I Reincarnated Into A Single-Celled Organism!

After listening to Erika’s talk, I finally understood what it took to evolve. One needed lots of mana, and the quickest way to get mana was to kill a creature that had more mana and absorb all of its essence. When I was living in the pond, it was easy to consume creatures stronger than myself, but now that I was a human in a society, there were rules that I couldn’t violate. For example, I couldn’t go out and kill humans to absorb their mana, and it appeared that techniques that directly absorbed someone’s mana were considered dark techniques outlawed in this province.

However, I didn’t plan to sit around and slowly absorb mana either. If I did that, who knew how long it would take? It was already clear to me that I wasn’t like normal people. I took a lot more mana to level than they did. Not only had I been absorbing mana for months, but I had just absorbed the contents of all five of these flawless, and it was only enough to gain a single level for me.

If a normal human did the same, they likely would have jumped straight to flawless, not that a mortal likely could have killed a flawless paragon. Even if they had stumbled across an unconscious flawless, they wouldn’t have had the strength to push the knife past their skin. It would have been like trying to cut through steel for them. No matter how sharp the knife, they couldn’t do it.

Yet, for me, even though they were technically a higher lifeform, I had evolved step by step from a single-celled organism. The issue wasn’t killing them, but absorbing them without getting into trouble. Since they attacked me first, I killed without action, As for the toxin, it was just some of my cells. Not only did they absorb all the mana, but they dissolved the body too. They use Apoptosis to quickly induce cell death and Lysis to dissolve all the biomatter.

On the surface, it looked like I was just leaving no trace of my kills, but the real reason I did it was so no one discovered I had absorbed all of their mana. I had thought of this as soon as Erika mentioned it, and it was lucky that I didn’t have to wait very long to test my theory. It turned out everything worked out easily, and I had even leveled. It had felt like ages since I had done that. I couldn’t help but check out my status.

Name: Spirit

Evolutionary Form: 10

Evolution Level: 4

Species: Human

HP: 4,999,999,900/4,999,999,900

Stamina: 4,999,999,900/4,999,999,900

Attack: 4,999,999,902

Mana: 4

Defense: 4,999,999,903 (7,499,999,855)

Agility: 4,999,999,902

Skills:

Absorption Skill: Active Diffusion, Endocytosis, Phagocytosis, Pinocytosis,

Attack Skill: Calcification, Electrogenesis, Eutrophication, Phage Tail, Pilli, Water Jet, Spores

Body Modification Skill: Cellular Growth, Cellular Redistribution, Chromatophore, Metamorphosis, Morphology, Shape Modification, Specialization

Buff Skill: Anatomical Separation, Decoupling, Physical Reinforcement, Signal Transduction, Toxins

Crafting Skill: Adhesion, Cohesion, Decomposition, Filtration, Glycosylation, Lysis, Matter Shifting, Transcription

Control Skill: Autobiokinesis, Cloud Control, Differentiation, Externalized Control, Unification

Defense Skill: Apoptosis, Cellular Wall, Encapsulation, Fibrinolysis, Organ Reinforcement

Endurance Skill: Aerobic Respiration, Chemosynthesis, Fermentation, Glycolysis

Experience Skill: Conjugation

Health Skill: Autophagy, Binary Fission, Gastrulation, Growth Factors, Homeostasis, Mitosis, Photosynthesis, Regeneration

Knowledge Skill: Adaption, Nuclear Envelope, Replication, Succession

Language Skill: Translation

Magic Skill: Basic Magic, Mana Enhanced Strength

Movement Skill: Cilia, Dexterous Movement, Flagellum, Pseudopod

Perception Skill: Chemiluminescence, Chemotaxis, Cognitive Senses, Parallel Processing, Photo Sense, Thermoception

Storage Skill: Endocytosis, Exocytosis, Luminal Storage, Selective Permeability, Vacuole

Stealth Skill: Crypsis, L Form Switching

Support Skill: Acidify, Antibodies, Mimicry, Mind Division, Mutation, Mutagenic

Of course, the increase in status left me feeling complicated. My status had increased by nearly 20% just like that. However, I was already so strong and fast that I had to restrain myself. I had never actually used my status to their full ability. If I even tried, I worried I might destroy an entire region. The one status I wanted to see increase, Mana, was only at four now. It was a pathetically small amount. Then again, everything I used mana with so far had only been with 3, so 4 felt 25% stronger.

The skill was pretty much useless to me, but it helped me understand the power of a paragon better. Strength could be directly enhanced by mana by the time you become a level 4 human. I had a feeling speed and defense would also be added before reaching Paragon. So, they could temporarily boost attacks or defenses with the right techniques far beyond their normal ability. This was all based on how much energy you could utilize in mana. Since a paragon had a ten-fold increase over a mortal, that meant that not only their status increased exponentially, but also their ability to strengthen those statuses using ever-increasing mana.

