He floated, alone in the soup.
No longer a helpless speck, but far from anything close to a predator. His form had bulked slightly—his membrane thicker, his interior core brighter, pulsing with faint bioluminescence. Small, yes. But alive. Awake.
And evolving.
Around him, the liquid stirred with low-level life. Filaments drifted like weeds, sacs spun like orbs caught in invisible currents, and threads of glowing waste passed silently by.
He ignored them.
His focus was internal now.
The system inside him, once fragmented and glitching, was starting to stabilize. Messages no longer came in bursts of static. The voice—the cold, mechanical one—was becoming clearer. Almost… deliberate.
[System Core Stability: 26.7%][Auxiliary Functions Online: Evolution Tree / Threat Index / Neural Stim Archive]
[User Designation: Null Entity — "Xerion" placeholder applied.]
He paused.
That word. Xerion. It didn't come from the system. It came from… within. A concept. A name. A thing that described him, separated him from the drifting cells and blind predators.
A flicker of identity.
He had a name now.
Xerion.
The second that name solidified, something within him clicked.
His awareness expanded.
He felt pressure differentials, sensed ion waves against his membrane, and noticed the weak bio-electric pulses given off by nearby entities. Not with eyes—he still had none—but with instinct honed by primitive code and sharpened by fresh intelligence.
He began to hunt.
His next prey was a slow-moving creature—plump and lazy. A spore-crab. It floated with half-curled appendages, absorbing ambient light from the nutrient-rich liquid.
Too slow.
Xerion coiled, pushed forward using micro-ripples in his outer shell, and enveloped it with practiced ease. The crab squirmed for a second, secreting a weak defense enzyme. It fizzled against Xerion's toxin veil.
The result was quick.
[Spore-Crab Absorbed. Energy +0.009][Enzyme Resistance +1%][Evolutionary Data Logged. Skill Tree Updated.]
[New Skill Node: Digestive Compression – Lock Cost: 2 Bio Points][Bio Points Available: 1]
Another new concept: Bio Points. His system had begun quantifying his evolutionary growth.
Not just "eat and mutate" anymore.
Now there was a path. A tree. A future.
He opened it with a mental pull.
A glowing holographic thread—visible only to him—unfolded inside his perception.
🧬 Evolution Tree – Level 1
Basic Form: Primitive Amoeboid
Current Traits:
Toxin Veil (Lv.1)
Sensory Fiber (Lv.1)
Absorption Efficiency (Passive)
Next Unlocks (Requires Bio Points):
Digestive Compression – Speeds up nutrient gain
Cilia Jets – Burst movement
Neuro Flicker – Temporarily stuns prey on contact
He had one point.
And a decision.
Each skill would shift how he survived. Faster digestion meant more growth. Burst movement could secure better prey. Stunning might win difficult fights.
But more importantly…
Each step defined who he would become.
[Skill Unlocked: Digestive Compression][All future consumption yields +15% Energy.]
With the decision made, the tree shimmered. A faint pulse of satisfaction hummed through him. Not from the system.
From him.
Time passed. Minutes? Hours? He couldn't tell. The void didn't offer clocks. Only instinct. Cycles.
He fed.
A translucent eel-worm. A bubble sac. A decayed seed-pod. He never engaged anything above his tier. Not yet. The system's Threat Index hovered beside his awareness, red-tagging any predator more than 2 ranks above him.
[Dominance Rank: 57th of 64]
He was climbing.
Slowly.
Every few kills added fragments of thought—echoes of prey memories, maybe. Instincts. Pulses. Not quite voices, but not meaningless either.
Some whispered fear. Others pain.
A few… curiosity.
"Why do you grow?"
The voice was so faint, he nearly dismissed it as system chatter.
But it came again, after his next kill.
"You are not one of us."
He paused mid-consumption.
The prey had been a luminous filament—barely more than a string of living light. It vanished into his mass without resistance. But the words lingered.
Another presence?
Another mind?
He scanned.
Nothing. No heat signature, no threat mark.
Still, something in the deep of the zone pulsed with watchful intent.
Later, as he rested—though he didn't need sleep—he let the system surface deeper memories.
[Accessing Neural Stim Archive…]
Flashes.
A red world burning beneath a sky of hexagons. A being in a silver robe, screaming as nanites devoured him. A code—a spiraling string of light—falling from a shattered orb and drifting endlessly through the black.
That code had found him.
He didn't understand the images, but one message crystallized in his new mind.
He was never meant to be alive.And yet, he was.He was not created by fate. He was forged by accident. Adopted by a broken tool. And now, the system obeyed him.
He had no past.
But he would carve a future.
A red spike surged through the fluid nearby.
An enemy.
Fast. Aggressive. Tagged Threat Rank 53.
The system flashed warnings.
[Caution: Rapid Contact Predicted in 1.4 seconds]
Too fast to run. No terrain. No allies. Just a decision.
[Trigger Emergency Reflex: Neuro Flicker? Unlock Cost: 2 Bio Points]
He didn't have enough.
So he improvised.
He spun, coiled his body, and let the toxin build. The enemy struck—too confident. Its fang-like appendage pierced his outer shell but slowed instantly.
His acid burned back.
[Enemy: Razor Podling Damaged — 19% Structural Loss]
He twisted again, flooded its wound with his core, and compressed his mass around it.
It screamed—no sound, just a wave of chemical panic.
[Razor Podling Consumed][Bio Points +2][Emergency Reflexes Unlocked]
He floated there for a long while after, panting mentally—if such a thing existed.
Not just from exertion.
From exhilaration.
He had won.
Not by instinct.
By choice.
Later, as he looked across the void—over the flickering ruins of a nearby nutrient colony destroyed by higher-tier predators—he understood something new.
He was no longer drifting.
He was no longer reacting.
He was thinking.
And for the first time, the system didn't whisper a command.
It asked a question.
"What do you want to become?"
He didn't have an answer yet.
But whatever it was—
He would climb high enough to define it.