Chapter 33

Operation Alpha vegan - not a complete failure? Yeah, if I think about it, I did catch on an important fact - my growth is not fully dependent on the system. I’m still unsure of how to effectively use this information, but it’s a step in the right direction. Who knows, maybe there are even deadlier plants lying around somewhere. The key is finding them, and it’s quite hard when you have a single eye, that barely sees shapes.

However, it does beg the question - why didn’t the system think of this as an upgrade opportunity? I would like to think there’s a logical explanation for it, but it might be something that’s there just to mess with my head.

Welp, let’s go hunt some more. I’m sure another genius idea will find me soon. Or I’ll die. It’s clearly a fifty-fifty chance.

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I watch in awe as the target of my subjugation melts before my eyes. All that’s left is a paste of biomass, which I quickly absorb before it disperses. Whaddya know, turns out I gained more than simple protection against the local plant life.

“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, eh?”

That’s right, without any help from the system, I took a step forward. One way or another, not only did I get decently durable against plant toxins, but I also integrated them as a weapon. Or should I say that my own toxins got upgraded? I still remember the poor fool that got caught before me and it clearly didn’t degrade this fast. Rather, the difference is so stark, you can’t even compare the two.

What now? Does this open a new opportunity? Let’s check on things I can work towards.

Killing the glowing snake thingy. Go look for more plants to absorb. Simply steadily increasing my overall size until I get too slow again.

Hmm, what else? Anything location-based? Something I could only do on the surface level? Try to leave water? Nope, it’s too soon for that. I’m still small enough to get killed by a slight breeze. The same goes for land animal hunting. Too small to do anything productive in a fight, and even if I win, I would have to bet on the system to provide an upgrade for living outside of the water.

I think I’m going about this the wrong way. I need to look at something I could do without any noticeable downsides. So let’s cross out things I know doesn’t work.

Killing the glowing snake beast is out of the question until I can survive a direct hit by its tail. Looking for more plants is a fool’s errand. There’s no guarantee that the plants I already found are not the apex plantlife around these parts, and I don’t remember seeing more unique specimens. That leads me to the last point - simply increasing my size is what I’m constantly doing already, and if history has taught me anything, in the long term, it won’t solve anything.

So I’m stuck? No, no, no. I’m still going about this the wrong way. Let’s check on what I CAN do. I can upgrade myself with or without the system’s help. So for system upgrades, I need vespine. The only place I know that contains vespine are the insides of the tail-biter fish. While dangerous, I already escaped twice in confrontation and even killed one of them.

Kill more tail-biters

Alright, that’s one side done. The other is more abstract. It all comes down to - do something the system doesn’t expect from me. What if I started experimenting with my skills? I got the primitive conversion system, but as far as I can tell it only works on blueprint bases. It came with biomass conversion installed, but the rate is so slow that it barely covers its running expenses. Can I change the blueprint to minerals or vespine?

I tried, and the short answer is I can. The long answer - It takes ages and is not worth it. At first, when I tried to change the output to minerals or vespine, I thought it simply didn’t want to work, but apparently if you wait long enough - around a day or so - it completes one mineral molecule. As for vespine? I dread that it will take months if not years. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Obviously, I wasn’t idle all this time. I got my second project working, and for now, while it’s a bit of a mess, Kevin’s making it work somehow. The main thought behind the project ‘A helping hand’, was to create a safer way of killing the tail-biters. With my ever-growing size and the fact that it is suicidal, I already discarded ‘being eaten’ as a possible strategic solution. That meant I had to focus my attacks on the outside. While technically doable with my upgraded toxin catalogue, the fact remained that my opponent will never sit still while I’m killing it. I needed a way to attach myself to it. Far from any deadly teeth and in a perfect position to dish out an unlimited supply of venom. Now that I think about it, calling it project ‘Bull rider’ sounds way cooler.

Anyway, we needed something that would work in such a situation and the only possibilities that I thought of: glue, cables and arms. If I had the necessary knowledge, I might be able to make superglue using the primitive conversion system, but my knowledge mostly consists of MOBA character skill and item builds, outdated meme references and the timings for **** rushes. Could try the plant glue, but, honestly, I can’t even differentiate between the things in my inventory nowadays. When I absorb anything organic, I get so much stuff, and all I can go for are their chemical names. I might know the periodic table, but what the fuck is C257H383N65O77S6. Now imagine thousands of slots, all filled with these random names. Nope, the glue is lost to the stash Gods.

The best I could think of for the cables was seaweed, but I would never get the chance to tie myself to my target. As for arms, well, that opened a whole new room of possibilities. I’ve been putting aside any plans of an active evolutionary step since the system approximated my chance of manually completing such a thing in 13 million years. While it might have been a joke on my expense, it’s true that I had no real knowledge of how to make that next leap on the complexity ladder. This time, hoverer, it’s something doable. All-in-all, it’s just stacking cells in one line. How hard could it be?

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Yeah, it was pretty hard. The whole module system is not really self-explanatory in the first place. And the placement of said modules mainly involves me hoping they would spawn in the general location of my target. Makes shaping my body possible, but denies any precision work. It all came down to trial and error. You do it hundreds of times and delete any off-target results.

Here's the gist of it:

Make a thousand cells in the same place.

Realise that making cells on the cancerous carapace is a bad idea and that they now lack the necessary nutrients to function.

Scratch them off using hard surface.

Scratch off the cancerous skin. Which involves pain as you are using sandpaper to scrape off your own skin.

Try to target the same place with another thousand cells.

Get a bit scared as you now have a huge lump on one side of your body.

Use ‘passive cell suicide’ actively and try to destroy the off-target cells, by guiding the antibodies to the necessary sites.

Repair the multiple holes you now have in your body.

Repeat step 5-8 over and over because you suck at what you are doing.

Get happy about smaller protrusion outside of your body that, honestly, looks like a penis.

Realise you cannot move the so-called penis contraption.

In panic cut off … skip this point, trust me.

After the agony is gone, start thinking of a way to control said protrusion.

The answer lies in indirect control. On the outside, we use a layer of movement spirals, which, after some intensive headache-inducing training, can be used to slowly fold said protrusion around the target. Tested successfully on nearby plants, but require too much time to be effecting in real combat.

On the inside layer, we use a chemical salt mix which, when sent by inventory to specific places, induce cell shrinkage. Therefore, if implemented on one side of the protrusion, can make it curve in one direction.

Tests reveal that said protrusion… you know what. I can’t keep avoiding this. It’s a fucking tentacle. I need to call it as it is. Yes, I’m slowly becoming some kind of horrible monster straight out of Lovecraftian horror. Bite me.

Anyway, tests reveal that the TENTACLE is strong enough to not break under strain. Test conducted while holding on to a plant and swimming away from it.

All that’s left is prolonging the tentacle until it can effectively circle larger opponents and, maybe, I could add more of these if my mind can handle it.

We got the hook, all that’s left is the bait and the sucker that eats it.