Chapter 27

Dark splotches crisscross the glowing body. My eye trails a singular globule of light detaching and floating away, into the dark surroundings. Susan orders the workers to flock and block the opened part with dead material. My so-called teddy bear is falling apart and I still haven’t reached the bottom.

A shadow moves near, trying to take another bite out of my guardian, and I move my body to protect it. Before the cretin manages to escape, I tear it to pieces and consume the leftovers. Already 8th bastard that tried this. Thankfully, I got good at playing the guard so the losses were minimal after the first few encounters.

Why is it taking so damn long to reach the bottom? I guess time can crawl when you are stressed, but I swear it’s taking forever. My hundredth complaint is finally met with a sight of swaying tubes, illuminated by my own body. Good, plant life means I’m close to the ground.

I steer deeper while trying to keep my artificial moon from entangling into nearby seaweed. Soon, I can see the ground or at least a grey circle that expands and casts away the dark as I get closer. I really need to get some better sight.

The first order of business is checking if my newfound size can handle some explosive digging. I park my satellite near one of the plants, safe from any harm that might come from me, and start up my drill.

-Hour later-

I give up, there’s nothing valuable down here. My best gain was a singular crystalline molecule, and I get that much by hunting on my own for a few minutes.

I guess this means I need to switch to my original plan of trying to look for larger prey. The only problem is that as with the surface, the bottom too is barren. I know there are bigger fish out there, but it seems they like to play in the middle ground. I hate this so much, but I don’t have any choice.

I hug a vine while moving upwards, Vick slowly stumbling behind me. While I still need him for my way back, for now, I could count on the shadowy plant figures to keep me ‘grounded’. As I reach the top, I can see the grasslands spanning along the pond’s floor. It’s the first time I can really judge the sheer amount of ‘greenery’ in here. Last time I left, I was a little bit distracted. Come to think of, while I was blind, I only guessed that these were plants. Now that I know it for a fact, it begs the question – just how long was I sleeping while evolving into this form? Weird, but I guess everything is, in my new life.

Oh, here comes the first customer! Shame it’s so small, do I really need to swim higher? I look at the grey blob as it moves past me. Yeah, it doesn’t see me, even with the glow. I leave the flower stem behind and zero in on the threat. This little bee is going for some meat. My body moves in front of its path and with light *Bump*, it bounces off. AAAAnnnd it goes apeshit, trying to dislodge my little parasites eating it alive. Unfortunately for the small guy, I spent plenty of time training in Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

“To eat the enemy, you must first become the enemy.” - Yeah, I never read the book. All my knowledge comes from internet memes.

It didn’t really matter, as the target barely got a few steps in before succumbing to the wounds. Slurping up the remains, I was ready to head back, but for a few seconds got a panic attack as I couldn’t see Vick from this angle. Thankfully, as I got closer, I noticed a bright spot in the swaying ‘greynery’. Sudden urge to hug a shining corpse aside, I need to move him closer to me. Else, the next time I won’t be so lucky. To think that I was one of the people who complained about waypoints ruining my RPG immersion. Right now, I’ll take the most handholding game of all the time over this crap. Heck, you can even play it for me, I’m all for some good old “walking simulator”.

He, hey! We got a new challenger! Disappointingly, it’s even smaller than the last one. Well, come to papa.

Wait, I could have sworn… ABORT, ABORT!

I dive to the left as huge shadow pass me in a trice the speed I’m capable of. Right, a single eye with no depth perception, duh. I turn around to see where it went and in my horror witness the end of Vick.

THAT FUCKING BASTARD!

You shall die a painful death! I charge the motherfucker straight up, while it’s still busy chewing on my favourite toy. In full speed, I impact his side. It does no substantial damage, but my warriors are already chewing through the thick skin on its side. It takes a few seconds, but soon the beast starts thrashing around. My glee of its misery abruptly stops as something impacts me. Flying uncontrollably, I try to orient myself towards the beast, and in horror, realise that I’m out in the open waters. I can still see the swaying kelp, but there is nothing nearby I could cover behind. I snap back towards the still trashing beast and for a second, I can swear we make eye contact.

