Chapter 616: When Countless Parasites Make Up a Person
"Kenichi, are you saying you actually found the energy source for the time machine?"
Amado looked at Kenichi with obvious excitement.
Kenichi smiled faintly and nodded.
To a certain extent, he really had found it.
The atomic structures he had analyzed were extremely similar to the mysterious energy inside the time machine.
There were still a few small differences.
But for Kenichi, that was already enough.
After all, those differences could potentially be corrected through special processing.
And Kenichi had already thought of several possible methods.
First, he would extract the unique energy contained within these so-called gods.
Then he would try adding or removing specific particles and altering the overall atomic structure.
If the transformation succeeded, the properties of the substance might change completely.
The idea came from an experimental method Kenichi remembered from scientists in his previous life.
Such manipulation would certainly be costly.
But to Kenichi, the cost was still acceptable.
"Then what exactly is the energy source you found?"
Amado looked confused.
"We haven't discovered anything with a similar structure so far."
"You previously showed me some of the energy's composition, but I still haven't found any element that matches it."
"So where did you find this?"
Kenichi explained directly.
The moment Amado heard the word "gods," his expression changed.
"Wait."
He stared at Kenichi.
"Gods?"
"There are actually gods in this world?"
Kenichi nodded seriously.
Truthfully, even he had been somewhat skeptical at first.
But those beings unquestionably existed.
Still, calling them gods was perhaps giving them too much credit.
"They're less like gods and more like unusual creatures."
Kenichi shrugged.
"Something similar to ninja dogs or ninja crows."
"They're special life-forms, but not overwhelmingly powerful ones."
He thought about it for a moment.
"Honestly, I don't even think they compare favorably to the beings from the Three Great Sage Regions."
"The Three Great Sage Regions?"
Amado looked at him curiously.
"You mean those three places where people can learn senjutsu?"
Kenichi nodded.
Ever since he had overturned the existing order of the Shinobi World and revealed many hidden truths, the Three Great Sage Regions were no longer some absolute secret.
At the very least, many of the strongest shinobi now knew about them.
Still, Kenichi found another aspect of those places more interesting.
"I remember that Mount Myoboku has something called the Great Toad Sage."
Kenichi smiled slightly.
"And apparently, while dreaming, he can predict the future to some extent."
Amado's interest was immediately piqued.
Kenichi himself was also extremely curious about that ability.
Prophecy was no simple matter.
Under ordinary scientific principles, accurately predicting the future should be extraordinarily difficult.
Of course, traveling into the past was even more absurd.
Returning to the past involved reversing things that had already happened, which made it vastly more difficult than merely predicting what might happen.
"Predicting the future?"
Amado nodded thoughtfully.
"You've mentioned something like that before."
"Do you want to go to Mount Myoboku and investigate?"
Kenichi shook his head.
He was interested.
Very interested.
But now was not the time to visit the Great Toad Sage.
Instead, Kenichi turned toward the door.
A moment later, he brought one of the old gods into the laboratory.
It was the god whose ability Kenichi had previously found rather unimpressive.
"Amado, I need your help with something."
Kenichi gestured toward the god.
"I want to study this one."
"Its condition is unusual, and I still haven't fully determined what makes it special."
"More importantly, I need to isolate the part of its body whose structure resembles the time machine's energy."
Amado immediately understood.
Kenichi wanted to use this god as the basis for cloning experiments.
The number of surviving gods was extremely limited.
If they could successfully clone one, then they would no longer have to worry so much about destroying valuable samples during research.
They could experiment far more freely.
At present, Kenichi had not discovered any other substance in the Shinobi World with a sufficiently similar atomic structure.
That meant these gods were his best lead.
"I understand what you're thinking."
Amado studied the god.
"But this organism is extremely unusual."
"Are you sure it even possesses usable genetic cells?"
Kenichi looked toward the god and fell into thought.
That was indeed a fair question.
According to the information provided by the other gods, their bodies behaved strangely after death.
They did not leave ordinary corpses behind.
Instead, they simply collapsed into ash.
That made conventional biological research considerably more difficult.
So whether these beings possessed cells in the usual sense was still uncertain.
Still...
Kenichi remembered touching them while collecting samples.
Their bodies had felt physically real.
That suggested there had to be some kind of cellular structure.
"At the very least, they possess physical bodies."
Kenichi nodded.
"So I don't think obtaining samples will be impossible."
"That should be enough for an initial experiment."
Amado accepted the explanation.
He brought the god to the sampling area and carefully extracted a small tissue sample.
Then he placed it under observation.
The result surprised him almost immediately.
Although the gods looked strange, they could indeed be classified as living organisms.
Their bodies possessed structures resembling cytoplasm.
But the more Amado observed, the stranger the sample became.
The cells were not arranged the way cells in a normal multicellular organism should be.
Instead...
Every individual unit looked like a complete single-celled organism.
Amado stared.
Was this entire god made of unicellular life?
Or more accurately...
Was the god itself an enormous colony composed entirely of countless single-celled organisms?
That seemed to be the case.
The discovery left Amado stunned.
Normal living creatures were also made from countless microscopic cells.
That part was ordinary.
But those cells were specialized.
Muscle cells.
