《Drip-Fed》Clam Time
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Despite its best efforts, the slime did need another two stalactites to fall before it was big enough to snowball down (or rather up) the food chain. How long did it take for two more stalactites to fall? Well, about as long as it took to actively watch grass grow.
In other words, it didn’t know, but it didn’t matter either because it was just too damn long. A felt eternity was spent just sitting around. Literally, as the slime had found the perfect hunting strategy. By disguising itself as a piece of tasty, tasty moss it attracted the shield like bugs that consumed it. They thought they were on their way to an easy meal, in truth the slime had spread itself thin in the surrounding area. Once they were close enough to try and eat the moss, and they could eat it since it was a perfect copy, it rolled up from behind them while raising up its main body from underneath the moss.
It was effective, but it was boring, but it was very effective. The only downside was that it had to move every now and again. The slime’s prey was just smart enough to realize that this bush of stationary moss was no good after a couple of their kin were lost to it. They were not smart enough to realize that the slightly different shaped moss that appeared elsewhere could not be trusted either. With all of that in mind, and the goal to gain biomass, this was the most meaningful way to spend the time between downing moss.
Now, however, after cleaning off the last bit of scrap moss from the latest deliverance of fate, the slime had reached the size of an average human’s palm. That had several advantages, it could now maintain up to four different outgrowths at a time. However, it also discovered a problem. The growths didn’t scale. The tail that had allowed it to dash initially was entirely useless at this point. An attempt at the ‘just grow multiple ones’ had come out as an unnavigable mess.
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It didn’t have to go back to crawling thanks to using two sets of the six insect legs, moving essentially like a centipede, but its new weight-class wasn’t a 100% positive improvement. Rather than moving straight up in power, the slime felt more like it was moving diagonally. Until it ate a creature with better legs, what it improvised had to make due.
Another problem with being bigger was that ambushing was harder than before. Luckily, the slime had already solved that problem with the trapping strategy. On the bright side: It was too big to be considered food by the water dragons anymore, even if it hadn’t eaten or even fought one itself yet. Also, the next item on its list of foods did not possess the mobility required to even get out of the way of an ambush.
Clams, that was what the slime was now heading towards. The armoured muscles had no real predators in these waters, so there was a vast bank of them at the east side of the lake. As filter-feeders, all the clams needed to do to eat was exist someplace where they could filter-feed. What controlled their population was a mixture of a parasitic worm that managed to infiltrate the shells of weakened clams and the amount of food that was provided.
In many ways, the slime was the clam’s worst nightmare. One would think that, if clams could be afraid of any natural predators, it would the starfish. In that way these clams here had lucked out. There was no star-shaped predator around that could stem open their shells and then bloat its stomach into them, externally digesting them before pulling the resulting protein sludge into its body.
No, these particular clams were spared from that nightmare. They just laid around in their black and beige shells all day, sometimes moving a few centimetres by extending their muscular tongues and dragging themselves over but otherwise doing as clams do.
Enter the slime. Normally, clams were not in the dietary range of slimes. For a start, most clams lived in saltwater, while slimes preferred to live around freshwater sources. Even if clams and slimes did share a biome, the latter usually didn’t have the necessary acidity to break down the clam’s shell in a satisfactory timeframe. They would try to eat them when they were desperate, but usually die of starvation before getting through.
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THIS particular slime, however, was one of the rare occasions of being acidic enough, which the first clam soon found out, as it closed its shell to escape from the sudden viscous liquid enveloping it. They sat still, the bloated form of the slime was unable to hold more than one clam inside it at a time.
The slime was not aware of what exactly was happening. It heavily disliked the initial taste of the clam, to humans it would have been like licking chalk, but it felt that it was dissolving something, so it decided to wait. Time went by and, as the slime was thinking whether or not it should spit out the clam and go back to being pretend-moss, it finally happened.
An explosion of flavour. The shell was finally gone. Not completely, but a thin point allowed the acidic body fluid to rush inside and hasten the process. Much more importantly, it now tasted the protein rich flesh of the actual body.
Clams, decided the slime, were amazing. The whole waiting was finally worth it as it had a huge amount of food to digest. What was more, this tasted sweet and nourishing, completely different from the gunk eating insects. With something like that inside its proverbial belly, it wasn’t even mad about having to sit around and wait.
It took, preparing to envelop the next clam in line, a journey of maybe three steps. Being steps of the slime’s size. Living in large clusters of partially melded shells, these animals improved their survival chances by reducing their individual risk of getting eaten. They did that by simply displaying a sheer stupendous number of their kind.
For predators, that strategy meant they had a giant buffet sprawled out in front of them. Even better, as the slime was the only organism properly able to hunt (if that word was even appropriate) these clams, this was more like a 100% chance to win in a gamble. Which, technically, wouldn’t be a gamble. It would just be winning.
Yes, the slime had just won a minor victory at life.
That first clam’s last bit of flesh dissolved and left behind a very happy slime. Immediately it went to analyse what it was able to do now, having figured out that it could visualize the actual parts and what they would do in its nucleus. There were three organs of noteworthiness. One was the gills to filter feed. Then there was the tongue, or foot however one looked at it. Lastly, there was the organ that grew the shell.
The slime had very little interest in filter feeding, although it reckoned that it couldn’t hurt to do it on the side. On the contrary, it could see the use in growing multiple tongues to use as feet while the shell seemed the most useful of all of all them.
All around, the clams were a wonderful addition to its toolkit. Particularly the shell would last for a long time since the useful part of it would just keep growing as long as it kept the organ active.
