AN: Although this intro is not a part of the main plot, it gives the MC quite a bit of backstory so she is not misunderstood later on, especially her base abilities that work even when magic was too thin [https://em.wattpad.com/0f40cee05eaa115f92174c66c7f07cf0b8736525/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f67594e714e336d746d32466b6a773d3d2d3738393538323532392e3135656365366439316664343662336432333539343635373832332e676966?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]        

Within the first realm of the universe, where only trees were supposed to grow new souls, there was a soul that was malformed and can only be described as a unique existence.

This soul was not shaped like a standard soul where there is a point in which everything originates.

No, it was a clustered web of lines interconnected together forming a bond of souls that could only be destroyed by the universe's demise.

This anomaly was not caused by experimentation, but a truly rare coincidence. One of a kind and impossible to replicate because this cluster of souls counted for every soul of a specific type that didn't have a chance to even germinate as an individual in the first realm.

Every soul in this uncountable mass of interlinked souls was of the same origin and kind. If one were to take a step into the first realm and see this being, one would see a singular massive tree.

This tree has been in this location for epochs as even the Creator didn't know what to do with it. Long enough for it to begin to think on a different dimension altogether as a single entity or many, being one of the few souls that still remember the first realm.

It was eventually decided that as a unique being, it should have a unique start that would help it develop its soul. Although the shape of the soul was entirely unique, it could not be supported by a standard body.

--------------- 

I can only recount this part of my memory now as I have just now learned English after Eons.

In the beginning, I was a tree. I could only feel the fresh air that passed over the uncountable number of limbs within a forest of unknown size. I could not see or hear, but I could feel the vibrations that wind had produced as it moved through numerous other trees.

However, that changed. I was changed.

I was thrown into an ocean as a singular cell [https://em.wattpad.com/defc6ee2e585cf7dd85b372e55dd5de5a8e00e90/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f43396a77386675576a4e7a4432413d3d2d3738393538323532392e313565636536333865306231303635353639373236353037333439382e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

I was thrown into an ocean as a singular cell. One of the first cells to be born into this world.

I felt pressure on all sides as I couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening.

My point of view was able to go inside of my cell and I could feel various structures, but I had no clue what they were.

Around me, only liquid was present as I was whisked around. I could feel the currents through this part of the deep ocean as it pushed me into a warmer region.

I had almost no control over my situation like a fisherman whose rudder was broken in a stormy and foggy sea.

This area not only had warmth, but also blobs of white matter. Every once in a while, I would bump into some of these white blobs and my cell walls would automatically absorb it.

These blobs would go into my cell and be transported by tiny little tubes to some structures I couldn't make heads or tails of. The many little tubes were everywhere like little webs.

For a period of time I absorbed these small blobs in contentment, becoming larger.

However, after numerous blobs, I felt incredibly bloated.

I pondered on the situation to solve this issue, but eventually nature solved the problem for me.

I got so large that I just divided into two. Kind of like how an oil drop on a hot frying pan would split into two if it became large enough.

My cellular walls started to bulge out into two different directions.

During this process, I didn't feel pain until the very end where the cellular walls between the two cells 'popped' and then there were two.

I could now simultaneously feel two cells.

This was an odd moment for me as I could now think and feel two at once.

The new cell was a perfect carbon copy of the first cell.

I could now feel them as they drew apart. The problem was that they kept on growing apart until the distance between them could only be described as massive from a small prospective.

I was now following these two cells as they flowed around this warm area until one of them actually fell into an extremely hot area. 

I felt pain like no other as that other cell was incinerated in the incredibly hot water. The pain lasted for perhaps a minute and it died down to nothing with my consciousness being popped away from the second cell.

I was now alone again, feeling fear for the first time in my microbial existence.

However, it did not take long for my to bump into more blobs of food and replicate again.

For a period, I managed to replicate six times making a of sixty four cells by eating the white blobs. I still mentally followed each one during this process. The blobs all drew a vast distance from each other. 

Some cells went outside the warm area, while some stayed in it and fell onto the bottom surface of the ocean near the vent.

