Chương 5: Bigger Fish

The colonial radiolaria, Andy had discovered, had opinions. Not thoughts or preferences in any meaningful sense of the word. But the forty-six secondary cells that made up the non-Andy portions of his colony had developed what he could only describe as independent instincts. Kind of like a new hire who doesn't know anything about the job still knows not to heat up fish in the break room microwave. They had begun sorting out prey by XP yield without asking or being directed.

They'd developed a kind of formation habit clustering the structural cells on the outside and the metabolic ones inward. After being mildly annoyed at it he figured, well, colonial radiolaria had to exist before him and probably weren't all former humans with a chip on their shoulder because they'd died before they'd been ready to. He was managing a colony that was better at being a colony than he was at managing it.

It was, he admitted to himself reluctantly like that time he'd become a new manager at an already successful Burger King while he was in college. It barely mattered if he was there or not. [XP: 148/400] The grind was going well. Foraminifera, which he learned were single celled organisms that kind of resembled sea-shells, were proving to be excellent XP. Their shells gave a complexity bonus that made them worth the trouble of punching through.

And the silica lattice had turned adhesive webs from a serious threat into a minor inconvenience. He rolled through them like a morning star through cobwebs. He'd lost a few secondary cells in the first encounter, but none since. He was learning, and so was his colony. Possibly the colony was learning faster than he was. He was working through a cluster of smaller organisms near a current boundary when the shooting started. The first projectile struck his lattice from the left.

It reminded him of a pebble hitting a window. Then fourteen more in rapid succession, each one impacting his silica shell at a different point. This disturbing volley lasted about two seconds but left him disoriented and spinning slowly in the current. Ping. Ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping. He steadied himself.

"Was that…" Andy projected to his colony, "shooting?" [NEMATOCYSTS DETECTED. ORGANISM: DINOFLAGELLATE.] [NOTE: DINOPHYSIS FIRES BALLISTIC NEMATOCYST CAPSULES UNDER PRESSURIZED PROPULSION] [SILICA LATTICE ARMOR INTEGRITY 94%] He was being shot at. By plankton. Something the size of a large bacterium relative to him. It had a biological gatling gun and he was their target. Given that he was still mostly intact he figured.

"That must've been a warning shot." He oriented toward the Dinophysis. It was spinning. This caught him off guard and he paused to watch the choreographed water gymnastics. Two flagella worked in perpendicular grooves around its body like a gyroscope. Its nematocyst batteries were already reloading. The chemical signals in the water were giving Andy about a three second heads up before the next volley.

"The colonial radiolaria," he narrated, falling into the comfortable groove of his best internal David Attenborough. Although at this point, he was not even sure if it still resembled Attenborough at all. Maybe, he thought with dismay, it never had.

"Faces its first ranged enemy." He paused again "The colonial radiolaria has no ranged attack… It is going to have to close the distance or risk being shot again." He folded his pseudopods tight against his lattice and dove toward the ranger horn first. The second volley hit him square during his approach. Ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping. He noted that it hit another fourteen times and kept moving.

The Dinophysis, which had a defense system optimized for soft-bodied prey, found that its entire ballistic arsenal was functionally inept against a horned glass-like sphere moving at (an impressive–if he didn't say so himself) ramming speed. The offending plankton expressed this discovery by being impaled. Pop. Not quite the same sound as a prokaryote. More structure, more resistance, far more satisfying.

[ORGANISM DEFEATED: DINOPHYSIS] [XP GAINED: +22] He absorbed the nutrients and sat with the satisfaction that he'd been unexpectedly shot at from range, and he'd not only tanked the hit but had come out relatively unscathed. The gamer-part of his brain laughed at the pvp encounter. Normally, a melee class being snuck up on and headshot by a ranged character would have failed miserably. Well, it was a good thing he wasn't normal.

His colony decided that the prey was good hunting and already steered itself toward the next Dinophysis in the area.

"Fine," he relented.

