Let’s see, where was I? Ah yes, Nacht is here now, and I honestly, don’t really have a use for it, so it’ll likely just sit inside this factory for a while until I find one, that aside, I do still need to gather biomass, like always. But that’s more so an underlying goal than anything, what I actually want to do right now, is find artifacts, and steal more skills, those will get me a whole lot further than just a bit more biomass, although I can’t deny the importance of that either.

Well, let’s just head outside and see what happens, for some reason that seems to always lead to something happening, so I think that’s a pretty good place to start. Oh right, something I wanted to test was the range of the teleportation; I know I can teleport a good distance, but for example, could I just teleport into space, or even to another planet?

I wouldn’t exactly call myself a space-faring vessel, so I myself won’t be going anywhere, but I will try sending a Ripper up there. Standing outside and looking up at the night sky, I look over to the moon of this planet, large, roundish, and red, and with an idle thought, one of my Rippers is now standing on the surface, very interesting. Another thing of note, this moon has an atmosphere, it’s nearly pure hydrogen, so not exactly breathable, but something definitely abnormal, and without leaving it there for too long, just about a tenth of a second, I bring the Ripper back to the planet.

One more thing, the teleportation ability did have a limitation, the further you teleported the more stressed your body would become, and eventually it would shatter with too much distance, but as with all my other abilities, when I fully integrated it into my body, it removed the limitation, and upgraded it a bit. For Cold, it didn’t protect you from it, that simple, but it does now, for the psychic mind, you would become blind, hence the blindfold he had, and for damage absorbent, you couldn’t choose where, it was simply just everywhere, I’m not entirely sure why integrating it removes the downside, nor do I know what entity is deciding how it changes, or writing the descriptions, but I’m not going to complain, not yet anyway.

Let’s see, I can teleport into space, protect myself from the cold, and keep myself together by manipulating my weight, as well as flying via Newton's third law, all I need is a way to breathe reliably up there, and I’ll technically become a space-faring vessel, weird. Enough about that though, I’m getting sidetracked, looking over towards the Lab again, there are now significantly less Infantry Class hounding the building, and significantly more Infantry class corpses, that’s good.

What’s not good, very, very bad you might say, is the flashing green light I’m seeing coming from the same location, which means that I might, very possibly, have woken up the Necrons that were kept there in that semi stasis thing, which is worrying. Luckily I now know that they’re here because of another warp glitch dropping them on this planet instead of wherever else in the “M41” universe, I do wonder why that happens, but again, that’s another thing I can’t exactly investigate right now.

I do however, need to take care of that Necron before it gets loose, for the sole reason that it’s going to start killing things, and that would cause a decrease in available Biomass, which is unwanted, to say the least.

With a quick thought, I find myself on top of the lab, looking down at the many Infantry class, and the one Necron fighting them, and with a sharp wince I recognize the Necron, a Lychguard. A hearty fighter, a veteran soldier, and intelligent, although luckily without weapons, which vastly slows its pace, but even then, the only reason it hasn’t completely decimated the Infantry, is because of its pride, like all Lychguard, it prefers one single powerful strike, rather than many strikes. Which leads to it sitting there for several seconds, being hit by attack after attack, until it sees a good opening to swiftly and efficiently dispose of an Infantry class in a single brutal strike, were it not doing so, they would have been dispatched a long time ago.

As a Lychgaurd, it’s adorned in heavy armor, by Necron standards anyhow, for this world it may as well be indestructible, were it a more regular Necron, be it a Warrior or Immortal, I would have been able to dispatch it with almost ease, but a Lychguard is difficult, incredibly so, to put it into perspective, a Swarmlord, which would cost roughly 2500 biomass, would be able to fight it, on equal ground, although with my newfound abilities and enhancements, it might be possible, the only reason being that it doesn’t have it’s usual weaponry.

Preparing to attack it from stealth, I’m surprised when it suddenly looks up at me, and speaks, “You there, I know not what lord you serve, but I would appreciate assistance, this rabble is blocking me from searching for my weaponry, and more importantly, finding my lord.”

That’s strange, he seems to think I’m a Necron, of course! As it stands I have a Necrodermis Skeleton, and several Necron items and artifacts, he likely thinks I’m some sort of Necron unit, considering my appearance, and whatever he detects me as, I’m surprised he even bothered to interact with me, especially since I likely appear as an odd, yet likely highly ranked Flayed one, whatever, I can make use of this.

