I Reincarnated Into A Single-Celled Organism! - I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 17

The snake-like creatures swallowed me in a single bite. I was just a single-celled organism while this creature was made up of thousands of cells. How was I supposed to keep up in such an unfair matchup? Even though the individual cells were individualized to their different purposes, they worked together to create a powerful machine. Even with my evolution and my high status, size meant something. No matter how high the level of an ant, a person could still crush it with a finger.

I had hoped that I could survive some of the small multicellular organisms. I think what had eaten me was some kind of tiny worm. Why was I still around? I immediately used Encapsulation. I was inside its digestive system, but its system didn’t seem strong enough to process me. The damage was in the single digits, and I recovered far faster than it could digest me. Even without the Encapsulation, I could survive. The reason I used Encapsulation is that it put me in a low-energy state.

I couldn’t absorb nutrients within this organism’s digestive tract, so my only choice was to wait it out. As for waiting for what, that was unfortunately coming out the other side. After some time passed though, I was getting a bit bored of waiting. The other versions of me somewhere else in this universe were not trapped in a multicellular organism waiting to be processed. Every hour I waited was experience points that were going to someone who may one day defeat me. I was starting to feel an increasing amount of anxiety.

There had to be another option. It had been a while, so I brought up my status.

Name: ???

Evolutionary Form: 5

Evolution Level: 6

Species: Protista

HP: 69900/62900

Stamina: 69900/69900

Attack: 69902

Mana: 0

Defense: 69903 (109,797)

Agility: 69902

Skills:

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

Attack Skill: Phage Tail, Pilli, Water Jet, Spores

Body Modification Skill: Cellular Growth, Shape Modification, Specialization

Buff Skill: Toxins

Crafting Skill: Adhesion, Cohesion, Glycosylation, Lysis, Transcription

Defense Skill: Encapsulation, Cellular Wall

Endurance Skill: Aerobic Respiration, Chemosynthesis, Fermentation, Glycolysis

Experience Skill: Conjugation

Health Skill: Binary Fission, Homeostasis, Photosynthesis, Regeneration

Knowledge Skill: Nuclear Envelope, Replication

Language Skill: Translation

Movement Skill: Cilia

Perception Skill: Chemiluminescence, Chemotaxis, Photo Sense

Storage Skill: Endocytosis, Exocytosis, Selective Permeability, Vacuole

Stealth Skill: L Form Switching

Support Skill: Acidify

Something wasn’t right there. I hadn’t looked at my status in a while, and while I theoretically understood my gains, it wasn’t until I looked at those stats, that I realized that I was ridiculously powerful. If this was a videogame, wouldn’t I be in the end game? I refused to believe that an attack in the tens of thousands wouldn’t be decimating for any multicellular organism.

Thinking back though, I had never actually attempted to fight the multicellular organism. It had instantly eaten me, and I had panicked and gone into lockdown. I was still a bit traumatized from my earlier deaths. It hadn’t been so long ago since I had to run for my life from various versions of myself. Even after getting used to and dominating the single-cellular world, I still had this feeling like I was at the bottom of the food chain.

As much as this felt like I video game, it wasn’t. I only had one life, and if I made a stupid mistake, no one would appear and grant me a second life. Well, I actually had no clue about that. After all, I was already living my second life. I was only assuming this was a world of one life. At least, back when my clones were getting along, I never encountered a version of myself who had died and then repopped so-to-speak. Although mana was a status criterion, I had 0 mana and had yet to encounter anything that looked like magic.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t want to die a foolish death, but was I playing it too safe? If I didn’t take risks and wasn’t even willing to attack larger creatures, then how would I continue to grow? I had come down to the dark zone exactly because my leveling had stagnated.

Taking a metaphorical breath, I decided. Dropping Encapsulation, my defense plummeted and instead of one damage a round, I started to take ten. It still wasn’t a drop in the bucket for me, but it did cause my stores of chemicals to get used up a bit quicker. Even within my stores, I had enough to last for a very long time. I had truly been acting paranoid.

“Water Jet!”

I couldn’t speak, but I’d like to think that the slight tremor I felt around me was the creature that had swallowed me realizing its fate. I fired and was delighted to see all of the cells I struck explode. At first, they seemed to resist. It was like the collective wall had a greater strength than the sum of its parts. However, after a brief bout of resistance, the jet shot through. I spun around in a circle, bisecting the creature.

I didn’t have ears, but I imagined the gaping mouth of the snake to be a shriek as it broke into two. I immediately used my tail to drag chemicals to me. However, this multicellular organism was composed of eukaryotes, and every cell was almost as large as mine. I had barely even touched a tenth of it when I had already had my fill.

It was time to find the next one. I felt far bolder now that I had killed a creature that had swallowed me. It was at that point I found a creature coming toward me. When my perception was able to make sense of it, it looked to be some wriggly bug with eight feet and a sucker hole in the front. It had little claws and if it wasn’t a thousand times my size, I might have thought it looked cute.

“It’s…it’s… a water bear!”

Although I had taken a lot of biology, I didn’t have a photographic memory or anything. Most of these organisms were lost to me. I couldn’t tell a pylori from a spirilla, but this particular creature was one that biology had fermented into my brain. The tardigrade, also known as the water bear, was microbiology’s golden child. They were considered extremely tough to kill, resisting heat, pressure, and salinity to survive across time and location.

It was coming for me, or perhaps more specifically it was attracted by the snake-like organism I had just killed. It was time for me to do or die. I had to fight the tardigrade and either die or kill it. With a silent roar, I shot out my Water Jet at it. The tardigrade recoiled. At first, it reeled back, and I was expecting it to swipe at me with its impressive claws. I prepared my Flagella to dart to the side. Yet, its paw started to go up and then continued. The entire thing floated up, lacking any other motion.

It’s dead?

I had killed the fearsome tardigrade in a single strike! Weren’t they supposed to be the nigh-invincible monsters of the microscopic world? Now that I thought about it, many of them were herbivorous, and their resilience was more that they could survive the dry spells and use a form of Encapsulation to last in environments where they would otherwise die. They weren’t known for being particularly violent or dangerous.

As I watched the dead Water Bear float away, another multicellular organism arose from the dark and swallowed it. The tardigrade was composed of a thousand cells, but this one seemed to have millions. I couldn’t even make out its entire body as floated by me like a giant leviathan in the night. Seeing such a creature, I was no longer filled with fear though. My mind had started to change.

If anything, seeing larger enemies reinvigorated me. I wanted to go out and fight them now. It was time to take the warrior’s path. I didn’t know how far along I had to go, but if I didn’t work hard, I’d eventually become prey to something else. I went out and began hunting smaller multicellular organisms. It was only on the fifth organism that my stagnant level problem was relieved, and I leveled again.

Congratulations! You have reached level 7.

You have unlocked the skill, Thermoception.

Like that, my vision became more filled with color. I was able to see the temperature now, like some kind of nocturnal monster. It added to my chemical sensing, photo-sensing, and chemiluminescence so that I could now see three-dimensional structures more easily. Before this, things just looked like a moving two-dimensional image. Furthermore, the dark became bright with organisms. I could see thousands of organisms moving around beneath me. Some were massive, while others were tiny, but they all moved around, going about their business.

If I had a mouth, I’d have formed a small smile. It was time to get to work.