I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 197

I walked over to Felix, where he was still on the ground dying, and kneeled next to him.

“I’m not sure what I am…” I responded honestly to the question he asked. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Was it possible to save Felix? There were supposedly some powerful alchemic medicines that might have reversed his fate, but they were above my current abilities, and even if I knew how to create them, I didn’t have the time. Could I use my powers to somehow keep him alive? It was possible that I could use parts of my own body to artificially sustain his life and allow him to heal, but it wasn’t like I knew how to do that instinctively. Without practice, I was just as likely to kill him as save his life.

Felix had just tried to kill me, and the result was that he was dying himself. One could call this karma, although while this world believed in karma, I didn’t personally ascribe to such superstition. Either way, I felt no pity or remorse. I hadn’t been the one to strike him down, so his death was completely the result of his actions. The only involvement I had was not going out of my way to save him. This was the best-case scenario, and ultimately what I planned out from the moment the howl demon appeared.

The only reason I was even giving him any mind was because he had done something unexpected. He had jumped in the way of the enemy’s attack, saving my life. I hadn’t expected Felix to do something like that. He left me with a complicated feeling in my heart. At the very least, in his final moments, I could ease his mind with an appropriate explanation. He had even offered me this much when he thought I’d be the one dying.

“Th-the fleshhowlers… you could have killed them all with ease?” Felix asked, his voice shaky as he struggled to get in breaths.

“At any time…”

“Just… how strong are you?”

“This… I also don’t know.” I shook my head. “I have yet to reach my limits.”

“Why did you… stay back… and hide?” When I merely stared at him, he chuckled but it turned into a painful cough. “Yeah… I knew this question was stupid… as soon as I spoke.”

I cleaned my sword on the grass and then tossed it back into my luminal space. Felix watched all of this, worry forming on his face. I then pulled out the poisonous dagger.

“Do you have any final questions before I end your suffering?”

“Why is someone like you… hiding in Stormberg? Why not show off your power? You could serve the lord… you might even be able to become the lord! People would respect you… fear you… worship you…”

I raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t the kind of question I was expecting. I thought about it for a moment, and then I spoke quietly.

“Imagine hypothetically, if you will, a being with unimaginable power. Something stronger than you can imagine. A paragon… an evolved who has been through six… seven evolutions.” As I spoke, his eyes widened in horror as if he was truly imagining such a creature, and I had even pulled back a few evolutions just in case. “How would such a being see the rest of humanity.”

Felix licked his lips. “Ants…”

“Would a person like that care if an ant fears him? Would he be moved by an ant’s prayers? His respect?”

Realization appeared in Felix’s eyes. “Th-then why… even interact?”

“Because there is no one else he has met at the top…” I shook my head. “When you’re alone, and you’re bored, and all that is around you are ants, you play with the ants. You find some you like, and others you don’t. You pick one colony to protect, and another to destroy. You observe them, you learn, but every interaction must be delicate, because if you make one wrong move… you could destroy them all…”

“S-spirit… we are talking hypothetically, correct?”

I met his gaze, and then sighed, “Yeah, hypothetically.”

He let out a breath of relief, but he still looked at me differently now. His eyes held a reverence and fear. It was exactly the kind of look I avoided. If Mara ever looked at me that way, I wasn’t sure what I would do. He probably convinced himself I was only about as powerful as a lord. After all, anything stronger than that likely went outside his ability to imagine. If his mind was able to understand a broader view of the world, he might even be further along in his evolutionary path. As was, his mental barriers weren’t my problem. He would be gone in a bit anyway.

“What are you planning on doing next?” Felix asked.

“I will consume your potential energy. It will hopefully allow me to level up. You already know my potential energy is quite low.”

“N-no… I mean… the others, they didn’t know. This order was given to me alone!” He spoke a bit forcefully, causing him to break into more coughs.

It seemed like he had already come to terms with his death. However, true to the Lou family, he was worried about them the whole way. I clicked my tongue as I made a show of thinking about it.

“I will continue to support Abigail Capala in the meantime. She stands to benefit from this expedition, so I will continue to support the expedition as well. As for the Lou family, I contain no great animosity, nor any great favor. As long as no one else tries to kill me, I won’t seek retribution.”

He closed his eyes and let out a sigh of relief. That seemed to be what he was hoping to hear. However, a moment later, he opened his eyes again.

“Please, forgive my elders. They are blind and can’t see the moon in the sky.”

“That depends on their future actions.”

He nodded to himself as if he expected an answer like this. “One last thing… direct descendent of the family leave a piece of their soul with the family head. Although, I am not one of them, those like Lot, Fortune, and Fate do. If they die, not only will the family be instantly notified of their death, but they will also know how they died and who killed them. If you ever choose to kill a direct descendent, just keep that in mind.”

He didn’t have to say anything, but he seemed to be giving me a good warning. I knew he wasn’t saying it for my benefit but for the benefit of the paragon houses. If I killed one of their children, they would likely come after me. It would be inconvenient for me, but for the family that pursued me, it’d be catastrophic if I chose to wipe them all out. By warning me, he hoped to prevent future disasters.

“For a dying man, you’re certainly insightful.”

“Dying… does that sometimes.” He closed his eyes. “If you’re going to kill me, finish it. I’m ready.”

I looked down at the poisonous dagger in my hand, and then put it away. Instead, I reached out and gently put my hand on his chest. I then sent out an electrical discharge, instantly stopping his heart. His body tensed for a moment but then relaxed. I began to pull the energy out of him directly, sucking it in through my hand like a siphon.

He didn’t open his eyes or thrash around. He died with a peaceful expression on his face. I left behind enough energy that he didn’t turn into a desiccated corpse. This was the level of respect I was willing to show him. Normally, a paragon’s body resisted degradation and decay. A dead evolved wouldn’t start to decay for days. A flawless could take weeks. Someone like Felix might have still looked like he was sleeping even three months after his death, but that wouldn’t be the case after I absorbed the energy from him. Although I intended not to ruin his body, I also felt relieved when I saw the familiar level-up text.

Congratulations! You have reached level 5.

Just like that, I reached a higher level. It took absorbing the power of a champion monster along with a flawless, not to mention hundreds of evolved. It was becoming harder and harder to level, although I never would have been able to do it in a reasonable amount of time if I hadn’t gone on this expedition. It was already worth it for me.

Of course, I unlocked a new human skill. It was called Sensory Reinforcement. Like Mana Enhanced Strength, it allowed me to put energy into my senses to amplify them. If I put mana into my eyes, I could see better. If I put it into my hearing, I could hear better. It was like that. For some reason, it was considered a support skill.  Since my energy was only five, the amount I could reinforce my senses was minuscule compared to the amount I already had naturally. In other words, all of these skills I was unlocking were pretty much useless to the current me.

The thing that excited me more was the doubling of my Mitosis. I could now construct two trillion cells. This was still a far cry from the thirty trillion cells an adult human possessed, but every time I leveled, my body felt more whole. One of the reasons I never went all out with my status was because of my lack of cells. I used mimicry and sacrificed a lot of integrity to make my body look like an adult male despite insufficient cells. It really was the equivalent of being a glass canon. If I tried to use too much force but lacked a body with enough support to handle such force, I could destroy myself in the process.

Ironically enough, if my calculations were correct, that thirty trillion number would be reached when I became tier 9, which would be a peak adult human. I had to wonder if there was some kind of intentional design that caused those numbers to match perfectly.

As I was dwelling on this, I heard the murmurs of a man. I looked over at Lucky, still in a tree where he had been left, although it was the only tree standing in what was now a clearing. He’d be waking up soon, and it looked like I needed to come up with an explanation.