The slime, keeping a set of gills to filter feed and starting its shell production, began the process of flowing around the next clam. Time to keep licking at the chalk again, as many times as it took to get to the tasty insides again, then to repeat that process over and over again until it was big enough to challenge the apex predator of the lake.
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A Virtual Invasion
An invasion from another dimension is shut down by an Empire's traitor and the world has a scant few decades to build the strength to resist a multidimensional Empire. How will the world fair when no one even knows its doom is one barred gate away? Fortunately, the traitor has a plan. Maybe with a bit of luck and planning, he can build a force to defend the world without anyone realizing it. Author's Thoughts: What is litRPG (From wikipedia) - LitRPG, short for Literary Role Playing Game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of MMORPGs with science-fiction fantasy novels.[1] LitRPG is a literary genre where games or game-like challenges form an essential part of the story. A LitRPG work simultaneously narrates the story of characters inside and outside of the game-world. At least some of the characters in a LitRPG novel therefore understand that they are playing a game: they are 'meta-aware'. So, while Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a fantasy novel, a book about people creating avatars and interacting in a Lord of the Rings MMORPG would be a LitRPG novel.Why do I read them? You know, I am not too sure. I love MMOs. I played them, quit them, joined up and repeated the cycle. They are fun! They are a massive waste of time but so are most games. Do I want to read about someone else playing them? Sort of?The advent of VR and the possibility of VR someday becoming so immersive that you can't tell them from reality sets the imagination on fire. What if this could be life? But most stories fall short. At the end of the day the protagonist hangs up his VR helmet and goes to have dinner with his mom and dad or other family and it becomes meaningless. It's like the story that ends because the main character woke up and nothing you read matters.There have been some books that explore the concept of the intersection of reality and total immersion VR. Enders Game is a classic. There were a few others that escape me but they exist, however, the cross between the game and reality is weak.So what if the game was real? The technology needed for total immersion VR is so advanced that by the time we reach that goal technology should have naturally evolved to include several items. You must have direct neural input. You simply can't have a total immersion (all senses and perfect presence) experience without this basic prerequisite. If you have direct neural access, you can probably do neat things like feed knowledge and skills directly to that person. You can undoubtedly do many horrible things as well. Muscles are controlled by the brain. If you control the brain why would you let the body just sit there and rot? A person that sits unmoving for 24 hours a day will have their body whither away just like a coma patient. However, if you control the brain you could control the muscles. On a basic level, this would be isometric impulses, working muscle group against muscle group to avoid atrophy. Taken to its logical conclusion you would be able to gain muscle mass and program muscle memory. The flip side is that you could remote control their body... but let's not go there. So what would people do if it were real? Well, they would probably limit and regulate it since the drawbacks are very obvious. Even if you look at the basic aspects of this you can see some negative possibilities. Look at the Sword Art Online anime. Personally, I think they missed the boat by putting a bomb in the VR helmet. Do you really need a bomb when you have direct access to the brain?So what kind of events would you need to have a situation where the obvious drawbacks haven't been explored? Maybe a society where the advancement of technology has so far outstripped the explorations of its applications that ignorance was truly bliss? Okay, so I had to put in an alien invasion to kickstart the premise, but that was just one of the possibilities.
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Narutoverse Fanfic Usual Rencarnation Game interface Good grammar Good plot Good MC Good time killer Read bruh Sex maybe, violence yes, swearing yes.
8 138Your Problem
Merlin turns Blinky into a baby as a joke and refuses to turn him back- Jim is not happy with this at all. In this scenario the trolls never left for new Jersey- they are rebuilding trollmarket while Merlin heals the heartstone.*I don't own trollhunters just my writing. Thanks!*
8 128The Oddity (Rewrite)
Scattered throughout the world are labyrinths, mysterious pocket dimensions brimming with monsters, traps, and treasures. Nations build themselves around these phenomena, and few are as powerful as the Kaldora Empire. Within its borders is Aurora Labyrinth, a place intricately tied to the famous Renard Academy. As a new semester begins, thousands of aspiring mages flock to it, but Rainen and Ellar attend with different goals in mind. Rainen wants revenge while Ellar wishes for adventure. Rainen's time as 'The Vigilante' leads him nowhere, and Ellar's dreams are blocked by a contract. Now bound by strict academy rules and pressured from every side by haughty nobles and outside organizations, the only chance for the pair to get what they want, lies in Aurora Labyrinth, a world labyrinth. Art was commissioned and done by Pinlin.
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Soon, seventeen-year old Zelda will be forced to marry if she cannot make her decision on her own. She must follow the Royal Law, one which her father strictly enforces. She must chose one suitor to take over the kingdom and rule alongside her. 1. The suitor must come from a royal bloodline. 2. The suitor must be an ally of Hyrule. 3. If the royal does not choose his/her suitor in a time span decided by the King or Queen, they must be forced to marry the King or Queen's ideal suitor. Time quickly running out, Zelda realizes she does not want to marry someone that only cares about inheriting the throne. She wishes to marry for happiness. And if she cannot prove herself and her happiness to her father soon enough, she will be forever forced into a life she does not want to live.RANKINGS - PAST AND CURRENT #1 in zelink#1 in legendofzelda#1 in Link#1 in zeldaxlink#1 in Hyrule#2 in botw#1 in Zelda#1 in Nintendo
8 189The Queen and the Singer
Ámbar is a mean girl who studies at Blake South College and has the title of Queen. Simon is a Mexican boy who just moved to Buenos Aires. They don't know each other, but they will soon, and when they do, their worlds will change forever. P.S. All characters are from Soy Luna. I don't own anything
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