“I shall do what I can, but do not expect much.” With a sigh, I charge up my Gauss Gauntlets and leap down, firing a blast squarely at the cores of an infantry unit each, instantly obliterating them, luckily, due to my newfound cooling abilities, I don’t have to worry about overloads and can fire them as much as I like, which is nice.

In response to my attacks, he simply responds with a nod, before going back to dispatching a unit every few seconds, and as for me, I’m doing a lot better than I thought. By charging up the Disruption fields around my ODGGs, and using it in combination with accelerating with a lower mass, and hitting with a higher one I can easily dispatch a unit with a single thrust forward, and by grabbing the core, making sure not to destroy it, I can then throw it like a grenade, doing extra damage.

As one of them goes to punch me, its attack is disrupted by the Rosarius, which, I honestly forgot about, that does however, catch the Lychguard's attention, but he doesn’t say anything, it likely intends to “question” me about what I am, and my abilities at a later date.

Safe to say, I’ll be perfectly fine, on the outside, I have the Rosarius’s conversion field, slightly inside that, I have a Warp Field, and even then, I have a Necrodermis skeleton which they couldn’t even hope to scratch, and with my other skills, I’ve been launching Gauss attacks every few seconds, and dispatching even more with my claws, all with but a single attack. This is actually raising my confidence on fighting the Lychguard, it might even give me some leniency due to my singular attacks, which would lead to an opening, and an easy strike, the better question is if I could ever hope of getting through its armor.

Before long my pace ends up increasing, stab with the hand, grab the core with my tail, throw it, and with the other hand I launch a gauss blast, then switch and repeat, by this point I’m eclipsing the Lychguards rate by almost three times, destroying one of them just under every second or so, much better than my minutes long fight from a few days ago.

Putting my body on an autopilot of sorts, I quickly count how long we have left before we go through the rest of them, which is a few minutes at this rate, still a fairly significant timeframe considering our pace, and really makes me wonder where all of these came from, and now I really want to know why they’re here. Now I’m thinking about other things, I could technically make a Norn Crown at this rate, would it be ridiculously expensive, yes, would it be worth it, double yes, but why stop there, add a Spirit-Leech Cortex, and a Balemind Membrane too, unfortunately due to the nature of my attacks I couldn’t add anything special for physical attacks, but I can certainly augment my psychic ones. Which makes me think, why didn’t we implement them more, it was so easy to improve on the Tyranid designs that were already there, why hadn’t it been done before, why limit ourselves so? It’s almost like we were hiding our capabilities, or trying to even the playing field for the other races, strange, maybe there was something wrong with the previous overmind, ah well, I’m not going to worry about it.

Theorizing isn’t going to get me anymore, especially now that I’ve dispatched the last infantry I can see, unless there's any alive in the massive mound of corpses, or hiding in one of the many, many pits created from the explosions, looking over at the Lychguard I can see it still dealing with a few, so I quickly launch a few Gauss blasts and clear them out, well besides for one, I don’t want to ‘steal his honor’ or whatever.

After finishing off its last enemy, it turns to me, “I appreciate the help, my name is Harkhethes, while I can appreciate your efficiency and brutality in dispatching these lesser machines, I nevertheless demand an explanation, just what are you? A core of Necrodermis, with an attached proper identification labeling you as Nobility, yet covered in flesh, but not like those infected with the Flayer virus, you are perfectly sane, and your flesh looks as if it was grown on, instead of the abhorrent attachment of those flayed one, not to mention the integrated weaponry, and extra attachments to be a more efficient killer, yet still, you would not look abnormal amongst those organics.”

Nobility is it? It must be the ODGGs, a pleasant surprise but a most welcome one, but even then considering his treatment to be what it is, he must be of lesser nobility himself, but I might be able to bluff my way out of this. “From the looks of it, you awoke in that laboratory of sorts yourself, no? It was the same for me, they, whoever the owners of this laboratory is, appeared to have grown flesh onto my body while I was inactive, while still not exactly owning a soul, this synthetic flesh is extremely close to real flesh, even stronger, and more durable, and for the weaponry, just a pair of simple Disruption Gauss Gauntlets, as for how they activate through the synthetic flesh and skin and not tear them apart, I have no idea. But if I could figure out the secrets as to how, it would be a great boon in the research of undoing the transference, or at the very least mitigating it.” Complete nonsense, but if it works, and he lowers his guard, that would be excellent.

“I see, and what of the Conversion field around you? That is no doubt technology of humanity, as well as most of the technology surrounding us, truly an enigma, however the biggest question is, where we have found ourselves, from what I know, this is no tomb world, nor do I know of it.”

