Reborn as a One-Celled Organism [Fantasy]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

What to expect:

-Strong fantasy elements, including microbes that talk and build kingdoms

-Weak to Strong non-human MC whose form will change over time

-Action and fight scenes, along with some occasional slice-of-life

Survival. Growth. Evolution.

As a microbiologist, Lucy studied life under a microscope. But when a god's mistake leaves her transformed into the most basic form of proto-life, she'll have to come face to face with the harsh realities of survival in a microscopic world that’s more advanced than she expects. As fantasy and biology intertwine to create a strange and hostile environment, she will have to fight to learn what it truly takes to stay alive. And what it means to grow.

But if she can beat the odds, she'll have the opportunity of a lifetime. With a System that gives her complete control over her evolution, Lucy will have an advantage over every other creature in the world, whether magical or mundane, and she's determined to make use of it. To choose her own path.

When gods start to get involved by placing bets on her success, things will get tougher. The gods were once human, after all, and they remember how to cheat.

How else could you become a god?

Disclaimer: This story is inspired by real-world science, but things get fantastical pretty quickly, and I'm taking a lot of creative liberties!

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2024
Author: Mike71414

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.1/ 5.0
Followers: 2,053
Views: 413,644

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

Grim ThoughtsRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This one gets 5 stars from me for sheer novelty value alone. It’s rare that I see an upcoming story on this site that is so unique in its premise, but this is one of those times. If you are at all interested in this genre, give this one a try
LonebotRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Style: Snappy dialogue with good use of wordplay to make the story more engaging and vivid, allowing me to visualise the setting in clear detail.
Story: Oh boy, oh boy. I was hooked from the start to the current chapter. The progression may be slow, but the story moves at a surprisingly fast pace, making the action flow even better. Add to that a good use of scientific facts, and the story becomes even better since there is clear research done for it.
Grammar: No major errors, aside from a typo or two (See 'Goddesss' in Chapter 5). The wide range of vocabulary is good too.
Character: Lucy as a character still has a lot of potential growth and depth to explore. I find her wits and desire to find adventure to be very appealing, but I still hope there could be more we can explore for her character in the future. Other than that, Jade and Simon seem to have a fun dynamic too, so I hope we get more interactions between them in the future.
Overall, a strong start to what could be an amazing LitRPG. I enjoyed the action sequences, the dialogue, and the stakes. The fact that all this is explored like a science lesson too makes it all the more interesting. I wish my science lessons were like this.
RokoRaspberryRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
What could be more progression than growing from a single cell! The story is a page-turner so far, and I’m somehow enjoying all the flashbacks to biology class. THE MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWER HOUSE OF THE CELL!
Style: The narration has been consistent, and the writing style is strong and brings out the author’s voice. It is easy to read with an even mix of dialogue, description, and information coming through. Even when there is technical lingo, the author communicates it well and keeps us immersed in the story.
Story: The story itself is interesting, and the author has a clear direction to where the story is headed. Although we can come expecting many litRPG concepts to show up here, the teasers and reveals that have dropped so far indicate that there is a long-term vision and hopefully some surprises in store as well!
Grammer: No major issues.
Characters: I like them so far. The MC is competitive, and I understand the rationale for her character, but at the same time have seen this type before. That is great because it has been what I have come to know and enjoy reading litRPGs, but am also hopeful to see some development down the line as well. I’ve already seen teasers that this might happen, so should be an interesting ride.
Overall, would recommend! It’s a great premise and I’m having fun reading it so far!
SkarabraeRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Style: The style is very good. The author has a unique way of writing that helps set the tone very well, and their word choice also contributes to the feel of the story quite a bit. I can also say that the literary device of imagery is used very well. I especially like how the style is able to convey the MC's thoughts and feelings incredibly well.
Story: The story is great. It is paced at exactly the rate it needs to be, and it develops at the rate it needs to as well. It also is far more interesting than you'd think anything revolving around a single-celled organism would be. It's a lot like Spore with the MC having to evolve herself. But she is also a scientist who is very smart, so she knows what she's doing. And the various cellular biology concepts that appear in the story are conveyed in a way that's easy for any reader to understand.
Grammar: I couldn't find any grammatical errors. Some might exist, but they didn't distract me enough from the story to be noticeable if they do.
Character: The characters are very good. There aren't many of them, but the ones that exist are very well-depicted. They are all three-dimensional and realistic for their situation. They are interesting too, having a good amount of inner conflict as well as outward rivalries with each other in some cases.
Overall, I highly recommend this story.
TheGrinningVikingRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm into the entire isekai thing lately and I've been reading a lot, a looootttt. Most are ok, mid at best; This one is great.
This fic might not have the same fevered pace as something more grounded in fantasy, but it's different in an interesting and well written way and with how many isekai there are on this site alone that's pretty hard to do.
I'm looking forward to reading more in the future. Hopefully it doesn't die 🦠👍🏼
