Drip-Fed Clam Time

Despite its best efforts, the sli did need another two stalactites to fall before it was big enough to snowball down (or rather up) the food chain. How long did it take for two more stalactites to fall? Well, about as long as it took to actively watch grass grow.

In other words, it didn’t know, but it didn’t matter either because it was just too damn long. A felt eternity was spent just sitting around. Literally, as the sli had found the perfect hunting strategy. By disguising itself as a piece of tasty, tasty moss it attracted the shield like bugs that consud it. They thought they were on their way to an easy al, in truth the sli had spread itself thin in the surrounding area. Once they were close enough to try and eat the moss, and they could eat it since it was a perfect copy, it rolled up from behind them while raising up its main body from underneath the moss.

It was effective, but it was boring, but it was very effective. The only downside was that it had to move every now and again. The sli’s prey was just smart enough to realize that this bush of stationary moss was no good after a couple of their kin were lost to it. They were not smart enough to realize that the slightly different shaped moss that appeared elsewhere could not be trusted either. With all of that in mind, and the goal to gain biomass, this was the most aningful way to spend the ti between downing moss.

Now, however, after cleaning off the last bit of scrap moss from the latest deliverance of fate, the sli had reached the size of an average human’s palm. That had several advantages, it could now maintain up to four different outgrowths at a ti. However, it also discovered a problem. The growths didn’t scale. The tail that had allowed it to dash initially was entirely useless at this point. An attempt at the ‘just grow multiple ones’ had co out as an unnavigable ss.

It didn’t have to go back to crawling thanks to using two sets of the six insect legs, moving essentially like a centipede, but its new weight-class wasn’t a 100% positive improvent. Rather than moving straight up in power, the sli felt more like it was moving diagonally. Until it ate a creature with better legs, what it improvised had to make due.

Another problem with being bigger was that ambushing was harder than before. Luckily, the sli had already solved that problem with the trapping strategy. On the bright side: It was too big to be considered food by the water dragons anymore, even if it hadn’t eaten or even fought one itself yet. Also, the next item on its list of foods did not possess the mobility required to even get out of the way of an ambush.

Clams, that was what the sli was now heading towards. The armoured muscles had no real predators in these waters, so there was a vast bank of them at the east side of the lake. As filter-feeders, all the clams needed to do to eat was exist soplace where they could filter-feed. What controlled their population was a mixture of a parasitic worm that managed to infiltrate the shells of weakened clams and the amount of food that was provided.

In many ways, the sli was the clam’s worst nightmare. One would think that, if clams could be afraid of any natural predators, it would the starfish. In that way these clams here had lucked out. There was no star-shaped predator around that could stem open their shells and then bloat its stomach into them, externally digesting them before pulling the resulting protein sludge into its body.

No, these particular clams were spared from that nightmare. They just laid around in their black and beige shells all day, sotis moving a few centitres by extending their muscular tongues and dragging themselves over but otherwise doing as clams do.

Enter the sli. Normally, clams were not in the dietary range of slis. For a start, most clams lived in saltwater, while slis preferred to live around freshwater sources. Even if clams and slis did share a bio, the latter usually didn’t have the necessary acidity to break down the clam’s shell in a satisfactory tifra. They would try to eat them when they were desperate, but usually die of starvation before getting through.

THIS particular sli, however, was one of the rare occasions of being acidic enough, which the first clam soon found out, as it closed its shell to escape from the sudden viscous liquid enveloping it. They sat still, the bloated form of the sli was unable to hold more than one clam inside it at a ti.

The sli was not aware of what exactly was happening. It heavily disliked the initial taste of the clam, to humans it would have been like licking chalk, but it felt that it was dissolving sothing, so it decided to wait. Ti went by and, as the sli was thinking whether or not it should spit out the clam and go back to being pretend-moss, it finally happened.

An explosion of flavour. The shell was finally gone. Not completely, but a thin point allowed the acidic body fluid to rush inside and hasten the process. Much more importantly, it now tasted the protein rich flesh of the actual body.

Clams, decided the sli, were amazing. The whole waiting was finally worth it as it had a huge amount of food to digest. What was more, this tasted sweet and nourishing, completely different from the gunk eating insects. With sothing like that inside its proverbial belly, it wasn’t even mad about having to sit around and wait.

It took, preparing to envelop the next clam in line, a journey of maybe three steps. Being steps of the sli’s size. Living in large clusters of partially lded shells, these animals improved their survival chances by reducing their individual risk of getting eaten. They did that by simply displaying a sheer stupendous number of their kind.

For predators, that strategy ant they had a giant buffet sprawled out in front of them. Even better, as the sli was the only organism properly able to hunt (if that word was even appropriate) these clams, this was more like a 100% chance to win in a gamble. Which, technically, wouldn’t be a gamble. It would just be winning.

Yes, the sli had just won a minor victory at life.

That first clam’s last bit of flesh dissolved and left behind a very happy sli. Imdiately it went to analyse what it was able to do now, having figured out that it could visualize the actual parts and what they would do in its nucleus. There were three organs of noteworthiness. One was the gills to filter feed. Then there was the tongue, or foot however one looked at it. Lastly, there was the organ that grew the shell.

The sli had very little interest in filter feeding, although it reckoned that it couldn’t hurt to do it on the side. On the contrary, it could see the use in growing multiple tongues to use as feet while the shell seed the most useful of all of all them.

All around, the clams were a wonderful addition to its toolkit. Particularly the shell would last for a long ti since the useful part of it would just keep growing as long as it kept the organ active.

The sli, keeping a set of gills to filter feed and starting its shell production, began the process of flowing around the next clam. Ti to keep licking at the chalk again, as many tis as it took to get to the tasty insides again, then to repeat that process over and over again until it was big enough to challenge the apex predator of the lake.