This Lychguard is strange, they normally aren’t this talkative, and certainly not this ‘friendly’, at least from what I know, which is predominantly from another race's perspective. “As I’m sure you know, humanity has not always been so… primitive, you could say, they call it the ‘Golden Age’, where their technology was powerful, and advanced, this Rosarius which I carry, is a relic of that age, and as one of the Technomancer discipline, investigating personal sized shields, which could be upgraded to Quantum shields, and carried by any Necron with a sense of self, would greatly increase our combat capabilities, however, I myself do not know whichever planet this is.” Hopefully that throws him off, if it doesn’t I have a plan.

“I suppose, but you are right, even I, old as I am, cannot deny the prowess they once had, although it has fallen far since then, the artifacts of that age are perhaps worth investigating, one thing of note, which I’m sure you have noticed, and leads me to suspect that we may not even be in the same galaxy, is my personal teleportation kit to return to a repair bay, is not working, which should be able to teleport me back so long as I am within the same galaxy, but that is inoperable.” That’s good, this means that he can’t escape, and I can actually properly know if he is destroyed.

“I see, mine is inoperable as well, ah of course, I have yet to introduce myself, you may call me Tyraniquor, or just Tyra for short, I’m glad that you were able to awaken, I did try to awaken you myself, but could not, there seemed to be some sort of field around your containment tank which disallowed me from interacting with it, although that clearly appears to be gone, as you’ve been released by something.” The plan is, extort him for information, and then deal with him.

“Indeed, there was no such field when I had awoken, instead the tank was filled with a strange liquid which hardened with a likeness to steel when exposed to air, not an issue, but an annoyance to say the least, but since we’re on the subject of materials, whatever material the laboratory is made of is truly marvelous, especially considering the technological ability of the humans, but enough of that, there was something I wanted to bring up, are you perhaps related to Lord Trazyn the Infinite?”

Well, that's a surprise, a really big one at that, “Why would you suspect that?”

“Firstly, I’ve noticed the way you gazed at them, and at myself, a near unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and a deep rooted hunger for the new, however, that is not terribly uncommon for a Cryptek, but what really made me consider it, is the ID of you, if I’m not mistaken, that particular Noble ID is that of Lord Trazyns clan, no?”

Oh, well, it seems that these ODGGs that I’ve found myself attached to, apparently belong to Trazyn the Infinite, or somebody related to him, that’s annoying, “I guess you could say that, not related directly, but considering that I’ve already begun amassing a collection of my own since arriving here, I suppose the connection could be made.”

“A collection? Might that be the source of that Rosarius you have?” This is getting annoying, and long, I’m finishing this.

“I suppose, come, allow me to show you, I’m certain it may pique your interest, and I may even have your weaponry there.” Saying that I put out my hand, waiting for him to take it, and after a moment of deliberation he takes it, his loss, the very next instant we find ourselves on the moon, and after I let go, I teleport back to the planet, a grab and drop, he’s not dead, but he’s no longer an issue, I just have to not go to the moon anytime soon, or at least that part of it.

Certainly a lot easier than killing him, I bet he’s furious right now, god that was annoying, I hate having to play nice, especially talking like some stuck up noble, but I did get some info, like how according to the ID of these Necron artifacts, I’m apparently related to Trazyn the Infinite, which both sucks, and can be leveraged. The only issue is that it’s possible there are more Lychguards here, and possibly a Necron lord, or even an Overlord, but, I do know that his weaponry is here somewhere, and it’s currently up for grabs, and I’m feeling pretty grabby right now.

I did wonder why that Lychguard was so amiable, but under the presumption that I could be directly related to a Necron Overlord, and a particularly powerful one, and not having his weapons, and not knowing where his lord was, I suppose that can come together to create a large degree of caution, but whatever, good to know I can just dump whatever I don’t want on the moon now.

I suppose with a bit of effort I could just throw anything I don’t want to deal with into this system's star, which would be a surefire way of disposing of something. Imagine that, a bunch of Rippers that just teleport you into the nearest star when they touch you, terrifying, horribly inefficient though, and would only be considered on Chaos or Necrons, since anything else would be a net loss of biomass as we obviously couldn’t consume it afterwards.

Maybe that’s what I should have done to the Lychguard instead of moving him to the moon, but I wasn’t thinking about it, and I don’t have a clear sight to the sun at the moment, so I’d have to chain teleports around the planet, and it seemed like too much work, doesn’t matter anymore, whatever.