"Good work." The Noctiluca was enormous. That was the first and the most important fact about it. Relative to Andy's colonial form, the Noctiluca was the size of a school bus. A bloated translucent school bus drifting rather confidently through the water. Its feeding tentacle trailed behind it, forgotten for the moment. Its interior pulsed with a cold blue-green glow faint and steady, that Andy could sense without eyes. [NOCTILUCA SCINTILLANS: HETEROTROPHIC DINOFLAGGATE. INDISCRIMINATE FEEDING BEHAVIOR. SIZE: SIGNIFICANT.] [NOTE: NOCTILUCA SCINTILLANS EMPLOYS BIOLUMINESCENT ALARM RESPONSE WHEN THREATENED.] [PS: THIS MEANS DISTURBANCE TRIGGERS A LIGHT EMISSION TO ATTRACT SECONDARY PREDATORS.]"So,"Andy addressed the System.

"It glows when you attack it… To summon back up?" [CORRECT.]"If I attack it, it calls for help?" Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. [ITS NOT A HARD CONCEPT TO GRASP.] Andy ground his teeth, or he would if he'd had any teeth.

"What kind of back up are we talking about?" The System chose this moment to stop responding. The System's silence had a particular feel to it when it could answer, but thought it would be better if Andy discovered it himself. Andy looked(sensed) at the Noctiluca, at the glow, it's size. He compared that to his multicellular cluster and nodded internally. Come on Snodgrass. You know the mechanic, you know the boss. Now you just have to defeat it before back up arrives. Qurupeco style.

"Okay colonial radiolaria. Let's deploy the Cluster Thrust." He drove his horn into the Noctiluca's outer membrane. The response was immediate. The glow went from faint to blazing and the light pulse was now reminiscent of a harsh emergency beacon. Even his primitive photoreceptors were overloaded in the visual noise. The Noctiluca's feeding tentacle snapped toward him at a previous unseen speed. It slid around his lattice holding on poorly and Andy used that moment to thrust the horn in deeper.

[SECONDARY PREDATOR DETECTED: APPROACHING. ETA: UNKNOWN] Andy processed "ETA unknown" and made a command decision.

"Alright everyone. It's time for pointy group activities." He contracted every pseudopod at once, angling his now-free horn for maximum penetration and drove through the Noctiluca's weakened membrane in a full colonial push. As he dove deeper the pseudopods shot out with hard spiky force penetrating the Noctiluca from dozens of angles all at once. The Noctiluca came apart. [NOCTILUCA SCINTILLANS: DEFEATED.] [XP GAINED: +110] [SURVIVAL BONUS: +15] [XP: 413/400] Andy floated in the dissipating remains of the Noctiluca and felt for the first time, in either life, genuinely impressive. He had rolled through bigger and bigger enemies, finally even taking down a school bus sized predator from the inside with relative ease. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, built differently.

"The colonial radiolaria," he narrated at a very robust internal monologue volume, "surveys the battlefield. Notes: No survivors, Threat level in this area: zero." He paused for effect, alone, in the water to an audience of none.

"He didn't even have to try." [ABILITY SELECTION AVAILABLE] [PLEASE CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:] Right. His reward. He pulled up his menu with great satisfaction. If he'd had a mouth it would certainly be grinning so big and long that his cheeks would hurt. [COLONIAL BUDDING] - Detach secondary cells as autonomous scouts or decoys. Detached cells retain basic coordination. Range: Medium. Cells return on command. [ENHANCED LATTICE DENSITY] - Reinforce silica framework with additional mineral deposits.

Armor integrity +40%. Movement Speed -10% [SYMBIOTIC PHOTOTROPHS] - Integrate photosynthesis algae into colony. Generates passive XP from light exposure. Secondary effect: colony becomes bioluminescent. He was reading option three a second time, working out whether bioluminescence was tactically a problem or an opportunity when the pressure changed. He'd been ignoring the chemical signals of his colony.

They were often single-minded in focus and any activity not leading toward more grinding XP caused them to put off an almost anxious chemical scent in the Horn's general direction. The copepod hit him like a truck. Andy had, in his previous life been hit by a truck so he was confident in his use of this metaphor. He recognized the half-instant total sensory interruption that stopped his brain mid thought.

The copepod's first strike with its feeding appendages caught his lattice at an angle that sent him spinning so fast that the Music Express would be jealous. His secondary cells couldn't compensate and three of them detached on impact. He felt them go. Three small signal losses in the coordination network and then he hit something solid (a rock) and came to a stop. [SILICA LATTICE ARMOR INTEGRITY: 61%] [CELLS LOST: 3] [COLONIAL COORDINATION: DISRUPTED.] He hadn't moved, he'd been yeeted. The copepod was enormous.

