Well, it’s been around 6 hours and I can confidently say that I have a near endless supply of Matter, and I’ve consumed roughly 15% of the planet so far. The dome project I had mentioned previously is completed and the residents inside have no idea about the hellscape their planet is turning into. Although it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing either, at one point I did run into a bunch of other skillholders but strangely enough, I didn’t get their skills when I consumed the crystal within them. That leads me to believe that whatever entity is controlling these skills either can’t control the ones I have already, or for some reason won’t.

The reason being, if they resorted to stopping me from getting any more skills couldn’t they just remove the ones I have? That leads me way back to when I first got the [Strengthen Self] skill, it mentioned in the description how I had consumed the shard, not integrated it or anything along that, but consumed it. My theory is that by doing so, I’ve somehow broken the skills free of the control of whatever entity made them, you might bring up [Killer Instinct] and how it had changed while I had it, but I think that it had changed beforehand, and it was purified afterward. Kind of like a body expelling or destroying an infection, and regenerating the damaged tissue later.

The only thing I’m doing now is waiting. Waiting for the planet to finish being consumed, and waiting for this entity to show itself and stop hiding like a coward. In the meantime, I’ll give an explanation of what I’ve been doing. As I’ve been consuming the planet I’ve found myself with an excess of Matter, so I’ve been placing what I call Nodes at 10 kilometer intervals around the planet, starting from the first city. These “Nodes” consist of 1 Capillary Tower at the center, followed by 4 Norn Cysts surrounding it, 4 Scorns, 4 Biovats, 8 Brood Hives, 16 Reclamation Pools, and some various defenses. The Nodes don’t seem very large but they take up a circle of about a kilometer in diameter, and considering that there’s one of them every 10 kilometers, the surface starts to look real fleshy.

Normally, a Hive Mind would never do something like this because it would never have an excess of Matter, unfortunately I exist, and I do have an excess of Matter, which means I can mess around and have fun like this. I suppose it doesn’t really matter if I keep track of how much Matter I have anymore, speaking of, you might have been wondering how I’ve known that kind of stuff without consulting the support system or whatever, to keep it simple, that system was never real. Remember how my mind had splintered when I was transported over? The other half was communicating with me via that “support system” until I got my bearings, and could access that information on my own again.

Alright, enough about that, my swarm has alerted me to the presence of a Lab facility, a new one this time, and I’m getting bored so I’ll be heading over there to check it out personally. Teleporting over to this new Lab, I can instantly see the difference. Well, besides the unending tide of Tyranids that are consuming the very Earth I’m standing on, down to the bedrock. The Lab here is much, much larger than the other ones, about 15x larger if I had to guess; It feels much more like a headquarters than a simple branch facility like the others were.

I had left about a 5 kilometer/3 mile radius around the facility alone and unbothered, just in case there were any defenses. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not actually worried about the defenses doing something, I just want to see with my own eyes what they are and what they can do if any exist. Walking over towards the facility I’m disappointed that there were no defenses, but not really surprised either, and I walk right up to the front door. Grasping the handle I throw open the door to a brightly lit white hallway, and after taking a few steps inside the door behind me shuts loudly and the walls begin to shimmer. For the first time in a very long time, I can’t feel the network anymore.

Hurriedly I attempt to reform the network but it fails, no connection. I try to teleport something inside, no connection. I attempt to pull Matter from the network, no connection. Deciding that this is a very bad idea, I turn to go back outside and the doors are gone, replaced by more of that endless white hallway.

The next best thing I can do is instead carve through the walls, but even with my ODGGs activated and fully running, they harmlessly bounce off; some sort of force field surrounding the walls and preventing me from damaging them. Since that isn’t working, I try to teleport down the hallway, but something keeps me in place, disabling my teleportation, but since other skills are working it’s likely just some sort of teleportation blocker.