I was surprised when the cells stuck onto the ground, and that there was something so supportive in the world, completely solid.

I could feel the distribution of heat in this region and could even tell that there was a point where the heat originated from. This was like mapping software that consists of many points, I began to make sense of the situation.

The cells that fell outside of the heated area began to run out of blobs of food. They began to starve and I felt them slowly blink out of my consciousness, leaving me with forty one live cells.

I also felt some form of terror when they ran out of food. This was also a brand new experience as their deaths were not as quick as the cells that ran into the heat source.

For every new cell I had, I became smarter as I had more parallel consciousnesses to work with. I could come up with better ideas, but with nothing to reference I was still doomed to repeat myself.

When I reached the cell count of three hundred and twenty seven, I decided to play around with the cells. I wanted something new as watching cells fall into the abyss or hell was not fun.

The only real control that I had right now was slightly moving my cell walls. However, I wanted to be able to move, explore, and multiply.

I looked at some of the cell walls on my cells and pondered for a period of time. I couldn't really imagine shapes except for what I saw, which were a bunch of tubes and structures inside my cell, and the spheroid shape of my walls.

Eventually, I just decided to push out one of my cell walls to see if it did anything.

The cell wall began to move outwards and a singular protrusion slowly formed. The tubes inside also expanded and connected to this to form a web which I could feel and manipulate.

With this new tail, I could finally move one of my cells. Although I said that, I tried to move it in directions, but I only rotated when it moved. I tried again and again until finally, I found out that I could wave the tail and it would push me forwards.

Thanks to the net of cells spread out through the volcanic area, I could feel the location of the cell that could swim. I moved it to an area near the hot area that had more food coming out. I also repeated the process for all of the other cells, giving them the ability to swim.

For a period, I replicated like crazy, spreading a massive net. However, I found that swimming in place takes too much energy and it was starting to hamper my progress.

To fix this, I had some of my cells swim near the vent and clump together as tight as they could. I had their cell walls combine into a tight structure which caught the food easier.

However, they still used too much energy, so I had them go to the very bottom and affix themselves to the surface below, which was hard and had many protrusions for me to anchor on.

This conglomeration of cells had become a sphere on the bottom of the ocean close enough to the vent to gather food. They ate food when it came near and redistributed it internally.

After some time, this sphere of cells grew upwards and became taller, like a stalk of wheat it grew until it became blatantly clear that growing any more would only be detrimental. This stalk was hollow and food was moved through the center to support all of the cells.

I decided to copy the plant thing and grew the first stalk's roots outward surrounding the vent, becoming a small field of tall tubes around the hot vent. I also found some spots that were hot, even if they were not gushing stuff in a direction.

This area was calm as I grew millions of cells. Every single cell I could feel and see inside, the tube network and all.

However, I also wanted to go outside of the vent region. I wanted to see what is outside of my area of scope. For that, I needed a method to store energy.

I could store blobs of the food into a large cell, but from my experimentation, large cells are very slow and the tails were not large enough to move them.

I continued to experiment with different structures and took in stuff that wasn't food in the water. Every now and then, I would discover a new body part shape, like a flat tailed fin but overall it was not that impressive.

I combined cells to create a large multicellular creature, which I played around with more as it was the best chance to explore with.

This creature was cylindrical and had a space in the middle to hold food in. I also took some time to figure out how to move the thing, as it was too large for cell-sized tails. I stretched some of the cells on both sides of the creature and interlinked them to where the tubes inside would pull and enable the 'tail' of the creature to move from side to side. Food was moved into the creature's belly through several of the food plants on the ground.

When the creature was as ready as I could get it, I sent it in a random direction in the cold regions. It swam for a period until it started to use the food that I had laboriously piped into the creature earlier.

I moved it around the ocean for as long as possible, but in the end, it ran out of food before I could find anything hot.

I repeated the scout creature countless times until I finally found a new vent.

At this vent, I sewed new seeds and created a new colony of vertical tubes.

When I tried to swim my cells upward, my cells bloated and the cell walls were destroyed. I was not smart enough to know better so I had sacrificed cells in an attempt to breach the 'death wall' above.

