Chương 6: Jelly Boy Summer

His lattice took longer than he wanted to patch. Time in the open water moved the same way it always had, which is to say it didn't. At least not in any way he could track. His secondary cells worked through what felt like a dull stretch of nothing, ferrying mineral deposits to the fracture lines in slow methodical passes. Meanwhile Andy floated near the basalt shelf and tried his best not to do anything that would crack the repairs. That monstrous lobster had gotten him good.

In just a few hits he had almost died, and that was enough to make anyone rethink their choices. So he'd rethought them, and rethought them, and rethought them and he came to the conclusion that he'd make the same ones all over again. He used the time to send off parts of himself to hunt small things. Easy things. Dinophysis that wandered too closely pinged off his damaged lattice with their volleys. [XP: 301/ 500] He was working through a slow current near the warm sediment when his colony spontaneously budded.

One minute he had forty cells and the next he had twenty-six. A small colonial cluster was drifting away from him into the water. They seemed to have not a care in the world. The colony had no horn. His horn stayed with the core, with him. The mini-colony, (his offspring? How many offspring did he have now?) drifted past his detection range and vanished into the open water. Hornless, autonomous, and utterly unbothered. He watched it go.

"I want it on the record," he said to the System, which was technically always (or never) listening.

"That did not count. I did not do that on purpose. That was unexpected. An accidental… I don't know the word." [NEW ABILITY: TYCHOPARTHENOGENESIS]"Bless you?" [XP +2] He absorbed a dinophysis and did not think about his tychoparthenogenesis offspring again. The current that took him out of the thermal vent zone was slow and deliberate. He followed it because his secondary cells were already following it and because the XP gains were getting thinner and less frequent near the basalt shelf.

The easy prey was all hunted out and somewhere ahead his chemoreception was registering something it couldn't quite classify. It didn't seem to be food or danger. It was something new, something bigger. The channel was narrow, rocky, and then it wasn't. Open water arrived suddenly and without ceremony. The thermal boundaries he'd navigated by dissolved into something vast and ambient.

His detection range, which had been relatively sufficient to cover his entire world post his colonial evolution, reached out in every direction and only found more water, more organism's, more everything. [NEW BIOME: OPEN WATER. EXPLORATION BONUS ACTIVE.] [KILLS +100% XP] [STEALTH RATING: POOR]"Stealth rating poor?" In the dim open water, far from the comfort of thermal vents he'd begun to glow.

His horn was putting off a unique signature his photoreceptors decided was a faint-blue white glow beginning from the apex of his silica structure. Here in the dark, he was a beacon. He tried to dim it. He focused on his horn the way he'd focus on his pseudopods or his secondary cells. The glow did not dim.

"The colonial radiolaria," he narrated, "has a nightlight." [NEW ABILITY: HORN LIGHT]"What even is this System?" [THE SYSTEM DID NOT GIVE YOU LIGHT. YOU FOUND IT YOURSELF.] In spite of many, many attempts at gathering more information the system refused to elaborate further. So, he hunted. The open water was thick with organisms he hadn't encountered. And even more organisms that had never encountered a colonial predator with a glowing horn and a dozen hard, long, sticky pseudopods.

The exploration bonus along with bonuses from encountering new species allowed his XP bar to move more quickly than he'd expected. [+22 XP NEW SPECIES BONUS +10] [+5 XP NEW SPECIES BONUS +10] [+18 XP NEW SPECIES BONUS +10] [XP: 423/ 500] Then he encountered the tardigrade. He almost missed it. His chemoreception flagged it as a living organism, roughly his own size, moving through the water slowly, deliberately, and confidently enough that it caught his attention.

He, of course, approached it horn first, and then extended a pseudopod to grab it. The pseudopod stuck. The tardigrade continued on his journey, casually unsticking itself and not even losing stride. Andy watched this happen. He extended three more pseudopods. The tardigrade walked out of those as well angling slightly toward him now. It didn't at all appear threatening with it's small circular mouth that it was using to feast on algae. Instead the tardigrade appeared to view Andy as an obstacle.

