Chapter 21

I put down my earphones and stretched. The flickering screen in front of me showed an image of a strategy game. I tried to focus on the replay, but the screen was getting blurry. Strange, my eyes might be too tired. A marathon of gaming does that to you.

I looked up at the clock and was surprised to see that it was almost morning. My stomach rumbled and I remembered that my last meal was 18 hours ago. Ugh, I guess I need to eat sometimes. Darn, I wish I had enough money to order something online. I’m too lazy to cook.

Finally, I got up and got dressed. The plan was to visit the nearby petrol station for a hotdog.

It was still dark outside and the fresh morning air did wonders to wake my tired mind. For the last 18 hours, I’ve been trying to get into the gold ranking. I played multiple games, watched pro replays, but it was all in nought. I was still silver by the end of it. Even sticking to my main race, couldn’t fix my lack of finger coordination. How am I this bad? I wish I knew how to play ********* better.

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I spent the next few hours carefully combing the bottom of the pond in search of smaller prey. The wound on my side closed by itself as time passed, and the modules or, in this case, cells that I bought, relocated and replaced the dead ones. This did mean that I had found a way to speed up the healing process, but it also meant I had no free modules for the next evolution upgrade.

Overall, my hunt was uneventful. I did find some random cells, which I immediately used for repairs, but I didn’t chase anything larger that I met along the way. I wanted to be in top shape for the confrontation, and I needed to collect sand for my trap.

Finally, the last damage was replaced by new protein and lipid tissue, and I was ready for my next target. I kept low while I searched, as anything dangerous should be higher up. At least, that’s what I hoped.

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A while later, came the soft bump I knew to recognise as my prey. Without waiting for it to start to escape, I activated my sand trap and let it cover us both. This time, it buried us close by. Even now, I could feel my outer membrane being eroded by the foreign toxins, however, it was at a manageable pace.

As before, Kevin took control of my attacking forces, and while he was not as good as Susan at multitasking, he knew how to exploit the weak spots. He searched for a structural weakness on the opponent’s membrane and focused most of the vesicles in that direction.

Soon my own walls were breached, and it was time for Susan to shine. At that point, the fight was a repeat of the last time. It was all about the Benjamins, baby. I had plenty of biomass to spare inside my secret stash, while the enemy captain only kept what little he had collected on his small bedside cupboard.

As per usual, my multicellular cell engulfed the remains and I absorbed half of them via my inventory. It was honestly a lot, and when my energy filled out there was still plenty of biomass left inside me.

That’s when part of me died, literally. A small part of my body just rotted away and was quickly being replaced by new parts. The process kept repeating with other parts of my body until the rest of the biomass and molecules were spent.

It took me a moment to understand what was going on - the bugged ‘suicide’ was still working. At least, that was my best guess. That begs the question – why now? What was so different from the usual? Was the system just randomly trolling me?

Surprisingly enough, the new parts seemed nimbler or more efficient? It took less energy to move the spirals on the replaced sides, and the whole metabolism was quite sped up.

So many questions, so little answers.

Alright, back to digging sand as I need enough for another hunt. I could always try to chase them down with my new speed, but something tells me that rushing randomly in the open, will end in embarrassing death for me.

-And after a millennium, the planar wars ended with a defeat on both sides-

An hour later and I had enough biomass to upgrade my defensive capabilities. It still required a free module to do so (those fucking money eating bastards), but now, we no longer took so many losses on our side. All those brave soldiers can feel safer with our new and improved chainmail vests. Really, it’s just what you need in space battles.

Long story short, I was ready to rumble. With my increased defensive capabilities, I finally left the plant field. The sand strategy might be the tried and tested plan, but it was also horribly boring. 99% of the time was spent digging for sand, and that meant too much time on my hands, for me to get into thinking up new words for ‘Barbie girl’ song. Yes, I know, boredom can lead to some scary stuff.

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/Current evolutions:

-Unused additional basic modules x0

-Movement flagella

-Advanced inner cellular defence

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