Chapter 11+12 Symbiosis

Lin asked the observer to swim to a high place, trying to find something that attacked the acid injector. Lin remembered that the pain of the fallen acid injector just now came from below, and the attack must have come from below.

Lin found that there were many protruding black stones on the rock surface under the acid injectors. They were very inconspicuous in this rock area. The acid injectors were floating very close to these stones. Lin It feels like the attack is coming from the stones.

Camouflage... A creature camouflages itself as something common in the environment in order to ambush its prey.

Although she had never seen such a situation, Lin knew that there was such a thing in her mind.

So Lin planned to counterattack directly. The acid injectors immediately aimed at the stones under them, and a large amount of dissolved solution was sprayed on these stones. Those stones were indeed moved by the damage of the dissolved liquid, but not only one of them was moving. , but all the stones in the entire area shook violently, and then the entire ground covered with stones slowly rose.

Lin didn't expect this situation, it quickly let the acid injectors disperse, and when they were far away, the creature hidden in the ground also showed its figure.

Its whole body is black and gray, which is exactly the same color as the surrounding rocks, and there are many protruding stone grains on the surface, a bit like the sawtooth on the surface of the digger, and there are a lot of flagella under it, but its body shape But it was more than fifty times the size of the excavator. After it floated up, a large defect appeared in the rock below.

Rockworm.

Lynn gave the huge and camouflaged creature a name and decided to kill it.

Lin asked an acid injector to come forward again, because Lin didn't know the attack method of the rock worm, so she did not dare to let all the acid injectors go out rashly.

When the acid injector approached the rock worm, it also reacted. This time, Lin clearly saw that a small stone on the rock worm shook slightly, and a tiny sharp object that was almost invisible was shot from it. on this acid injector.

Then Lin felt the same pain as before, and then there was no response.

It was a terrifying attack method, but Lin could still see clearly that there was something sharp hidden in the rock-like protrusions on the rock worm, and there was some kind of liquid in it, which could quickly destroy the body of the acid injector. the nucleus of the cell.

poison?

Although it was a new word, Lin felt that it represented the same meaning as the acid injector's dissolving liquid, a liquid with extremely strong damage ability.

The rock worm moved its huge body, slowly turned around, and swam towards the body of the downed acid injector.

When the rock worm turned around, Lin saw a strange black protrusion on the top of its mouth. Unlike the stone particles, this protrusion was quite large, and it felt like an ice crystal shimmering.

Eye……

Although she hadn't seen it before, Lin realized what it was. It was the first time she saw other creatures with vision besides her own observer.

curious.

Lin began to be more and more curious about this rock worm, not only its eyes, but also its peculiar attack methods. If Lin's cells could also have it, it would be very interesting.

Therefore, Lin did not intend to let the rock worm go.

The rock worm had already swam beside the body of the acid injector. It opened its cave-like mouth and slowly swallowed it, but instead of swallowing the body completely, it tore the remaining part with its flagella. open, and threw the fragments of the corpse at the stones growing on his body.

Do the stones also need to be eaten?

Although curious, Lin's movements did not stop. Almost at the same time, Lin let the acid injectors attack again.

Although the rock worm has a powerful attack method, Lin noticed that the number of stone particles is not many, about 20, which cannot be compared with the number of its acid injectors.

And Lin as long as there are basic cells,

It can grow new acid injectors indefinitely, so Lin hardly has to worry about the loss of attack.

The acid injectors rushed up, facing the huge opponent, they spewed a large amount of dissolving liquid, and the surrounding water was immediately dyed green.

The body of the rock worm is not only the color of the rock, but its firmness is also very strong. When it is contacted by the solution of the acid injector, only the surface layer is corroded with some scars.

The rock worm launched a counterattack, and the stone particles on its body shot out a large number of sharp thorns, and several acid injectors were instantly killed by one blow.

Although acid injectors evolved from cone cells, they have not directly used their bodies to dig things for too long, so their hard outer shells have degenerated and cannot withstand such attacks.

However, Lin had to attack with acid injectors, because other than them, Lin estimated that other cells could not tear the outer membrane of the rock worm.

The rock worm twisted its body, as if it felt severe pain from the solution, and it began to swing the flagella under it, as if it wanted to escape.

But the speed of the rock worm is not fast, and it is only similar to Lin's storage cells, which are full of oil.

It's not because of the huge body, it seems that because of the habit of hiding and disguising for a long time, the mobility has begun to degrade.

At this time, Lin let the cone cells step forward to participate in the attack. Hundreds of cone cells surrounded the rock worms in an instant. Lin asked them to use the cone angle to stab the corroded scars on the rock worms.

The rock worm is powerless to resist this time, and the thorns on its body seem to have been shot.

