I happen to find myself in need of a large quantity of biomass, and more so than that, I now have the ability to physically change my body, at least as long as I don’t change the skeleton, that’ll be an issue until I can somehow destroy Necrodermis. That aside, what I can change, however, is my skin, and I happen to have very specific portions of a stealth specific Tyranid integrated into my body, that being the Lictor.

With a thought my skin shifts color, and I become invisible to the naked eye, and to my surprise, so does my dress, perhaps I should look into these artifacts and magical items that Carol had mentioned, they might actually contain useful materials or DNA if I’m lucky. I might want to do more exploring, finding more of these artifacts could come in useful, moving on, I start walking back towards Winterhome, I have a couple of people I need to pay a visit to.

Hopping over the perimeter wall, my low weight while using the skill, combined with the invisibility, and natural stealth I took from the Lictor means that not a single person even realizes I’m here, not even the guy I just landed right next to. Which is perfect, and so I work my way towards the center of the little town, looking for a very specific building, and oh hey, the City Council building, when did that get there, might as well pay it a visit since I happen to be in the area.

Alright, there’s no point in beating around the bush, yes, I’m here to kill the council and their guards, they should provide a decent amount of biomass, and I’ve been waiting a long time for this, well, in reality, it’s only been a few days, but whatever, it feels like a long time. Regardless, I walk in the front door, and to my delight, aside from the door opening and nobody coming through it, which I probably should have thought about, the various guards and employees can’t see me, and I continue walking, right past them.

It doesn’t take very long until I run into my first issue, the door into the back area of the building has a keypad, which complicates things, only slightly though. Remember how I have all that psychic tissue in this body? Yep, I can just puppet one of the guards and scan their mind for the passcode, or just have them open it, that might seem less suspicious, actually, this gives me an idea.

I could design a parasite, it would attach to the back of the skull and act as a sort of focuser for psychic power, making it both easier, and more efficient to take control of a target, or I could go for the physiological route, and have it physically take over the brain, but that would cause a lot more panic, and would be highly noticeable, at least until it takes control anyway. Both have their uses, but for now, one that acts as a psychic focuser would be better for this situation, I just have to make it first.

For starters, I need a little bit of psychic tissue, just enough to cause it to resonate with me, I also need it to stay alive, although not for very long, so it needs some organs, but anything for eating, or a mouth, or sensory organs in general is unnecessary, in this case anyway. Next some stealth like a Lictors skin would be required, and a small streamlined form would be best, by the end, it looks like a starfish, and it attaches to the head, allowing me to perform a psychic takeover, and they won’t even realize it happened.

I’ll call the physical one Puppeteer, whenever I make it, and as for the psychic one, I’ll call it Psychic Lenser, at least for now, cost wise the psychic one would cost 20 biomass, and considering I have 24, it’s just enough. So with a quick creation process, I vomit up a Psychic Lenser, making these things never gets any easier, anyway, now I just need to find a guard who hopefully knows the passcode and slap the Lenser on their head.

Looking around for a bit, I find a guard who appears to be either on break or slacking off since she’s reading a book, taking a quick peek the title is “The Handsome Prince and His Very Loyal Escort Knight.” To each their own I guess, that aside, I sneak up behind her, which is very easy to do, and gently place the Lenser onto her head, she seems startled for a second before I initiate a takeover and she calms right back down.

Picking her brain for a moment, her name is Helen, she works as a guard, all that stuff, apparently, she has an entire collection of books like these, crazy, anyway, the passcode, and get this, the passcode is… 1243, yep, the passcode for a highly secure government building, is 1243, now this is ridiculous. A moment later, she gets up, putting her book down, which I purposefully remove the bookmark from, a tragedy, and she walks over to the locked door, greeting her coworkers and acting none the different, heck, she doesn’t even know something is different, if you asked her she’s doing this of her own free will.

Inputting the code I slip past her into the room, and remove the Lenser, now that I’m back here, it isn’t necessary anymore, so I let her go, in her mind, she came back here to do something, and then forgot on the way, how many times has that happened to you? She likely won’t pay it any mind, and I continue walking, after swallowing the Lenser again anyway, I don't need to be carrying it around anymore, and that’s biomass I could have prepared in case something happens.

Continuing through the various hallways, I come across an office, and inside is suspect number one, that councilwoman who ordered Carol shot, how lucky, thinking about it, that might have been the first clue that this dress I have is more than meets the eye, if I remember correctly, I was shot straight through the chest, which the dress was covering, yet by the time I walked out of that building, it was like nothing ever happened to it, strange, yet another thing on the “investigate later” list which seems to be growing rapidly.

