4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Last chapter recap: Lin encounters a multicellular hard-shelled organism in the ice.

Lin targeted the mouth parts of the oval worm and had the exploding balls and the cone-shaped cells move first. These single cells were small and could easily avoid the sharp edges around the mouth to enter directly.

There was no light inside, but Lin could feel, using the perception of the cells, a moving space similar to a passageway. It was transporting everything inside downwards.

the flow of water inside was very strong. Lin’s cells were being blown this way and that, unable to move freely. After a burst of violent trembling, Lin found the invading cells were washed back outside the oval worm into the cold water.

Lin found that there were two narrow crevices on the side of the oval worm’s head. It seemed to expel out the water that it had consumed through these crevices. Lin’s cells had been expelled out through there. It seemed a certain part of the oval worm’s food passage had the ability to separate food and water.

Lin’s attacks had not been effective. The cells that entered through the mouth were expelled, and the devourers that had entered the wound were facing endless blue cells. The devourers that were attacking the other joints were not successful. The oval worm had noticed them, and it only had to move its segmented limbs to throw off the devourers.

The oval worm had not stopped feeding. It had eaten almost half of the mothership. The pain of being torn apart had never stopped. In this situation, Lin started to lose its calm.

Bomb its esophagus!

Lin’s thinking became faster. It quickly decided the next plan. Countless exploding balls once again charged into the mouth of the oval worm. This time, Lin had them start to expand and explode before they were forced out with the water.

The exploding balls would release large amounts of dissolving fluid after they exploded. While Lin could not see the situation outside, Lin found that the oval worm was affected by the dissolving fluid. After many cells exploded, the oval worm stopped tearing at the mothership. It shook its head and spat out large amounts of green fluid from its mouth.

The moving esophagus inside the oval worm’s mouth was made from cells. The dissolving fluid had done some significant damage inside.

Lin recovered its calm. But it could not continue to attack because … … it didn’t have any more exploding balls.

There hadn’t been many exploding balls and creating these cells took a long time. Adding on that the mothership was almost ruined, and some of the resource stores inside had been damaged, there was no possibility of creating more exploding balls at this time.

What to do? A direct attack!

Lin had the devourers give up on attacking the joints and charge into the mouth of the oval worm!

The oval worm also noticed that these round things were charging towards its moth.

The mouth of the worm could not open and close. Due to this, the only defence the oval worm had was the edged structure around the mouth.

The devourers were much bigger than the single cells. Due to this, the first group that attacked were torn to pieces by the sharp edges around the oval worm’s mouth. Enormous pain passed into Lin’s thoughts but there were still some small devourers that dodged the sharp edges and entered the mouth of the oval worm.

The vision and illuminating ability of the devourers allowed Lin to see the structures inside the oval worm’s mouth.

This was an enormous esophagus. The walls were blue. If one looked closely, they would see that the walls were made from countless blue cells. Dissolving fluid was floating all over the esophagus. This dissolving fluid that was extremely damaging to cells caused the esophagus to be covered in wounds.

This was probably the reason the oval worm was feeling pain.

Lin suddenly discovered, the “esophagus” was a new term?

Who cared about that.

Lin suddenly saw some cells that were large and similar to shapeshifting cells appeared at the wounds. They used their bodies to cover the wounds. Lin thought that this was a kind of way to heal wounds.

The shapeshifting cells that repaired wounds were very large. They were even larger than Lin’s devourer which were made up of thousands of cells. This way, these large cells could completely cover the wound and make repairs.

However, cells like this shouldn’t have any ability to fight.

Kill them!

The devourers charged over. They bit at the shapeshifting cell that was repairing the wound and pulled in different directions. They tore their opponent into many pieces instantly.

At the same time, Lin had the devourers tear at the wound to make it even bigger.

But this was far from enough because there were thousands and even tens of thousands of shapeshifting cells that were repairing the other wounds in the esophagus.

Lin only had a few hundred devourers in the esophagus, and they were only the small ones. The bigger ones were stopped by the sharp edges and couldn’t enter.

