I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 246

The world dissolved into a blinding cascade of light and a nauseating lurch, a sensation of being pulled apart and reassembled in an instant. One moment, we were in the antechamber of the Antecedent ruin, the air thick with Lord Blanche’s impeding threats and the approaching danger of the mad survivors; and then the next, we were standing someplace else. So, teleportation really was a thing.

The portal to the Antecedent pocket dimension, let alone the path I took to find this underground location in the first place, could be explained by a doorway that opened from one location to another. In essence, the distance between two locations was shortened or twisted, making it so that with a single step, one could cover vast or otherwise impossible distances. This kind of gateway travel had been theorized and seemed the most likely means of surpassing the limits of more traditional travel.

Compared to that, teleportation was a different mechanism completely. There were two possible ways that teleportation could exist. In the first method, a person’s body was scanned, and their entire being was turned digital as some kind of snapshot blueprint. The living being was either destroyed as a result of such a thorough scan or merely killed as a function of the scan to avoid redundancy.

The blueprint was then sent to a new location, where a new machine used the blueprint to rebuild the person using available material. In this respect, to the person, they would instantly disappear from one location and reappear in another, but in reality, their old body was destroyed, and a completely new body was created. The only reason the new body wasn’t a duplicate seemed to be because of some moral sense of continuity.

When I was a prokaryote living inside that pond, I used binary fission to endlessly replicate myself. Many copies of me had died, and the only one that survived in the end was the current version of me. I was privy to the thoughts of any other version or their experiences after our division. One could say this resulted in me having a somewhat unbothered viewpoint on the idea of being copied.

However, from the best I could determine, this wasn’t that kind of teleportation system. Instead, this teleportation system used some kind of spatial pathway. We traveled through it so quickly on this short journey that it was hard to detect, but it didn’t function all that differently from the aforementioned gate travel. The only difference was that the gate moved over you, rather than you having to cross the gate. This manifested in a bunch of bright lights, which took a few moments to dissipate, finally leaving us in darkness.

As I regained my senses, the first thing I noticed was the air. It was a bit different now. It was colder, heavier, and carried a faint, metallic tang, like the scent of old blood or rusted iron. The second thing I noticed was the lack of any lighting. It wasn’t oppressive, suggesting that there were still traces of the bioluminescent flora that had lit everything previously, but there was clearly a lot less of it where we were currently.

Tiffany pushed away from me, on guard after I had suddenly grabbed her. She took a few shaky breaths, her eyes wide as she scanned our new surroundings. We were in the corridor. There was no teleportation array near us, as the targeted location didn’t need one.

“We’re… we’re still underground,” she finally managed to say, her voice a mixture of surprise and confusion. “I thought the array would take us to the surface. What did you do?”

“It normally would,” I replied calmly as I let my eyes adapt to the darkness. “I altered the coordinates. We’re deeper within the Antecedent compound now.”

Her head snapped toward me; her expression slightly upset. “You what? Are you insane? You left us trapped in here! Without Lord Blanche and his men, we have no protection! We won’t last an hour in these ruins!”

I glanced over at her. I had always planned to explore these ruins. It’s just that when I imagined doing it, it was by myself.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, turning to face her fully. “I’ll protect you.”

“You?” Tiffany scoffed, a harsh, disbelieving sound that echoed in the vast, silent chamber. “You’ll protect me? You’re just a…”

She trailed off. The hard lines of her anger softened, and a faint, almost imperceptible blush crept up her neck, coloring her pale cheeks in the dim, otherworldly light.

“I’m a what?” I asked.

“You’re an idiot,” she finally said, her voice no longer having much force.

She turned away from me, focusing her attention on looking off into the darkness. She seemed to be able to see clearly as she immediately approached some runes on the wall and wiped some webs and dust away. However, she was not able to read what it said. It appeared that paragon eyesight was superior to human eyesight, and they were able to see even in such low settings. As for me, I had many ways to view my environment, and I was also working on improving my night vision through mutating my eyes. There was no point in creating a light that might be noticed by other things if we didn’t have to. I walked over and examined the sign she was looking at.

“It says… Cells… this way,” I told her unprompted, guessing this is what she wanted to know.

“Cells?” She looked back at me. “What do you mean, cells?”

“I don’t know, should we continue?” I asked.

She nodded lightly, and the two of us started walking in the direction the sign pointed. We walked down a long, dark corridor. The walls were lined with strange, metallic panels that hummed with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. The air grew colder, and the metallic scent in the air intensified. Tiffany walked with a newfound caution, her every step light and deliberate, her senses on high alert. The skills she had honed when she acted like a thief sneaking into other manors seemed to be on full display here, as her steps made no noise and she seemed to blend into the shadows, giving her a somewhat illusory appearance.

She seemed to notice me staring at her as she shot me a look. “What? This place is dangerous. I want to be ready for anything.”

I shrugged. “Do as you must. I won’t lose sight of you.”

She stiffened for a moment and then turned away from me. She suddenly began to move a bit faster ahead, no longer appearing hidden. Did I say something to offend her?

“Wait!” I hissed as I hurried after her, realizing she wasn’t stopping.

As a result, I nearly ran directly into her when she suddenly stopped. She was standing at an entrance that opened into a large circular room, but she had stopped rigidly. I looked over her shoulder to see an old man standing there. He was mostly bald with long grey hair coming from the back of his head. He also had a large grey beard that ran all the way down to his groin. This was probably for the best because he was pretty much wearing rags beyond that. He appeared bony and malnourished, but as soon as our eyes met, I couldn’t help but feel an unexpected twinge of danger. There was definitely something off about his eyes. They had an animalistic quality to them that gave the impression that he was not quite human.

“Well… hello there.” He smiled.

His mouth moved strangely, and his voice had an accent I couldn’t match. It was like he hadn’t spoken words in an extremely long time.

“Wh-who are you?” Tiffany asked breathily. “An… an Antecedent?”

“Does that frighten you, dear?” He asked calmly, tilting his head.

“Y-you really are one?” Tiffany seemed shocked. “You have the knowledge of the ancients?”

“Oh… yes…” He nodded. “I have all kinds of knowledge. All you need to do is free me, and I will impart to you anything you want to know. You will be the strongest among your generation. I can show you the very secrets of evolution! Just call me… Dr. Mengele.”

“Mengele… wait, free you?” Tiffany seemed to be completely overwhelmed by this guy’s appearance.

Although it was suppressed, he gave off an aura of someone quite powerful. Unfortunately, he seemed to be hiding it so without a frame of reference, I had no clue. At the least, this was the strongest existence I had ever encountered. However, that wasn’t the part of him that was most terrifying.

“You haven’t figured it out?” I asked, gesturing to his leg, which appeared to be bound to a chain attached to the floor. “Cells… this is a prison. An Antecedent prison. This is where they locked up everyone too dangerous to remain in polite society!”