“Crap!”

I reorient towards the sea floor and dive. Swimming as I’ve never swum before. I'm almost there when in the back of my mind, I feel a shadow hanging over me.

“Dude, can’t we just talk this out like grown-ups?”

*Snap*

The teeth close around me, cutting off part of my body.

“Goddammit, here we go again.”

Thankfully, this time I’m armed with vision. I scan my surroundings and dive towards what I presume is the throat, before anything teeth-like can grind me to dust.

A shadowy tentacle I dub tongue, lashes at me, but I evade it and keep going. The opening is small, enough for it to feel cramped, but I manage to stuff myself inside. I know I usually seem crazy, but I do have a plan. I just need to be a little deeper for it to work. No more poo-stain, this time, I’m taking the fucker down.

It takes a little bit more tunnel diving, but I finally get there. In front, I can see a place where the tunnel opens up into a large cave. An acidic burning sensation slowly grows stronger as I move towards it. I stop right on the border and open my inventory menu.

“Sorry, Vick. This is the best burial I can get you.”

Sand starts flooding out from the space in front of me. A trickle at first, but I enlarge the flow, as soon as I judge it safe. While the consistency is muddy at first, it soon becomes clear that there is enough sand to absorb all the liquid this creature has inside its stomach.

“Choke on this, bitch!”

This should stop it from puking me out, once I start working. It would probably die anyway from all the sand, but I’d rather speed up the process. I block the other end of the tunnel too and turn my attention towards my core. Alright, the energy discharge is still offline so I shouldn’t have problems with that. Time to work guys.

We split up our workforce - Susan managing the inner cell stuff, making sure every part has enough biomass to sustain the increased production, while Kevin goes balls to the wall with driving our vesicles to impact and release the toxic waste on the surrounding walls. I’d like to say that in the meantime I’m being a quality control manager, but truth is that I’m nursing an ever-growing headache, and it gets hard to think about stuff.

Soon, we are rewarded with sweet, sweet ichor of the Gods, or just blood for simplicity sake. This bastard even has an enclosed blood system, I’ll be sure to put it to good use when I devour it.

Oh crap, it stings a lot more now. Right, the creature has its own defence systems for any parasitical intruders. Unfortunate for my host, I got so much spare biomass that I don’t think I will ever run out. Praise the magical McGuffin element!

Alright, we are inside! I can feel my vesicles flowing inside one of the walls and disappearing somewhere, as I lose control of them. Now, I just have to slowly flood his system with my toxins, while that bastard chokes on the sand. One way or another, I already won.

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/System message:

-The system will be undergoing maintenance in 1 hour, due to the new patch release.

-Please be advised that system functions will be disabled while the maintenance occurs.

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What’s with the sudden arbitrary time limit? I swear you are doing this on purpose. I had weeks with nothing better to do and you chose this moment.

Good news - it won’t take that long to get out. The outside movement has already stopped, the beast crippled and drawing its last breath. It shouldn’t take long before my cells degrade it enough for me to absorb the parts.

It takes only 30 minutes until I see the walls around me disappear. I increased the suction range and soon I can see a sight that I can only describe as wire mesh. Its body lacking the absorbed parts, I can see the outside kelp fields. The mesh itself is built from sturdier stuff, as it takes 10 more minutes to suck it in. Wait, that’s not right. It should be counted as alive to not be absorbed, not sturdy. So what’s the last thing that is considered alive when everything else is gone? Was that ganglionic neural network? Did I finally score gold?

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/Absorbed:

-Multicellular organism - x1

/New molecule discovered:

-Vespine x2

-Updating prices

/New options added for evolution choices:

-Advanced defence system – updated x2

-Advanced offence system - updated

-Advanced movement system – updated

/Evolution options added:

-Advanced control system

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“Goodbye Vick, your heroic sacrifice won't be in vain.”