Countless years passed and I managed to cover a ludicrously massive area with vent dwelling plant-like creatures. I couldn't help but notice that the majority of the vents were along a line.

The vent lines started to intersect as I grew and I was starting to form a web around the ocean. I also 'felt' a slight curve along the ocean floor with such a vast distance.

I was not successful in going upwards as my cells always seemed to explode when they went too high from the ocean floor.

-------

Throughout this period, I started to experiment both inside and outside. I took in ingredients into experimental cells and saw what they did, meanwhile I played around with different combinations of limbs and internal structures.

The first exciting external structure that I had made was able to link two cells together without the cell walls combining. Of course, how that worked was beyond me at the time.

The second was cells that were sensitive to light. I was puzzled at how and what light was, but I figured out that the heat vents created light.

The most useful inner structure was made from the materials outside. It was a long chain from end-to-end was about a meter in length. When it was bundled up together, it didn't really do anything, but after some time and replication of the chain, I found out that cells with the chain inside of the cell would order the cell to perform actions without the need for my input.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The strings, DNA, would command for me, performing the mundane daily tasks without question.

I played around with this long automatic string plethora times and managed to make cells that would replicate and carry the automatic strings with them. This was done enough times that I actually withdrew my control entirely so I could watch what the cell would do, only leaving a wisp of my control so I could see and replicate anything that the cell does later on.

This new cell carried on its task and replicated constantly, eating the blobs around vents. Eventually the vent was overcrowded and the cells started to move in different directions, dying to the cold.

Some of the cells however, started to mutate beyond recognition of the originals. I have no clue why, perhaps it was because of a flaw within the cell's program.

The new cells spread around everywhere. Some even managed to get through the 'barrier of death' upwards without popping, which grabbed my attention. However, they still ended up popping when they went even higher up. This did not deter the new army of cells as they pushed through obstacles that I couldn't fathom with a large enough period of time.

Some of the cells that were not under my direct control became conglomerations of cells, but most lived a singular life. Those conglomerations did not really connect however, as becoming a multicellular organism was apparently not as easy as I did.

I could actually re-control the cells if I had wanted to and had successfully done so, but I decided to only supervise multiple cells with a single consciousness each to discover new approaches. Their ingenuity and randomness actually solved problems for me.

However, cells began to eat other smaller cells. This was actually quite disturbing as they could easily start to eat the cells controlled by me.

This problem did occur as one of my plants was partly eaten. The offenders were actually a small swarm of cells that went by and took the surface cells from my plant. They began to live there so I had to push them off with external means. It was not a pleasant experience, but I still had enough nutrients to regrow those plant parts. In a way, I felt betrayed by those cells.

A big change was the discovery of Lipid cells. They specialized in converting the white blobs into yellow blobs that were easily stored. The energy could be converted back into a clear fluid that energizes the nearby cells. Every creature that I directly controlled now has this feature.

I discovered light high above the ocean floor with my scouting cells after countless attempts. The problem however, was that as they got closer to the surface, the cells died. They did not pop like before, but they were boiled alive from the outside in like they did when they were in the lava vents. This was puzzling to me since I could not feel the heat like lava gives off.

I continued to send new cells up above to experiment with methods to survive. I also noticed the uncontrolled cells attempting to do the same.

This process continued on for an Era until the uncontrolled cells made a discovery. They discovered photosynthesis. Of course, I didn't know what it was until I saw/felt the cells lasting near the surface. They converted and stored energy from the light above.

This breakthrough revolutionized the way that I had thought life should work. I quickly copied the surviving cells and made my own special brand of multicellular organisms that also took in light to create energy.

These cells were green, something that had never happened before as most of the cells were purple. Of course, I couldn't really differentiate between the colors with the simple eyes that my single and multicellular organisms worked with.

Due to this process, something happened that I didn't expect. The oceans slowly changed with bubbles starting to form within the water and oxygen started to flood in.

