29-30

"So you say you found other suspected genestealer holdouts all over the planet?" I asked the towering Magos with a raised eyebrow.

"Affirmative: Yes," he...it, answered.

I took the moment to take in his whole form, he had four mechanical legs like thick spider legs that held up his towering torso that was covered in plated armoring which hid a swarm of cables and tubes. A Mechanicus coat hung over his shoulders, hiding four larger arms and several smaller ones under it, some had normal humanoid hands while others ended in syringes, claws, power tools or some that I couldn't even guess the function of.

"Suggestion: It is imperative we eliminate the Xenos infecting this Hive World lest they damage infrastructure irrecoverably by the time it is repopulated."

"Indeed," I nodded, pulling my gaze back to his face hidden under the shadow of a hood. Tubes thicker than my fingers streamed out of it and down into his mechanical shoulders like dreadlocks, interesting hairstyle to be sure but his face was the most outstanding part of him.

Pale, necrotic flesh with a single brown eye that I suspected to be a replacement for a long gone original one and the glowing crimson sensor on the other side of his face. It was a bit unnerving and I felt a bit disgruntled looking at him, it seemed the body horror of it all still managed to affect me despite myself being much worse.

"A Valid suggestion Magos," I reiterated, "Unfortunately it'd take far too long for only myself to go around exterminating them and such, do you have men under you or should we ask for troops from the Captain?"

"Affirmative: I have a contingent of Skitarii under me and a group of Adepts but transportation and reconnaissance would need Arch-Militant Vortigern's assistance."

"Ah, Orion, yes," I nodded again, "Would you handle that for me?"

"Affirmative: Yes."

"Recommendation: Letting me dissect a few of their remains would let me learn about any genetic disparity with the recorded Tyranid bioforms, I implore you to let me."

"Agreed," I nodded, "You are a Xenobiologist, aren't you?"

"Uncertain: That is what some would call one of my areas of research, yes."

"You see, Magos Dominus Zedev," I stared into his unblinking 'eyes', "I could use some of your 'samples' if you have any as my Psychic talents lie mostly in ... well, this."

My outstretched hand morphed, far from as fast or natural as I usually do but it shifted. My forearm shifted, bones thickened and extended, flesh melted and sharp cithinous armour covered it all. From the elbow down my arm was the jagged scythe of a Lictor in all of its malefic glory.

The Magos' single eye trembled in an undescribable emotion as his blood-red sensor stared unblinkingly at my arm as it morphed slowly back into a human arm. I didn't just do this without any reason either, I'd managed to translate his mind's binary chanting quite easily after I left two of my mind cores to work on it.

I knew the Magos was on the doors of death and all of his hope lay in Xeno organic replacement for his mind and fleshy parts. He probably had many different samples from all around the galaxy and I was the best Biokinesist in this whole damned galaxy, of that I had no doubt.

Well, if you count my body's natural abilities as Biokinesis.

My psychic Biokinesis was coming along well too, it wasn't too hard to mimic what my body was doing when healing with soul energy. Turning it into biomatter was a bit harder but I could already induce cancerous growths on myself, the only problem with those was that I only induced them and not fed them with soul energy. Cancer took the energy for growth from my existing cells, as such it was the exact opposite of what I wanted, it ate my bio-energy instead of replenishing it.

"Outstanding...impossible...maybe...yes..." Zedev's speakers sounded out, seemingly without his input as he still stared at my now human hand.

"So you can talk normally too," I noted as he snapped himself out of his daze.

"Affirmative: Yes. Clarification: Most fail to understand my intentions due to my synthetic voice, this method is the most efficient."

"Understandable,"

"Query: Your previous appendage matched the recorded melee appendages of Bioform: Lictor, how?"

"There are few beings better at murder than Tyranids," I just shrugged, "easier to mimic the finished work of others than coming up with something new."

"Query: How would different samples augment your Biomancy?"

"Trade secrets Magos," I shook my head, "though I'm willing to say that I learned the trick from the Kroot."

"Understanding: I see."

"On the note of samples," I brought his wandering attention back to myself, "If you had an Ambull or Crotalid among them that would be great."