Nerve cells.
Blood cells.
Skin cells.
Different cells followed different biological rules and cooperated to maintain a single organism.
This god was different.
Each component seemed more like an independent single-celled organism.
Yet instead of separating and living independently, countless such organisms had gathered together to form one body.
Even stranger...
They appeared to possess only one consciousness.
Amado immediately called Kenichi over.
Kenichi leaned closer to inspect the sample.
His expression changed.
This really was strange.
Calling it rare would be an understatement.
Kenichi had never encountered anything remotely like it before.
Most organisms simply did not function this way.
And yet reality was right in front of him.
A single living entity formed from countless autonomous single-celled organisms.
Rather than feeling discouraged, Kenichi became even more interested.
He glanced toward the god.
The god looked visibly uncomfortable under his gaze, as if it could not understand why Kenichi suddenly seemed so fascinated with it.
That only made Kenichi more curious.
His Rinnegan activated.
This time, Kenichi examined the god's entire body in extreme detail.
What he saw made his eyes hurt.
The god really was composed almost entirely of countless single-celled organisms.
Skin.
Muscle.
Organs.
Blood.
Everything.
Even the blood vessels themselves were formed from these microscopic organisms.
And within those living vessels, countless other single-celled organisms flowed like blood cells.
From time to time, some of the organisms inside the bloodstream were even devoured by the organisms forming the vessel walls.
Kenichi's stomach immediately tightened.
The sight was deeply unpleasant.
He had not expected the internal structure of this god to be so disturbing.
Still...
What mattered most was the strange energy.
Where was it coming from?
Kenichi continued analyzing.
His Rinnegan traced the atomic structure he had previously found similar to the time machine's energy.
Then he discovered its source.
Kenichi froze.
The substance was waste.
More specifically...
It was excreted by the countless single-celled organisms making up the god's body.
Those waste products accumulated and were transported toward something resembling an intestinal tract, itself naturally composed of even more single-celled organisms.
Kenichi stared.
"No..."
"That can't be all."
He continued watching.
Then he saw the next stage.
The waste produced by the countless organisms was transported into the digestive system.
There, the single-celled organisms making up the stomach and intestines processed it again.
A second transformation occurred.
And only after that secondary processing did the substance become the strange energy Kenichi needed.
The corner of Kenichi's mouth twitched.
So the time machine's energy source was not actually the god itself.
It was...
The processed waste of the microscopic organisms making up the god?
Kenichi fell silent.
What kind of ridiculous biological system was this?
For the first time in a long while, Kenichi genuinely did not want to continue looking.
The image was simply too disturbing.
It was beginning to damage his sanity.
"Kenichi!"
Amado suddenly called out excitedly.
"Come look at this!"
Kenichi rubbed his face.
He really did not want to.
But he still walked over.
And immediately regretted it.
Amado had cut off a small section of skin from the god.
Instead of remaining where it had fallen...
The piece of tissue was crawling back toward the wound.
Under Kenichi's enhanced vision, the process was horrifyingly clear.
The countless single-celled organisms composing the severed tissue were wriggling their flagella and dragging themselves toward the exposed flesh.
The tissue was literally crawling back to the body.
Kenichi stared.
This was unbearable.
He took a deep breath and looked toward Amado.
Amado, meanwhile, was practically glowing with excitement.
He did not seem remotely disturbed.
Kenichi forced himself to calm down.
Fine.
Scientific mindset.
Ignore how disgusting it looked.
What mattered was understanding the phenomenon.
Kenichi focused again.
Why did the special energy appear only after the secondary processing carried out by the organisms in the digestive system?
What exactly changed during that stage?
He looked toward the god again.
Originally, Kenichi had planned to have Amado clone the entire organism.
But now that he understood what the god actually was, that plan suddenly looked far more complicated.
How did one clone a life-form composed of countless separate single-celled organisms?
Would every individual organism need to be cloned?
How many separate cloning procedures would that require?
And even if all of them were reproduced, how would they be assembled into a single functioning god with one consciousness?
"I have to admit..."
Kenichi sighed.
"This thing has given me a serious problem."
Previously, he had never examined these gods deeply enough at the cellular level.
Now that he had...
He had discovered something far more troublesome than expected.
Still, another question entered Kenichi's mind.
Perhaps this was a hive mind.
Maybe every single-celled organism shared the same consciousness.
That was not impossible.
In fact, considering what he had observed, the possibility seemed fairly high.
Kenichi turned toward the god.
"Do you know how you were born?"
The god looked confused.
Kenichi genuinely wanted to know.
How did something like this come into existence?
Surely some gigantic single-celled organism had not simply given birth to it.
Or perhaps the reality was even stranger.
Could two colonies of single-celled organisms somehow reproduce and produce another colony containing countless individual organisms?
And if so...
How did such a creature grow?
How did it regulate the number of individual organisms composing its body?
How did it maintain a stable shape?
The more Kenichi thought about it, the more questions appeared.
"I..."
The god hesitated.
"I don't know."
"When I first became conscious..."
It frowned, trying to remember.
"I think I was standing inside a gigantic swamp?"
Kenichi stared at it.
"A swamp?"
....
https://discord.gg/KvMN2CFsMR
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03].