4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Book 2: Chapter Twenty One “Settling and Traveling Afar”



Last chapter recap: Lin found some tubeworms and its protector was attacked by an unknown organism

After Lin acquired new terms, it started to be able to understanding some of the meanings represented by these terms. So it called this new being a “cutter shell” because it had cut the protector into two pieces.

The protector had hard armor, and the part that was pinched was where the tail connected to the body. The tail of the protector was already inside the shell. Lin released a large number of devourers so that they could swim into the opening between the cutter shell’s two halves.

Lin could see the two halves of the shell tightly gripping the protector’s body. The part showed large cracks due to the force. Countless small tentacles inside the cutter shell wrapped around the protector’s tail. The head of these tentacles were sharp and they created many small holes on the thinner parts of the shell. They seemed to be trying to suck in the cells inside the protector.

But they could not eat anything as it was empty inside.

While Lin had put many exploding balls and acid ejectors in the tail of the protector, they only took up a small amount of space. When the protector was caught, Lin had them retreat.

The cutter shell might have been puzzled over why the interior was empty, so it did not completely cut off the protector’s body.

Lin started its attack. The devourer tore at the small tentacles inside the shell, and Lin’s mothership released more troops that burrowed into the shell to attack it.

The little tentacles inside the cutter shell didn’t seem to have any ability to fight back against other organisms. The devourers easily tore them apart. The giant teeth devourers could easily bite them off. The injectors pushed large numbers of multipliers inside.

The cutter shell suddenly moved one of its shells and sprouted a powerful jet of air when attacked. It spat out all of the devourers and the protector’s tail at the same time. Then it closed its shell and quickly spun to try to burrow back into the sand.

Lin immediately had the mothership stretch out its tentacles and wrap around the cutter shell to stop it from spinning. It pulled the cutter shell out of the sand.

Lin had modified the mothership’s sprout. Now the sprout could curve in all directions and the mothership could retreat, turn and make other movements. It could pull the cutter shell out of the water.

The prerequisite being the mothership had to be stronger than the enemy …..

Even though the mothership used all of its effort to blow out water to pull back, it could not pluck out the cutter shell from the water, and was actually slowly being pulled in.

Lin found that a very large part of the cutter shell was buried deep in the sand. The bottom shell of the cutter shell was a round pillar covered in roots. As a result, it was firmly entrenched in the sand.

But this was just its last struggles.

The multipliers had invaded the cutter shell in large numbers. They burrowed deeper into the cutter shell from the blood vessels in the tentacles. They started to furiously absorb the cells of the cutter shell and increase in number. At the same time, Lin released a large number of exploding balls from the mothership. They smashed onto the cutter shell’s outer shell and created explosions.

The outer shell of the cutter shell had a thin and transparent coating. It had the attribute of resisting corrosion. This was to be expected as the dissolving fluid was the greatest danger to hard shells.

Then Lin had the exploding balls gather on the mothership’s hammer. A new kind of hammer took form. This was … … the exploding hammer!

The great force produced by the enormous hammer tentacle broke though the cutter shell’s protective coating. The exploding balls’ acid directly affected the cutter shell’s unprotected shell. Lin could create a hole on the shell with one blow.

Lin easily opened the cutter shell’s outer shell that was once thought to be “unable to be broken.” While Lin would explode all of the exploding balls with each blow, and had to replenish the exploding balls, it had enough exploding balls it wasn’t a problem.

On the other side, the multiplier experienced attacks from the cutter shell’s cells inside. These cells could consume and digest the multipliers with their large bodies.

These should be the cutter shell’s immune cells. The multiplier’s advance slowed down and even lost ground as they appeared.

However, the multipliers had caused damage against the cutter shell. The cutter shell stopped trying to burrow into the sand but Lin did not stop attacking. Under the successive attacks of the exploding hammer, the cutter shell’s shell showed a large hole. In the next moment, countless devourers attacked it again.

Regardless of how strong the cutter shell’s outer shells were, they were not a match for the devourers. Lin only had to wait for the devourers to tear the cutter shell’s interior into pieces.