Oh right, I don’t think I ever mentioned the color of the moon until now, yeah it’s red, which leads to moonlight being not silverly, but almost a blood red, and during the night everything has a reddish tint, and I suppose on full moons everything would look really red, but I haven’t been on planet for that long, so I can’t say for certain.

Anyway, walking inside the lab I note the same features as last time, except with extra dead robots everywhere, and continue walking until I come across the PDN lab from last time, the one that appeared like an entire section of space was missing, and has this invisible barrier which I couldn’t get through, yeah I can teleport through it now, so I wanted to give it a shot while I was here.

Teleporting to the other side of the barrier, I find myself in a similar room as the one in the other lab, through the Anomalous Wing, except this time, everything is shifted and pushed around, and unlike the pristine dozens of untouched vials I had hoped for, instead I find everything empty, and even more than that, it looks like somebody lived here for a while. A sleeping roll with a long dead corpse in it, and several wrappers from various rations or food bars nearby, in the corpse's hand, is one of the PDN vials, looks like this guy got desperate, looking at the body it seems to have a researchers uniform of sorts on, with the name Dr. Bright on the tag, although it’s very faded, around the body’s neck is an amulet of sorts, it’s made of gold, round, wiry, and has a ruby in the center, upon picking it up I briefly notice something poking at the network, before retreating, strange.

Deciding to keep the amulet for now, since it seems to be an artifact of sorts, I continue looking around the room, but find nothing of note, that is, until I see something in the middle of the room, but strangely I can’t seem to look at it, only able to look where it isn’t, I noticed this because my eyes seemed to skip in the middle of the room, almost like it missed something. No matter how hard I tried this continued happening, and I can say this, It isn’t round, and it’s in the middle of the room, it isn’t this or that, but I can’t seem to know what it is, which is annoying, deciding to risk it, I punch it, or at least where I think it is, because I know where it isn’t, and the feeling fades as a white seamless cube falls to the floor, and the strange barrier retracts.

Picking up the cube, I can now obviously, see what it is, which is a double edged sword, it produces a near impenetrable barrier which hides its insides, and all it needs is a nudge to disable, but you physically cannot know where it is, I got around this by knowing where it isn’t, which let’s me know where it is, and I can guess from there, but I suppose not everybody can do that, well, it doesn’t matter, all I got from this room is the barrier cube, and this strange amulet, which I swear has something inside it, but I have no real way of telling.

Not exactly the most lucrative trip but it’s something I suppose. Walking out of the room, I wait a moment, and decide to head back to the UMLR area, where they were researching Necrons, and would you look at that, that one tank which had the Necron is gone, although he is now on the moon, with that confirmed I move on, I’m looking for artifacts, strange devices which really shouldn’t be working, not Necron stuff.

That brings me back here, the Anomalous Wing, and upon walking in, the amulet, which is wrapped around the tip of my tail, trembles momentarily, there’s definitely something to that, well, ignoring the suspicious amulet, I walk down the hallway, the labels above the doors are still unreadable, and so I pick one at random, and open it. Inside the room is… nothing, well, there is a single pedestal in the middle, but it’s empty, so I move on, the next one, empty, next, empty, empty, empty, empty.

They’re all empty, at least so far, and now I wonder, going back to the open from a while back, I still see it cracked, and the arm inside and everything, and once I close it completely, then open it again, yep, empty, which means, there’s some sort of identification which disallows not authorized personnel from opening the ‘correct’ door, interesting. With that in mind, I start to wander down the various hallways, this time much quicker than before since I need some sort of identity to find anything inside the rooms, eventually, I come across one which is cracked open a bit, and upon opening it, I find nothing.

But this isn’t just nothing, it’s more like a lack of anything, there’s no room, no wall, nothing at all, just an endless empty void, tearing off a piece of my dress, which near instantly regenerates, I toss the fragment in and it disappears, there’s no ripple, or dust, or destruction, it just, never was. Does that make sense? Don’t think about it too much, this place is weird, and I decide to move on, a complete abyssal void where stuff cannot exist isn’t quite what I’m looking for, although it does make me wonder how they got it here.

Finding another open room, in the inside is a filing cabinet which is a bit surprising but eh, opening the drawer I realize why it’s in here, it just, goes, the drawer just keeps on going, and sticking my head into it a bit, struggling because of the horns but I manage, I can see that yeah, it just keeps on going, endlessly. A bit disappointing that that’s what here compared to the last two, but whatever, moving on, what’s really anomalous is how in the world this hallway exists, it is utterly massive, and somehow exists between different Lab installations.