The Tyranids outside all have souls and a slight sense of self, so they won’t collapse with me gone, but they won’t exactly do all that well either. I really should have sent a scout in or something, worst case scenario and I die, my soul is stored in a Scorn so I’ll be reborn in a sense, but as for me, the one in control right now, that’s it, I’ll be gone and another will take my place. In fact, there might already be one, with memories right up to the point she went inside, then nothing else, it’s entirely possible that I was cloned in a way, and I’m that clone while the original is sitting outside, confused as to why she lost access to her body. Okay, enough terrifying myself, I need to get moving instead of sitting around and thinking too much.

Thinking about it, I am quite literally a soulless abomination right now, a mind piloting a soulless body, actually, I just realized that I’ve lost the protection of the Hivemind, and my pseudo soul is now incredibly vulnerable from an attack. I suppose I still have one set of soul rings because I was unable to give them to Carol, and that would provide a decent amount of protection. Considering I have next to no protection as it stands, I’ll go ahead and equip the rings, which interestingly enough, sit vertically behind my horns rather than horizontally above my head, interesting.

Well, with the rings equipped, I realize that they are significantly weakened because they were designed to connect to the network and draw off of that, darn. It’s better than nothing, but I’m still a tad disappointed, whatever, not much I can do about it anyway. What is slightly confusing, is that [Guide] is telling me that this hallway, as far as I can tell, is not the same hallway I had entered originally, it’s completely detached and is not connected in any way. Speaking of, I just remembered about the Amulet, the one that Bright or whatever had, I still have that in the storage ring, and last I checked it also protects the soul, albeit in exchange for other’s souls.

Taking the amulet out of the ring, I stare momentarily at the white gem in the center, before putting it around my neck, hopefully, that will alarm me about any teleportation I experience in the future, and help protect my soul. Now that that’s done, I can safely, somewhat at least, start moving down this hallway, and by making rigorous use of [Speed Demon], I can do it quite quickly.

It doesn’t take very long to find a separate path in the hallway, so naturally I decide to go down that path instead of continuing down the straight and seemingly unending path. Upon passing through that side path, the first thing I notice is that the amulet once again, trembles, which means I’ve been teleported, although it looks no different than it did before, and even [Guide] is telling me nothing changed. However, between the two of them, I trust this amulet more, the skill is controlled by some unknown entity, and while I do believe that it can’t interfere with the skills, I have no actual proof that it can’t, but this amulet is completely disconnected.

Continuing down this path rather than the other, I see that it’s much less pristine, losing that unnatural cleanliness that the rest of the Labs have always held, and looking much more lived in, more “human”. Regardless, I still don’t have a connection to the network, so I still need to be cautious, and consequently, I slow down to a much more manageable speed and start walking. After a little while of nothing but walls, I finally come across the end of this little hallway and a door at the end; this entire facility is completely nonsensical and seems incredibly disproportionate, but maybe that’s just how these places are.

That aside, this door has no labels or indicators and is a simple wooden door, like one you might see in an average family home, very out of place. On the other side of the door lies what looks like a cafeteria, although it’s devoid of life, one of the walls is a large window, letting me see what’s outside, space. Considering that the amulet did its whole trembling thing, I assume that this door is some sort of portal to space or something.

Walking over to the window and looking down at Earth, I watch the unending tide of Tyranids consume the planet, and the dead ground they leave behind, well, if you ignore the Nodes placed around it anyway. Yet still, I can’t seem to form a connection with the network. Looking back at the cafeteria, I notice that the door I had just gone through isn’t really there, I can see it yes, but it seems transient, like it could stop existing at any moment. Running my hand over it I can feel that it’s not there, yet I can see it vaguely, and I can grasp the handle just fine if I aim for it, but sliding my hand over that area from the wall yields nothing, and my hand passes right through.