Andy drove his horn into it. Tink. The horn bounced off of the tardigrade, and unphased, it continued eating algae. [TARDIGRADE DETECTED] Stolen story; please report. [NOTE: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO KILL THIS ORGANISM]"I'm already attempting it," Andy said. [THE SYSTEM IS AWARE.] [STOP.] He did not stop. He hit it with Mutual Penetration, The Cluster Thrust, he'd even pulled out older moves like The Jackhammer and even The Proctologist. The tardigrade continued eating algae.

Occasionally it'd shift its weight, or step slightly to one side or the other. Three of Andy's secondary cells spun off into the current and he recalled them, somewhat humiliated on their behalf. The tardigrade, which had been mostly ignoring Andy had arrived at a decision. It opened its mouth and extended its stylets toward Andy.

The most frightening part to Andy, was not that it was attacking him, but that it was doing so as it continued to eat and with so little animosity, so little hurry or energy that Andy knew in that moment he would forever be outmatched by this bizarre looking underwater potato pig. Andy moved. The tardigrade did not pursue, or escalate. It found another algae path and continued on with its business as if it had never been bothered by Andy in the first place. [XP GAINED: 0] [NOTE: THE TARDIGRADA IS UNDEFEATED. IT WAS SO UNDEFEATED YOU MIGHT AS WELL LEAVE THIS OUT OF YOUR MEMOIR] Andy watched the tardigrade lumber away into the open water. Eight stubby legs, perfectly content, completely indestructible.

"Gerald." he said.

"You remind me of Gerald." Gerald did not respond. Afterall, that was one of the things Andy loved most about Geralds. He turned toward more killable prey. The large thing didn't attack him. That was the important part. It moved through his detection range the way a weather system moves through a city. Present and without malice or discrimination. It's chemical signature was so dense it registered less like an organism and more like a local phenomenon. He sent twelve scouts out.

[COLONIAL BUDDING] deployed them in a wide arc, each cluster broadcasting its own chemical signature outward into the open water like twelve miniature campfires. The massive organisms water displacement shifted. Its passage angled three body widths to the left of Andy but the water still hit him hard enough to crack one of his newly repaired fracture lines. [SILICA LATTICE ARMOR INTEGRITY: 91%] The scouts came back jostled, some of them trailing debris.

He absorbed them back into the colony and didn't examine how relieved he was that he hadn't lost any. They were cells. His cells. He should stop thinking about it, because he didn't want to make it weird(er). Then the surface broke. He didn't see it, not truly, as he still didn't have eyes. But the pressure hit first. A concussive displacement from above that moved through the water with a speed and violence that had no equivalent in anything he'd encountered to date.

Something had hit the surface from above, and was gone before the water had finished reacting. [NEW ORGANISM DETECTED: AERIAL PREDATOR. CLASSIFICATION: PENDING] [SURVIVAL BONUS +5 XP] [NOTE: THE WATER HAS A CEILING. YOU FINALLY FOUND IT.] Andy processed this. Something lived above the water. Something large enough to hit the surface and bring attention to something he'd yet to see or understand in however long he had lived here. This world now had another dimension he'd not yet accounted for.

[XP: 497/500] He found a small colonial cluster near a current boundary, hit it with The Long Stroke, and the bar maxed out. [XP: 500/500] [TIER 3 EVOLUTION AVAILABLE] [CNIDARIAN (JELLYFISH)]- Mobile predator. Bell propulsion, trailing tentacles, stinging cells. Primitive nerve net. Incompatible with Horn Morphology, compatible with rapid pseudopod extension, incompatible with silica lattice armor, incompatible with colonial specific abilities (budding, tychoparthenogenesis, etc.) [PORIFERA (SPONGE)]- Sessile filter feeder. Silica spicule framework retains and upgrades your current lattice. High passive XP. Compatible with Horn morphology in purely decorative form. Incompatible with active hunting, colonial specific abilities (budding, tychoparthenogenesis, etc.), rapid pseudopod extension. [STENOPHROE (COMB JELLY)]- mobile predator. Cilia-driven locomotion. Sticky colloblast cells replace pseudopod adhesion. Retains modified colonial coordination.

