5

As the last of the trash is recycled and I finish going through my training regiemen for the daily quest exp I take a look at my gains.

"Notifications summary" I thought, reading the screen that popped up summarizing the gains I had gained since I left that fake city thing, I found it to be quiet decent for about 12 hours worth of grinding. Eavesdropping and Stealth skills really got advanced from being in a large crowd,

Gained Stats

+2 Wisdom

+1 Luck

Gained Skills

Craft Level 1

Eavesdrop Level 20

Language: High Gothic Level 1

Language: Low Gothic Level Max (All future local planetary dialects shall be included for ease of writing)

Light Foot Level 3

Observe Level 15

Repair Level 1

Salvage Level 3

Stealth Level 20

Tech Use (Imperial) Level 1

Gained Items

Damaged electrical lantern

6 field rations

model lasgun

laspistol

3 las charge packs

Chipped knife

4 Dataslates

Two sets of damaged Golgothan style outfits

7 Credits

6 units of rare earth metals

78 units of common metals

52 units of plastics

37 units of cloth

Seems like salvaging items gave me both Crafting and Repairing skill exp so that just gave me even more reason to go dumpster diving.

I look at the language skills I gained, particularly the maxed out Low Gothic skill before taking a look at the dataslates. I wonder if there was anything useful in there? Like if the basic info on this planet or events going on, or even what time it was. Depending on where and when exactly I ended up, things could either turn out ok or I should start blowing my brains out with the laspistol right now.

Taking a breath, wait, I took a breath, I really should see if I need to breath and this is a good as time as any. Taking a deep breath I take out the four dataslates and proceeded to....turn them on. I am ashamed to say that even with the Tech Use skill it took me more than a couple minutes to figure out how to turn them on. Stupid backwards advanced future tech.

Then I had to spend a couple more minutes on figuring out how to actually navigate the damn things. You would think the future equivalent of a digital book reader would be simple to use, but nope, it's actually a bit more complicated then I expected.

At least the date was easy to find as it was clearly labeled on the top right corner of the local equivalent of a digital newspaper. That's right seemed the 4 dataslates I acquired were just newspapers. Seems I was in M41 941 which did not really help me much considering I never really did take the time to remember the years of specific events. So this gave me no real clue what was going to happen in the near future except for the fact that I would be facing Tyranids at some point and that Cadia would fall with Guilliman reviving.

However, the thing that really got my attention was the headline on the latest newspaper edition. In bold text were the words

'MASSIVE BOUNTY OF 10 MILLION THRONES PLACED ON ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THE DEFILER OF HIS ROYAL GOVERNOR'S 'THE GLORY OF ALKAZERE!''

Reading through the article I felt a headache starting to form. It seems that the empty 'city' I was in was not a city at all, but was instead a giant fucking vanity project the governor built that was meant to be seen from space. The whole damn city would form a image of the governor in a suitably heroic pose that was highly detailed when looked at from orbit by all those arriving. It seemed that a anonymous report of a weird noise was reported coming from the art installation and a team of the governor's own guard went to search, and found a trail of destruction and blood all across one of the many 'lines' that made up the piece of art.

The governor was understandably furious at what he perceived to be an attack on himself and ordered for a massive manhunt for the rebel heretic that dare destroy his beautiful artwork and use it for a no doubt heretical ritual with all that blood so the local Ecclesiarchy was also up in arms and going on a witch hunt. Joy. Even worse was that things like this attracted any nearby Inquisitors of the Ordos Malleus and Hereticus who most likely have psykers in tow to assist them. I really do not want to try to tangle with them or seeing how my Gamer System would interact with their powers as the interaction might mean it would be easier to track me or not. Better not to take the chance, plus I still don't know if my System is stronger than the Warp and the beings within and I really did not want to take the chance with that particular test.

So that means I needed a place to hide and a background that would not draw attention. No way was I going to hide in the underhive, because while there was no doubt it would be very easy to hide in their, it would also have a very high chance of me fighting gangers, mutants, and worse in there as a fact of life. Fights that could potentially attract attention if I keep winning, and no way was I going to just keep running and let myself get hunted by even more people. So that meant staying here in the middle hive cause the upper hive would no doubt be covered in surveillance and guards normally, not to mention now of all times.