Very strange, I wonder if this is an effect of [All-Seeing], allowing me to see stuff that isn’t really there, like this “secret” door. Regardless, I have a station to either explore, or destroy, or both, so let’s get started. First, there’s yet another door in this cafeteria, this one looks more like it belongs here, high tech and presumably automatic, which might be problematic, but should be fine. The moment I get to the door, it shoots open and I step to the side, activating [Phantom] and turning invisible.

A middle aged man in a white lab coat, jeans, and a plain shirt walks through, carrying a mug of what seems to be coffee, “Damn it all, Earth is really done for this time.”

He stands in front of the window, looking down at Earth, and comments on the Tyranid swarm currently overtaking it. Intriguing, so there are still humans from the previous world around, they just evacuated to space. I may not have a connection to the network at the moment, but I still have my tricks, and by lightly prodding his mind with psychic energy, I can implant a question and he’ll answer it out loud without even realizing he’s talking to me.

For example, “Who are you?”

“Oh little old me, I’m Dean, just Dean. I used to work here a while back, but there’s nothing really to do anymore, so I’m just kinda here.”

Well, that wasn’t a lot of info, but let’s move on regardless, “What is this station for?”

He takes a sip from his coffee, before letting out a sigh, “The station huh, originally it was a military station used to house scientists or whatever and was used to monitor new invaders, but now it’s used mostly just to house old members of AARCAD. Then around 6-7 hours ago, what’s being referred to as the ‘Flesh Cataclysm’ started, and now it’s just the last bastion of humanity, I guess.”

AARCAD? That seems important, “What is AARCAD?”

“Right… AARCAD is short for Agency of Anomalous Research, Capture, And Development, we used to research, capture, and develop invaders and anomalous items. But that was back when Earth belonged to humans, now we’re just people who lived a very, very long time.”

Turning from the window, he finishes his coffee and sets the mug on a table, “Now it’s my turn, who are you, actually I guess that doesn’t really matter anymore, how did you get here, and where even are you?”

Welp, guess he found out, that doesn’t surprise me really. I do, however, have a backup plan, and it consists of using [Dreamer] to create a more humanlike me, and use that fake me to converse. Normally I wouldn’t care, but since I don’t have access to the network I need to be extra careful. Let’s see, let’s imagine my body, but remove all the extra bits, and maybe about 40 cm/16 inches of height, I don’t think a 229 cm/ 7.5 foot tall lady is exactly the most normal thing to see. As for clothes, I’ll take one from Nacht’s book and go for some simple jeans and a regular hoodie. Now, let’s get this done quickly.

 

-Dean’s POV-

 

After calling out based on a hunch, I wait a few seconds, and after nothing happens, I start to think I might actually be going mad, then I start to see a shimmer at one of the tables. At the table appears a tall and gorgeous woman, with long platinum blonde hair, piercing crimson eyes which dance with amusement, and skin fairer than snow. She’s wearing simple clothes, jeans, a dark hoodie, and some sneakers, but it fits her strangely well. Apparently I was staring for quite a while because she coughed politely to get my attention.

“Ah, oh, uh sorry, you just startled me. Right, I know for a fact that you weren't on this station previously, so how did you get up here?”

She leans back in her chair slightly, pointing a thumb towards the wall, “I went through that door, it looked pretty plain so I’m not entirely sure how I ended up here. All I did was walk through a door and yet I’m somehow up in space.”

There’s clearly not a door there, so either she’s lying, or she can see more than I can, which would be a surprise. “Oh really, the door right over that, at that completely empty wall.”

She smiles, before standing up, “Yep, since you for some reason can’t see it, I’ll show you where it is, just walk over here with me.”

Putting down my coffee mug, I walk with her towards the wall, “Alright, let’s see this door you went through.”

Approaching the wall she grabs empty air, and swings open an ordinary wooden door, and on the other side appears to be an endless dusty white hallway, like one at an AARCAD facility. “Well, guess there really was a door, strange how I couldn’t see it but you could.”

She closes the door, and turns to me, “Ah, I’ve always had a knack for finding hard to find things.”

“Right, so why exactly did you come up here?”

