Chương 7: Bigger Pond

Being a jellyfish was, and Andy would stand by this for the rest of this life, the most fun he'd ever had in a body that didn't have a skeleton. Having a nerve net changed everything. Not in a dramatic, narrative-climax kind of way, but rather in the way a first pair of glasses changes a near-sighted kid's understanding of trees. He had been perceiving the world solely through chemical changes his entire second life. It kept him alive. It was functional, but there was little to experience. Now he was experiencing.

Water had texture, layered and varied with pockets of warmth and threads of cold. Currents pushed against his bell the way your hand feels air resistance when you stick it out the window while driving down the highway. When he swam through a cold pocket near the surface, the sensation was unpleasant and that, paradoxically, was wonderful in of itself.

"I have a nervous system," he thought pulsing through a frigid current, "I am cold." Warmth had been a revelation. Cold reminded him of winters back in–where was he from again? It doesn't matter. Cold reminded him of it. If he had breath he was sure it would be coming out in white plumes. His stinging cells were interesting from an intellectual perspective and horrifying from a personal one. Each of eight tentacles was studded with cnidocytes, coiled barbed threads loaded with paralytic toxin.

This fired the instant something brushed against them. Faster even than he could register that he'd been touched. He felt like he had hair triggers built into his skin or that he was a swimming minefield. A fragment of mineral deposit drifted into his trailing tentacle, and his cnidocytes unleashed a volley of paralytic barbs into a thing that was already as paralyzed as matter could be. Toxin dissipated uselessly. The rock drifted on, rather unimpressed at the show.

Andy's nerve net buzzed with the chemical equivalent of "false alarm, sorry, my bad, this is not my proudest moment."

"Great," he thought, "I'm the guy who punches an actor at a haunted house. Or worse… punches a cardboard cutout at a haunted house." But his horn. His unprecedented horn that followed him from single-celled prokaryote through three evolutions sat proudly and regally atop his head. Like him, it too had grown and was now long and thick and glowed a pulsing white blue. It still required intent as it didn't prematurely release like his cnidocytes. It was the weapon he controlled. His pride and joy.

He practiced, for lack of anything else to do. He found a mineral outcropping and used it as a target dummy, driving his horn into the rock face from different angles using his far more effective maneuvering locomotion capabilities. He worked from different angles, cataloging which trajectories allowed the fastest retraction. He'd become particularly fond of a bell propulsion combined with a tentacle grab into his horn that he was tentatively calling "The Express Delivery." He was adding to the list of named moves.

Luckily he had to remove most of the colonial ones because it was getting long. He refused to be embarrassed about his long list of made up moves. Who was he going to be impressing? The System? [THE SYSTEM IS NOT IMPRESSED]"Gee, thanks." Andy projected at the system. He tried to throw in as much sarcasm as he possibly could. When the System didn't respond, yet again, he went back to naming his moves.

The Express Delivery: Full speed bell propulsion, when close enough he would deploy [RAPID PSEUDOPOD EXTENSION] wrapping around the target and jamming it into the horn. The Curtain Call: tentacles forward, cnidocytes primed and when the target was paralyzed by the sting, follow up with the horn from behind a curtain of tentacles. The Dentist: A corkscrew maneuver that spun his bell in a tight arc. Andy had discovered that drilling into opponents with his horn was now even more effective than it had been previously.

[XP: 18/800] Eighteen experience from target practice. Not bad for what was essentially a training montage. But at this rate he'd be a boneless, paralytic horn forever. Hunting became far different at this tier. Cell combat had been rather direct: find thing, stab thing, absorb thing. Jellyfish combat was far more complex. Like chess when he'd been playing checkers. He had a bell to orient, tentacles to position, a horn to aim.

And now that he was larger the targets were as well and they had their own plans and ideas about who was eating whom. His first real fight happened near a thermal vent. Andy had been picking off smaller colonial organisms, and wondering if any of them could have been the piece that budded off of him. Mentally he shrugged and continued to wreak havoc on their day when he sensed something new. A chemical signature in the water that was large and complex and moving with the same directed purpose he moved with.

A hunter. His opponent was a siphonophore, a chain of specialized units linked together like cars on the world's tiniest toy train. It was perhaps twice as long, maybe three times Andy's length. It moved through the water with a bizarre undulating grace that Andy found to be both beautiful and personally offensive. This was his hunting ground and he was the bizarre thing in his territory. It sensed him and changed direction, angling toward him.

His cnidocytes primed automatically, each metaphorical hair stood up on Andy's (mental) neck.

"Okay," he thought with calm clarity.

"This is a real fight. This something will fight back." It struck first. One of its feeding units extended toward Andy's bell, trailing stinging filaments that would, if they made contact, paralyze him. He was not prepared to be out paralyzed by a chain of colonial cells with delusions of grandeur. Andy dodged. A hard pulse sent him angling well out of the filaments' path, and they passed through the space he had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.

It reconfigured, bringing a second unit to bear, then a third, coordinating multiple attack vectors all at once. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. It was also bigger than Andy. Appeared to be more complex than Andy and had many more weapons than him as well.

"But you don't have a horn," he projected at the evil train organism.

"Didn't you hear, horns are the new black?" He pulsed hard, driving forward at maximum velocity, horn forward like the lance of a jousting knight, aimed at the junction between the siphonophore's locomotion unit and it's first feeding unit. Now that he was familiar with colonial weaknesses, he could exploit them. His horn struck home. Crunch. [CRITICAL HIT!] [HORNY STRIKE: DAMAGE BONUS +25%] Horny strike. Was the System tired of his naming and was now naming his moves for him? This horn was his thing.

