Chapter 20

Red lights flashed as my ship took a direct hit. The hull was breached, and in came the alien swarm. I gave my controls over the defenders to my second officer Susan, and she guided them towards the best-flanking positions. Every enemy soldier engulfed three of mine before finally perishing, and while the battle seemed lost, we had cheats.

My first officer Kevin was handling the offence and our own troops filled the enemy vessel. We had a hard time gaining any foothold, and at this point, defeat was just a matter of who ran out of resources first. While it seemed that the fight on the enemy soil was going horrible for us, unfortunately for my enemy, we had cheats.

I released a new wave of resources inside my ship. Biomass and other molecules flooded everywhere, and soon they were collected by the ship’s worker bots for processing. More and more clone troops flooded out of my hangars and flew towards the enemy’s ship.

Finally, the fight was over as the enemy’s space cruiser lay in ruins. We closed in for pillaging, and on contact, my ship engulfed the remains.

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/Absorbed:

-Multicellular organism -1x

/Evolution options added:

-Extracellular offence system

-Advanced inner cellular defence

-Movement flagella

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As per usual, I collected half of the parts and left the remaining for fixing the ship’s hull. This was our first victory against the cowardly pirates, and the loot we gained spoke for itself. Increasing movement, defence and offence, exactly in that order, should make this whole journey simpler.

I chose movement first as, truth be told, I was getting sick of my prey escaping right before my proverbial eyes. This was the 6th multicellular enemy we had encountered after escaping the dreaded plant zone. All the others escaped on the first contact, and, unfortunately, they were faster than me. In my rage, I came up with an amazing idea on how to utilise my inventory better. The next time I met one of them, I released all the SiO2 I had collected and buried us both. While it was a death sentence for any ordinary organism, I could always dig myself out, leaving my opponent imprisoned. The next step was finding the guy, but I had plenty of time for that. All in all, my plan was a great success! Now it’s just a matter of repetition until I have enough for all the upgrades.

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/Available evolution paths:

-Finally grow a spine - 7499.9 kg biomass (Limited Time Sale - 25% Discount)

-Additional basic modules – 0,3 micrograms

-Extracellular offence system – 1,2 micrograms

-Advanced inner cellular defence - 1,4 micrograms

-Movement flagella - 1,3 micrograms

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I had 2,2 micrograms already, so I bought the ‘Movement flagella’ or, at least, I tried to, before a system screen interrupted my fun.

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-Cannot purchase ‘Movement flagella’ no available modules.

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Happy thoughts captain, happy thoughts…

I bought another module and felt that on one side, my own body split open and out came another part of me. Great, I’m getting fat. Anyway, I bought the ‘Movement flagella’ and selected my new body part as the build place. I dub thee – Bottom side. Kevin, from now on, you are responsible for keeping my bottom in perfect condition.

Once I was over my childish snickering fit, I steered us into the deep blue in search of more prey.

Learning to turn the ship using my new appendage was a pain in the ass, but after a few minutes of eating dirt, literally, I managed to aim for what I thought was the sky.

I have no way of judging our current movement speed, but I’d like to think that we went from horse carriage to a sports car.

It took only a few minutes until we bumped into a new enemy and I immediately used our new found speed to run away. Why? Well, for starters, we lost almost all energy in the first few seconds and half of my side is now missing. I have no idea what that was, but I’m not going to fight with that monstrosity.

Thankfully, whatever that was, it didn’t think we were worth chasing. All that’s left for me, is to slowly recover. I bought 2 more modules and dumped the leftover biomass inside me. This is going to take a while, I wish there was a fast repair button or something.