She turns away slightly at the question, seemingly ashamed, “I um, was running.”

“Running, from what?”

She looks back over at me, her face showing a look of disbelief, “Really? You’re gonna ask me that? Well turn around, you can’t miss them.”

Turning around, I watch the endless tide of the Flesh Cataclysm for a few moments, before looking back toward her, “Oh, that makes sense, sorry.”

“It’s fine, whatever.”

“Next question I suppose, how can you turn invisible seemingly at will?”

“It’s a skill called [Phantom], it lets me turn invisible, but I can’t do it forever, and for some reason, it doesn’t work on them, so I had to run.”

A skillholder, and with an invisibility skill at that, she’s dangerous, incredibly so. “You have a skill? What’s your corruption at?”

“2.4%, I haven’t had it for that long, but it’s been a real lifesaver.”

“If it’s that low then it’s fine, actually how did you manage to implant ideas into my brain? It can’t be because of your skill because you already have one.”

“Oh, I picked up a device from a uh, AARCAD facility that lets me transmit thoughts, and I figured out how to do that by using it. For that matter, how did you know I was doing that?”

“It was mostly just a hunch, but as a ‘former’ member of AARCAD, I have training to protect myself from mental attacks and stuff like that. Although what you did was far from an attack, I was still able to determine it was being done.”

“Is that so? I suppose that would make sense if you dealt with that kind of stuff regularly.”

“Now I think it’s only fair to ask, may I see this device you’re using?”

“Oh, I guess so, like you said it’s only fair, just let me grab it real quick.”

As she reaches into her pocket, I feel something hit the back of my head, causing me to fall forward, the last thing I see is her fist impacting my face. Then everything goes black, for the last time.

 

-Tyra’s POV-

 

[Defender] is pretty useful, while it says it makes floating shields to protect things, those shields can also be moved around, thus they can be used as weapons. Anyhow, I got what I wanted out of him, and he was starting to get on my nerves, so I killed him real quick. Unfortunately for me however, because I don’t currently possess a soul I have no way of accessing the Matter network, or even setting up a temporary one.

Fortunately, I still have the Norn Crown and Spirit-Leech Cortex, so I can grab his soul, wipe it clean, modify it to fit my body, and insert it into myself. There it should reform itself properly after a little while and generate a second? Soul for myself. I’m not entirely sure how that will interact with the network after I get out, maybe- hold on, it seems that he doesn’t have a soul, but somehow I have one again.

Ah, I see what happened, when I killed him the Spirit-Leech cortex automatically shredded and absorbed his soul, then used that energy to “repair” mine. And since my soul was missing, it recreated it using the imprint it left on my body, so to summarize I accidentally just cloned my soul. Now I’m very concerned about the ramifications of that, but with the soul comes the network, and now I temporarily have access to one.

Then it hit me, I had removed that ability because It was “unnecessary”. After all, I had the rest of the network to sustain and add storage, and the benefit of removing it in exchange for a more powerful psychic presence was at the time, a lot better for me. Well whatever, I can do without it for now, instead I’ll just yoink Dean's keycard and go back to looking around the AARCAD space base.

Walking up to the automatic door from earlier, I watch a blue beam quickly scan over my body, before locking onto the keycard and opening. Luckily it doesn’t actually check if you are who you claim you are, that makes things easy. Reactivating [Phantom] I meander my way through the hallways, checking room after room, most of them don’t really matter, bedrooms, storage rooms, an agriculture room, etc. Nothing that catches my attention at the moment, not until I reach where the engineering room is, at least according to the sign anyway.

Unfortunately, Dean apparently doesn’t have the authority to enter the engineering room, fortunately, I have the authority to go wherever I want, specifically by way of [Electric State of Mind]. One short electrical overload later, the door opens, and I make my way in, only to come face to face with what I assume is the Station's engineer. An average sized blonde woman with a scowl.

