I woke up to a lot of problems. I was a sticky, dehydrated mess, one of my hands stuck to a thigh causing me to groan at the faint headache that welcomed me to the waking world. There was no moment where I questioned if any of this was actually real or a dream, it was starkly real, unquestionably so.

I began the slow process of wiggling out of the sleeping nest that I had done a fine job ruining last night. The beastmen had not come to beat down the office door and kill me so that was one good thing about today. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes as several notifications from the System captured my attention.

(Mission update, Survive 100 days: 1/100.)

(New Boons available:

80 XP, Boon of The Beholders Beauty: Grants +10 Fellowship, become enticing, attractive, beautiful to any who behold you regardless of proclivities or species. You also become more attractive in general, healing and preventing the formation of unsightly scars. You also gain a one step increase in cup size. +3% alignment

100 XP, Boon of the Dancer: Grants +10 Agility, your body becomes highly supple and flexible, able to be stretched into various positions without coming to harm and recovering with ease. Gain Performance and Dodge Training. +3% alignment.)

Only 3% huh? Some effort to make these boons more attractive? There was a theme here too, did the little Prince feel a bit desperate? Trying to sweeten the deal? They would have to do better than that. I stretched a little bit when another notification appeared. 

(First Female orgasm +20XP Thanks for the show cutie~)

Oh they can fuck right off!

I kicked away the last strips of bedding and got to my feet feeling a bit bow legged and wobbly. I could feel my blood pressure growing at the thought of the so-called dark ‘gods’ paying such voyeuristically close attention to me. There was no way that a glorified sex god found my little exploration the slight bit interesting. I had no real way of knowing just what form of plaything I represented but something about my access to the system made me worth plying with boons, it could be purely entertainment but there was, ostensibly, more than enough of that going on in the 40k universe... my head throbbed.

Something to consider later.

For now I settled on picking up the metal pipe and one of my shivs and placing them on a desk in easy reach before slowly unbarricading the door trying to be as quiet as possible. I left one of the desks ready to be quickly pushed back into place if necessary before I collected my weapons and opened the door to the sitting area.

It was quiet, my eyes played over the room looking for any indication that someone had passed though and found none. I made my way to the bathroom, favouring my uninjured foot and closed the door behind me before relaxing with a sigh. I put my weapons down away from the door before stalking over to the urinal and grabbing at my crotch only to grab nothing and sway in place with an embarrassed sigh.

I settled down on one of the two toilets in the room and considered my options. I had to check my foot again and clean myself obviously but after that I had a few options for where to spend my time and energy, both limited now that I was well and truly out of food. I momentarily cursed my past self for not having the discipline to save the extra ration for later.

Once I was finished on the toilet I moved over to a sink and started to pull off the rags. I had entered this world in. I could not clean them, not without depriving myself of any clothing in a facility that did not keep the thermostat at a comfortable temperature. I hung the rags over one of the sinks and then untied the bindings on my feet.

The cut on the bottom of my foot was no longer bleeding very much and did not look... too swollen, I had been trying to keep it clean and bandaged where I could and that was honestly the best I could do without any medical supplies. I cleaned it again before I got started with the rest of my body.

The sinks here did actually have hot and cold water, however in homage to the British roots of the 40k universe the cold water came out of the cold tap and the hot water came out of the hot tap. Meaning that anyone wanting to wash their hands, or in my case, my everything. Had to choose between dousing myself in ice cold water or burning myself with scalding hot water.

Very nice. I am sure this was a luxury too knowing how miserable 40k was. The workers here likely praised Big E every time they annihilated the outer layer of skin on their hands under the hot water tap.

Rather than doing the two tap shuffle all British children learned from a young age I simply plugged up the bottom of the sink with a rag and combined the two streams of water into something hot but tolerable. Magic! Imagine if this could be done within a single tap!