Ignoring that little bit, I move into the room, luckily the door is open so she doesn’t even suspect anything yet, inside the room is her, the desk and chair she’s at, and two guards at either end of the room, roughly 6ish meters apart, it’s a decently sized room, and because of that my chances of taking them both out at once are very low, did he? Just for a moment, I thought one of them saw me, but that wouldn’t make sense, his eyes seemed to lock onto me but I think he was looking at something else since he hasn’t acted on it, oh wait, now he’s radioing something in, he definitely saw me, maybe? I’m not sure, he hasn’t done anything else, and hasn’t looked over at me since, the better question would be how he saw me, if he did at all.

Moving around the room, and getting closer to the councilwoman, he still hasn’t done anything, so maybe he really didn’t see me, and as I get closer to the councilwoman, I hear the familiar click of a safety being turned off, and I quickly launch an attack at her, only for my claws to skid off of an energy field of sorts, shocked, she quickly stands up and backs away, and then I see, she has a Rosarius.

Why is there a Resarius on a backwater planet like this, and why in the world does she have one? There’s definitely more to this than I thought, that aside, I know for a fact that he saw me, but I think he only minorly saw the shifting when I move, and he called that in, and then he got permission to fire at whatever it might be, but I got impatient and attacked before that.

Raising his weapon he goes to fire a shot at me since my invisibility has been disabled, but before he can I launch a psychic attack and promptly melt his brain, something of note, is that the warp in this dimension is a whole lot cleaner than in the main one, reminiscent of pre chaos even, as for the other guard, he does get a shot off, but it’s deflected by the warp field I put up, and I counter attack by launching another psychic attack, and his brain also melts.

With my enhanced hearing I can hear guards storming the location, but I have a couple of seconds, and in the few seconds I launch a psychic attack, as well as two attacks with both the ODGGs, both active, at the councilwoman, whose name is Theresa according to the nameplate on the desk, and only barely manage to shatter the field when the door is kicked open, and a dozen or so laser guns are now pointed at me, and firing, and I have to devote my attention to maintaining the warp field rather then attacking Theresa, so she manages to make it over to them.

But I am not going to let her get away, so I charge up a Gauss blast in my left hand, which with the new body won’t overheat me, but in exchange, it’ll disable the gauntlet for 20 seconds or so, but that is very worth it. Holding my arm up, I launch the blast but it’s intercepted by one of the guards, who ends up disintegrating into iron dust by the blast, but Theresa is escorted out of the room, and away from the fight by some of the guards.

“NO!” I shout, and with a powerful psychic blast, everyone in the room is knocked back, and in the brief moment I launch forward, picking up one of the guns as I jump out of the room, according to the memories of various soldiers that the Tyranids have integrated previously, I have about a minute until that field recharges, and I’m not waiting for that, so, I hold my breath and take aim, using the experience of however many guardsmen and their lasguns that the Tyranids have integrated previously, and fire.

While the laser rifle, AL-3R I think Sarah called it, isn’t exactly a lasgun, it’s close enough to matter, and with a single shot, Theresa has a hole through her chest, just like what happened to me, although this went very differently then what I wanted, this works too, oh, the Rosarius, right, I want that, so, I start to sprint over to where she was, and quickly dispatching the guards that were there by again, melting their brains, I pick up the Rosarius, and slip it around my neck just as it comes back online, have I mentioned how useful psychic abilities are? Especially when the warp doesn’t try to melt you for using them.

Picking up a grenade from the guard, I pull the pin and chuck it down the hallway just as the guards begin piling into it, and with enough force to embed itself into the skull of one of them, the rest of them don’t stand a chance as it goes off within a meter of them, and are killed by the blast.

Seeing another group turn into the hallway, they appear to be the last ones around, presumably because they were in the front and not the back area like this, and oh hey, there’s Helen, that gives me an idea, you see, when I briefly took control of Helen, it left a sort of imprint in her mind of me, nothing much, but it’s enough for me to channel psychic energy into her, and would you like to know what happens when you channel psychic energy into something that can’t contain it? It explodes, gloriously.

Needless to say, that group is gone in a beautiful blast of shifting colors, well, I say gone, but they’re kind of everywhere now, quite literally too, I kind of wish I brought the rippers, this is going to be a pain to consume by myself, and I likely don’t have all that much time until other people start showing up, although some skill holders might show up, so it could be worth it, oh whatever, I’ll wait it out.

Luckily enough I upgraded my body to be able to absorb biomass at the same efficiency as the Rippers, it was strangely easy to do, almost like I was purposefully weakened to make it harder to start off at, and my skills and abilities were made highly inconsistent and strangely unrefined for a Tyranid to have in the first place, weird. Well, I won’t worry about it, I need to quickly eat a whole lot of biomass in a fairly short time, so I’ll go ahead and get a head start on that.

From what I can tell a human being is on average 40-50 biomass, with some rare exceptions, like Sarah for some reason, she had a strangely high concentration of PDNs for some reason, maybe when somebody starts to form a skill they gain a high concentration of those, then it solidifies into the crystal that gives them the ability, although the crystal has never been worth any so maybe not.

