It was time to get back into the cage editor. What I saw made me happy ― the chromosome returned to its original size, so the total size of the DNA was more than a third of the original size. Now I began to understand what a villus was — it seemed that this was the first armor that, according to the description, gave 0.01 physical protection for every percent of the cell wall coverage, in addition to 0.005 resistance for every percent.
"This is the first key to a successful journey." I thought. In addition, I decided to see what kind of "resistance" is, it turned out that it is perhaps even more useful than armor ― it gave resistance to various adverse environments or environmental conditions, such as acid or alkaline environments or frost with heat ― the most suitable for travel. And Yes, apparently, as soon as I opened the villus, pages about armor and resistance, as well as about the villus itself, were added to the encyclopedia. But there was also a minus ― for the villus, you had to pay for increased energy consumption, in addition, the maximum parameter of life will increase, which on the one hand is good, but on the other it will reach the maximum later and will have to wait longer for division.
"Well, you don't have to make any villus just yet, so it's better to add it just before you travel."
Now I decided to see what could be improved. I now had 123 evolution points at my disposal, and it looks like I won't be able to afford one of the three upgrades. These were the "f-pilus" which were an interesting thing ― they allowed you to pierce neighboring cells and exchange plasmid DNA, which could give you points of evolution and, if you were lucky, a whole improvement. But there are no points on it, and it looks like I'm the fastest in terms of evolution, besides, the target must have plasmids, and only the sister cell next to me had them, which was actually my clone. Therefore, it was not worth getting upset.
The other two improvements were " Compartmentalization 1" and "Shell structures 2". With structures, everything is clear ― more functionality for customizing the membrane, and compartmentalization was the same, but for the internal structure, that is, now I could complicate the structure of the cell, which was the way to becoming a normal unicellular, not a simple bacterium. But the points were, as always, only for one improvement. After a bit of research, I realized that the first one will give me the opportunity next time to pump out such a thing as "Cytoplasmic inclusion", which can store energy and resources that make up the cell, and in General, anything to store. And the second is access to the "Flagella" and" Cilia" that will allow me to move. In principle, all this is necessary for me to travel, and in theory it will be enough. Before I can prepare for the journey, I must have enough energy to divide.
"There is no difference in the end, except that it is best to push the membrane up to type 3, but this will require additional division before the journey begins, but I'm afraid I may not have that much time…"
Although, I do not care what the first download, so you can take the structure and how to say "why decide something today, if it can be postponed until tomorrow". With these thoughts in mind, I took "Shell structures 2" for 100 evolution points. Naturally, the remaining 23 points will not be enough for anything.
"Well, let's see how you can configure the shell now."
I went to the editor and started changing it. What can I say, you can ignore anything in the cell only proteins, but the former efficiency gains will not be as much of a difference, also now due to the difference in composition of substances osmotic pressure will actively interfere to bring the part in to the perfect value... then obviously you need a pump, let's hope that over time I something get. In the end, I squeezed a little more, well, any improvement is nice. The rest of the changes didn't seem particularly useful yet, so I closed the entire menu and waited.
Meanwhile, enough has passed and life has fully recovered to 0.12, and after improvements, the maximum number of HP increased by 20%. But the energy was only 0.062, which meant that energy production was decreasing the fastest... since the regen of life had also slowed down. Looking around, I saw that now the cells are in groups of 8, and in some places 16, at the same time I noticed a group of non-standard number of cells:
"Here are the first losses, they clearly do not have my improvements and they have already started to die."
My own group was already blocking a quarter of my view, despite the fact that I was lucky to be away from my relatives. Half of them are the same as the cells around them, but the other half has an improved membrane and will not die so easily: therefore, there will be no relief, just a little more time due to the elimination of ordinary cells around.
Then finally there was a message about the imminent division and some get bored I finally started to share.
― Division begins.
― Spent 0.06 units of energy.
― Your life and energy will be divided among your descendants.
― Mutations: thanks to your "accelerated evolution " feature, the probability of mutations increases by 10 times.
― Mutation: the new improvements are not obtained.
― Mutations: thanks to your "evolution control" feature, the genome change is blocked and the changes are converted into evolution points.
― Received 194 evolution points.
― The duplication of DNA: ready.
― Cell division has begun.
― Lost 0.06 units of life.
― 0.02 energy units lost.
― The division is complete.
A good increase, but to recoup the plasmids, you need to share 3 more times. Now I have more than two hundred evolution points and can buy one any expensive upgrade or two cheap ones.