Lin's acid injector will also use up the dissolving solution, but it can easily make up for this shortcoming with quantity, but the rock worm can't. With the cooperation of the acid injector and the cone cells, the huge body of the rock worm finally can no longer be used. Unmoving, the outer membrane simulating the color of the rock was torn into pieces by the cone cells and scattered in the water...

This time, only 15 acid injectors were lost. Many thorns of the rock worms were shot on the same acid injector, so the loss was much less than Lin thought, but if she ate the rock worms, Lin would be able to split immediately Hundreds of them came out.

Lin could finally check the part she was curious about, first of all the eye, which had been paid special attention to before, so that the acid injector would not corrode the rock worm.

The eyes are very large, about twice the size of Lin's cells. Lin asked the cone cells to dig it out of the corpse of the rock worm. Because it was too large, ordinary cells could not eat it, so Lin specially let the storage person eat it. Look.

The storer slowly swam over. In order to store more food, the hypertrophic fat cells became very soft, and the body was enlarged to five times the size of ordinary cells. The eyes are also more than enough.

After the storage keeper swallowed the eye of the rock worm, Lin immediately conveyed a message in her mind.

This information is exactly the same as when Lin originally wanted to gain vision, and Lin tried to get this cell to use this eye to gain vision.

But it failed, the storer did not respond at all, but the eye, like other swallowed food, was slowly decomposed and digested, and converted into oil for storage.

Is there no way?

never mind……

Lin turned the next target into those small stones that shot deadly spikes.

If you look closely at these stones, you can see that there is a small hole on them, and the poisonous spikes are shot from the hole.

According to Lin's previous experience, if a cell is damaged by poison and survives to successfully divide, they may become resistant to the poison, and then if the resistant cells eat the poison, it is possible to secrete The ability of poison, although I don't understand the principle, but the acid injector has evolved in this way.

Unfortunately, none of Lin's cells survived after being hit by the venomous spikes.

If you let them eat it directly, it is likely that only a few more cells will die, and Lin feels a little worried.

At this moment, Lin suddenly saw that a stone was cracked, and a small round creature was drilled out of it.

There is a structure on the surface of this creature's body that looks like a cover. From its transparent body, it can be seen that under the cover, there are very long and coiled tentacles, and the end of the tentacles is a small needle.

Did it shoot the poison needle just now?

Lin looked at this creature curiously. It was obviously different from a rock worm, but a different type of cell.

What is the relationship between it and the rockworm? Like yourself, there are many different cells in a group?

If so, now so close stinging cells should attack themselves, but they don't respond.

Lin thought, let a cone-shaped cell poke the stinging cell, and the stinging cell suddenly opened the cover of the body as if frightened, and the tentacles inside stood up instantly, shooting out the spikes at the end.

Although he missed the shot, Lin was startled.

However, Lin immediately had a new idea.

This stinging cell might be useful to Lin...

………………………………………………………………

After a period of observation, Lin found that these small stinging cells were only about one-tenth the size of Lin's cells. They seemed to collect rock fragments, gather these fragments to surround themselves, and then stick to the ground to camouflage It looks like a stone grain, and a small hole is opened at the top, which is obviously used for shooting needles.

This kind of cells should usually be disguised as stones to ambush other cells, but why are they related to rock worms? And their attack commands seem to be controlled by rock worms.

But no matter what, Lin can use them like rock worms.

Lin tried to wear these stones with needle-piercing cells on the body of a digger. The digger could clamp these small stones with the teeth on the surface of the body. In this way, the digger had the ability to spray poisonous thorns. ability.

Maybe these stinging cells just landed on the rock worm, and they probably reached a common consciousness after communicating, so they helped...

Do you communicate?

Lin has never tried to communicate with other creatures, which seems to promote a special relationship, that is... symbiosis.

Although Lin didn't try it, she knew there was such a thing.

Lin is now beginning to wonder, why does it know so many things by nature? Shouldn't these things be discovered little by little?

Lin began to feel strange about this, but it was still the same. If she couldn't figure it out, she stopped thinking about it.

So, Lin turned her thoughts back again.

Now that the stinging cells are obtained, Lin plans to treat them like the rock worms, give them food, and use them as a means of attack.

However, Lin didn't know how to feed them, so it followed the example of rock worms and put some food fragments into the stone holes of the cnidocytes.

In response, the stinging cells suck in the food debris from the hole.

However, Lin still doesn't know how to command these stinging cells to attack, so she is currently only bringing them to a few diggers.

Next, Lin let the cells eat up the huge body of the rock worm, which made its colony grow a lot. Then, Lin turned her vision to the various creatures in this area.

