Bootleg of evolution

The cone cell damaged by the solution began to split. This time the newly split cone was still cone-shaped but its color was darker.

It seemed that cells with resistance to the solvent will have darker colors then normal cells.

Lin had the cone-shaped cell devour the solvent of the strange cells.

Because the outer membrane became tapered and hardened, it became difficult to swallow large objects like normal cells. It could only open a small hole at the front of the cone to eat from, and the speed of eating was slow.

Lin wondered if it could replace it with a cell that could eat things faster.

How does one replace a cell with another?

Lin pondered of these two thoughts but couldn find an answer.

This is what happens when Lin isn intelligent enough. The only way to increase its intelligence is to increase the number of cells.

Lin had its new resistant cone cell eat the solvent. There was no sign of damage and the cone cell seemed to be the most resistant cell so far.

Lin then had the cell go into the hole to melt the harder food.

or maybe…

Lin looked at the remaining strange cells and thought of killing them to make more powerful cone cells.

Forget it.

In Lins mind, a new word appeared, ”sympathy ”.

Lin returned into the cave with the new cells. After reaching the deepest parts, Lin had the cone cells spray the solvent on the hard food. As expected, the hard food was dissolved into a easier to digest form.

While the dissolved food did have traces of the solvent it wasn enough to kill the normal cells. With this Lin could have the cell eat the dissolved food and produce cells with resistance to the solvent.

Lin also made another interesting discovery, the cone cells which ate a lot of solvent would turn green when filled with solvent then change body color when they spitted the solvent out. It became faded, but after eating, these cone cells will go back to their original green color from when they were filled with solvent.

Lin tried to make these cone cells spit out solvent, and sure enough they sprayed out solvent again.

What did this mean? Could the cone cells now produce their own solvent? Could it now use the abilities of the strange cells?

Is this also… evolution? (G: once again it is not evolution)

Lin did not understand how this evolution worked.

It knew however, if it increased its knowledge, it would know.

Lin decided to give these new cone cells a name.

”Acid ejectors ” (G: just wanted people to know the machine translation Im polishing called these thing ”Sour person ”.)

With the help of the acid ejectors, the cell group was able to dig deeper and was constantly expanding. Under the constant division of cells, Lins cell group grew to reach 331 cells.

In that group there were ten acid ejectors, three hundred diggers, twenty cones and one observer. Under the constant pressure of evolution, there were no normal cells.

Lin found a problem.

When the cell group was small, as long as Lin increased it by a small amount, it could increase its intelligence greatly. The problem was the cell group was growing bigger, and the increase in intelligence was becoming smaller.

If you used numbers to explain it, if you only had 20 cells in a group, 1 cell would give you 1 point of intelligence. But if you have 200 cells in a group, you would require 10 cells to get the same amount of benefit.

why?

Lin often felt it lack in intelligence, now it was stuck at a certain point, and it couldn find a way to solve this problem.

Either way, Lins biggest priority now was to consume the giant wall of food.

After the last layer of food was dissolved by the acid ejectors, Lin could once again see the boundless blue background.

All that was in front of it was water again.

What was the end of this body of water?

Lin originally though something interesting was behind this wall of food, but it was significantly disappointed instead.

As Lin looked on at the endless blue ocean, something rushed into its field of vision.

The thing was probably only a hundredth of the size of one of Lins cell but it couldn escape observers sight.

It was a unusual gray color, with a long tail, and a head structure shaped like a sphere.

What is it?

Lin saw as the thing approached a digger cell as it swam across the water.

It first circumvented the diggers harder outer membrane, and wrapped around the fragile cell membrane below it.

Lin curiously watched, doing nothing.

The thing then used its tail to make a small hole in the cell membrane. The thing then began to shrink as it injected a gray liquid into the cell through its tail.

Pain…

Lin felt a great pain as if it itself was injected with the gray liquids. The digger had a severe painful reaction.

Lin realized what the thing was.

The size of its cell group made it smart enough to understand what the liquid that thing injected into it was.

The thing… it was a virus, just like the spike balls it encountered before. They are not the same kind of virus though.

Unlike cells, virus were weird, Lin had no way to tell how they worked In more detail.

The tail of this virus was hollow and from the look of things it can inject a liquid into cells after tying onto them.

Lin still didn know what the liquid was, but it obviously wasn a good thing. It made Lin feel pain, and it knew a word to describe what was happening.

”Infection ”

Lin is aware from before that viruses could infect cells, causing great pain and eventually killing the cell, releasing more viruses in the process.

After a period of evolution, the acid ejectors now have a small hole at the tip of its tapered head, allowing it to spray a large amount of solvent at once.

It could be seen from the outside of the transparent cell membrane that the infected digger began to die. It seemed to be filled with a strange white silk and liquids. It made Lin feel great pain as it slowly lost control of the cell.

Lin still did not want to take action though, its curiosity allowed it to wait to see whatll happen to the cell.

After a while, Lin lost complete control of the cell.. the cell had died, and its insides were murky.

The cell membrane began to crack open at that moment.

This virus didn make the cell burst like the previous one, but the gap slowly grew bigger. From these cracks, the virus flooded out!

This time, the number coming out was about one hundred.

However, before the viruses could escape any further, a huge amount of solvent showered upon the infected cell. Even if the number of viruses was increased ten fold, they wouldve not been able to escape the barrage of solvents.

The virus instantly broke down as it touched the solvents, they were very fragile.

The acid ejectors kept on spraying until the husk of the digger cell was also completely dissolved.

Was Lin feeling the joy of victory?

The feeling wasn as strong as when it killed the strange cells, but Lin still felt the similar feeling.

This feeling did not last though, as there was no reason to feel so elated about a victory against a bunch of weak viruses.

Lin goal is one of a never ending evolutionary path.