Chapter 17

I'm out of ideas.

There is nothing left to try, and the stupid system has not given me anything to progress towards.

Why not just explore the whole pond and find something bigger to devour?

I AM THE POND!

Almost literally, as now the Bobs cover every corner of it. I lost count of how many there are, as we, probably, crossed over billions some time ago. There is nothing in here that hasn't been explored or killed. No fish, no plants, no nothing. There were, all in all, only a few million random cells that all died the first time I went for a mass crusade.

I'm stuck, I can't find the last missing piece of this evolution puzzle. I tried sending the Bobs to dry land but they just died. No random leg growing mutations, just plain old death. In fact, it's amazing that no such thing has occurred by now if you think about it. At this point, we are so many that there would inevitably be some deadly mutation that kills some of my Bobs or make them evolve different things, but there is nothing. They are copies of each other, biologically impossible, perfect unchanging copies.

At this point, I don't even see the point of dividing them anymore. We are already covering the whole surface, and any more of them would just die if they need to live in each other's shadow. Last week was spent digging deeper and collecting materials. I don't even know what I'm saving up to build, but I have to at least do something.

-Few days later.-

“Kevin, I'm not insane! I can make this work. We just need to destroy enough land to make a path towards future progress!”

“Who cares about the dropping water levels, if we are gone by the time it starts to matter?”

“Yes, I thought this through. We first need to sacrifice a third of Bobs, and then we c..”

What the fuck? I just lost contact with billions of Bobs at the same time.

It keeps on happening and judging by the direction, whatever it is, it's getting closer to me. Fuck, it's moving too fast to escape! Goddamit, I'm not ready for this.

“Susan, Bob ball ASAP!”

This was the best defence strategy I came up with after thinking of how I should defend against larger threats. Whatever the thing coming this way was, it struck us and I lost 3 layers of Bobs on the contact, and I keep losing more as time goes on.

Alright, bitch, you want to take me down? Let's see who dies first!

“Call in all personnel! We will hit it together!”

I could feel a reverberating headache as Susan took control and made every Bob gather to my location. Kevin was giving helpful suggestions in the background. Unfortunately, they were all but useless, as I couldn't find any baseball bats, or aim them at the general location of the opponent’s crotch.

Another layer fell, and I started to feel a dread set in. Can I swap my consciousness to another Bob, or will I die the moment my last layer of defence falls? The previous experimentation led me to believe I'm shackled to my main cell. I hope the transfer process is automatic in case of imminent destruction.

Finally, it seems the Bobs were gaining ground, as I could feel a new layer enforce my Bob ball. There were only a few hundred billions of us remaining, but it was enough for finishing this foe.

Together with Bob power, part by part, the enemy melted and turned into precious biomass that got instantly absorbed by my still active inventory, and after what seemed like a century, we won.

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/System announcement:

-Conglaturazion!!!

-You just cleared the currently available content in our Alpha version of release!

-The (?!,();!? corporation would like to thank the Alpha tester on his hard work.

-As part of our never-ending support of our playtesters efforts, we gift every player on content completion with system skill ‘Suicide’ to provide the needed morale boost!

-We also include a free single use gacha machine spin to the top 100 fastest playtesters!

-Warning, content after this point is still in a pre-Alpha state and is subject to game breaking bugs.

/Do you want to keep playing? (Warning, on selecting ‘no’ your player avatar will be deleted!)

*Yes

*No

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Okay, first of all, that's not how you spell congratulations! And what's up with the suicide skill? Can't they make it less obvious that they don't really want people to keep playing after this point?

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-Warning, a choice required! Upon not selecting anything for 30 seconds, the player avatar will be deleted.

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Calm yer tits. I'm taking the 'yes’ option just to spite you.

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-*Yes* selected.

/Player input needed:

-Would you like to use system automation to proceed with evolution?

*Yes (Price - 90% of collected biomass)

*No (Estimated time for player's manual evolution - 13 million years)

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Yeah, fuck that, I'm not waiting.

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-*Yes* selected.

-Starting automatic use of skill ’suicide’.

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Wait, wut? That wasn't what I chose!

No, the Bobs are dying!

I could feel every single Bob I had dissolve at the same time. It didn't hurt, but the sense of loss, which came with losing every limb you had, was quite overwhelming. As I tried to think of a way to fix this mess, my own cell body started to melt from inside out. I lost all my hard earned senses and was back in the darkness, with only a blue screen keeping me company.

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/Player input required for ‘ev;#€&+)n &;€ect+&n’

*Seg:”)+#€ €&rm

*A;&#+&pod

*V!’&(+#ate

*P’!+t

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Hey, fuck you system. I know what you did here, I'm not stupid.

“I'll take the option that starts with ‘V’”

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-*V!’&(+#ate selected

-Suspending player's conscience

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Wait, no! I still want to...

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The wind howled, as huge amounts of dark clouds covered the sky. Then began the endless rain that threatened to flood the land. One by one, the burning craters surrounding the pond snuffed out, as more and more water collected in them. Soon, the whole place was flooded, and instead of a small pond, there was now a lake.

A blast of thunder reverberated and with it, came the lighting. It struck the land ceaselessly, and unlike ordinary lightning, this one tore the earth apart. Soon, a huge web of deep canals sprouted from the lake. They connected it to multiple nearby rivers, and from them, came the new wildlife.

As everything started to finally settle, the remaining clouds gathered together in one point. From it, the last lightning bolt, larger than the ones before, struck the middle of the new lake.

At the point of impact, a bloody red egg formed.

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“Guess who's going fishing now?”