Regardless, I get about 150 biomass worth before the first person shows up, they seem to be wearing some sort of heavy armor, much different than the rest of the guards who were wearing regular Kevlar, or just standardized uniforms. Ah wait, I recognize that one actually, I think they’re from the divers guild, which is a surprise, speaking of, according to Sarah, the only reason she didn’t bring any skill holders when she went for me, was that they were all out at the time, and she thought she could handle me without them, which would mean, this guy, whoever they are, is likely a skill holder.

The question is, what kind of skill, taking up my lasgun, er, I mean the laser rifle, I fire a shot at his chest, and it seems to dissipate on the armor, harmlessly spreading out across his body, which I can say for certain, as someone who’s been shot by one, is not how it normally reacts, so it looks to be that his skill spreads the impact across his body, which would explain the heavy armor.

There are two other people there, one of them in lighter armor, and the other one with a blindfold on, but otherwise in regular clothes, the other armored one, which I’m just going to call them, heavy, medium, and light, seems to gather some sort of frost before launching ice shards at me, which deflects off of the Rosarius field, and the light one, tries to launch a psychic attack on me, yeah no, that’s not gonna work.

In turn, I fire off a blast of warp lightning at the light one, which is intercepted by the heavy one, who is momentarily stunned, but nevertheless shrugs it off, that’s going to be annoying, from what I can tell, the heavy one spreads damage, the medium one fired ice blasts, or can just control cold, which is actually fairly damaging to the warp field, more than the laser rifles anyway, and the light one seems to be some sort of psychic, which means, the only problem is the heavy one, and the other two can be ignored.

Other three, I should say, because another one just appeared behind me and tried to stab me, but the Rosarius stopped her, she was, even to my eyes, completely invisible, she seems to be wearing some sort of black bodysuit, probably to help with her stealth somewhat, but I like the ability, could be useful, using my tail I pierce it towards her and to my surprise, she actually disappears again, and my tail intercepts nothing, another thing is that the cold is actually starting to build up, as the walls are now covered in ice, and the Rosarius is starting to freeze over, the psychic one is still useless though.

This might be a problem actually, the ice one is starting to build up attrition, and the heavy one stops me from attacking them, while the stealth one tries to kill me when I let down my guard, and the psychic one is, uh, trying their best, I do completely outclass them though, so they’re somewhat useless, I just hope they don’t get the bright idea to start using their abilities to assist their allies, rather than trying to attack me using them.

Well, I can’t do anything from all the way down the hallway, so I start to march down towards them, and unfortunately the psychic one starts to get smart, and starts to help the ice one by launching his ice at higher velocities, which is now doing more damage to the field, and passed the repair rate of it, so that now has a time limit. But I should get there before that, or I would if I wasn’t just quite literally stabbed in the back by the stealth one, she somehow got inside the refraction field, so I’m assuming her ability is actually teleportation, and if my bones weren’t Necrodemis she would have just pierced through my heart, but my ribcage stopped her.

Upside of that though, is that my blood is now on the blade, and is now rapidly deteriorating it, hooray for acid blood. Not so hooray that she teleported before I could counterattack again, luckily the wound was thin, and only took 3 biomass to fix up, and I continue down the hallway, now running instead of a quick march, seeing the teleport one show up by the other three, I hear her mention how my bones were incredibly strong, and I happen to notice that her blade, which is about 40 cm/16 in long, is quickly repairing itself, so that’s great, a self healing blade, wonderful.

With a loud shatter, the Rosarius shuts down, as it’s been completely frozen solid, as well as the field being worn down from the ice shards, and my warp shield quickly takes over, but to my surprise, the ice shard goes right though, the help from the psychic giving it just enough to pierce it, and in a moment, I barely manage to deflect it with my hands, lacerating the skin and muscle, but again, being stopped by the Necrodermis.

Charging forward, I deflect two more shots, before finally reaching the heavy one, and activating my ODGG, I launch my hand at him, not aiming to pierce through, but instead hitting him with the palm of my hand, and just as planned, the blast is evenly concentrated over his body, and his armor is quickly dissolved by the disruption field dancing across his body, and moments later, his body is shredded by the forces as I push the field over him, his own ability killing him.

Moving on, I launch a psychic blast at the other two, the ice one dying, and the psychic one going mad, before I physically dispatch him with a quick thrust, feeling an itch of sorts, I quickly turn around, shooting my hand forward just as the teleporter appears, and grab her by the neck, before quickly killing her before she can teleport away.

I’d say that was pretty productive, and I promptly devour the four of them, their bodies worth 260 biomass collectively, which is a lot more than normal, which actually would put me 21 over the current limit, but I can put the rest in physical storage, so that’s okay, now then, the actual important bits, the skills.