I needed a place out of sight and out of mind that no one would really look. I mean I look young and normal so I had that advantage going for me. I just needed a position of utter normality something to distance me from the idea of a alleyway breaker and bleeder. Something so pathetic and worthless that there was no possible way it could be me. I looked through the areas recorded on my map at the various shops I had passed before stopping on one. It was a restaurant, restaurants were pretty common from what I could see, and every restaurant needed dishwashers. There was easily over a dozen restaurants and surely one of them would be willing to hire a kid willing to work for cheap. The job would also have the benefit of keeping me out of sight in the back and let me build up social skills with my fellow coworkers, multiple birds, one stone.

First however, I needed to get clean. I looked down at myself and curled up my nose at the filth. I haven't showered in weeks, only the fact that I did not really seem to sweat anymore kept me from smelling worse than I was now. So first get clean, then go job hunting. Looking at the map again I marked the closest restroom icon and proceeded to sneak my way off the building, through the crowd, and into the restroom with all the speed and stealth I could muster.

Looking around inside I did not really see anyone, and it did not really look any different than a regular restroom you would find on Earth, though it lacked mirrors, proper lighting, looked a little dirty, and the materials were different but the basics were still the same.

Heading over to the sink I turned on the tap and inspected the water for anything strange before finding nothing and proceeding to first clean my arms of the dumpster gunk. As I was washing my hand I had a idea, could I store water in my inventory without a container? Opening up the inventory screen I placed it in a sink next to me and turned on the tap, watching as the water did disappear into the screen without issue, yes! Now I had a large supply of water if I ever needed it even if I did not actually get thirsty anymore. At least I could now shower or bath anywhere I wanted. As I watched the water from the sink flow into the inventory screen I suddenly had an idea. Could I enlarge the screen?

Looking around the restroom and finding no one, I keep one ear on the entrance and proceed to grip the edge of the inventory screen and pull it while willing the rest of the box to stay still.

My eyes widen in happiness as I see the screen stretch across the rest of the sinks and I proceeded to turn on the rest of the sinks. smiling as all of them dumped their water into my inventory. Yes! This opened up new possibilities for me as it meant that I could also store items larger than I thought was possible.

'I'm going to need to test this out later' I thought to myself as I turned off the sinks and closed my inventory and proceeded to leave the restroom, entering the dark alleyways again. I proceeded to experiment a little more and made myself a makeshift shower by crafting a bathtub out of some plastic and filling it up repeatedly with water. The crafting system was strange. I did not need the recipe to make certain items as it seemed to unlock once my skill is high enough, but items that were at or under my skill level that I discovered were not included in my unlocked recipe list. So to clarify my Craft skill unlocked more recipes as it leveled up, but there are also other recipes not included that I either have to find or make myself before it is recorded. Also, the really strange part of the crafting system is that when I click on the craft button to make the recipe it takes no time, it literally takes less than a second for my hands to blur into motion and the item to appear. I remembered the actions I took, but they make no sense, like the fact that I smashed a bunch of plastics together which proceeded to melt and meld together into a solid piece and my hands then proceeded to instantly shape them into a proper bathtub of uniform thickness.

It was a a bit frightening as I basically had no control for that split second, but amazing as well since it meant I could very quickly make whatever I needed as long as I had enough resources in my inventory, though looking through the recipes showed that some of them did have prerequisites such as tools or equipment which made sense.

Noting down those discoveries for later I went ahead and gave myself a really violent bath as I basically scrubbed off the entire top layer of my skin, making use of my Gamer's Body to basically regenerate a clean new layer of skin. Next was fixing up the clothes I found in the trash as the crafting system had a repair option as, just that some mental math revealed that repairing a item would cost more in materials than jsut simply making a new one, but I did not have the recipe for the current outfits. I was going to need to need to find some way to gain the recipes of items I had like some sort of reverse engineer option. Man, the possibilities of that if I could gain recipes for power armor and power weapons. *Drools*

Wiping the drool away I take a quick look at myself in my repaired clothes and thought I looked good enough.

Time to job hunt.

