Standing on the surface of the moon really allows me to get a good look at the planet below. The planet itself seems to be your average temperate life bearing planet, except for the fact that there are numerous cold zones dotted around the surface. Most likely a result of more of those flash pillars I saw in that one city a little bit ago. Speaking of, I might want to nab one of those and see how that flash technology works, but that can be saved for later, as it stands I’ve been putting off large combats due to caution, but I think I could handle it now.

So with that in mind, let’s pick a good location and teleport over, let’s see… what looks like fun- er I mean efficient, yeah efficient. Hold on, does this system have an asteroid belt? Or any undisturbed and not hydrogen covered moons, because if it does I could totally set up a mining operation and start farming Matter that way. It would be a lot quicker, and would more or less give me a near infinite supply of Matter, or at least it will for now.

I suppose it’s a little hard to see with my naked eye, so I’ll grab the spotters and have them start looking since they have both more eyes, and the ability to zoom. Since all we’re doing is looking for anything, it shouldn’t take long to find something, and they found something, that was fast. By the looks of it, this system has a gas giant with a little over a hundred small to medium sized moons, vastly different from this abnormally large one. So much so that you could probably confuse the planet and moon for a dual orbit of two planets, one of which is just very far away and quite small comparatively.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted again, so without further adieu, I’ll teleport one Ripper each to 10 moons and just let them do their thing for now. So, with that set up for the future, I return my attention to… actually, I don’t know what the planet is called since I didn’t check, let me do that real quick. Alright, so by the looks of it the planet is called Earth, and the moon Luna, that sounds familiar somehow, where have I heard that before? Ah well, it doesn’t really matter, what does is that I’ve found a suitable place to attack.

This area is a lot further south compared to Aquila, so it’s quite warm even for winter. Unlike Aquila however, this human settlement didn’t take over a portion of the city and is not using the city's infrastructure to their advantage, and instead built a settlement from the ground up in the wilderness. As a result they’re fairly primitive compared to Winterhome, rather than powder weaponry, electricity, and ballistic clothing, they have a more late medieval level of technology, while all the industrial age stuff is either hidden away or hoarded by the higher ups.

There’s only so much one can see from space, even with a ridiculous amount of zoom thanks to the spotter's unique eye structure. So, let’s teleport down there and start the slaughter.

Teleporting down to Earth, I set myself down a kilometer or so away from the edges of the town, and following shortly are the rest of my little army, 10 Rippers, 10 Gaunts and Gants each, 5 Warriors, and the 2 Spotters. Quite small for a Tyranid army, let’s fix that. Using up most of my Matter and leaving me with only 736, I create 40 more Gaunts and 40 Gants, that’s better.

Now, with a wave of my hand and a deafening scream my army sprints forth, and within a minute they reach the border of the town, quickly overwhelming the light defenses they had and pushing past the outer wall. As for me, well I teleported over on top of the wall, and am currently watching over them, as designed whenever something dies the Spotters teleport in some cheap and expendable units, which fall onto a corpse and teleport them both back to a reclamation pool.

It’s rather boring watching it, the people here don’t seem to have powers, or those that do aren’t here, and because of the lacking technology they can’t even break the Fortress field, much less do any actual harm. By the time the town is half gone one of the Gaunts alerts me to a group of 4 individuals who seem to have powers, and I teleport over to take a closer look.

Telling my army to ignore this group since I want to take care of them, I look over at them, 4 moderately armored individuals, considering the technology level of the city, they’re most likely knights of some kind. One of them steps forward to speak but I don’t let him and simply freeze him in place, the next one I teleport in a Ripper in the same position as a test, which kills the both of them in a messy organic explosion. The third charges at me with flame covering their sword, but I sidestep and cut his head off with my hand, the fourth turns to run but I kill her with the Shadow, and she drops dead in an instant.

Well, that was anticlimactic, I have to remember that these people are strong compared to base humans, but I’m already hundreds of times stronger than that, so they aren’t all that special. Anyway, let’s move these bodies back to the Pools and see what abilities they had since I didn’t get to see any, well, besides that fire one anyway.

 

[Heat Manipulation]
[Type] Active
[Description] The heat is a part of you, and it will obey you.
[Effects] You can manipulate heat energies to form fires of varying temperatures, or to heat up objects quickly and to an extreme degree.

 

That seems remarkably like somebody copy pasted Cold Manipulation and simply changed it slightly, weird. Next!

 

[Burst of Strength]
[Type] Active
[Description] For but a moment, you will become unstoppable.
[Effects] For a single second you can multiply the damage on any attack you deal by 10 times, this can only be done once every hour.

 

Alright, that one seems more unique than the last one, and actually useful too, oh and pre upgrade it was 5 times and once every 4 hours.

 

[Survivor]
[Type] Passive
[Description] Someway, somehow, you will not die, not just yet.
[Effects] Vastly increases your will to survive, and your ability to do so, and as such nothing short of death will stop you.