The oxygen was slowly, ever so slowly increasing. I was intrigued by this new thing, gas so I tried to commune with it, only to find that my purple cells died inside of the oxygen bubbles. I became slightly cautious but didn't think too much of it.

The uncontrolled purple cells that did not have photosynthesis started to prey on the green cells near the surface. Although they couldn't break through my multicellular organisms, they could swallow the uncontrolled green cells.

I actually found a point where the ocean and bottom come together, but it was too far away in the danger zone so I kept most of my multicellular organisms below the surface so they couldn't get burned. 

-----------

Numerous purple cells that were near the surface died these past few cycles, including mine.

This was a massive extinction event, the ocean water was filled with oxygen due to the green cells. Of course, I didn't fully realize that oxygen was literally poison to the purple cells so I kept pushing them until they just stopped working. I avoided bubbles, but I did not know that oxygen could be dissolved.

I had a plethora of purple cells that acted as messengers carrying fat downwards from the surface to my other colonies. Luckily, those cells were multicellular creatures and the outside cells on them died but the ones inside managed to stay alive.

I mourned for my many purple children and carried on.

This event would later become known as the 'Great Oxidation Event' or the Oxygen crisis.

Uncontrolled cells started to have a new structure inside of them, a Nucleus. I couldn't figure out why until I noticed that cells without it mutated ludicrously fast near the surface. The nucleus helped protect the long DNA strands from radiation and from getting stretched about structures such as ribosomes or the small tubes.

These new cells also developed a new structure, the Mitochondria. It helped turn those white blob sugars into a different kind of energy, instead of building cell parts like ribosomes did. This energy was called ATP, which is used by structures throughout the new cells and used Oxygen as a building block to increase efficiency.

These cells could now do more with less energy, using ATP to help power their tails and increase DNA replication efficiency instead of my incredibly inefficient systems that used replaced parts when the proteins ran out of juice.

Nature did it again and made my kind better.

However, this change only works for areas that have oxygen, so the majority of my cells deep below couldn't exploit this new system.

The Great Oxidation Event was followed by two true terrifying events. 

The first was an Ice Age, where the entire world slowly froze over and I had lost a multitude of cells. Perhaps over a few quadrillion cells were lost to the frost.

When the freezing started to occur, my plant cells were floating below the surface of the ocean. However, they couldn't really move, say for an air sac. I felt the freezing come out of nowhere. Everything turned colder and colder until the entire surface of the ocean was covered by solid ice. At the time, I had never experienced ice before so I did not see the warning signs.

I had to start from ground zero, from the deep ocean vents again as I couldn't get energy from the sun anymore.

After a very long period of time, the oceans slowly melted back. Luckily, some of the surface cells went into hibernation and were not outright destroyed by the frozen water. Nature did not have to take its course to figure out how photosynthesis worked again.

However, that was only the first event. A period of time after the ice age, something new occurred. Something massive quickly came from above and hit a part of the world in an awe inspiring ball of red. I felt the destruction through the ocean and watched as the half of the world's oceans were covered by a thin film of ashes.

The surface of the ocean was briefly covered but the sun was revealed again within a short period.

Although the fireball did not kill many species within the ocean, if I was above the surface it would have been a lot different.

--------

The uncontrolled cells have finally become multicellular. They managed to grow from one cell into two where the cell walls were interconnected.

These organisms started to show up on the shallow ocean floor that was far enough away to not commit suicide by light.

They grew with all of their green spender and became plants that had bound themselves onto the ground. I could feel their jubilation as the cells took in the sun's energy. These plants later on also developed a system where they would pass cells between them and use that to intermix genes.

The biggest event with the plants was that they managed to grow outside of the water. Albeit not for a long time as they dried up.

After an era, these plants have sprouted in every lit area underwater around the world, alongside my plants and turned the planet's ocean slightly green again.

However, they were not to be outdone as species akin to molluscs started to show up. At first I was not impressed by them, as they were kind of like my many multicellular ground-scouts. However, the molluscs ate plants.

I was not a stranger to cells eating other cells, but when I had a mollusc slowly eating one of my plants, I felt the death of those cells.