There was no soap so I contented myself with washing with just the hot water from the sink, starting from the top and working my way down taking the time to get more used to my new body. There was little sense in rejecting it if I had any hope of survival after all. I hoped that the System could be used to make me stronger and faster rather than the years of hard work it would take to transform this body into something approaching the capabilities the last one had almost by default.

Considering the System, while I was cleaning myself I activated it. Using the System was reasonably intuitive but required some degree of willing it to do things I wanted and I had little doubt that I was clearly missing some elements of the System. Musing on getting help or documentation for how it worked was fruitless, learning how to operate it likely part of whatever the hell the point of me being here was most likely. I decided to work though the basics of what I already knew.

(Name: Livia Waydri

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Hight: 5’4, 162cm

Build: Emaciated

Characteristics:

Weapons Skill: 22 Ballistic Skill: 19 Strength: 20

Toughness: 30 Agility: 27 Intelligence: 28

Perception: 22 Willpower: 26 Fellowship: 28

Fate Points: 1

Affinities:

Fieldcraft

Agility

Tech

Skills:

Basic Survival

Basic Tech Use

Talents:

None

Experience Points:

Total: 245

Total Spent: 105

Remaining: 140)

It was easier to consider the characteristics in multiples of ten, with moving from 20 to 30 being the meaningful change to the stats. However when I had increased my agility from 22 to 27 that had afforded me a meaningful increase in the speed and stability while I was running. I did not know if increases to the characteristics were more meaningful at the lower end or if I would continue to have quite significant improvements with every point spent.

With the cut in my foot seemingly being okay, for now at least. I was more comfortable with spending XP now in an effort to gain more XP for later. There were some things I had to consider. First and foremost I had to understand the source of XP. I had obviously received XP for completing missions provided by the system and my ‘Patrons’ could offer me XP in the form of their own special missions that came at an alignment cost. I had also gotten XP for working out what was happening in that fight around the altar. And today I had learned that the ‘Patrons’ could send me XP on a whim without costing me anything. At least that I knew of. But several questions remained, the big one of course.

Could I gain XP from killing creatures or people?

If I could then that changed my priorities considerably. There was no avoiding violence in the 40k universe, the place simply had no place for pacifism even if mine was borne from a desire not to be in danger of dying! Engaging in violence meant that I needed to improve my personal combat abilities and the only real way I had to accomplish that was by purchasing affinities that would offer me fighting abilities or by buying one of the boons on offer.

Or I could just find a lasgun lying around, that would be nice.

The most attractive offer right now was getting the boon of the Dancer with the Defence affinity. Both would offer me dodge training that would hopefully stack rather than leaving me with just basic training. Then getting a weapon like a spear, one that allowed me to wound opponents without relying upon my dismal strength whilst keeping some distance. Defence also improved my Toughness characteristic, currently my best one. I did not know how exactly that scaled and the direct effects of it. Improving my Toughness before had allowed me to continue walking for a much longer amount of time without getting blisters.

Could a high level toughness stat make me resistant to wounds in general? Could a 100 Toughness make my skin turn away a knife trying to stab me? Could I get more than 100 Toughness? I sure wish someone would explain all of this to me!

Of course that was not my only choice, I could instead focus on my non-combat capabilities that might nevertheless provide me with an advantage in a fight. Picking up intelligence, knowledge and offence would get me far closer to filling out my eight affinities with the benefit of not gaining any alignment. It was not lost on me that the 20 XP the Prince of Dicks just gave me had been just enough to allow me to purchase the Boon of the Dancer and the Defence affinity.

Playing to his tune was not exactly the best idea. Not without knowing what even a single point of alignment actually did to me. Sticking to just affinities for now was the safe option and I did want to get them out of the way in order to see what options would be available to me once the rest of the System unlocked. I had to save the last affinity for gaining the Psyker affinity even if I really wanted to have a better foundation to avoid the risks being a Psyker brought.

