I Reincarnated Into A Single-Celled Organism! - I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 50

With Knight Swallow’s corpse breaking apart at the bottom of my pond, I made sure to initiate an L-form Switch. Tanner looked across the pond, gave me a single nod, and then walked back up to his farmhouse. A short time later, the cart returned with Mara and her mother. They had been through a traumatic event and needed time to recover, but my eyes weren’t focused on them. Instead, I was focused on something else entirely.

I was so focused on it that I hadn’t noticed a small form scampering away. Tanner hadn’t noticed him either. He was too worried about everything that happened. His thoughts were on his family. If we had been paying attention, we would have seen that boy, Markus. He had returned hoping the Knight would give him more money for another job, only to witness his untimely death. The consequences of this lapse would only become apparent later.

For me in that moment, I could not have cared less. That was because some familiar text had appeared in front of my vision.

[You have reached the maximum level for a multi-cellular organism. If you wish to proceed, you must evolve. Your level will return to level 1. Do you want to evolve into a human?]

I had been staring at the text since the moment it appeared. I had finally done it. I had reached my ninth evolution. I was supposed to become something greater than a multicellular organism. I knew that it didn’t always work that way. When I evolved from a eukaryote to a protista, I merely increased my level of complexity. I had done so once again, but nine evolutions, ten forms… and it all led to this?

I could become a human again? Why would I even want to? Humans were hardly evolved creatures. They were stupid, sinful, liars. They came in countless despicable forms. I knew firsthand. I used to be one of those forms. I knew just how vile they could be.

If I chose to become human, I would lose everything I had earned, everything I had fought for. I could lose Mara and her family. I could lose my entire ecosystem. That could be it. I could never be able to evolve again. After all, the number of humans I’d have to kill wasn’t feasible. I’d be a genocidal monster if I tried to achieve that feat.

I was torn. I had been moving forward for countless years. It had been fourteen years, but the truth was that it was even longer. It could have been hundreds if not thousands of years that I worked toward this evolution. Yet, in the end, I didn’t become some higher being. Instead, it had all led to being human again. What a waste of a lifetime.  There was another concern too. The tribulation it would trigger. Just how powerful would be a ninth-level tribulation? Wouldn’t such a thing end up destroying part of the countryside? At the least, the Tanners would be dead.

I wanted to move forward, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure which direction I could take anymore. This was somehow worse than the ninth evolution being impossible to achieve. If I never evolved, I could have continued to move toward some unobtainable goal. Yet, now that I saw where I was heading, it only depressed me. I had spent this life avoiding humanity. There was no way I planned to return to it now. I made my decision.

“No.”

Although I had no voice, I told the system my choice. The text flickered away, and then there was nothing. That was it. My days of evolution were done. I had reached as high as I would ever reach. I felt a bit of sadness deep inside, but I also felt relief. I decided to bring up my status menu one more time. I knew what I was going to see on it, but it had been a long time since I last looked at it.

Name: Spirit

Evolutionary Form: 9

Evolution Level: 9

Species: Multicellular Organism

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

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

Attack: 999,999,902

Mana: 0

Defense: 999,999,903 (1,499,999,855)

Agility: 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, 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

Movement Skill: Cilia, 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, Mimic, Mind Division, Mutation, Mutagenic

Just under a billion hit points. Adding to that just under 69 billion cells, and I was pretty powerful. What would be the point of becoming human anyway? What would be the gain? So that I could leave this pond? Who cared to leave? I was happy here. This was my home.

“Spirit, huh?”

I also noticed that the silly name Mara had given me had somehow stuck. That’s all I was, a pond spirit. I sunk into myself once again. Since I wasn’t going to join humanity, why was I wasting so much time watching over the Tanner family? Instead, I decided it was better to just continue until I inevitably died. Meaningless, without a future, just like how my insignificant life was supposed to go.

Time didn’t speed up for me though. If anything, the days moved agonizingly slowly. Mara came back to my pond the next day like nothing had ever happened, but I no longer responded to her. At first, she didn’t seem to mind much and would continue to drone on. However, as days turned into weeks, she grew more and more upset.

“It’s my fault.” Tanner stopped Mara from jumping into the pond. “I had him do something, and it cost him most of his energy. He needs to rest, It may be a long time until he has the strength to communicate again.”

“I-is that it?”

Tanner looked in my direction and then nodded to her. “Mm… keep talking to him. Maybe… one day, he’ll awaken again.”

“I-I will” She responded, her eyes filled with tears.

The pair of them hugged. He gave me a hesitant look over her shoulder, but then shook his head and looked away. He was lying for her sake. Maybe, he had his suspicions of why I had stopped communicating, but he didn’t want her to worry, and he wasn’t going to force it.

Mara came back every day, talking to me like I was a comma patient. Sometimes, she would bring food offerings. Other times, she would read from a book. She spoke less and less about Markus, and more and more about wanting to go travel. Her father said that she couldn’t go out. The world was too dangerous for a young woman like her. She told him she was the same age as Carolina when they left, but he said that was different. They left out of necessity. She absolutely couldn’t leave.

All of her frustration and anger were relayed to me. Sometimes, she’d spend hours complaining about how unfair her parents were being. She said she was growing too big for this farming town, and she wanted more for her life. I listened to all of it, not necessarily because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. Long past were the days when months passed in the blink of an eye. Every day ticked meticulously forward, and I felt no relief.

Eventually, her visits began to slow down. From every day to ever other day, and then once a week. With me never responding, her visits finally became monthly. Even then, two years later, she was still visiting me. She was sixteen, a beauty just like her mother, yet she still came once a month down to my shores. There, she’d have a picnic.

She pulled something out of her dress, looking both ways before leaning toward the shoreline. “This is father’s best brandy. I snuck it out. Would you like a drink?”

I didn’t respond. Her dad would likely be very angry when he found out she had taken it. The guy did like to drink, although his paragon status made it more difficult for him to get drunk, so he had stiffer drinks than usual. She still didn’t hesitate to pour it into my pond.

It would be a shame if I wasted it. I made sure to collect and savor the liquid. It reminded me of the time I had gotten drunk. That’s what I needed to do. I began Fermentation until my pond was 10% alcohol. Finally, I was able to drift off.

“No! You asshole! Fuck you!”

Slap! Slap!

“What did you say? Say it again!”

Slap!

My sister’s hand tightened against mine. We were hiding in the closet again. In the living room, my stepdad had been drinking, and now he was hitting and punching our mom. I squeezed my sister’s hand tighter and tried to cover her ears by pushing in head against my chest.

Slap!

I felt her jump a little, but she didn’t react more than that. She had already become used to this. She barely even trembled anymore.

“Sister, it will be okay,” I tried to reassure her, my voice shakier than I would have liked.

“How will things ever be okay?”

I felt something warm in my arms and knew that she was crying. I bit my lips, trying to fight back the tears. I wanted to cry too, but I needed to stay strong.

“We just need to run away,” I whispered, “I’ll run away, and I’ll take you with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

“Y-you promise?”

I reached out a wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I will do everything to protect you. Even if I become the bad guy. Even if I have to burn the world to the ground. I will never abandon you. I will never leave you. I promise.”

She looked up at me with wide eyes, but then she nodded.

Of course, that was a promise I was unable to keep.

I was pulled out of my drunken stupor by a sudden scream. As I cleared out the alcohol from my system, I immediately smelled fire and blood.