It actually did not take me that long actually surprisingly enough. I ended up as a dishwasher for a pretty busy restaurant called the Little Golgotha for a particularly successful fat man by the name of Josef Titon, seems that his cleaning servitor broke down so he needed a new hire to take its place. The pay wasn't that good and I had to pull double duty as a janitor and dishwasher, which made me gag in private later on behalf of the people eating, luckily I would keep clean for them. At least I had a Cleaning skill now to make things bearable as it let me finish my work a lot faster, giving me some free time. 12 hour work shift, but that was only from dawn to dusk, so good for me as that kept me out of the day time traffic and searchers, leaving me the night to roam and prowl about to do what I want. Another plus side at least is that I can chat with my fellow dishwashers and waiters that come and go as they appreciate someone willing to lighten their load and keep it a secret.

The biggest benefit of this? I had an alibi for my existence in the middle hive as a worker for the restaurant and could claim to be an orphan from a now defunct orphanage that went under a few years ago that I obtained the information on from a particularly chatty old man who could not stop talking. I also now had a source of income with no expenses. No food, water, or even rent. After using my first payday to purchase a bunch of really cheap damage blank data-slates I immediately headed towards the local equivalent of a library that was open 24 hours for some reason and sat down at a cogitator. My time in the restaurant was paying dividends as interacting with various electronics in the kitchen gave me several more levels of Tech Use (Imperial) which let me actually figure out how to use the cogitators. It was both familiar and strange as the clunky brown box was both extremely advanced yet archaic at the same time and smelled heavily of incense and oil. I could even see some non augmented or slightly augmented people in red robes wandering around.

I accessed the world's version of the internet and proceeded to spend the rest of the time searching and saving various how to equivalent videos and instruction manuals for a wide variety of subjects. I made sure to set them up for experiments to see how the Gamer System interacted with various states of data-slates.

1. One data-slate filled with the theory on how to cook

2. One data-slate filled with how to videos for woodworking

3. One data-slate filled with written instructions on how to mine

4. Four data-slates with a combination of 1 & 2, 2 & 3, 1 & 3, and all of the above for different skills each

All of the other data-slates were filled with both 2 and 3 as the data could be easily transmitted from pad to slate to slate so it was not that big of a deal to move them around once I finished testing the 7 test slates to see what would be the best use of them.

Walking out of library I get out of sight of the tech adepts and find a trashcan with a lid on it, open a inventory inside of the can then drop the stack of data-slates into the can and close the lid before the light could be seen then closed the inventory before leaving for my rooftop home.

As I made sure I am properly hidden by the machines once more I take out the data-slates and begin absorbing the test slates one by one and recording their effects.

1. No prompt to learn skill as expected.

2. Gained skill at level 1, multiple levels gained if more videos are absorbed either all in one slate or multiple, but only of the content is different than what I had absorbed before.

3. Same as 2

4.1 Same amount of level gain as 2 and 3 theory seems to add nothing

4.2 Same amount of level gain as if adding 2 and 3

4.3 Same as 4.1

4.4 Same as 4.2

So in essence theory is worthless to me, and gains from both video and literature are essentially the same as long as the content is new to me. Another thing is that while data-slates with more advanced techniques require me to have a prerequisite in skill level before I can learn it, if I have sufficient lower level content along with it it will allow me to learn it, as the lower level content will level my perquisite skill to either at or higher than the minimum requirements. Also, as long as there is new content in the data-slate then even if there is mostly old one then the whole slate will be consumed, so that means I could just download everything into one slate and absorb it all together instead of absorbing multiple data-slates with me having to only remove any advanced skills I have yet to reach the skill level for or have insufficient skill materials to feed the perquisite skills.

Feeling very happy about the results of my research I quickly transfer everything into a single data-slate and begin removing everything that kept me from just outright eating it, placing them into their own individual data-slates for later. Once all of those were removed I clicked accept and winced a bit at the sheer amount of knowledge that now crowded my head. Ok, maybe there is a good reason not to put everything into one sitting. Ouch.

I massaged my head and for one in over 3 weeks I decided to take a nap hoping my migraine would be gone by the time I woke up. Hopefully, that sleeping in bed removing status effect thing was still a actual thing here.

I crafted a crude bed using cloth and plastic and laid down, closing my eyes and letting myself drift off to sleep.

DING!