"I will see what I can do. Farewell Inquisitor."

"Farewell Magos," I nodded and the giant ambled out of my assigned room.

That was somewhat risky but he should know by now that I know about his little research. He is a threat but his use is much more than the danger he poses.

He understood my unspoken promise, he'd come through with his part. His life depended on it in more ways than one even if he didn't know it.

The time I spent waiting for the Magos to do his rounds wasn't wasted. I kept mainly to my own quarters, generously given to me by the Captain and I worked on my gene-pool. I had a bunch of trash by now and just like with my enhanced skin I had to make use of it.

In the meantime I kept track of my four-legged friend, he more or less strongarmed Orion into giving him troops and transport to wherever he wanted and after that off he went. He took with him a contingent of skitarii and a flock of servo skulls, you call them a flock right? They looked like a flock so that's what they are.

He told me he'd do the reconnaissance himself and would only bother me when he narrowed down the locations to only those that still had sizable genestealer presence in them.

I set a few of my Mind-Cores to work on incorporating all of the beneficial genetic sequences into my human form, making the best possible, bones, organs, muscles and such and afterward move on to doing the same with a Hunter Form and a Combat Form, each being modeled after the Lictor and the Patriarch respectively.

Wish I had a Carnifex, oh or a Hive Tyrant. Well, the Patriarch will have to do for now.

I didn't have to hurry overly much with these and as such I focused all of my free Mind-Cores on figuring out the Navigator's Genes from the few cells and strands of hair I absorbed. I ate one of every important-looking cell-type I found in him without doing any permanent damage to him so it shouldn't be too much trouble.

I could replicate anything I had already eaten and deeply scanned in the process, this meant I could replicate any of the cells I had absorbed from him, along with his hair but that's not what I wanted. I wanted to replicate his whole body based only on this genetic sample, if I could do this it'd be a disgusting ability in the future.

I'd only have to take a single drop of blood from my enemy or a single hair to replicate their body mid-combat. How annoying would that be? A Krork came around to smash me to bits only for me to turn into a Krork, instantly evening the odds.

I tried just imagining replicating the Navigator but that ended up with a gory pile of randomly placed cells. I somehow had to take the template of his body from the sample, I was sure my body could do it somehow.

Hours went by with me doing slightly different mental exercises. I could have just used another human template and pushed his cells into it but that'd have been counterproductive. Normal humans didn't have a third eye, Navigators were Abhumans, a sub-species of humans and if they mixed their bloodlines with any normal human it could have disastrous consequences.

They used Seers and Genologists and all kinds of weird shit to find the perfect genetic match for themselves to interbreed with.

My bio-energy kept me awake, nourished, and in top health, as I spent days without moving a muscle in my quarters. Thinking, experimenting, testing. I realized that I had to understand what the genes meant in exact detail, I had to have the mental image of the finished form I wanted, and the gene sample I had was like a written description only that it was encrypted too.

It was like learning a coding language only by practicing with a compiler. I was given examples of working code and I could mess around with it and see what happened to the original program that the code produced. I had to figure out with trial and error what each 'command' of the code meant and then compare it with another similar code.

It was monotonous but I didn't tire nor bore as my focus was held entirely. Around a week into this, my Hunter and Combat Forms were finished and I could reallocate my Cores to the other task. With the increased brainpower it only took another few days to finally crack the code.

The mental template was clear, my instincts were telling me that it was solid and it'd produce a stable form but I've watched far too many of them melt or just straight up convulse and die for me to just test it myself. I wouldn't die, sure but that couldn't be a nice experience.

A tendril extended from my finger, like a dangling rope until the end of it started to swell. I let it lay down on the floor as the white bulbous form started taking on a humanoid form. I watched carefully for any sign of sudden combustion as I detached the tendril connecting my finger to it.

The form followed my previously given orders like a machine and finished transforming based on the genetic template I provided.

A second later I was staring down at a somewhat good replica of Lord Aaron Fallanx.

Not a single sign of life, I wonder if I could make bio-drones with this?

