane. Yay!!'
Laughing at his circumstances Jim had to find some way to get through another waiting game.
Some time later, 'I wish there was some kind of clock. This is torture, not knowing if a day has passed or even just a few minutes. How does a cell perceive time anyways? Cells don't last forever do they? Am I going to die here?'
One thing was really positive, in all the time that Jim had waited he had not received a single notification that he was about to run out of food. Thinking about it he guessed that his only organelle had received a lot of biomass and the plasma membrane had undergone apotheosis as well as an embodiment.
'Maybe my cell wall is immortal at this point. Thank goodness for small miracles!!'
Some indeterminant time later.
[You killed a cell.]
'Yay! Hurray!! I can't believe it worked. Yes!!!'
Over the world with happiness Jim marveled again at how the emotion of a cell was so single track. His soul body was overwhelmed with the joy that his physical cell body provided as feedback. Then his cell/soul mind became really awed.
[You killed a cell.]
[You killed a cell.]
[You killed a cell.]
[You killed a cell.]
…
[You killed a cell.]
[You killed a cell.]
'Wait, what? This is too much! I thought maybe a cell, at the most two or three. What is happening?'
[You have killed 378 cells.]
[You have unlocked the experience system. Please see your status screen for more information.]
[Profile
Name: Jim
Species: Non-determinate
Level: 0
Experience: 0 (0/1)
Physical: 1
Mental: 1
Spiritual: 1
Talent: Meditation III [0], Concentration II [0], Memory II [0], Self-examination II [0]
Skills: None
Skill points: 0
Organelle: Poison Sac
Mutations: Plasma Membrane
Neutral biomass points: 0
Poison biomass points: 0
]
'Oh! This is crazy. I am level zero?? What kind of system is this? And I only need one point to level to 1? Wow, this is easy mode. Come on poison, just give me one more kill!!'
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
'No!!!!!!'
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
...
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
[You killed a cell. You have received 0.0001 experience points.]
If he could slap his own forehead he would.
'How many cells do I have to kill to even get one experience point?'
Calculating in his head he realized that he was going to have to kill 10,000 cells.
'Please, oh, please, oh, please be enough poison!'
At this point Jim was hoping that when he leveled up the system would heal him back to perfect condition again. And hoping against hope that would mean that he would get back all his organelles and support structures. A lot of anime and light novels had that feature, right. It wasn't too much to hope.