My eyes snapped open at a screen that popped up in front of me

YOU HAVE AWOKEN RESTED! HP AND MP ARE RESTORED BY 100% STATUS EFFECTS ARE REMOVED!

Oh hey it worked, and I wasn't attacked last night, even better! I take a look at my System's clock and found that I still an hour before it was time for me to go to work so I started planning. What I needed to do is lay low and get stronger. I could rapidly gain strength without having to train by just simply eating more skill books or skill data-slates to be exact. I however could not just simply download everything from the internet in one sitting nor could I download the stuff that I want for like things like combat without seeming suspicious. So that meant I needed patsies. People willing to do the work for me. My recycling efforts have netted me some rare metals which would be trade-able for a decent amount of credits that I could hire people with, plus I could craft stuff eventually to trade with.

However, first I needed to know who I could hire and if I could trust them, and then I needed a disguise.

So while working I spent one train of thought on my work and chatting away with my coworkers and another of my plan to enter the criminal side of the hive city. I would need to level up my Persuasion, Intimidation, and Observe skills as those would let me control others better and to prevent any backstabs. Plus it would let me actually locate those willing to do work for money on the side. If I really needed to, I could also work as a info broker and smuggler thanks to the Observe skill giving me more info as it levels up, and my inventory letting me sneak entire shipments around unseen. Speaking of which.

I turn to look at my bed, it was a simple 6' x 4', much bigger than the inventory screen, but as I now know I could enlarge and move the screen. So the question is could I just 'scoop' up the bed or does it only work for things I can carry or move?

I stretch out the inventory screen and proceed to move it along the ground to be the bed it just stopped at it, unable to move forward. I took hold of one side of the bed and easily lifted the whole thing off the ground and willed the inventory screen to move forward and watched as it swallowed up the bed.

Well that is good, I can move the inventory screen mentally, but I cannot enlarge it mentally, and it can accept anything as long as I can carry it. Wait what about taking it back out? I immediately close and open up the inventory again seeing that it returned to its default 1.5' x 1' sized box. I tried to take out the bed and it immediately stretched to 4' wide and the bed could come out, putting it back in kept the size the same. Guess there was just one more thing to test, something I didn't dare test before due to lack of materials.

Is the inventory screen visible to other people?

"Hello, can you take just a quick moment of your time?" A man heard a young voice calling out behind him, turning around he saw a young man with glasses and messy but clean hair holding a piece of paper.

"Look kid frak off, I ain't interested in whatever you are selling." He said gruffly, he just got off a long patrol shift and just wanted to get a drink and relax.

"Oh, I am not selling anything, I just wanted to ask you if you could read to me what it says here, my father was very excited last night when he saw it but he didn't tell me what it was before he left the house and now I am trying to find him. I'll even give you these credit chits, it's all that I have." The young man said holding out a fistful of chits. Damn is the kid a idiot, who can't read in the middle hive? Fine whatever, you could use some more drinking money.

The man takes the data-slate from the guy and looks down at the slate, finding it to be a cheap news-slate, it was just the headline about that vandal that messed up the governor's damn money sink and the reason why you had to do the long patrol shifts now. You felt irritated at being reminded of that and toss the slate back at the young man and grab the chits from his hand.

"It's just that stupid news article about the Governor's bounty on the idiot who messed up his property, your dad is probably out their being like all those other idiots trying to find the information to cash in for the bounty. Go home kid and stop wasting your time." He grunted out, with his last words being a bit sympathetic, the kid's dad was most likely going to end up dead when he tangled with the wrong sort of people also looking for that information for that cash. Putting that thought out of mind he stomped into the crowd leaving the kid behind, never seeing the smile that grew on his face like it was Emperor's Day.

I looked at the back of the man leaving with a smile on my face as I looked down at the data-slate in my hands, the data-slate with the inventory screen layered over it. I man had to touch through it to turn the screen on and he did not even notice it. This was glorious news as that opened up a lot more options for using my inventory in public.

Now I could properly plan now that I had knowledge of all my options and tools. First, I gotta get to work, and dashed through the crowd towards the restaurant, gotta keep up my alibi and grind my skills.

*Half A Year Later*

I quickly washed the dishes in the tray in front of me, now long used to the toil and instant cleanliness I could impart to the dishes and other such filth, when I suddenly heard my name called.

