My six protein tail fibers flared with an icy, black light. Contracting my tail sheath, I shot through the viscous plasma, descending upon the floating bacterial monster like a silent, microscopic phantom executing its first hunt.
The rod-shaped bacterial cell had no idea I was coming. At this scale, there were no eyes, no ears, no high-tier martial instincts—only chemical receptors and passive membrane absorption. To the Streptococcus microbe, the surrounding plasma was merely an endless ocean of nutrients ripe for consumption.
To my Bacteriophage Clone, it was a biological factory waiting to be seized.
I cut through the thick, viscous plasma like a microscopic missile. The electrostatic forces of my viral body repelled the ambient liquid molecules, allowing me to glide through the fluid drag with terrifying precision.
Clack.
My six protein tail fibers slammed onto the peptidoglycan wall of the bacterial cell, anchoring deep into its rigid outer membrane. The impact sent a tiny, microscopic shockwave radiating across the bacterium's cell wall, but the creature was too massive to even register my presence. To the giant microbe, I was nothing more than a speck of dust landing on its skin.
Step one: Attachment complete, I thought, my dual consciousness focusing entirely on the mechanics of the hunt.
In my past life, I had read countless textbooks detailing this exact molecular dance. But experiencing it directly—feeling the mechanical tension in my own tail fibers as they locked onto specific chemical receptors on the host wall—was surreal.
I willed my tail sheath to contract.
Click.
The central protein tube at the base of my tail extended downward, piercing through the dense peptidoglycan layer of the bacterium's wall like a microscopic hypodermic needle. The host cell's internal pressure flared, resisting the intrusion, but the icy, black energy humming within my capsid head easily bypassed its biological defenses.
Step two: Penetration.
Now came the critical moment. I focused on the dark, genetic core suspended within my twenty-sided crystalline head. It contained my unique biological signature—the viral code of the Bacteriophage Clone.
Inject!
With a sharp, internal pulse, I squeezed my capsid. The icy black genetic strand shot down through my hollow tail tube, piercing straight into the bacterium's cytoplasm.
The moment my genetic code invaded the host, a wave of profound, intoxicating feedback rushed through my mind.
I could feel my viral strands spreading like a black, liquid shadow inside the bacterium's cellular fluid. It was a hostile takeover at the most fundamental level. My genetic code immediately sought out the host's bacterial chromosome, binding to it and overriding its metabolic machinery. The bacterium's ribosomes—the tiny protein factories inside its cell—instantly stopped synthesizing bacterial wall proteins and began exclusively reading my genetic instructions.
=====================================================
REPLICATION INITIATED =====================================================
[Host Target]: Streptococcus Microbe (Single Cell)
[Infection Status]: 100% Host Takeover
[Replication Progress]: - Synthesizing Capsid Proteins…[25%]
- Replicating Genetic Cores... [50%]
- Assembling Phage Clones... [80%]
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[Estimated Yield]: 200 New Bacteriophage Clones [Time to Lysis]: 15 Seconds =========================================================
Fifteen seconds, I realized, my mind racing as I watched the internal progress bar tick upward in my vision.
Inside the host bacterium, chaotic, rapid assembly was taking place. Tiny crystalline heads were being forged from the host's stolen amino acids, tail sheaths were being constructed, and my replicated genetic strands were being coiled tight inside each new capsid.
One clone became ten. Ten became fifty. Fifty became two hundred.
The inner volume of the bacterial cell was rapidly filling up with my new bodies. The host cell wall, built to withstand normal osmotic pressure, began to bulge and stretch under the unnatural strain of two hundred microscopic predators packing tightly inside its membrane.
12 seconds... 8 seconds... 3 seconds...
I unanchored my original body's tail fibers from the outer wall, pushing off into the plasma stream to give myself distance.
1 second.
BOOM.
To human ears, it was completely silent. But in the microscopic realm, the cellular lysis was a violent explosion. The stretched peptidoglycan wall tore open, disintegrating into microscopic cellular debris. A shockwave of plasma rippled outward, and out from the ruptured host burst two hundred identical Bacteriophage Clones, glittering with faint, icy black light in the golden fluid.