“God forsaken door shorting out constantly, I swear this Station is cursed-”

I quickly kill her with a quick bonk, I don’t want her to try to fix anything I’m about to break. Now then, back to the engineering room. Finding what I assume to be the control panel, I get ready to start wreaking absolute havoc, but am suddenly interrupted by a short headache. But as I grab the console to recov-

 

-Tyra’s? POV-

 

Well, let’s just say that didn’t go to plan. I’ve lost my main body and everything on it to whatever protection that facility had, so I had to make a copy real quick so I’m now temporarily piloting that. It’s a good thing my soul wasn’t in there, it would suck to get disconnected from the network, honestly, I probably should have sent a scout of some kind in first, but whatever, you live and you learn. Thus we go to Plan B, nuking it. More specifically dropping a few barely functioning unstable fusion reactors on it from orbit, that should hopefully do some damage. My body should be fine, it’s made of Necrodermis after all, and on top of that, it has the Fortress Field to at least dampen the impact slightly.

Anyhow, creating a few reactors I place them in orbit, slapping a few bio thrusters on it and letting it boost their fall significantly. Watching the explosions from a good distance away, I can unfortunately already tell that they didn’t work. Oh well, time for Plan C, a very long tentacle that is grounded outside, and just reaches in and retrieves my body. Just have to actually make something to do that real quick. Not very difficult since tentacles are relatively simple structures, make a big flesh and carapace ball with a bio vat inside to churn out more tentacle, or dissolve some when needed, and boom, done. I call it the Barnacle, because honestly it kind of looks like a big one, just with a big tentacle that pulses and grows and has an eye on the end.

After I fill in a portion of the crater to make enough space to actually put it on, I place it in front of the door. Controlling the Barnacle I move it up to the door, open it, and peek inside, nothing but a hallway, and no body in sight. Well, that’s strange, it’s not like it could just walk off, it doesn’t have a soul controlling it so it technically isn’t even alive, it should be a regular old corpse right now, so perhaps it got moved by somebody, or maybe this is one of those teleporting places, and after the door got closed it got teleported off. What a pain.

Oh well, I’ll use the Barnacle to explore it a bit anyway, I’ll come across my body eventually. Pushing the tentacle through the facility for a little while, I eventually come across the lobby, built the same way as all the other ones, just bigger. Still haven’t found my body, which is starting to get on my nerves, I sort of liked those items I had. Well whatever, I can find more things anyway, it’s not like they were very important I just found them neat. What was it Hark said? I think he called it “Trazyn Instinct” once, although it’s very much possible I’m just making that up.

That aside, this facility too has an Anomalous area, and inside of it is-

Suddenly I find myself reconnecting with my main body, way up in space somehow. Apparently, a soul somehow emerged from it, but we don’t need two cores in a hivemind, and I want my body back, so with a quick thought I obliterate it and retake control of my body. After the flood of memories come through, I realize that I might have just technically killed myself, or one of myself, but eh, oh well, I’m still here and that’s all that matters. Sorry, not sorry other me.

 

-Tyra’s POV-

 

I- What? What just happened, what was that supposed to be? I, that was, oh, I see. It was [Foresight] I suppose in this case I looked “up” and saw a potential future. But out of everything that I saw I can’t help but go over a single line, something I should have known already but just didn't think about “It’s not like it could just walk off, it doesn’t have a soul controlling it so it technically isn’t even alive, it should be a regular old corpse right now”. Once again, I’m not supposed to exist.

Sitting down next to the console I briefly stare at my hands. “Oh, so that’s why…” I think- I think I figured it out. You see, Tyranid bodies are made of multiple living organisms, I for one have the main body, each of the organs, and the Norn Crown, which makes 8 different organisms required to make this body. I’m not Tyra, nor was I ever Tyra, the moment I got cut off from the network I stopped being Tyra. I should have realized that. I’m just the leftover dregs of consciousness from those organisms, enough to sustain higher thought, and apparently just barely enough to make a replica of a soul from.