Lin needed more reinforcements.

Lin once again moved the single cells, including the diggers, the cone-shaped cells and the acid ejectors. Because the oval worm had stopped eating, the water flow inside the esophagus that had been strong before was now very weak. If Lin’s cells entered now, they could create great damage.

Attack!

Lin’s army started a charge. The sharp edges around the oval worm’s mouth could not stop these tiny cells from entering.

The cell army entered the oval worm’s esophagus and started to furiously attack. Each cell was using its abilities to tear, pierce, dissolve and damage the esophagus. Some of the enormous diggers that Lin used to dig through the ice successfully made it into the mouth of the oval worm. They used the denticles they had on the surface which had been used to dig up ice to create countless wounds.

These small cells created an enormous amount of pain for the oval worm. It started to shake its head hard. It used the water current that formed by its fierce action to wash away the cells that had not yet made it into the mouth. Then it turned and fled back into the ice passageway it had dug.

However, when it had been fighting with Lin, the water temperature of the surroundings had turned cold again. The cavern that the oval worm had dug out had formed a thick layer of ice.

And the millions of Lin’s cells were still in the esophagus of the oval worm. They continued their rampage. Just like the oval worm had started to eat the mothership, Lin did not have mercy. It had the cone-shaped cells make countless holes on the esophagus and then had the diggers and the devourers charge deeper into the esophagus. It prepared to destroy the core of the oval worm.

The oval worm continued to smash itself on the walls of ice out of pain. It seemed to force how to dig through the ice. It only created cracks in the ice with its impact. Then, the oval worm’s movements gradually slowed. In the end, it laid on the ice wall. Its segmented limbs were tightly gripping some of the protrusions and cracks on the wall of ice. Its body was motionless.

The oval worm was dead?

It seemed to appear so from the outside, but it was not like that inside.

The esophagus had been completely changed. Originally there had only been a few shapeshifting cells here, but after the oval worm became motionless, large number of new cells suddenly appeared. These cells were white, and the largest were as large as Lin’s devourers while the smallest were as big as Lin’s basic cells.

There were a great number of them that flooded in through the esophagus or from the wounds. A short while later, they seemed to rival the numbers of Lin’s invading cells. There were more than a million of them.

These cells seemed to be the oval worm’s defense troops inside its body. They started to attack Lin’s cells. However, their attacking method was simple. They only had one move, wrap around.

These white cells were covered in tiny tentacles on the surfaces. Their attack method was to swim to Lin’s cells and then use the tentacles to wrap around the cell. Then they would tighten the tentacles until Lin’s cells were crushed.

When Lin invaded the body of the oval worm, it had thought that defense troops would appear. However, it hadn’t expected them to come so late, and in such numbers.

Lin immediately started a counterattack. The esophagus of the oval worm became the battlefield.

These white cells that were covered in tentacles were skilled in one-on-one fights. Their tentacles could easily grip and crush any of Lin’s cells. But when fighting in groups, because their tentacles could not be used to greatest effect, they would easily fall apart facing the acid ejectors or the charges of the diggers and the cone-shaped cells.

Therefore, these white cells came out of different places and tried to split apart Lin’s troops so that Lin’s cells would have to fight one-on-one. Lin did not fall for this. It moved its troops together to fight back against these white cells.

Lin had the advantage in the present battle but Lin did not have any reinforcements. These white cells could continuously come out, and some even split during battle to increase in number.

Lin had originally planned to have cells enter through the mouth of the oval worm to help since the body of the oval worm couldn’t move any longer.

Wait … …

Lin suddenly found a problem.

If it continued to increase forces like this, it didn’t know how many losses it would incur until it killed the oval worm. Lin didn’t even know if it could win as it didn’t know how many defense cells the oval worm’s body held.

But what if it had something that could turn enemies into allies?

Lin coincidentally had something like that.

The infectors–these bright red things that managed to survive in the oxygen danger which Lin had kept in the cell colony.

It was time for them to arrive on stage … …

Translator Ramblings: Lin works hard to fight the worm’s platelets and immune system.