I put that thought on a mental list and started going through the prone clone with probing soul energy tendrils soon followed by a myriad of my white ones joining in

The sudden idea of bio-drones derailed my previous testing for a bit as I figured out that I actually could make bio-drones, sort of.

I tried with flies at first, because the last 38 thousand years somehow failed to exterminate the pests and they were still around even on a damned spaceship. The little fuckers zipped around without a care in the world and one of them even tried to suck my blood, ungrateful little shit, it got turned right back into bio-energy.

I couldn't control my little spawns after they separated fully from my body and when I dug through them I found no sign of my white little tendrils running through them. For the next batch, I willed a single thread to remain but I still couldn't control it from afar.

Then came telepathy, it was disturbingly easy to control the tine thread with it, it seemed receptive to any sort of psychic control and I felt like I was a step closer to figuring out what my body originally was supposed to be.

Still, controlling the flies through telepathic threads when they could just be snapped or noticed by another psyker wasn't the most useful thing, especially since if I did that I could also use soul energy itself to scout and sense stuff.

On the other hand.

For the next batch, I gave predetermined orders to fully natural flies and surprisingly they could do them. This was far from an actual hive mind like scouting drones but I could use them without oversight at least.

Another use for this could be if I didn't want to use the drones for scouting but combat against enemies that couldn't damage my psychic threads. I felt like it'd be a waste of bio-energy though.

I returned my attention to the prone form of the lifeless clone and got to slowly and carefully absorbing it. I already knew the genetic template but it couldn't hurt to check twice.

Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly not a single cell was out of place. I took an unnecessary breath as my forehead morphed along with a section of my brain connected to it before a pure white eye opened up to compliment my two forest green eyes.

The experience of seeing the Warp perspective at once was somewhat staggering, my soul could perceive souls in a much larger scope than my third eye but that was it, it was like looking at space from a planetarium while the third eye saw the warp-like tumultuous ocean it was.

I saw currents, storms, giant waves washing through sections that it, and small tunnels that seemed somewhat calmer than the rest. The overall range of my vision was smaller but I saw more of the Warp than ever before.

The two sights overlapped, despite my soul floating outside of the Warp as far as I knew. My only idea was that I could still be somehow out of phase, I could be away from the Warp in a way my still humanlike mind found hard to comprehend.

I knew about theories of higher dimensions above the usual three but I could barely understand the ramifications if any of those were real, still, I imagined myself to be sort of phased in a fourth dimension on a spatial vector which would put me outside of the view of anything operating on the usual three.

It was confusing and then again my body shouldn't even be visible to others.

Ah, fuck it, later.

My two visions meshed together and the currents and storms appeared on the starry sky that was the Warp before this. It was a roiling darkness that tried to corrupt everything, it was destructive and everything but small pockets of light still remained far away from me, even this close, despite the gigantic waves in one direction the twinkling soul on the ship still shone brightly against the dark backdrop.

I closed the eye, returning my forehead to a normal human one. It was one thing to be adept at biomancy and another to be capable of stealing the genes of a Navigator House from just a few strands of hair. The stuck-up abhumans guarded their genetic legacy like ferocious dogs, they'd surely kick up a fuss even if I managed to come up with some bullshit reason for why I suddenly had a third eye.

From what little I managed to figure out from mind-hopping into all the people here who couldn't detect me, even most well-learned Biomancy specialists could maybe morph their body into different shapes or regrow limbs but changing their base genetic structure was beyond them, then again there were no well-learned Psykers among the people here, not anymore.

Selene was still rather sulky which while unbecoming of a Captain, I couldn't fault her for it. The poor Seraphina — As I learned she was called from dubious applications of telepathy — has been rather close with the Captain and there were some rather scandalous rumors going around the crew about the two.

I decided it was time for me to have some fun for once, relaxing fun, not the one that left even my neural pathways degraded from thinking.

Let's see those fighting pits.

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Traversing the lower levels of the ship was a pain and I'd never have found my way back were it not for my eidetic memory combined with the Warp-Drive being a clear north star for my travels with its dystopian amounts of radiation.

