One moment, she’d been standing in a desolate landscape of dead-snake looking tendrils next to a bloated corpse that was slowly leaking cytoplasm into the drift. Then a flood of blue points had flowed into her, and her System told Lucy she had been awarded 25 points for defeating the mutated doctor-larva.

[Class: error:UNKNOWN]

[Sub-Class: Microbe. Current Evolution: None]

[Skills: Awareness (Meta), Gene Stealer, Protective Barrier, Reform Body, Spike]

[Next Evolution: 77/100]

[Energy: 14/100]

Evolution Points: 28

Lucy forced herself to act rationally rather than immediately dumping all her points willy-nilly just so she could Evolve.

First she replaced her vacuole for 10 EP. The genetic material that had previously floated in it had been destroyed, but she could get as much as she wanted now that the doctor was laying dead in front of her, and presumably it now had the code for his tougher membrane and terrifying tentacle-arm, which could certainly come in handy!

Lucy hesitated briefly as she considered the fungus that covered her nearly completely inside. It was rather disgusting and more than a little distressing. She hoped Evolving would clear it up like Accutane for fungus, but just in case she didn’t, she still wanted to know how to get rid of it.

She thought for a moment, then moved over to the doctor’s corpse. She had to dig around a bit to find a ribosome that wasn’t melted by destructive enzymes, but finally she found one and spiked up a bit of genetic material to store in her new vacuole. Then she opened her membrane channels to feed and restore her energy while she worked.

He should have an enzyme in his body that either kills the fungus or keeps it from spreading, since he eats it for food and doesn’t get taken over by it. Hopefully I can just…

She used Gene Stealer to pry open the genetic code, and a swarm of tiny slicing proteins moved to it before she saw the code displayed before her in a single-helix.

As it showed her the different nucleotides that had once served as blueprints for the doctor-larva’s body, she prayed that she wouldn’t have to attempt sorting through the thousands and thousands of proteins manually.

If so, I’ll need to find some better shelter. I swear, if Pincer-Hands shows up right now, I’m gonna be pissed.

She looked around nervously, but he didn’t. Still, she took the precaution of swimming as fast as she could away from the doctor’s corpse, until she found a crevice in the stone a good distance away to hide in.

Luckily, the Gene Stealer proteins seemed to have the ability to ‘scent’ certain genes, and when she used them on the enzyme she knew from previous experiments had reacted with the fungus, they were able to sniff out a similar string in the doctor’s genetic code.

From there, Lucy had to experiment again, choosing one at a time from a handful of options.

Finally, on her sixth try, she found it. She had already narrowed the pool of possible enzymes by her first experiments, and now that she had the doctor’s genes to cross-reference, she was able to isolate the specific enzyme needed to break down the fungus.

Which she promptly did, scouring the fuzzy strands and tendrils from her inside like cobwebs to a flame.

Good riddance! Although…

As the last few spores drifted through her cytoplasm, she considered if they’d be worth keeping. It was a little gross to think about, but now that she could destroy them at will, it shouldn’t actually be any danger to her.

She guided the spores over to her vacuole.

Then, with 6 points left to spend and a single point away from her first Evolution, Lucy bought back her cilia.

The hairs sprang to life all over her body like they’d been waiting for just that moment.

As the hairs sprouted anew out of her membrane, Lucy felt a sense of satisfaction even greater than when she’d bought them the first time. Back then she hadn’t known what she was missing without the extra movement and sensation they gave, but now that she’d been without them for a while, it felt like an old and familiar jacket fitting comfortably over her shoulders. Like a ghost that’d been following her around growing solid and real before her eyes.

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It also sharpened her Awareness of what was going on around her, as the tiny hairs picked up minute vibrations in the water which she interpreted as movement.

Then her cilia began to tingle with a sense far divorced from the tiny physical vibrations that hummed at a low ebb constantly through the water of the hydrothermal vent. They tingled internally with a sense of magnitude that Lucy had no words for, like each individual hair was ringing with the pure tone of a tuning fork, each a subtly different pitch, all coming together to form a wordless harmony.

Interweaving strands of rainbow-colored light swirled out from inside Lucy’s core, and her mind finally gave a name to the melody soaring through her body.

Magic.

The water around her turned into a fireworks display of flashing light and streaming color as the Evolution began to take hold, the magic that had seeped so freely out of her core now filling the little crevice around her.

Holy fuck.

Lucy wasn’t sure how else to respond to the scene presented to her as she prepared to take her first Evolution.