Compatible with rapid pseudopod extension. Compatible with horn morphology at reduced efficiency. He read the sponge option for exactly as long as it took to get to the word 'sessile' and then closed it. He read the comb jelly option twice. It kept most of his current build, and was the only option that retained use of his horn even though it had reduced efficiency. He took a moment before selecting. He was absolutely nervous but the reason for the delay was not nerves. He recalled his scouts.

All of them, he'd become rather attached to them. His village, his staff.

"Well. Thanks." he said to them. In true form they did not respond, and that was really all Andy needed to know that he was making the correct decision. He would be sad to see the horn go. He selected Jellyfish. The silica dissolved first. He felt it go, slowly drain away from him like washing off dried on mud in the shower. Every lattice thread and mineral deposit his secondary cells had painstakingly ferried to fracture sites softened and released into the surrounding water. His armor, his shell was gone.

Then the restructuring. His colony cells reorganized in a fashion similar to when they'd arrived. The difference was that now there was no lattice to anchor to, nothing to build around. Andy clung to his horn. He wasn't ready to say no. He felt it begin to dissolve and he concentrated on it. No no no. I've changed my mind. It pulled at the core of his being and snapped back into place. A bell structure forming around it, and his pseudopods stretched into tentacles below.

Eight of them incorporating their own version of the [RAPID PSEUDOPOD EXTENSION] into something more fluid, more responsive. Stinging cells populated the tentacle surface. Thankfully, the nerve net came last. Andy understood at that moment why babies cried when they were born. Every first feeling was overwhelming. His new and raw nerves felt every sensation wholly for the very first time.

He was feeling the worst pain, and the greatest pleasure imaginable as his neural tissue threaded outward from whatever served as his core. It connected to the bell, to the tentacles, to every corner and crease of his new body. He could feel the water. This wasn't chemoreception, not pressure waves, not signals or secondhand information being interpreted by data he or his secondary cells had collected. No no. He felt warm water pressing against his bell. It was temperature, it was texture, it was there.

In that moment he felt undeniably safe. A giant, warm hug embracing him in the dark. Whispering softly, that he was going to be okay. He felt in that moment more complete, more whole than he ever had in either life. And then, reality rushed back to remind him that he was in fact, not safe. [TIER 3 EVOLUTION COMPLETE] [SPECIES CNIDARIAN (JELLYFISH)] [YOU KEPT YOUR HORN. THAT IS INTERESTING.] [HORN MORPHOLOGY: ACTIVE TIER 3/6 TRAIT CHAIN UNPRECEDENTED. NOTE: HORN RETAINED AT PRIMARY APEX. STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION: PERMANENT.] He checked the horn. Still there. Calcium spike at the crown of his bell, protruding upward in the direction of travel when he swam, pointing forward when he dove. He was a jellyfish… with a spike on its head. A crown, a tiara on a translucent blob with frilly stinging underwear. He looked absolutely ridiculous. And he felt like it was exactly where he was supposed to be. He pulsed the bell once, experimentally. Water jetted downward. He moved upward.

The sensation immediately made his head spin. This was the first time he had a sense of where his body was in space. The sensation was so clean and immediate that he just stopped and existed. He was a jellyfish with a horn on his head and today he was feeling water on his skin. [XP: 0/800] [NEXT MILESTONE: TIER 4 EVOLUTION] Eight hundred. The numbers just continued to get larger. He pulsed his bell again, slow and deliberately. He felt the water answer, and a swell of joy came over Andy. He was real. He could feel.

Forward.