Ah, this belonged to that girl whose mind I blew up, my bad, she didn’t even get to use her skill.

 

[The Watched]
[Type]
[Description] Take care now.
[Effects] 

 

Uh, now that’s strange, this is definitely not normal. I’ll have to look into that later, I just got another ping, it looks like there’s a Humanborne here, and that means another skill, and hopefully not one another like [The Watched].

As I teleport over I see why they needed me, this Humanborne isn’t particularly strong, but it is large, about twice as large as a Warrior, and it has very fast regeneration. I watch a Warrior blow a hole through its chest and it ignores it as it heals the wound within seconds, oh now I really want it.

Leaping onto its shoulder I activate the ODGGs and take two large swipes at its head, activating the new [Burst of Strength] skill, and to my surprise, the entire top half of its body disappears, which was a bit more than what I wanted but okay. WAIT THE SKILL, I quickly begin searching the area but to no avail, it looks like I accidentally destroyed the crystal because of the increase in power, which means I don’t gain whatever regeneration skill this thing had.

I suppose that is my fault, they could have killed it if they targeted the head as well, but they weren’t because they didn’t want to accidentally destroy the crystal, and then in I go and eradicate it completely. Ah man, I really wanted that skill, it would give me an actually infinite source of Matter and near immortality, oh well, it’s too bad but I can’t do anything about it anymore.

As I sit around while the rest of the Tyranids slaughter the populace, I feel something change in my vision, and more specifically, the way I look at things. After a moment of thought I quickly check my skills.

 

[Killer Instinct]
[Type] Passive
[Description] The most efficient and deadly killer, made worse.
[Effects] While targeting something with the intent to kill, you will know when, where, and how to deal the most devastating damage with any attack.

[The Watched] is gone, I guess it was just a warning but reading the description of this skill basically guarantees that there’s something out there that controls these skills, and that something just let me know it’s watching me.

Well, I’m not going to get anywhere from worrying over this, I have a city to eat, and current estimates put the potential gain at around 120k Matter from the people alone, and I can only store 15% of that at most, and that’s being generous, so I better get started on building. I think I’ll use this place as a base, there were some castle ruins as the center which is what the city was built around, and it seems like a good place to start.

Before I start proper though, I’ll use 5250 Matter to put Rippers on the rest of the moons around that gas giant from before. Now then, let’s start this properly. Taking the ten Rippers that I brought here, I have them begin construction of a Norn Cyst, arguably the most important Tyranid structure since it creates other Tyranid structures at an incredible pace. The reason I didn’t make one before is that it’s relatively expensive at 400 Matter, and more importantly, is very large and can’t exactly be hidden, but now I don’t have to hide anymore. That and I can throw a 500 Matter Fortress Field in the center of the Norn Cyst and cover the entire Hive, blocking airstrikes, ground attacks, and preventing anything not connected to the network from entering.

With that done, the first thing I'm going to do is build half a dozen Biovats, which are large city block sized structures that give 20k physical and 5k network storage each. Next, I’ll build 4 Brood Hives, which are bigger, better, and faster Brood Nests, then I’ll dot 5 Scorns around just as some backups. I’ll throw in two dozen Reclamation Pools as well, the current few are sort of overwhelmed and there are still a bunch of bodies sitting around so this should help. As for protection, let’s throw in 20 Hive Guards to roam around. It should be fine with the Fortress FIeld, but I want to be safe, just in case.

Just because I’ll make two Hierophant Bio-Titans, they’re rather expensive at 8500 each, but I have the overhead to afford it, I’ll also make 150 more Gaunts and Gants, as well as another 45 Warriors. Right, I should mention that the city itself was worth 30k Matter after I got around to tearing everything up, so those moons around that gas giant will likely end up pretty rich in Matter once it gets going. I’ll sprinkle in 10 Biovores for some long range, and 100 Gargoyles and 5 Hive Crones for any flyers, and 2 Neurotyrants with 10 Zoanthropes each for Psychic Attacks. Finally, I’ll make 10 Carnifexes, 5 Screamer-Killers, and 5 Exocrines to reinforce the ground troops a bit.

That leaves me with just over 5k Matter, and a significantly larger and more diverse army, likely enough to take on just about anything this planet could throw at me. As for the Rippers on the moon? They’re gathering about 2 Matter a minute, times 115 of them, and every 25 minutes is a doubling time. I've done the math before so I won’t show it again, the only difference between then and now is I’m not stopping them this time, and it’s twice as fast.

Still, that’ll take an entire day to ramp up to absurd levels, in the meantime there’s some info I got from the residents of this city that interests me. Particularly that there was a group of 11 Skillholders, or knights as they called them, who went out to take care of a nearby monster nest, and should be returning soon. I wonder what they’ll think of their new home, I for one think the change was for the better.