"Hey Noman! Go throw out the trash!" The voice of the restaurant owner Josef called out even as he berated the cooks who were preparing the main courses for a special RSVP event tonight.

I had been working hear for 6 months now and the owner has gotten pretty used to having me around and didn't both paying to fix the broken servitor I replaced as I did more work than it and for cheaper too.

While he was not a bad boss per say he really could have stood to pay me a little more and yell a little bit less. If only he knew who exactly he was yelling at. I had made a name for myself as a thief by the name of tri2. Someone that many in the underground wanted found due to the massive bounty placed on my head by the Adeptus Mechanicus for the theft of their data archives and by others for thefts of various miscellaneous items and books. Though to be fair other than the data archive theft the other thefts were not even done by me and more by the people I hired instead. No point in putting myself personally at risk after all when there were people greedy enough to do it for you. That wasn't to say I couldn't have done it myself, I did not slack off in my own personal training a single day the past 6 months.

The night after the discovery that my inventory screen was invisible I immediately took off to find the closest mass waste disposal site and snuck into the facility. The place was not really guarded other than a few automated surveillance which was never really designed to detect superhuman infiltrators. I mean what augmented person would even care about literal crap? I did.

I made full use of my strength and extendable inventory screen to quite literally scoop and lift entire chunks of the waste mountains composed of compressed trash blocks into my inventory. It actually took me significantly more time to sort and recycle it all than to collect the literal hundreds of metric tons of trash. While that very very rarely lead me to acquiring any repairable items, it did however net me metric tons of raw materials, both common and rare. I was not even talking about just rare earth metals but as in rare materials such as plasteel, diamantine, and even slivers of adamantium on rare occasion. In short, it allowed me to have a very sizable and stable source of income to support my more illegal activities.

I spent more than a month grinding away my social skills, gathering trash, training my Tech Use skill, increasing my intelligence, and most importantly of all creating and raising my Hacking skill. Now just why would I need hacking skills? One word. Blueprints.

Every manufactorum in this hive as well as all of their products were either made with a STC blueprint design or had their designs stored in the local Adeptus Mechanicus temple data archive with no hard copies except in the hand of the business owners which would be those in the upper spire. That meant if I wanted to gain access to useful blueprints for things like weapons and armors I would need to loot it from the archive as every Mechanicus temple was connected together on a wireless network. A fact that I brought from what I am pretty much sure was a heretek that was looking for additional funding for his own secret projects.

It took me another two weeks before I was actually ready to hack into the temple and even then it required outside assistance. The reason for the week was because I had to track down and hire the services of dozens of underground hackers, data miners, and hitmen. Now I wasn't go to kill anyone, I strive to make sure no one died in anything I did. I wasn't ready to become a murderer, despite the legality of my actions. I had a operation timed for the end of the week so that every single one of them would be, as they were paid in advance, operating in sync to distract the tech priests. First the hitmen would cause alarms to be raised at various manufactorums that require the presence of tech priests to appear to troubleshoot the problem before non lethally neutralizing them or just occupying them. Shortly afterwards the hackers and data miners would essentially hit several vital system with DDOS attacks and work not to successfully break in, but to divert as much resources towards stopping their intrusion. Meanwhile, I would be using a personally designed rig to subtly infiltrating the network using access codes and security procedures provided to me by the same heretek, with a promise to share all data gained with him which I agreed to.

Of course I made sure the rig was no where near the market district where I was based and that I had a escape route planned.

On the day the operation started it was a total nightmare for the hive city. Digitally at least, on the surface nothing was really happening, no alarms were going off, no fires, no explosions, no outpouring of guards or skitarri. It was a completely different in the digital realm. Viruses crashed against vaccine programs, brute force hacking juggernaut systems tunneled through firewalls only to be met with superior processing powers and programming of dedicated tech priest neural wafers. Infiltration attempts by dozens of throwaway rigs sending out billions of differently generated access attempts were denied and back tracked through various relays that quickly self destructed along with the rigs as they were compromised.

In the thick of it all my months of grinding my intelligence, money, and Hacking skill paid off. I was an equal to any normal mentally augmented tech priest with my intelligence and equipment, but with their own access codes and procedures I could easily predict and circumvent their logical security and bypass their defenses undetected given all the chaff I had prepared.