His chemoreception processed it in pieces because his brain, which had been busy being smug a very short period of time ago, couldn't fit the whole event into one thought. It had a segmented body and six pairs of legs, each one longer than Andy's entire colony diameter. Antennae swept through the water. Radiolaria appeared to be this guys' favorite snack and he had all of the right evolutionary parts to ensure he didn't go hungry.

Mandibles clicked, as it tilted its head and felt around in front of itself looking for Andy. The Notiluca's distress signal. He'd known it'd attract something, but he didn't know it would be worse than the notiluca itself. [COPEPODA: PRIMARY RADIOLARIA PREDATOR. MECHANORECEPTIVE TARGETING. MANDIBLE FORCE: SUFFICIENT TO BREACH SILICA LATTICE.]"Sufficient to breach. Well that's an understatement, System. Thanks." The copepod located him. The head had stopped rotating and both antennae pointed straight at Andy.

Then the copepod shot toward him with explosive force. He did the only thing he could. Extending every pseudopod outward, he dragged himself sideways along the basalt shelf. The second strike took four more cells off of his colony, and cracked his lattice. Pain ricocheted through Andy's entire being and he started imagining himself opening like a walnut while the copepod enjoyed his juicy center.

[SILICA LATTICE ARMOR INTEGRITY: 43%] [CELLS LOST: 7]"Okay," Andy said, reassuring the rest of, well himself, "new plan." The copepod turned with a speed that should have been outlawed. Its mechanoreceptors tracked his pseudopod movement, he realized. Every time he moved it knew where he was. When he was still, it was recalibrating, playing with his food. It was far faster than him, far bigger than him. He knew his armor could handle a lot, but it could not handle those mandibles.

He looked at the ability selection screen which was still open, technically, floating in his awareness. He didn't have time to decide so he yoinked the first one. [COLONIAL BUDDING ACQUIRED] [MAXIMUM DETACHMENT 20 CELLS] The copepod came at him a third time. He detached ten secondary cells in every direction simultaneously. And scattered them. They weren't exactly bait but they also weren't not bait.

He hadn't told them to go but ten small clusters of colonial radiolaria suddenly moved and began broadcasting in ten different directions. For the copepod it began hitting his mechanoreceptors like a switchboard lighting up all at once, and for two full beats it hesitated, antennae sweeping, processing the conflicting signals. It staggered and stuttered unsure of where to go. It was enough time.

Andy drove horn-first into the gap between the copepods third and fourth body segments, where the chitin plates overlapped but didn't seal. He'd learned from the crinoid that even small organisms had soft spots underneath hard parts. He extended each pseudopod down and inside between every plate he could find and activated his skill spearing the creature in twenty soft spots all at once. Crunch. Pop. The copepod's reaction was immediate. Every swimming leg fired at once.

A full body spasm that wrenched Andy sideways and sent another fracture through his lattice. Andy held onto the bucking copepod, diving his horn in deeper. The copepod twisted, and Andy leaned into it the extra weight throwing it off balance. He worked the pseudopods out and in while he yanked the horn out and thrust it in again, like he had on the crinoid. In, twist, out, angle, in, twist, rip. The copepods's spasms grew slower, and then stopped.

[COPEPODA: DEFEATED] [XP GAINED: +175] [SURVIVAL BONUS: +100] [COLONIAL SCOUTS RECOVERED 7] [SILICA LATTICE ARMOR INTEGRITY: 31%] [XP: 288/ 500] [NEXT MILESTONE: TIER 3 EVOLUTION] He released the copepod's body and drifted backward in the current. His lattice had a fracture that his secondary cells were already trying to patch with mineral deposits, slowly. He was down ten cells but he was, he was fairly confident, fine. He was fine. He was 212 XP from Tier 3.

He'd just defeated something that had evolved specifically to eat him. He waited a beat to see if the smugness would come back. Thankfully, it didn't. Some lessons, it turned out, only needed to be taught once.

"The colonial radiolaria," he narrated, "is going to find someplace to rest, and heal. And then it's going to keep moving." He paused.

"Forward. Always forward."