Wayward WarlockRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Where do I start? Perhaps first with my skepticism. At first, I thought this would be a very boring story. One about a lady who got turned into a single celled organism and who has to bullshit her way to the top.
But boy howdy, have I been proven wrong! I didn't know battles between bacteria could be so engaged and action packed! Mike has started his story off with the most basic life forms, little more than moving, eating bubbles of water, fat, and sometimes spikes; and turned their basic interactions into action packed and genuinely interesting engagements on par with any other fantasy novel with multicellular characters.
I enjoy how the main character, Lucy, had an easy out to end the story and potentially call the first few chapters a dream, but decided against it and chose the hard path (the one that leads to a story, duh ;) )
I can't wait to see where Lucy's small set of starting powers takes her and what sort of crazy evolutions she has as she moves her way up the totem pole! I leaves a LOT of room for open paths at this point. And even better, we just got introduced to a major antagonist opposing Lucy's benefactor. It happens early enough that I urge new readers to go ahead and read up to chapter 8 to get that introduction, but it puts more of those pieces on the board to make the story far more interesting and set things up for more interesting supernatural twists as we chug along.
All in all, an interesting start and I can't wait to come back and binge a few more chapters soon!
milkman7121Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This is a good incremental progression fantasy. The big problem for me is that other sapient creatures get introduced way too early. MC is special initially because they are a single-called organism in a deep-sea vent, and they are also a reincarnated (more or less) human. Normal progression would be incrementally more dangerous, intelligent creatures as the series continues. If intelligent creatures appeared, they would be foreshadowed properly, and the mc would slowly learn to communicate, and probably also they wouldn’t have the exact same magic that makes the mc able to be sentient at a cellular level. They’d be like, tiny octopi people maybe? But if literally every single called organism had the potential to be sapient that would be existentially terrifying in any setting. Spoilers:
This does not happen. There’s a magic bug, then a group of tribalism tool-wielding cells, then a evil scientist-cell that is intelligent enough to farm, and then also the scientist-cell is able to engineer bio weapons, and also all the cell-sheep they were farming are also sapient, and one of them is a reincarnated demon sent to collect their soul, and!!!
The big thing keeping this from being generic Isikai #1295858933 is the setting. A sentient little cell can get up to all sorts of lil gremlin mischief. A separate, hypothetical fiction with evil scientists doing magic to turn themselves into horrible flesh monsters, and tribalist, raiding cannibal-slavers (the mc can kill them no remorse though because they’re all evils no take-backs), and of course the weary oppressed slave-class in need of rescue (complete with a mysterious potential love interest with red… hair) is generic Isikai #1295858933.
You have a great setup, author, you’ve got a compelling drama between the higher-ups to explain the shenanigans (great characters by the way, and I would have recommended the fic to litrpg-inclined friends on their strength alone), but if you don’t focus on what makes your setting unique,
Robert HermanRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
Characterization is alright, and it was popular so I wanted to give it a shot. Reads like it was professionally edited, so big points for that given where we are.
Just wasn't for me. Reading how a single cell fights another ameboa was not very interesting.
Hope the story is successful anyway
uxelRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
The background plot is a mess and very cliche. The main plot is all over the place. It starts with mc beeing a single cell as title suggest trying to survive, so far so good. Then suddenly gods that hate each other are introduced and somehow mc is one of their chosen ones.... The other one sends his goons presumably.... This is as generic as it gets. But wait to top it all off theres sentient microbic bug people with a civilization that can talk too... This all doesnt fit together. This god plot is cliche. The original single cell bacterium plot is sidelined quickly. The bug people make no sense. Also in the earlier parts there are flashbacks of the mc that are very annoying to read as they completely break the flow of the story.
orinaticRoyal Road
★★ 1.5
If done correctly, the single cell premise could be very cool.
Unfortunately, the single-cell premise is not done correctly.
The main problem is scale. Part of the reason why a single cell premise *should* be cool is that the scale we're talking about is a totally alien world. When you get to microorganism scale, things fundamentally do not work the same way they do on the macro scale.
In our first real conflict, we end up with a larger spiky cell shooting spikes at our protagonist, who jumps/dodges them.
None of this makes any sense at all at the scale we're supposed to be dealing with.
Because fluid friction is high and the masses (and thus momentums) are tiny, projectiles are entirely useless at the scale this is supposed to operate at. It can't be shooting spikes at her, because spikes would lose all their momentum within one or two body lengths. Friction scales with the frontward cross section of a projectile (which is the square of size), while mass and thus momentum scales with the cube of size. So the smaller something is, the higher the friction to mass ratio is, and the less projectiles work.
The whole appeal of a micro-world (at least for me) is how *weird* things get at thst scale. And this story *utterly* fails to convey that. The author should take a look at how single-celled organisms actually fight and take inspiration from that.
Also the writing keeps assuming there's a meaningful 'up' and 'down', and there isn't. Single cells are neutrally boyant, and this whole thing happens in water. There is no up or down. The idea of jumping or falling on something is nonsensical, and it keeps getting referenced.
I love the premise, but I'm really disappointed in the execution. I want to read about microbe-scale combat, not humans-wearing-microbe-costumes-scale combat, which is what this feels closer to.
Also the gods subplot is totally unnecessary.