Well, it doesn’t matter, and I come to a stop before another entrance, into a different Lab installation, and I go to open the door, only to find it locked, so I break it, and the moment I break through it, a strange whitish mist bursts out and covers me, I can feel it trying to degrade my body, but failing, I have a lot more control over my body then this mist does, which is trying to turn me to ash or something, and upon walking inside, the amulet trembles, I’ll have to investigate that properly later.

Walking through the Lab, I find yet another PDN research room, which like the others is empty, although I have noted the large amount of ash-like substance on the ground, which is likely caused by the mist. Thinking about it, I kneel down and taste it, worthless, the biomatter within is reduced completely to its core elements, this is less a mass of biomatter, and just a mass of regular matter, why it was decided that this mist was necessary, I don’t know, but whatever, I move on, walking until I eventually reach where the UMLR is in the original Lab, but in this one, it’s labeled Undead Research, inside is various test tubes, containment chambers, which are breached, and various notes, which upon reading, makes sense as to why they used this mist.

These ‘undead’ actually refer to a specific group of invaders, they came through a ‘hole’ as they called it, and upon contact with an entity, dead or living, said entity would turn into an undead within an hour, sometimes as short as a few seconds for the unlucky ones, the mist was a countermeasure in case they escaped, since they had contained the original group. I’m starting to think even more that this world, which I’m going to start referring to as Hub, was drawing in from a lot more universes than just mine, which could explain some of the artifacts, and the entities within this world.

If that was true, it was only a matter of time until this world fell; I’m amazed they lasted as long as they did, it’s almost suspicious even, perhaps they just had good luck, moving outside, I notice that it’s day wherever this one is, and teleport high into the sky, the amulet trembles, this seems to be a pattern. Floating there with my wings, this Lab seems to be in a desert, and the mist cloud extends for quite the ways from the Lab, but there's still nothing nearby, not even from this height, I suppose that was intentional.

Teleporting back to the ground I walk back into the Lab, searching through it, but there’s nothing of note, just a bunch of offices and research labs, most research is on computers that aren’t running, and there are no forms of identification which would allow me to start searching the rooms in the anomalous wing, which is a shame. Sighing, I move back into the Anomalous wing, and the door, is back in place, completely repaired, this time I just open it normally since it doesn’t seem to have relocked, and that means it’s time to look for more open doors, or at least hope to find any form of identification, and as I walk through, the amulet trembles.

Walking around I find another open door, and on the inside is a display case, like one you’d find at a jewelers, and inside is a ring, a shiny black, with red almost circuit like highlights. Upon grabbing it, before I even realize, it’s already on my left ring finger, and it doesn’t want to come off, with a sigh, I tap it against the box it came from mindlessly, and the box disappears, focusing on the ring I can understand that the box is somehow inside the ring, and with a thought, it’s back on the table. After a moment of deliberation, I decide that if I’m stuck with it, I might as well use it, and tap it against the barrier cube which I’ve been carrying with my tail, the cube disappears, and I can tell it’s being held inside the ring, perhaps there’s some cost I’ll figure out later, but for now, this will do.

Having a Ripper teleport to me with the regenerating blade, I also put the blade in the ring, just in case, the amulet however, I put around my neck, and again, I have that feeling of something trying to invade my mind, but this time it runs even quicker than the last, and the amulet which has always been ever so slightly warm, turns cold. I teleport down the hallway a bit, just to test it, the amulet trembles, so it’s fine I guess, and I continue walking down the hallways, until I come across another open door, I can see another lab entrance down the way a bit, but this is more important for now.

Entering the anomalous room, I see a person, or a shadow in the shape of one, and the moment my red eyes meet its white orbs, it’s gone, and I’m standing outside the room, my hand on the closed door, the amulet trembles. Looking around for a bit, I don’t notice anything out of the ordinary, not yet at least, and decide to walk forward, moving closer to the other Lab, I grasp the handle, and the door swings open, and I walk inside, but contrary to the previous times, the amulet does not tremble, but instead screams.

IsSkyriel

I had to go do some stuff at the time I would usually post chapters, and didn’t post the chapter before I left, so I had to wait a couple hours until I got home, then post it, so it was a bit later than usual, my bad, anyhow, we are delving back into the anomalous part of stuff again, and just to make sure you know, the amulet and Doctor bright is nothing but a reference, at least for now anyway, I don’t have any current plans to integrate SCP, but you never know right? Anyhow, I’m gonna go lie down before I pass out now, bye bye.

Before I go, here’s a Lychguard, for being a good little reader :3

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