The thing about him that continued to get bigger and harder every time he leveled up, and at this point the innuendo was so obvious that the System seemed to now be getting in on the joke. The tiny train recoiled. The units rippled as the damaged junction leaked cellular material into the water. He noted that several of the outer links had been shaken free and the length of the chain was now a bit smaller. Andy circled again and stuck from below thrusting his horn deep into a feeding cell.

[HORNY STRIKE: DAMAGE BONUS +25%] Two hits. That was all it took for the siphonophore to begin losing cohesion. More units were drifting away. A chain was only as strong as its weakest link and Andy was very good at finding links to break. He struck a third time, then a fourth.

Express Delivery, Curtain Call, The Dentist, each one punctuated by the System's horn bonus, and his opponent, which had entered this fight larger and more complex came apart in slow drifting pieces that Andy took the opportunity to eat and bask in his kill. [ORGANISM DEFEATED: SIPHONOPHORE] [XP GAINED: +12 NEW SPECIES BONUS +10] Twenty-two experience. It felt like the system was saying "good job killing someone your own size."

[THE SYSTEM DID NOT SAY THIS] Andy floated in the debris field, absorbing nutrients and processing the fight. 25% extra damage on horn hits, the horn that supposedly wouldn't transfer to this form. It really did seem like the System was encouraging him to build his entire identity around this horn. An unprecedented horn that so far the System refused to explain. It continued to grow and become even more elaborate with every evolution. Getting increasingly stronger every time he used it.

He continued to get rewarded every time he stuck his horn into something.

"You're leading me somewhere." Andy thought, addressing the System again.

"This horn is special isn't it? My horn?" Characteristically, the System said nothing. Tease. [XP: 40/800] Andy, now once again having inflated his overly-endowed ego, peacocked off to find some more siphonophores or other new species to destroy. It didn't take long for Andy to get smacked back down from his orbit. The giant creature came back. It was somewhere between 50 and 100 times his size.

It moved with a slow undulation that displaced water in rolling waves and anything in that water had no choice but to be displaced as well. Strong, overly confident, horny Andy did the only thing he could at this moment. He hid. Mineral deposits near the channel mouth provided cover, pockets of shadow where a small jellyfish could tuck its bell and wrap its tentacles close and become almost invisible. Unfortunately, for Andy, that wasn't possible since his horn was a glowing beacon.

"The jellyfish's stealth weapon," he narrated, "has been cancelled. To put it bluntly this is like putting a bell on a cat, painting a sniper rifle neon orange or, and I can't believe I'm saying this… having a boner at the worst possible time." Andy shuddered remembering 11th grade speech and debate class. He'd been wearing dress pants to give his speech in and they were a tad too small, left nothing to the imagination.

Neither did the very low cut top of his teacher and he was busy becoming lost in her cleavage when it was his turn to take the podium. Sniggers from his classmates was enough to keep him awake that night and to fake an illness the next day. Wait– He'd gotten distracted. What was he doing here again? [SURVIVAL BONUS: +3 XP] [STEALTH RATING: POOR. CONSIDER EVOLVING CAMOUFLAGE OR REDUCING LUMINESCENCE.]"Oh. That's right. Consider reducing luminescence. Oh, I would love to find the dimmer and reduce luminescence.

Please tell me how to turn off the glowing horn. System, is there DLC? A switch," he waggled his tentacles, "do I need to angle one of these a particular way? A HAT!? Just tell me!" [QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED]"Why do you hate me?" [QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED] It also happened that in spite of its terrors, the open water was full of XP. Generous XP. Double XP for new Biome kills, a flat bonus per new species, plus a survival bonus that seemed to scale with the effectiveness of his strategy.

He hunted carefully, nothing like the brazen horn-first, Attenborough-narrated hunting of before. But he was getting bored of feeding mostly on small things that he would defeat without ceremony. A twitch of a tentacle as unsuspecting prey walked into his horn and tentacles like a bug zapper. [XP: 78/800] The shadow came again. Or quite possibly a different shadow, but equally large. The shadow dove, angling away from Andy toward the surface. He felt the pressure waves, the water displacement and then it was gone.

Something lived above the water. Maybe a lot of somethings. [NEW SPECIES DETECTED: AERIAL PREDATOR. CLASSIFICATION: PENDING] [OBSERVATION BONUS: +5 XP] [NOTE: AERIAL ORGANISMS OPERATE IN A BIOME CURRENTLY INACCESSIBLE TO YOUR SPECIES. SOME EVOLUTIONARY PATHS MAY GRANT BIOME TRANSITIONS IN FUTURE TIERS.] It was another one! Something new and what's this, biome transitions? He could eventually leave the water? Eventually.

Perhaps with the correct choices, he could evolve into something that wouldn't have to wear a seashell bikini. He turned his attention back to this biome. There was still a lot of XP between this tier and the next.

"Hey System," Andy prodded.

"Why am I not working toward an ability XP modifier?" [ABILITIES IN LATER TIERS ARE EARNED THROUGH LIFE CHOICES, AND MET CONDITIONS RATHER THAN XP.]"So, I have to do something cool and I'll get an ability?" [BEING COOL HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH IT. LUCKILY FOR YOU.]"What? Did you just call me uncool?" [QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED]"Do not give me that shit System. I know you're there. Who are you?" [QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED] Andy sighed which actually released a trail of bubbles from his manubrium.

He shivered at the sensation of the bubbles brushing up past his skin on their way to the surface. Andy was choosing to be happy about his new sensations, and his glowing unprecedented horn crown. Plus, glowing horns were undeniably cool. The universe was out there saying "This guy's got a big impressive horn, check it out." And he was choosing to believe that, because the alternative was that the universe was just trying to get him eaten.

And after– well his first life, then almost being digested by an amoeba, and then a crinoid, he figured that the universe thought he could use a break.