After only a few moments of observing my changes, I turned toward the final guy. He likely had the most mana of any of them. Would it be enough to reach level 5? Not likely, but it would be a pleasant start. As I took a step forward, his thin sense of calm broke down.

“Y-you promised! You can’t kill me!” He began to panic.

“Halt!” A voice came from behind.

He looked behind me, and a look of relief filled his face. I turned back to see a large group of people standing in the road, coming down from the city. Even if I didn’t recognize the colors of purple and blue for being part of the Stride family, I recognized Jordan Stride. Although, he wasn’t the one who spoke. It was an older man standing next to him, who I recognized from being one of the elders during the tournament. He was a high-level champion, up there with the strongest I’d encountered in this province.

“Why?” I asked. “I’m just cleaning up some trash the guards missed.”

A couple of the people behind Stride in armor moved uncomfortably. It was clear these were the guards who had been suppressing the road. It looked like when things didn’t go Jordan’s way, he had called his elders to help rectify the situation. I moved toward the man on the ground, who began to panic.

“Ah! Help! Don’t let him kill me! I’m one of you! I’m from the Stride family!” he ripped off the face covering and hood, revealing a young man.

“You dare attempt to murder people from the Stride family?” One of the men shouted. “Arrest him!”

None of them had looked surprised by the reveal it was Stride, but they were quick to react. About ten guards stepped forward, but they only moved a few feet before they froze. This was because another group had appeared of the same size.

“Stop!” A voice called out as the group came up from the Academy side.

The one at the lead was none other than the headmistress. She had a particularly unhappy expression on her face. The rest were guards from the Academy. We were soon surrounded on both sides with two groups of about equal size. The guards on the Stride side all turned back to the elder, whose expression was still calm.

“What is the meaning of this? Do you wish to interfere with a matter of the houses?” He asked.

“Houses?” The headmistress snorted coldly. “These are two of my students and a personal guest from the university proper, heading home from a day at my academy, and you want to say I have no right to be involved? Erika alone means this matter involved the academy, but even if she wasn’t present, I would still come to protect my students.”

“Your students are attacking and killing members of the Stride family.” He declared.

“That’s not true!” Erika cried out. “They attacked us claiming they were bandits. We were just… just defending ourselves.”

She couldn’t help but look away with that last part. Her voice didn’t sound all that convincing. She was likely conflicted over me killing them. I had already incapacitated the guards. I technically didn’t need to kill them, but I did it anyway. It weighed on her conscious. She was still too innocent.

“I can also confirm this is what happened.” Penelope’s voice was far more steady. “They set out to settle a grudge. This man even gave away Jordan Stride.”

“I did not such thing!” The man on the ground turned white, lowering his head in shame when the elder and Jordan both gave him severe looks.

“It appears there has been some failure of communication.” The elder spoke up. “Jordan likely expressed his dissatisfaction over losing his previous match against this boy, and an overzealous subordinate wanted to curry his favor and acted recklessly. Isn’t that true?”

He looked sharply at Jordan, who immediately lowered his head and spoke through gritted teeth. “I should be more mindful of my words. I never expected a subordinate to take action over a childish rant.”

The man on the ground looked at him in disbelief, but when the elder shot him a look, he also lowered his head. “It’s as they say. I was trying to curry favor and wanted to help reclaim Master’s honor.”

“So, he did beat Jordan again…” Penelope let slip, causing Jordan to stiffen, his expression becoming quite dark.

If I recalled, Jordan Stride had been courting her. It had to look embarrassing for her to say something like that.

After a moment, the headmistress nodded. “It appears as you say. I recommend an appropriate punishment.”

It seems like things were about to be resolved with just that. The weakening toxin I had released had already completely dissipated. Penelope and Erika had already returned to their feet with each other’s help, and the guy was on his knees with his head down. The other bodyguards were all puddles, the only thing remaining being their armor and clothing.

The elder nodded. “Punishment will be handed out. We’ll also provide both the Capala household and the Academy with a small gift of atonement.”

“We will agree to that.” The headmistress gave a nod.

“Sounds good to me.” I pulled Eternal Harmony back out from the Luminal Space and then took the remaining steps toward the man.

He sneered at me for a moment until he saw me lift the blade. “Wait, no!”

That was all he could say before I swiped. His head came off his shoulders. Erika let out a little grunt, but the rest of the crowd went silent. I looked around innocently as his headless corpse collapsed back to the ground.

“What?” I blinked, “Was that not his punishment?”