Still, it took me no less than two hours to reach the 'most esteemed' fighting pit on the ship. This part was controlled by a community of powerful mutants that called themselves the Scav Boys. By community I mean gang, and by powerful, somewhat above average.

If I heard the name without context I'd have thought it was some knock of Ork band but they turned out to be just humans with insect eyes and big ass claws for a right hand. The appendage was almost as tough and resilient as it was ugly.

"What do ya want?" asked one of the mutants with his buddies standing behind him, trying to appear menacing.

"Heard you have a nice fighting pit around here," my velvet voice contrasted the brash mutant's deep and gruff voice with its melodic intonation. I'd always thought my voice was one of my strongest points and while I tried enhancing it with my powers here, I decided to keep the original. There was something distinctly alien about hearing my own words come out in an unfamiliar voice.

"That wee 'ave," He said, running his gaze over my body with a focus on my curves, "20 Thrones' the price of getting yer self through me."

I found myself staring at this dipshit with a slight sense of awe, here I was, with a damned plasma pistol on my waist and dressed in a rather high-quality bodyglove. I looked entirely out of place in this dump and yet the first thought of the good was to scam me, well that was his first action, his first thoughts involved far fewer clothes on me and whips.

I glanced around, both with my eyes and senses and when I turned my gaze back on the small group of clawed men I knew there were a bunch of other people in the nearby tunnels and hallways.

"You will let me pass and forget ever seeing me."

The wave of the telepathic attack smashed into their minds and their eyes glassed over for a second before they shook themselves awake, rather confused about all of them being in a daze but I was past them by that point. Telepathy told me that while there was a price for seeing the matches, this moron wasn't the one collecting them.

With a few uses of telepathy, Illusions, and Invisibility I easily got into the spectating crowd currently watching two mutants duke it out. I wasn't sure why exactly I decided that watching two mutated slaves beat each other to death would be a great way to spend my time, I just wanted to do some exploring and just eating mutants was rather boring.

One of them looked like a giant, covered in tough skin and with a deformed head resembling a triangle while his opponent had scales running up his body and one of his arms was a huge clawed leg that wouldn't be out of place on a small dragon.

The place smelled, badly. I was tempted to turn my sense of smell off while I was here but I fought through it instead, I'd killed a Lictor, it wouldn't be the stink of sweat, blood, and piss that brought me down.

As I watched the lizard-man blocked an incoming fist from the giant with his scaled arm. He got pushed back and I saw blood running down his arm where the scales ended and the soft flesh started, the alien appendage was just as much a curse for him as it was the only thing giving him a chance to fight back.

His claws raked across the tough skin of the larger man as he drove to the side, leaving trails of trickling blood behind but not much else as it failed to penetrate deeply. The giant ignored the wounds as they joined the rest dotting his barely clothed body.

Neither of the two was a fighter, the lizardling had some practice but it probably came from beating up others but the giant was a different breed. I could tell he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed and a quick peek into his thoughts reinforced that idea.

*Smash, Lizard, Hit, Stomp, Swing, Kill, Smash*

One was faster and smarter while the other was a knockoff Hulk, I didn't put much hope into the smaller mutant turning the tides but he surprised me when he jumped onto the back of the larger man. He almost slipped as his fingers slid over the giant's sweaty and blood-covered back before he slung his human hand over the other's neck.

The giant was ever so slow to realize that he was on the back foot for once and failed to grab the hand on his neck before the clawed limb snaked before his face and dug into his eye sockets.

"EYESSS, CAN'T SEEEE!," the giant raged and threw himself around, not even realizing his attacker was still on his back with his claws lunged into his thick skull when he threw himself back and onto the ground. The unfortunate lizard-man getting squished into a paste under the weight of the giant.

"GRODD WON ANOTHER ROUND, BUT IT MIGHT BE THE LAST WIN HE SEES IN HIS LIFE."

One of the clawed mutants shouted and the crowd erupted in cheers and deep laughter as the huge man lay in the gory remains of the man that took his sight.

It dawned on me then, I couldn't find even a smidge of pity for the fighters in me. The only thing I felt was curiosity about their genes and an overwhelming greed to get my hands on them.

What is going on with me? This can't be normal