My current plan involved gathering supplies and operating the advanced elements of the facility I was currently in, something that required technical skills, intelligence and less combat focused skills that could help me avoid a direct fight in the short term and make the eventual battles more favourable for me. Honestly I did not want to address it but my current Intelligence stat was hurting my ego. I did not feel stupider but that was also worrying.

Getting the Intelligence affinity would make Intelligence my highest characteristic and purchasing it would make buying intelligence related things cheaper later on. Uh, Right?

(Experience Point Purcheses limited to aptitudes and special boons only until all aptitude slots have been filled. Aptitudes will inform future power progression as they will reduce the cost of spending experience on associated purchases and boons.

Aptitude Slots: 3/8 filled

Available Aptitudes:

25 XP, Weapon Skill: Grants +5 to the Weapon Skill characteristic.

25 XP, Ballistic Skill: Grants +5 to the Ballistic Skill characteristic.

25 XP, Strength: Grants +5 to the Strength characteristic.

25 XP, Toughness: Grants +5 to the Toughness characteristic.

25 XP, Intelligence: Grants +5 to the Intelligence characteristic.

25 XP, Perception: Grants +5 to the Perception characteristic.

25 XP, Willpower: Grants +5 to the Willpower characteristic.

25 XP, Fellowship: Grants +5 to the Fellowship characteristic.

40 XP, Offence: Grants +2 to both the Weapon skill and Ballistic Skill Characteristics as well as Low-Tech weapons training.

40 XP, Finesse: Grants +4 to the Agility Characteristic as well as Ambidexterity.

40 XP, Defence: Grants +2 to both the Toughness and Willpower characteristics as well as dodge training.

40 XP, Knowledge: Grants +2 to the Intelligence and perception Characteristics as well as Logic training.

40 XP, Leadership: Grants +2 to the Fellowship and Willpower Characteristics as well as Command training.

40 XP, Social: Grants +4 to the Fellowship Characteristic as well as Charm training.

100 XP, Psyker. Become a Conduit for Warp Energies.)

Yep, I was effectively picking my build for the future now with little bonuses. Perhaps I had been thinking of this all wrong, rather than thinking about my needs right now I had to take a low time preference approach and instead decide on what affinities would benefit me in the long term. I had to save one slot for Psyker so I could pick up to four of the Aptitudes to go with. Intelligence was an obvious pick. Then... hmm this was actually pretty difficult, only having three choices left meant that I had to prioritise even if I would want pretty much everything here.

But I had to keep in mind that affinities would not preclude me from buying things outside of my range of affinities. It just reduced the costs of going ‘off build’ as it were. Did that mean I could become a Psyker later on? Was I willing to risk turning down being a space wizard? Being a Psyker was the most direct path to power in 40k after all. And it was here being dangled right in front of me with all the risks associated with it.

Yeah I was going to lock that in for later, the last affinity I would purchase would be Psyker. So, the long term plan for spending my current XP would be buying Intelligence, Knowledge and Social then later on get Psyker and something else. While I did not have anyone to talk to at the moment besides cannibalistic beastmen that was hardly a good metric to go on. I had only been here a day after all and being able to simply talk to people good would be invaluable in general.

That would cost me 120 XP and leave me with 20 spare.

My current self preservation combat option was Boon of the Dancer and Defence, costing me all of my XP but making me, hopefully, very good at not getting hit at the cost of some form of purple corruption the effects of which I could not predict.

There was also an entirely different option to take, one that would hopefully make me far more deadly in general and would be invaluable if I could indeed get XP from killing things. Going pure combat. Getting the Offence, Defence and Finesse right now would give me the best possible combat capabilities I could acquire at the moment and would no doubt make improving my deadliness in the future far, far cheaper.

Going this route would also allow me to purchase Psyker and something like Intelligence too without a problem. It would make social and leadership skills less viable however. Finishing cleaning myself I pulled on my rags. It was time to make a choice.

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