The crystals are unique for each, the heavy’s is dense and looks like iron, the ice’s looks like a sphere of ice, the psychic’s looks like someone took a bit of the warp and turned it into a small sphere, red, purple, and shifty, and finally, the teleporter’s is pitch black, and is covered in some sort of fog, although the fog doesn’t fall off, and sticks to it.

[Damage Absorbent]
[Type] Active
[Description] Damaged here? How about over there instead.
[Effects] You can choose to transfer damage evenly to any part of your body, or anything on your person.

[Cold Manipulation]
[Type] Active
[Description] The cold is a part of you, and it will obey you.
[Effects] You can manipulate cold energies to form ice, water, or to cool items to below zero C temperatures.

[Psychic Mind]
[Type] Passive
[Description] Your mind is powerful, and can force itself into reality.
[Effects] Grants you a psychic presence which can grow with proper training.

[Teleportation]
[Type] Active
[Description] Here or there? How about anywhere?
[Effects] You can Instantaneously teleport to anywhere you can see.

By the looks of it, the psychic one was actually helping the Teleporter, by sharing his vision with her, even though he saw via psychic power instead of actual eyes, it counted anyway, this also means I can teleport any Tyranid, to any other Tyranid, or to Carol and Sarah. Pretty cool, and I can see this having a lot of uses, and now that every single Tyranid is a psychic, and psychic power is now shared throughout the entire network because of this, I could theoretically design large structures that do nothing but provide a large psychic presence, and using the skill as a medium, use that presence anywhere there’s a Tyranid.

Did I mention that the presence of the entire network goes into feeding one large presence, like a psychic gestalt, which means that every Tyranid I add feeds directly into creating a powerful psychic mind we all can use simultaneously. At the moment, it won’t change much, but the Scorn now has a fairly large psychic presence, with the skill all neural tissue is equivalent to psychic tissue, and psychic tissue doubly so, oh, and the Scorn also took the souls of these guys through me, so they're also in there now, all of them. More for the deep storage then, at least until I find a use for them.

This also goes for Damage Absorbent, remember how I said that the skills considered the entire Tyranid gestalt as one body? Yeah, I can transfer damage from any Tyranid to any other Tyranid, and also Sarah and Carol, speaking of, there were more council members than just her, but by the looks of it, she was the mayor, and Sarah, as the head of the divers guild, is currently helping them escape, and find somewhere safe. So uh, I’m just going to kill them psychically by using Sarah as a medium, she won’t mind, and one two three… boom, brain blasted.

Just like that, my revenge is complete, and I have a whole lot of biomass to get still, in total there were 27 regular guards, and I’ve only ate three and a halfish, so that’s about another eleven hundred biomass to get, give or take a hundred or so for different weights, well, as long as no more Divers show up anyway, for the moment, I use what biomass I have to form up a Warrior over at the Scorn just in case. That leaves me with 181 Biomass left, which is still a good amount considering I haven’t even ate the ones here, which speaking of, I quickly whip up three Rippers and let them go to work, it’s much easier to have them do it rather than me.

Strangely enough, no one else has come over to try and kill me, which is nice, but I’m missing out on some biomass, which is a shame, but since I’m 1143 biomass richer, I’m not complaining, oh and I ate the Rippers afterward, so it’s just me again for now. Over at the Scorn though, is a different story, since I’ve made two more Warriors, 3 more Rippers, and a Hive guard which cost 320, if the Scorn is destroyed, that’s it, I’m gone, simple as that, so I need to make sure that’s protected, and the Hive Guard is designed for exactly that purpose.

Oh, and I did give the Hive Guard the same treatment as the Warrior, by giving it the ability to switch between its weapons at will, but for the most part, it won’t matter, it won’t do terribly well in the tight hallways of the factory, but it can fit, and it’ll do a whole lot better than anything of a similar cost, so it’s fine for now.

One other thing, the cold ability can easily offset the heat produced by the Gauss Gauntlets, so that’s no longer an issue and the workaround of disabling them is no longer necessary, which is neat. I did, however, manage to grab the council members' souls, those are going into a different section of deep storage, I’m thinking about turning them into Tyranids, making sure to keep them conscious, but not in control, stuff for later.

I also got that blade that the Teleporter had, again, another thing to look into properly later, and one more thing on the rapidly growing “Investigate Later” list.

Well, I guess that’s that.

IsSkyriel

I think this is the quickest chapter I’ve wrote, the entire thing, in just about 2 hours, and considering that they usually take about twice that, I think it’s safe to say I had fun with it, but uh, quite the power up huh, just about doubled her skills, removed the downside from the ODGGs, and potentially removed the heat problem from overusing psychic skills, although she hasn’t hit that yet, and vastly increasing her psychic presence and abilities, neato.

 

And of course, a little Hive Guard for your troubles.

Spoiler

 

 

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