Ah, there they are, I can see them off in the distance and approaching quickly, it looks like they started to run after they saw the new state of the town on the horizon. What they weren’t prepared for was the Neurotyrants and Zoanthropes I had hiding by the road, and who just blasted the group's minds to pieces. Well, that was easy. Normally this tactic wouldn’t work on a large scale because Zoanthropes are hard to make and aren’t that powerful, and usually there’s some sort of Psyker on the enemy side, or at the very least they have some tolerance, but not this time. My Zoanthropes are powerful, easy to make, relatively cheap, and the enemies have little to no Psychic protection, which led to them just ripping the souls out of the group.

Alright, I got the skills and won’t get into it here, if you really want to know each and every detail, check the full status page on your own, but for now, I’ll list the names and put a short comment in.

[Healer] It lets me heal things, including myself.

[Defender] I can make floating holographic shields, cool.

[Tough] It makes me take a little bit less damage, always welcome.

[Team Leader] Group telepathy, useful for single minds, not for me.

[Speed Demon] It increases my speed by reducing friction, sort of useful.

[Dreamer] I believe the term is “jackpot”. This bad boy lets me manifest my thoughts in the real world, albeit temporarily

[Guide] It provides a real time map of my surroundings in my mind, including the location of creatures, and updates based on where I’ve previously been, very cool.

[Phantom] Basically an invisibility switch, doesn’t let me go through walls like an actual phantom though.

[All-seeing] Not too sure what this does, but I think it lets me see through invisibility, somewhat useful.

[Electric State of Mind] Now this is cool, it means that I am completely immune to electricity based attacks, and can output as much electricity as I want so long as I have the mental strength, which last I checked, is a lot. It basically invalidates the need for reactors, and the fusion fuel farm I set up earlier, I’ll keep it there though, just in case.

[Foresight] Hm, this one sometimes lets me see the future, though it only says “in times of need” so I don’t know when exactly it triggers, and considering that I just killed the owner unaware, death is not considered a "time of need".

 

Well, that’s the skills I got and some of them are clearly more useful than others, but for now I’ll move on. There was something I wanted to do from the moment I got this place, and that is to move Carol over here so there’s even less of a chance she can be hurt by something. It’s incredibly easy to do as well, and all I have to do is teleport over to Carol, pick her up, teleport back, and lay her down somewhere nice and safe, like inside the Norn Cyst. It might be a little cramped, and maybe a little fleshy, but she'll be perfectly safe and her vital signs will be automatically monitored, as well as her body being constantly tuned to perfection and cared for while she’s inside.

For the moment though, I think it’s time to start properly expanding, and by that, I mean stripping the terrain to the bedrock at the base, and slowly expanding out while doing that in an unstoppable, all consuming wave. You might worry about Aquila, but I say you don’t have to, with the new [Phantom] skill I can create a titanic biomechanical dome around the entire city and some of the surrounding land. Then I can maintain the atmosphere, temperature, and all the other weather stuff within the dome, and the ones inside will never even know. A hidden Paradise kept exclusively for Carol.

Although it would cost approximately 60k for everything it would require, and I sorta used everything already. But not to worry, I believe I can regather that amount quite quickly, especially with the growing horde of Rippers stripping those moons. Ah, just so you know according to my rough estimate, each moon is worth roughly 30 quintillion Matter, which is 30, followed by 18 zeros, and that’s just one of the moons. Again, that’s a rough estimate based on the average size, and it can vary heavily, but my point still stands, for my purposes that’s more Matter than I might ever need, for example, that would be 350 trillion Hierophant Biotitans, from one moon, and there’s 115 of them.

Ignoring that, I’ll just have 100 Rippers start chewing up the land nearby and reducing the ground to rock, luckily those Rippers up in space have been going nonstop, otherwise, I would have run out of Matter for these guys. Although that does push back a doubling period by about 10 minutes, that’s okay, I have plenty of time.

Instead, let's focus on designing the Dome, we’ll need to have several Norn Cysts around the edges to actually construct it, and to help with maintenance, the temperature inside can be regulated with [Cold Manipulation] and [Heat Manipulation]. Rainfall, wind, and other such weather patterns can be regulated by mimicking data I’ve taken from places, and can be actually accomplished by mechanical turbines and turning Matter into water. If somebody ever tries to leave I can Psychically guide them back without them noticing, or just remove the idea of leaving from their brains entirely.

There shouldn’t ever be resource shortages either since I can always restock things using matter in an emergency, and even then the inside is a closed loop ecosystem, so they shouldn’t ever run out in the first place. That should keep Carol happy, and Sarah can continue to play her little town game for as long as she wants.

For now, I need to gather more Matter yet again, as I only have 780. To think that a week ago 78 Matter would have been near life changing, now ten times that seems too small to do anything with, ah the wonders of rapid unstoppable growth. Speaking of, I just did the math and the moon will be consumed in roughly about 30 hours, so in a few hours I’ll have near infinite matter, oops?