In that exact instant, my consciousness didn't just stay in my original body—it expanded.
W-What the...?!
A dizzying, overwhelming wave of sensory input flooded my brain. Suddenly, I wasn't just looking through two sets of eyes (my human body and one phage). I was looking through two hundred and one sets of eyes simultaneously.
My vision exploded into a vast, interconnected hive-mind grid. I could feel two hundred distinct tail fibers flexing, two hundred crystalline heads sensing the electrostatic charges of the bloodstream, two hundred individual points of presence floating in the plasma near my respiratory tract.
The sudden mental drag hit my human brain like a sledgehammer. In the physical armchair beside Lina, my human head snapped back, a sharp gasp escaping my lips as my physical heart rate spiked violently on the medical monitor.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
"Master Ryuk?!" Dr. Keller's voice echoed in the room as he rushed over, checking the holographic monitor displaying my vitals. "His brainwave activity just surged by three hundred percent! What is happening?!"
"I'm... fine, Keller!" I gritted out through my human teeth, my eyes remaining closed as I fought fiercely to organize the massive influx of data inside my mind.
"Do not... touch me!"
I forced my biotech discipline to take total control. I didn't try to process every single clone's individual visual feed at once—that would melt my human brain in seconds. Instead, I established a Swarm Protocol. I treated my two hundred clones as a single, unified collective, filtering their sensory inputs into a localized radar network rather than individual camera feeds.
Slowly, agonizingly, the mental storm receded. The chaotic noise smoothed out into a quiet, humming hive-mind resonance in the back of my subconscious.
I opened my human eyes in the medical room, breathing heavily, sweat glistening on my forehead. Beside me, Dr. Keller looked terrified, holding a bio-scanner, while Lina slept peacefully under her glass dome, completely unaware of the invisible war being waged beside her.
"I told you... I am fine, Dr. Keller," I said, my human voice raspy but calm as I wiped the sweat from my brow. "It was merely an adjustment during my internal training."
"Master, your brainwaves were mimicking a high-grade mental storm," Keller insisted, his voice trembling slightly. "If you continue to push your spirit energy like this without proper rest—"
"I know my limits," I interrupted coldly, casting a sharp glance at him that made the physician freeze in his tracks. "Return to your station."
Keller hesitated, then bowed deeply and stepped back toward his diagnostic consoles near the far wall.
Once he was out of earshot, I looked down at my human hand resting on the armchair armrest. In the background of my mind, the blue status panel flickered back into view, updating its numbers in real time:
=====================================================
STATUS
=====================================================
[User]: Ryuk (Amar)
[Age]: 16 years
[Talent]: Ice world (Martial saint level talent) concealed, Dual consciousness
[Physical realm]: Martial apprentice
[Main Form]: Human
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[CLONE SWARM MATRIX]:
- Active Bacteriophage Clones: 201 / 1,000,000,000
- Current Colony Stage: Micro-Cluster (Tier 0)
- Swarm Processing Capacity: Stable
-----------------------------------------------------
[EVOLUTION PROGRESS]: - Replicating Phase: [0.0000201%]
- Next Growth Milestone: 10,000 Clones =====================================================
A slow, dark smile carved its way across my face.
One bacterium had yielded two hundred clones in fifteen seconds. If those two hundred clones each found another bacterial target, they would produce forty thousand. And those forty thousand would become eight million.
The exponential math of viral replication was terrifyingly beautiful.
I leaned back into the plush armchair, closing my human eyes once more as I directed my newly created swarm of two hundred microscopic clones to fan out through my bloodstream, hunting for every single foreign microbe, parasite, and waste cell hidden within my body.
Arthur... Vice Principal Rosette... Golden Star Academy... I thought, my mind humming with the silent, collective pulse of two hundred viral eyes staring out into the microscopic dark. Keep playing your petty political games. By the time I walk through the academy gates tomorrow morning... my army will already be in the thousands.