The plan all hinged on just how long the hackers and data miners could keep the tech priests occupied, which would not be long. Now to steal the entire data archive would most likely fail because of one simple fact, data transfer speeds. There was only so much data a single port could handle without giving anything away. So I did away with the secrecy once I reached the archive in digital space and unlocked its defenses. I sent an order for it to send parts of its data through every single output port to prepared temporary wireless networks and equipment crafted to handle vast instant data transmissions. Then, the networks would cut the connections to delay the trace and the data would proceed to be transferred in the same way again and again multiple times until they all reached a single hidden rig located within the edge of the underhive space, where a very special rig would forcefully eject its 2 custom made high capacity data-slate blocks. Said data blocks would then fall into a inventory screen opened right below it ahead of time a couple of days before the rig itself was built and delivered a week ago. Thus giving myself an alibi from even the flimsiest of time framing from the construction of the rig and my presence in that part of the hive using the elevator, especially with my short time there.

After that operation I laid low, like really low. No going out back to my previous roof home, no going out to raid dumpsters, no outside excursions at all. I immediately went to ground, and then below ground. I hid under the dumpster behind the restaurant where I literally ground away the ferrocrete from beneath the dumpster, with my bare hands to prevent any noise, to create hidden tunnel and a cave to hide in while I was not working. A good thing too as the Adeptus Mechanicus were PISSED, to say it lightly. For their holy relic to be actually broken into and raided, even if none of the data was actually lost, but still stolen, was a Heresy that could not be tolerated by any means. They must have pulled off a lot of favors as entire regiments of PDF, Imperial Guards, alongside skitarri and tech priests were doing pretty much door to door searches of every single damn area that had one of the rigs at the end of the relay network. My heart clenched at the news that several hundred people were either burned or taken away by the Ad Mech for further questioning as I was not sure if that was because they actually found something criminal about them or if the people were just going to suffer for no reason.

Even the market district was searched and that was on purpose with a middle relay network on a random rooftop as it would have been too suspicious for nothing to have been found in a single district. I spread the suspicion out everywhere to dilute the trail with the inventory trick at the end to cut the trail dead stop. I hoped that would have made them eventually stop searching after a month max, I underestimated the rage of the unfeeling machine cult.

Three months later and they were still searching the hive top to bottom like a Inquisitor seeing a cultists waving at him from a window.

That was not the worse part however, at the end of that third month a rumor was going around the underworld grape vine, with said rumor only even reaching me because the one giving the rumor to me had no idea I was tri2. Needless to say with the amount of heat I brought down upon the hive with the sheer size mechanical hornets nest kicked I was pretty much persona non grata with a majority of the criminal underbelly with only my own disguise and refusal to share any information or have a fixed location saving me from them just outright selling me out. That and the fact that they don't any suspicion of having any connection to me reaching the Mechanicus.

The rumor was there was a Inquisitor on the planet. A rumor I believed with all my heart and soul. Why?

A quest had popped up then.

DING!

QUEST CREATED!

AN INQUISITOR OF THE ORDO MALLEUS HAS ARRIVED ON PLANET! HE SEARCHES FOR BOTH A SUSPECTED CULTIST AND FOR THE THIEF BRAZEN ENOUGH TO STEAL FROM THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS. FOR WHAT REASON AN INQUISITOR WOULD SEARCH OUT A THIEF? WHO KNOWS, BUT IT IS PROBABLY NOT GOOD NEWS FOR YOU. HE WILL NOT GIVE UP UNTIL HIS QUARRIES ARE FOUND AND ASSISTING HIM ARE HIS PERSONAL RETINUE GATHERED AND TRAINED OVER DECADES OF LONG SERVICE. A TEAM THAT EVEN A ROGUE TRADER WOULD BE HARD PRESSED TO OBTAIN.

GOAL: ESCAPE OR DEFEAT THE INQUISITOR AND HIS RETINUE!

REWARD: FREEDOM, +10 LEVELS, OR RARE TIER GACHA TICKET

PENALTY: TORTURE, DEATH, ENSLAVEMENT, WORSE

ACCEPT/DENY

Something I noted back then about my Gamer System was that unlike the original Gamer System it was based off of, it does not grant quests for everything. Only for important things related to my survival. So no easy quests for just washing dishes, but a quest for killing the enemy in front of me or completing a mission/operation.

