Chapter 6

Is it to face the boundless world of water again? Or to continue staying in place and eat to one's heart's content?

Of course, it's to continue eating. Why leave? If it left, there would be too many uncertainties, and Lin didn't want to take the risk.

So Lin decided to swallow this massive food source completely. This way, its colony would grow to the thousands, no, perhaps even reach the tens of millions.

Lin had never been able to imagine such numbers before, but now, as the colony grew, the information it could think about also increased.

However, there was one thing Lin hadn't considered—

The future.

Lin's cells began to continuously devour the massive food source, starting from the holes they had dug. The acid-secreting cells continuously dissolved large amounts of food, while the remaining cells dug, cut, and tore, using every method to devour the food as quickly as possible.

Lin's colony began to grow rapidly. When the colony surpassed a thousand, Lin's observer cells' field of vision could hardly contain them all.

Lin felt puzzled again. Why couldn't the vision-capable cells split into other vision-capable cells? The cells that split from the observer cells were still just basic ordinary cells.

And these ordinary cells would slowly evolve into diggers due to their eating habits, ultimately having no vision.

Just as Lin was troubled, a special object appeared in its field of vision again.

A huge, blue object lay on the vast white plain made of food. This object seemed to be alive, its body constantly moving.

However, its movement did not damage the food beneath it. Lin deduced that it wasn't eating. Moreover, this creature had a strange appearance; its body seemed to have no fixed shape, constantly changing, like...

A slime?

Lin didn't know why this word came to mind, but in the next moment, it found a more accurate name...

An amoeba.

A very fitting name.

Lin had no particular thoughts about this amoeba because its size was too large. Even if a thousand of Lin's cells were piled up, they wouldn't reach half its size. This made Lin abandon the idea of attacking.

But why must one attack upon seeing another creature?

However, what else could be done besides attacking?

Lin didn't understand.

Lin continued to observe the constantly moving amoeba. Suddenly, it noticed that some small things were slowly swimming toward it from a distance.

These small things were about the same size as Lin's cells, but they were oval-shaped and green. These were probably also some kind of cells.

However, as these green cells approached, the amoeba suddenly reacted. Its body surface suddenly protruded with many tentacle-like structures, reaching out to the green cells.

No, it wasn't so much that it extended tentacles as that it transformed part of its body into tentacles.

The green cells didn't try to avoid them. They were easily caught by the tentacles, which, like cells devouring objects, sucked the green cells whole. The swallowed green cells were slowly transported to the center of the amoeba's body through the tentacles.

The amoeba's body was a light gray, highly transparent, so Lin could see what happened to the green cells inside it.

The cells were concentrated in one spot inside the amoeba, very close to a black, round object, which was probably the amoeba's core. Then the green cells' bodies began to slowly shrink and eventually disappeared.

It seemed they were being digested, but Lin couldn't see what was digesting them.

Speaking of which, when its own cells digested food, the food would mysteriously shrink and disappear inside them. Lin couldn't see what was actually digesting the food.

Many green cells were floating by, and the amoeba only caught a portion of them. A large number of green cells were floating toward Lin's cell cluster.

Although they didn't pose a threat to Lin, what made it nervous was that the huge amoeba was also moving in this direction, following the floating green cells.

So fast.

Lin had only one thought about the amoeba's speed. The continuously moving, large-bodied amoeba was much faster than Lin's cells.

Run? Counterattack?

Lin didn't plan to run. It had already experienced many battles, and its cell colony was now very strong.

A direct confrontation, then.

There were now 97 acid-secreting cells, and Lin was very confident.

Under Lin's control, the acid-secreting cells rushed forward. The amoeba seemed to sense something approaching and sped up.

Lin was curious about this sensing ability. The amoeba clearly had no vision; otherwise, it would have seen this side long ago. How did it know the location of the food? It couldn't be by touch, as it knew the green cells were coming before making contact with them.

The strange cells before also reacted to nearby objects.

Lin had a desire to obtain this ability, as it still couldn't split into more observers.

The amoeba sensed the approach of the acid-secreting cells and launched a preemptive attack. It split a large, soft-looking part of its body into countless small tentacles, reaching out to the acid-secreting cells.

As the tentacles approached, the acid-secreting cells sprayed a large amount of dissolving liquid from their conical mouths. The amoeba's tentacles immediately began to rot upon contact with the dissolving liquid, and the amoeba, as if in pain, retracted its tentacles.

At this moment, Lin launched its second attack.

It was a group of 300 conical cells. These cells had become extremely sharp through constant drilling into the food. Even the high-hardness parts of the food that previously required dissolving liquid could now be easily drilled through.

The amoeba didn't just stand there. After realizing the other side would counterattack, it concentrated all its small tentacles into several large tentacles. These large tentacles would still rot upon contact with the dissolving liquid, but they wouldn't be completely dissolved so quickly.

Using these large tentacles, the amoeba caught some acid-secreting cells and sucked them into its body. The liquid from the acid-secreting cells caused some damage to the amoeba's body, but it wasn't serious.

At this point, the conical cells had approached the amoeba. They used their sharp, saw-toothed cones to pierce the amoeba's outer membrane and began to rotate.

This rotating action was something Lin had discovered by chance. This method could cut food faster, and some cells that rotated a lot even evolved small, oval fins on their tails to help accelerate the rotation.

The outer layer of the amoeba was cut into countless pieces by these cells, but it didn't retreat. Instead, it used the old method of extending tentacles, trying to swallow the cells drilling into its body.

However, some of the conical cells, with their powerful cutting saw-teeth, could drill out a hole and escape even if they were swallowed.

But many were still swallowed. Lin could clearly feel the sensation of the swallowed cells, but they seemed to be immobilized by something and couldn't move.

When digestion began, it was painful, and when it was complete, Lin could no longer feel them.

By now, nearly half of the acid-secreting cells had been eaten, and only about 200 conical cells remained.

Lin realized that its attacking behavior might have been a mistake. Even if they could injure the other side, it was still impossible to defeat something over two thousand times larger.

But... continue attacking.

This time, Lin even stopped the diggers from eating and had them join in the attack on the amoeba.