The molluscs started to spread into a small army of crawlies everywhere in the new coral reefs. At the very least, they were slow and only crawled so I could move my floating creatures out of the way.

---

I had lost numerous plants now and I am starting to use the seed methods that other plants are using. There are not enough molluscs to harm my power base. However, the molluscs started to develop a hard shell. This shell was made from chitin, which during the growth period excited me.

I took the idea of chitin and replicated it onto one of my creatures and had it go near the surface. When it was close to the surface, it didn't burn like the plethora of attempts before. This creature uses slug-like movement to get around so moving upwards required some ingenuity.

Armed with this new physical shielding, I moved this creature to the surface of the water and had the shell jar out a little bit. I couldn't feel the outside, but I felt that the shell was fine outside the water.

I moved the shelled creature along the upwards slope towards where I had speculated that 'land' existed.

When I went towards the land, my experimental eyes caught a glimpse of it. I saw soaring peaks, but everything else was blurry. My primitive eyes couldn't focus even if I wanted them to outside of the water.

Finally, I hit land and took my first movement onto it in a slow fashion. However, I felt two things I had never felt before: gravity and evaporation.

I had given this creature a ton of fat in the center and had a shell on the top. The inner layers were incredibly thin. When my creature exited the ocean, it actually tore apart the inside tissue and water flowed out. Water also started to evaporate from my cells, killing them because the cells were used to transferring water constantly, not keeping it in.

From my view, I took in the land. It was barren. Nothing here. However, I had to leave this barren desert. It was eerily familiar to the underwater regions when there was no plant life.

As quick as I could, I dove back into the ocean to redesign the creature. Meanwhile, I got some molluscs to perform experiments for me. I guided them to the land and attempted to get them to live ashore.

They could actually survive where I couldn't. However, they were still evaporating, which was a problem that I also had. Another problem I discovered was oxygen. Although at the time I had no clue what oxygen was, I had experienced its terrors on anaerobic cells and the glory that came with efficient oxygen-using cells.

During my experimentation outside, an event took place which forced me to stop.

Another ice age.

I was not prepared just like the first time. However, I managed to save both my cells and the other cells and put all of them into stasis, where they did not consume that much energy until the ice age was over. In a way, it was cheating but I didn't want to have to deal with nature re-learning again.

-----

This running theme of extinction events was only getting started, as it occurred ten times before creatures began to adapt to the surface from the first oxygen event. I saw molluscs, fish with cartilage and bones, thirty meter-long cone-shelled kings, Trilobites, spiked sharks and a plethora of new species.

Each era was preceded by an extinction event, where the population from the era before was dealt a fatal blow or went almost entirely extinct.

For every era of new creature, I have adapted my cells to protect myself from becoming extinct too. I kept features from the previous creatures, such as bones, cartilage, muscles, hearts, scales, and eyes that were not primitive and could see in colors.

The biggest advancement for me was getting out of the ocean. At first, I could only copy the life and live as moss near the rivers, but a breakthrough had occurred as moss lived and died to create soil from the sand hellscape that used to be on the five continents.

Trees that go up to thirty meters have been grown and ever so slowly, trilobites started to climb up from the oceans and survive on the land.

The trilobites were originally descendants from molluscs, but they developed shells to protect themselves. These shells kept with them when they changed in shape and form and developed external apparatus to breathe oxygen in the air. The trilobites and molluscs were the only creatures that could temporarily survive above the surface because their shells protected them from the dangerous light.

Since the great oxygenation event, the light up above lost its danger as oxygen was introduced. This meant that creatures could live without depending on such large and thick shells near and above the surface and they could use oxygen efficiently to breathe.

New descendants of trilobites formed into many different species over time and inhabited the brand new forests like kings. These included giant scorpions, massive dragonflies and other creepy crawlies that would definitely keep you up at night. The most unique creatures were fish that managed to climb out of the water and develop limbs, almost gecko-like.

During the period in which the bugs were living on land, light came down from above again and exploded multiple regions of the world. 

