Hmm…

At first, Lucy wasn’t sure what exactly to make of her choices. She dismissed the tank option almost out of hand, since she had serious problems with the idea of just standing there getting whaled on in order to do any damage.

The first option, while indeed an upgrade, didn’t feel like a true Evolution. Maybe in the future—when she had customized her form more to her liking—upgrading it all at once would be more powerful, but right now it didn’t really give her anything unique that she couldn’t just get from the Shop if she gained enough points, nothing special. There was benefit to keeping her options open for the future, but only if she was sure there would be a future.

The second option was tempting. Lucy had already identified speed as a potential all-purpose survival tool, and an Evolution focused solely on that attribute could take her far. It would allow her to flee when she needed to and fight when she could. In a way it was the obvious choice, a direct upgrade to her previous plan.

The only problem was the warning about energy consumption. Here near the sulfur-pits it should be fine to constantly be draining her energy, but the tunnels had been surprisingly desolate, and she had to assume not everywhere she travelled would be energy-dense.

On the other hand, she would also be able to travel farther to hunt more, and energy organelles would presumably still be available in the shop. Overall she thought it was a strong option.

The more she thought about her decision, though, the more strongly she leaned towards the symbiote.

On its face, it wasn’t the strongest option out of them all. It would be nice to have some help Oxidizing sulfur, but it would only really be an advantage if it increased the efficiency of Oxidization enough that she could use it farther from the sulfur-pits. Otherwise it would only make her life easier as her cilia took over for her and passively gained energy from the surrounding water. Which was great, but what she needed right now was to survive.

Increased efficiency was a possible benefit, but what really interested her were the future possibilities of a symbiotic system. The model in the shop had demonstrated using the fungus as a means of defensive enzyme release, but the true benefit would be having a mechanism in place that she could adapt to her needs, whatever they ended up being. Depending on the symbiote’s specific functionalities, a whole range of new options might open up for her in the future.

If I can stay alive long enough for it to show its strength.

It might take time to develop, but an adaptable system like the fungal cilia seemed to provide would only get more useful for her survival as she changed. It was one of the reasons why the brain was such a powerful evolution. In humans, it allowed for the adaptive use of the body, as well as the use of external tools.

Fingers that had once been an advantage climbing trees could now be used to hold stone hammers. Mouths and lungs that evolved to eat and breathe could grunt in communication. Eventually, something as complex, rich, and useful as language could develop.

During normal evolution, an individual organism was more likely to die from a chance mutation than to benefit from it. And even when a beneficial mutation did come along and get passed on, it took thousands or millions of years for complex systems or symbiotic relationships to develop.

And Lucy could do it in an instant.

The scope of the decision before her boggled her mind a bit. It was one thing to decide which organelle to buy from a shop, but right now Lucy was making a decision that would have taken thousands of cumulative generations in nature!

No pressure though, right? she thought nervously.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She also didn’t know enough about how the Evolution system worked. She assumed her current choice would affect her future options, but there was no indication through her interface of what those options would be. For now, she had to figure out the branching paths herself.

Any option would be a risk, and in the end, Lucy chose the one that she saw the most potential in.

The Symbiote.

She could always upgrade her body and purchase organelles to increase her speed in the future, but she didn’t find it likely (or preferable) that she would go through another parasitic situation again anytime soon.

She figured it was a good sign that it was calling the Evolution “The Symbiote” rather than “The Parasite.” Hopefully her System wasn’t playing some sort of trick on her.

Lucy confirmed her selection, and immediately, her Evolution started.

The rainbow swirls of magic rotating slowly through the water around her blurred as they coalesced, certain colors brightening then fading out, others growing steadily stronger. They ran around her like jumbles of rainbow koi in a tiny pond, flowing and streaming as they recombined and came together.

A sense of hunger began to grow, located strangely outside of her membrane, where her cilia were. The magic seemed to be drawn to them, the little hairs acting like lightning rods for the multicolored swirls of light.

As the magic seeped into her cilia, it reached deeper, moving inwards until it encountered the fungus inside her, throughout which it promptly began to spread color, turning her insides into what looked like rainbow shag-carpet.

The fungus began to dissolve, collapsing into the magic and flowing to her membrane, where it anchored itself and began to grow outwards, fusing with her cilia.

By the time it was done, Lucy was left with a body that had changed.

She’d expected to remain much the same, except for her new cilia, but every single part of her body she observed was at least subtly different where it had been shaped by the magic, integrating the flowing streams into her physical form.

Her whole body increased in size slightly as it was reforged, and though the Lucy that emerged looked somewhat similar to the old, she felt as if she had been born completely anew.

There were other changes as well.

Her vacuole had expanded, and her flagellum had grown a bit flatter. Even her cytoplasm had changed slightly in color, and her membrane had thickened substantially where the fungal hyphae anchored into it.

The fungus seemed to have changed a bit too, lightening to a pale shade between brown and green. Although most of it was now external, Lucy noticed that, in one place, it connected to a special kind of vacuole that floated in her cytoplasm near the inner wall of her membrane.

Apparently, the System had provided her with a way of interfacing with the fungus directly. She would have to experiment to see what exactly it could accomplish, but she knew from the model that she could pump enzymes through her new cilia, and absorb molecules much easier from outside.

The special vacuole, presumably, was where things came in from the outside, or where she could guide her own concoctions to shoot them outward.

The sense of hunger she felt grew, separate and yet her own, a phantom-melody she could feel but barely hear.

It brought other sensations with it as well: a staggering intensification of the sulfur smell that morphed into sensations Lucy recognized: the sharp, smoky tang turning into something like the taste of caramelizing onions.

The smell swelled within her until she felt like she was the smell of sulfur, like nothing else of importance could possibly exist. She reached out for it, and as she drank of the sulfur-rich water around her, she felt truly alive.

Something nudged her, and she found Rikorlak floating a few bodylengths away where he had retreated after poking her. He seemed to be watching her warily, but trying not to speak.

Lucy came back to herself, scared of what had just happened and the momentary loss of identity.

Well, so much for getting rid of the fungus, I suppose.

Thankfully, it felt a lot different now, like it was a part of herself that she could control, even if it had its own survival at heart.

She had known that taking on the sulfur-feeding symbiote would alter her metabolism, but she hadn’t expected to experience things like the fungus did.

I’ll have to be careful, she told herself, even as the rush of energy from the sulfur made her feel giddy.

She had done it. Her first Evolution!

Lucy burbled out a laugh, and only as the yellow molecules drifted happily out of her membrane did she notice Rikorlak floating in the water, staring at her.

Right. Still with the herd. Plans to make, things to decide.

“Alright,” she said, hugely relieved to be able to talk again. “First things first: let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Then she saw the herd of sad-looking microbes milling around the sulfur pits, some of them still anchored hopelessly to the ground, and she sighed.

“Alright, fungus-cleansing party first, then I’m getting the fuck out of here.”