A rush of love and pride and accomplishment soared through her, pushing aside the dread and doubt that had been her constant companions these last few days. It filled her completely, like the perfect mix of a delicious meal, a scintillating discussion, and the sight of a beautiful new horizon all at once.

She had done it, had succeeded in her plan to make use of this area’s rich natural resources and to stay alive long enough to reap the rewards.

This is good shit. Maybe I’ll try drugs when I’m a human again.

She paused.

No, that’s a bad idea. Just the magic speaking.

She gave a nervous laugh as the energy soared through her.

At that moment, it felt like when she would be human again, not if. She’d been determined to complete the challenge before, but now that determination felt like it was flowing through her physical body, not just sitting in her mind. It was inside her now, and along with the magic, she could feel its desire to change her, to mould her body into whatever shape would lead her forwards into the future the most ably.

This was heady stuff. It was all rather inspiring, really; but even as she felt the magic tingling in her body and waiting to change her, Lucy’s mind settled on something even more exciting: the four images presented before her. The options for her first Evolution.

[Option #1: Ole Faithful]

[Why change what isn’t broken? Trade in your knackered, worn out old membrane for a shiny new one! Sure, it’s the most boring decision you could make, but you’ve never let that slow you down before, have you?]

The first, as far as she could tell, was similar to her current body only everything was upgraded, bigger, and improved. The membrane wall was visibly thicker and bulkier, the cilia were denser and more graceful, and the flagellum extended longer than the one she currently bore, and had flattened along its length to propel her forward even faster. Out of her membrane stuck two permanent arms with pronged hands.

Inside her body, she saw two separate vacuoles and a jagged spike beginning to form that looked stronger and more deadly than the ones she currently produced, as well as a mitochondria that hummed away, producing more energy to power her larger body.

She got the impression that this choice would lead her down a relatively standard and straightforward path of evolution, focused on incremental progress to become ever stronger.

[Option #2: The (Really) Early Life Crisis, aka The Speed Demon, aka The Lightning McQueen]

[Why trade in your beater for something responsible when you could trade it in for something exciting instead? Sure, it’s an energy-guzzler, but it’s also guaranteed to make all your friends jealous. You do have friends by now, right?]

Hmm, I guess it depends on how you define—

[Demons sent to retrieve your soul don’t count.]

Alrighty, never mind then.

She took a good look at the image.

The model before her showed a green-membraned organism shaped into something sleek and tapered, like it had been tested in a wind-tunnel. Her cilia were gone, so instead of a hairy Ferrari, she looked more like a barracuda impersonating a sports car, with fins on either side of an elongated body that seemed to be reinforced by a cytoskeleton structure. Lucy supposed the extremely smooth membrane that surrounded it was designed to make her swim faster, but it reminded her of little green alien men, and overall it was a bit disconcerting.

Probably is fast, though. And I do think I would look good with a spoiler, if I can add one later.

[Option #3: The Symbiote, aka The Freeloader]

[Congratulations, by convincing yourself you made a friend in addition to harboring a parasitic fungi, you have unlocked a special Evolution.]

[You have learned the value of teamwork and cooperation! Just kidding, what you’ve actually learned is how to use another organism’s survival instincts to further your own goals. That’s fine too though, we won’t judge you. Yet.]

Lucy had the briefest impression of a pair of looming eyes staring out at her from the darkness, then the vision faded and was replaced by the model.

This one showed a version of herself where her cilia had been replaced by the tube-like structures of the fungus, and an interactive scene taking place on the screen demonstrated their ability to passively filter the water around her for sulfur.

Hmm, I wonder if I could customize that further later on.

Immediately the organism on the screen puffed out a cloud of enzymes through its fungal cilia, and a spike-monster that had appeared next to it began to writhe in pain. After it died, the Lucy on screen pulled out its own spike and began madly stabbing at the corpse, over which a web of fungal strands began to extend, sucking it dry.

Ooookay…hopefully that doesn’t mean it will drive me mad?

[Option #4: The Tank]

[By upgrading the sturdiness of your membrane multiple times, you have learned the value of having an outer layer that doesn’t tear like tissue paper. Now imagine what it would be like if enemies not only had an even harder time hurting you, but also got hurt themselves for trying! ‘Do unto others’ and all that.]

Man, I could beef up! Who needs the gym?

The Tank was pretty much what she expected. In addition to her size drastically increasing, this Evolution would triple the thickness of her membrane walls, and line her entire body with spikes. It came with a tiny flagellum, but Lucy assumed she would need a bit more than that to move around at a decent speed.

As flows of colorful magic continued to swirl through her body and the small, enclosed space around her, Lucy considered her options.