The surface of the oceans became hot and black, poisonous even to me. The only creatures of mine that survived were the ones in the deep oceans near the vents. I managed to move some of my biomass ashore, but the majority of it was lost as I could not develop cells that could survive the hot black water fast enough.

This hit led me to develop my own brand of trees, grass, moss and fungi on land so that I had energy and a method to survive long-term. I did not want to keep up in a survival war between the bugs so I kept most of my mass in plants. I did however, have to find ways to protect my forests from the truly terrifying bugs that could eat wood in large droves.

The land creatures switched from very large bugs to giant lizards now as the forests collapsed and the lizards could dive into the ocean to survive. The forests regrew and now these large lizards have very tall spines. The lizards grew too large and some couldn't survive off of the land so they began a course of hunting each other. 

The black oceans cleared up again so I could repopulate it.

I played around during this time and created a few different large bugs of my own. I made it a game of sorts to see what could survive the longest as my own species did not have the glaring weaknesses that the majority of surface animals did. The bugs eventually developed hiveminds, like some incredibly small creatures did in hives.

My creatures never had a reaction time like the lizards and others had as they relied on a crude nervous system and brain. Meanwhile, I didn't even require a nervous system because I could directly control my cells.

The delay between the brain and the muscles was a glaring weakness that could not be solved by all species. As a result, my creatures always had a reaction time that was unparalleled.

I had finally reached a limit on the number of cells I could directly control. The number was unthinkable and each cell gave me a consciousness. However, I had to start taking a step back from controlling a hundred percent to only a fraction, as most cells do not actually do too much in real time like tree bark.

This worked because for some reason I could keep up any number of 'wills' for each cell that run on autopilot, even the ones that I did not directly control. However, I could only 'take a seat' on so many cells at once meaning that my response time was multiplied for the cells that I did not control all the time.

Another extinction came and went via ice age and now the lizards were bigger and almost monolithic on land. Of course, they were not as big as the ones in the next Eon but they were quite impressive.

The most impressive dinosaur was actually in the ocean and not on land. It was larger than the biggest fish and feasted solely a carnivorous diet as an apex predator.

I played more with the dinosaurs and enjoyed the thrill of the hunt and being hunted. They were still smaller than the trees and multiplied like flies.

The next eon's Jurassic dinosaurs were the largest land species I had seen so far and their bodies shouldn't have worked the way they do. For instance, the Brachiosaurus grew way too big; in the 12-16 meters range. I could barely fathom how their bones didn't crumble with the crushing gravity or how they still managed to survive only from leaves and bushes compared to the large carnivores that digested meat like no other.

I was sad to see this eon go as afterwards there were no species to play with that were quite as large. The biggest problem that I had with the dinosaurs was that even if they lived in packs, they were as dumb as a doorknob. At least the hiveminds from two eons ago were more fun.

The dinosaurs lived like kings for three eons.

The meteor that came down to kill all of the surface creatures on this massive continent was powerful. It came and left so quickly I couldn't even respond as I lost a ridiculous amount of mass above ground. Of course, this being the Nth extinction event I have lived through, I had backups set up everywhere around the world.

----

After the very lucky few survivors from the asteroid survived, the base species changed again and now it was the era of warm-blooded creatures.

Instead of having small reactionary brains, these warm-blooded creatures grew larger ones that enabled higher thought functionality at the cost of a higher body temperature, which lead to pack mentalities that dwarfed the bug hiveminds from several eons ago.

Every creature in these packs stuck together and prevented the lizards and bugs from becoming too large with safety in numbers. Dinosaurs tried pack mentality with herbivores, they were only semi-successful and did not develop further in intelligence due to over-hunting by carnivores.

The creatures of most note in these two and a half eons were the apes. Although they were not much of note compared to the other warm-blooded creatures, they changed in ways that I couldn't predict.

They developed a social system that required language, so they did. This new species grew out of the area known as Africa and used this new language to develop stronger and more developmental ideas instead of just survival.

And this is where I am today. I learned their first few languages quite easily and monitored their progress, coming and going from the shadows. I have not yet made direct contact with them as I do not know how to broach the subject.