There are many cells gathered in this rocky area, most of them are huge, and they are types that Lin has never seen before, but Lin did not attack rashly. There are so many wonderful attacks of cells, so it is better to be careful.

Therefore, Lin plans to increase the number of colonies. One of the reasons why a large number of cells are attracted here is that food occasionally emerges from the cracks in the rocks here.

It was the kind of soft and white food before. Lin noticed that these foods seemed to come out of the cracks in the rocks. Most of them were in the form of crumbs. water flow.

That is to say, a lot of this food is hidden deep in the rock, and for some reason a stream of water sprayed them from the cracks that brought them from the depths to the surface, attracting a large number of cells.

Lynn started trying to dig these rocks.

However, Lin found that this is a very difficult thing. Even if the acid injector is dissolved first, and then the cone cells are drilled with a cone angle, they can only peel off some stone fragments.

Lin found that there really seemed to be no cells trying to dig up the rock, but some small cells came in and out of the cracks.

Lin began to think that it not only needed huge cells that could store food, but also various small cells that could burrow into gaps.

However, Lin really didn't understand how to become smaller.

In short, Lynn now has a new goal.

If you blindly kill other cells, it is very likely that you will encounter a powerful enemy and be in fatal danger, so Lin plans to develop slowly first.

Lin's community has grown, and her thoughts are also progressing step by step.

Take all the food-spraying crevices around you first, and you'll have an endless supply of food.

Thinking about it, Lin let the cells spread out to occupy the surrounding food gaps and drive away some small cell groups that were originally guarding around the gaps.

After a while, Lin occupied hundreds of cracks around. The strange thing was that these cracks were all about the same length, and the amount of food ejected was similar, so there was nothing worth protecting, so Lin evenly distributed the cells to occupy the space. each location.

Lin's observers have been floating high, with several cone cells and acid injectors as guards, looking for better targets.

Under the observer's eyesight, Lin discovered something strange.

A huge crack, this crack is extremely wide, on an empty rock plane in the distance, it can be filled with hundreds of Lynn's cells.

From time to time, this huge crack spews out a lot of food, but strangely, there are no cells waiting to eat that food, only a few gray-white cells slowly floating around the distance from the huge crack, but they never Will rush forward to eat the spewed food.

Very suspicious.

Lin asked a few diggers to try it out. When they approached the huge crack, Lin felt a familiar feeling.

Warm... no, it's hot, the water above this crack is pretty hot.

Moreover, this crack is not like other small cracks that maintain a fine flow of water, but intermittent, after an eruption, it will stop for a while, and then erupt again!

When Lin thought of this, the few diggers were instantly hit by the heat flow, and Lin lost her sense of them.

Can the high temperature of the instant eruption kill the digger?

Although the loss of a few diggers is not a big deal when there is sufficient food, Lin still feels a little pity.

At this time, I saw the few gray blood cells floating by the cracks slowly floating up, swimming to the side of the diggers killed by the heat flow, and slowly swallowing them.

I see.

Lin understood immediately, those cells were waiting to eat other cells that were killed by the heat flow.

...then, this heat flow is mine!

Those gray blood cells were probably used to eating free food and had no fighting power at all. Lin's acid injectors easily killed them all, and then occupied their huge cracks.

Of course, Lin also gave this distinctive crack a name, 'Hot Spring Mouth'.

Lin thinks this hot spring mouth will be very useful.

Then, let's continue to develop.

Lin needs more and more intelligence to figure out the problems it doesn't understand.

With a stable food source, Lin's colony is constantly growing, and it also needs to occupy more food cracks. Usually, Lin uses about ten cells to guard the cracks. If it encounters a strong enemy, it will let the cells in other places. Going to increase the number of members, fortunately, there is almost no opponent who can threaten Lin.

Lin also made the cells keep drilling rocks, trying to evolve a type that could dig hard rocks, but it seemed quite difficult. Those diggers and cone cells that had been digging for a long time, except that the serrations on the body surface became sharper, still remained. Still can't do any effective damage to the rock.

Those symbiotic stinging cells will divide if they eat too much. When they start to divide, they will swim out to the rocks to make nests. Lin has to let the diggers catch them again. After a few generations, they know how to swim directly to the nearby digging. fixed itself on the person.

In this way, Lin officially obtained the symbiotic relationship of the stinging cells, although she still did not understand how to order the stinging cells to fire stingers.

In this way, Lin gradually occupied the area of ​​this huge rock spouting food everywhere. When the rock occupied about 20%, Lin's colony had already reached 10,000.

However, it is difficult to expand any further. Those occupying other areas are all huge cell groups. If Lin wants to attack them, she must concentrate her troops, but in this way, she will have to give up a large number of crack guards.

Lin felt a little troubled, but the huge community allowed him to think about more things, and Lin quickly found a solution.