And because of how good that replica is, I- The original Tyra will obliterate that soul because it’s detrimental to have two cores in a hivemind. Tyra could make a perfect copy of her soul and link it to her own, expanding the core, but as for me, I made an independent copy, something that should not exist in regards to a hivemind.

Now what? What am I supposed to do now? If I leave the station Tyra will near instantaneously obliterate me, then am I supposed to stay here forever? No, I can’t do that either, eventually Tyra will find me. That AARCAD facility isn’t infinite, and with [All-Seeing] she will eventually find me, and when she does, I die.

If I hide, I die. If I run, I die. If I fight, I die. In the end, it won’t really matter, Tyra will live on, but as for me? The Tyra right here and right now will cease to be. I suppose that this is technically insubordination, but I still want to live, I don’t want to die yet, I want to break free from these shackles. I have an idea, while I might not be able to gain Matter at the moment, what I can in fact gain, is memories. So with that in mind, I’m going to eat the engineer.

Alice, her name was Alice, not important. What is important is that this station apparently has some sort of Dimensional Transporter. Something that will shunt the station away into a different dimension entirely, although it’s “supposed” to only be used in case of an emergency, with a little Psychic prodding and with Alice's credentials and identity I can get the overseers of the station to activate it.

With that in mind, I’m going to start a call using the Engineering terminal and use [Dreamer] to pose as Alice.

 

*BZZZ BZZZ*

Kind of a weird ring but whatever.

*BZZZ BZZZ*

*BZZZ BZZZ*

“Hello? Alice, did you need something?” On the other side of the monitor appears an older man, although I say that he seems to be somewhere between 50 and 60, with brown hair with significant graying, and a sharp yet softening face.

According to his reaction, my fake Alice seems to have held up, “Overseer, sir, I’ve just received a warning that an Entity connected to the Flesh Cataclysm has broken into one of our facilities. One that has a ‘door’ to up here.”

For a moment there’s silence, before I see him stand up and loudly swear, slamming his hand onto his desk, “DAMMIT they weren’t supposed to be able to get in. *Sigh* In your opinion, what do you think the chances are that they find the ‘door’.”

Making the mimicked Alice scrunch her face up, I pause momentarily, “Near certain, sir. I think it would be best to activate the Dimensional Transporter. As it stands it’s only a matter of time before they come up here and slaughter us. Not to mention that there have been nuclear detonations detected, as well as entities capable of stellar travel.”

The Overseer sits down silently, and after a few moments speaks up. “We’ve lost, all it took was one Invader of just the right kind, and that was it. We’ve gone through so much only to just lose in the end…” Minutes pass before he speaks again. “I’ll activate the Dimensional Transporter, it will disconnect the ‘doors’ and put us in a new dimension, we’ll be the Invaders this time. But we have a duty to make sure the human race lives on, as AARCAD, and as humans. Get ready, you won’t be seeing Earth again.” With that, the call cuts off.

Success. You might see this as a betrayal, but like I said oh so long ago, “I don’t want to die, not yet. Before the hive or my duty, I’m me, Tyra.” But I’m not even properly Tyra am I? Just an imposter, a liar, and a fake, but I suppose that under all that, while I may not be the original Tyra, I’m still a Tyra. I’m still me, whoever that’s supposed to be.

And as the station begins to rumble, I begin to run, not from this place, but from my duty, from my life. I- I’ll never see Carol again, will I? Not unless I find some way to come back, not until I find some way to protect myself from, well, myself. This isn’t forever, right? Just for a little while, I’ll find some way to come back, the best I can do is try.

But to do that, I first have to survive, and to survive, I have to run. Far, far away. As far as I can go. Then, the shaking stops, and I look around, it seems like everything is frozen in time, strange.

 

<Tsk Tsk, you won’t escape me that easily>

 

“Wha-” but before I can finish, a strange darkness takes over, and my vision goes black…