So I became even more careful making sure to either be in the restaurant at all times or underneath the main street when it was busy, and when it was not, well I put my Willpower skill to the test as I used every last inch of my focus to empty my mind to make it as mentally dead as possible to try to have nothing for a psyker to detect. If that was even how he or she would detect me, or if the Gamer's Mind would shield me from detection or if I even had a 'soul' or presence in the warp to even detect. For all I knew I was as psychically attractive as a rock, but I could not take that chance.

Two and a half weeks later and I was still here, doing my routine, hiding in plain site and mundanity, and the Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisitor were still searching the city. Worryingly so is the fact that the Inquisitor seemed to have tracked something I missed and was slowly investigating the districts that formed a straight line to the market district. He was on the scent somehow and I still had no idea how to escape without the Inquisitor finding out.

'Dammit, I didn't expect the situation to become this troublesome for so long' I thought to myself with a sigh as I grabbed the trash bags piled by the door to the back alleyway. I opened the doors and pretended to drag the bags out before closing the door and just dropping them into the dumpster.

Hearing a sound I look towards the entrance of the alleyway towards the main street and notice two large guys with clubs in their hands. Arbites. Why were they looking at me? I did nothing to raise suspicions did I?

I stayed still just watching them and they proceeded to walk towards me.

Should I stay still? Should I run into the restaurant?

No, that would bring attention to the restaurant and that might raise alarms with someone which could bring disaster to me and my workplace.

Besides I did nothing so there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe they are just here to shake me down for money? I could Act very well now and give them 'all that I have' routine and let them be on their merry way. Nothing to raise a fuss over.

So I kept still looking like a frightened rabbit as the men, and damn were they tall, towered over me.

"Hello-" Before I could even finish my greeting the feeling of the club smacking me in the face hard registered and my mind went into overdrive, bullet time kicking in with the adrenaline as I processed what just happened.

Millions of thoughts and plans went through my mind before a conclusion was reached.

'Play dead and listen' which I immediately did so letting my body go limp and hit the ground as if someone who was knocked out would, my head bouncing audibly from the hard ground.

The two men say nothing before one of them kicked me over hard. I remained limp and breathing shallowly.

"He's out, grab him." I feel large hands gripping me by the waist and tossed over the shoulder like a sack of potatoes and then carried away.

We were moving towards the main street, shit, I could not break free in public, why oh why didn't they just take me deeper into the alleyway to do whatever criminal act they were obviously planning to do?

The sound of the pedestrian traffic didn't even abate when we entered view and my Eavesdrop skill picked up some worrying things.

"Ah another one."

"Shit glad that wasn't me."

"Damn he's young"

"Isn't that the janitor?"

"Hope it's quick for him"

As I am tossed into what feels like a metal box filled with bodies, still pretending to be unconscious, I can hear them say a frightening thing. "Another one for the regiments to Armageddon."

I frightfully keep myself limp even as I wanted to break free from my captors and escape deeper into the hive to escape this fate.

I didn't however, because if I did I would be captured by the Inquisitor who was so tantalizingly close to my trail despite all my efforts. This recruitment was not planned, this was not going to be recorded, the background check would clear me due to my efforts to painstakingly create a false history, my fate would be unknown to all as no one would notice another grunt especially if he showed nothing special. The Warp itself would further hide me as the temporal irregularities from travel would further muddy up my destination.

This would let me lose the Inquisitor for good, being just one among billions, but I would be in the Imperial Guard.

Certain torture and/or death versus most probable death and torture.

I know what I would choose.

But I didn't want to choose either.

'It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!' I ranted in my mind even as I made my choice and let myself get dragged away to join the countless billions fighting and dying in the void against the empty gaze of reality itself just so mankind could live even one more day.

It wasn't fair. With all my superhuman power and intellect I still ended up in a situation with no choice or control.

But that was the point wasn't it?

DING! QUEST COMPLETE!

WISDOM +1

LUCK +1

Oh shut up.

AN: And my muse went into Overdrive today allowing me to gift you all with ANOTHER early chapter! REJOICE! Remember to like and critique everyone!