During this time, the cutter shell sent out a kind of glandular cell to battle the devourers. This kind of cell would spit out large amounts of chitin substances to surround and seal the devourers. However, before that occurred, the devourers tore them apart.

The cutter shell’s insides was a large and soft body covered in large numbers of small tentacles. It had all kinds of organs, many of which Lin had seen before.

Lin cared about the cutter shell’s shell.

The cutter shell’s upper and round shell stayed on the surface while the lower shell was a hooked structure that reached deep into the soil. The greater part of the cutter shell’s body was in here.

Most importantly, they were extremely hard. Lin could not create such a hard shell with its present chitin creating methods. Studying this would be useful for Lin.

Lin also found a kind of green cells on the upper shell of the cutter shell.They existed mostly in the space inside the shell. The cutter shell had many cell passageways connected in this area. The green cells would create extremely tiny crystal pieces that were about the same size as viruses. The cutter shell’s passages were primarily for consuming the abundant crystals.

Those could be eaten?

The green cells Lin reared would also produce crystals. However, Lin had expelled them each time as trash. But the cutter shell ate these things?

Lin had to study this.

if the green cells could produce food, then Lin would not eat them as their reproduction rate wasn’t high.

Lin studied the cutter shell for a while and then it became Lin’s food. Even its hard shell wasn’t spared. Lin dissolved the great majority of it for chitin.

After obtaining the enormous cutter shell, Lin could cover the entire mothership in armor and have full protection.

Lin used the painter to recover the cracks on the protector. It calculated it almost hadn’t suffered any losses in this battle. It should have achieved good success against an organism of similar size.

Then next … …

Where should it go?

Lin looked into the distance. It liked to go explore areas it had never gone to before. But it also wanted to settle down in a place with abundant food as it wouldn’t know what dangers it would encounter in its exploration.

But staying in one place was not interesting, and Lin didn’t know when the food would run out.

Couldn’t it do both at the same time?

Let the mothership settle and then create some new “types” to explore!

It did as it thought. Lin started to search for a good place on the sand. It quickly found an enormous piece of stone upright in the sand. If Lin was on this stone, it could easily observe the surrounding area and wouldn’t have to worry about being ambushed by organisms that lived in the sand.

The top of the stone was flat and could hold ten motherships. Lin didn’t feel it wasn’t large, but it would first take over and change places when it found a larger one.

Lin had the mothership floated at the center of the flat part of the stone, and then sent out all kinds of squads to create structures nearby. It primarily made some defensive and hunting tentacles that had stingers at the perimeter and created all kinds of organs at the center of the flat space.

Lin desired to modify this enormous stone into a living base with a heart and blood vessels connected to the tentacles, sacs for digesting food, and “dissolving factory” for dissolving and combining chitin substances!

Lin did not plan to have the mothership stick to the stone. The mothership must maintain a state where it could move at any moment. Due to this, Lin had the mothership stay afloat above the enormous stone base.

Lin tried and the crystals the green cells produced were edible and the nutrient effect similar to the white gel of the past. Lin needed to rear them on a large-scale basis.

Maybe it could form an enormous round stage to rear large numbers of green cells on top so that they could be exposed to more light. The more they divided, the more crystals they would produce.

The protector was responsible for searching for food. Lin had to create many types that could leave the base to hunt. Depending on just the devourers was not sufficient.

Lin planned to hollow out the inside of this enormous stone and shove more structures into it.

However, Lin was most concerned with the types that would go explore far away.

What should it do?

Editor’s notes: So much going on. First, mutant clams with hentai tentacles. Then exploding hammers of acid. Which I don’t get how it works, “spitting” out acid into the water would dilute it and it would be carried away by the current. Then we have an immune system and SUGAR! Talk about odd evolutionary development. I’m pretty sure immune systems are a much later development but sugar is the basis for energy production and should have been one of the first things to be addressed. Whatever I guess, magic of storytelling I suppose.

Translator Ramblings: In regard to WanderingGummiOfDoom, story magic is a wonderful thing.


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