I dashed to the side, letting the giant Mawloc — an overly-rge worm with far too mah and a far too wide mouth — sail past me as it burst out of the ground I stood on just a moment ago.

  My sword vibrated with energy as I sshed at its body, a sharp force field a dozeers lohan the sword itself sshing right through anything but the spine of the beast.

  I sent my body flying further away as the rge beast came back down with an enraged screech of pain, smashing down on one of the approag hive Tyrants.

  A Telekiic wave diverted two other of the Tyrants ing at me from behind, sending them smashing into each other instead of me. It didn’t do any damage to the hardy monsters, but the sight of it was worth it.

  The third Tyrant, I smashed my ko as I turned, ign as its cws and scythe-like limbs scratched my armour.

  I didn’t have the weight, mass or whatever to really kick a Hive Tyrant weighing tonnes away with a single kick, butthe speed I was moving at made up for the mass I was g.

  The Tyranid didn’t appear too wounded, but it still went rolling head over heels away from me before it mao stop itself by stabbing its scythes into the ground.

  I touched down, soul energy rushing out of my feet to turn the already hard ground under my feet into stone as dense as the Fortress’ walls, whiother stupid worm smashed into and learned why you don’t do that.

  I held my footing ih my Telekinesis even as the worm-thing smashed its skull open on the under-side of it, then I stomped down. Sending the pte of rock through the length of the beast.

  The first worm still struggled to move, but the Tyrant it buried underh it cutting its way through it with little sideration for its wounded rade finally pushed the beast through the doors of death.

  The four Hive Tyrants verged on me, cirg me like predators would a prey.

  The Serpents at the perimeter turned dark, all of them disregarding biomass preservation in favour of letting nothing else through to intrude on my pytime with my new friends.

  I eyed them as I thought over whiy ons should I test on these four. If I’d gotten aer, all four should be little effort to beat into the dirt.

  Sword, Body, TK, and something.

  My body flickered away, leaving behind only an afterimage as bio-energy surged through every cell of my being. I appeared o one of the Tyrants and my sword pierced through its armour before it ever realized I wasn’t where it was looking.

  The sword wasn’t really up for the task, pierg through the carapaly with effort, but I made up for it by pure force. With my enharength behind the pierg attack, the sword plunged into the Hive Tyrant’s body, crag its carapace as it did so.

  Just as the beast was about to turn and rip my sword out of my hand, I ripped the sword not back out, but to the side. The bio-sword protested but with my strength behind the ssh, it came out of the beast's body, leaving its torso only half attached to the rest of its body.

  I smashed my fist into it a it flying with a frown down at my sword as it quickly repaired itself; it was bent, scraped and more than a bit fucked in all the ways it mattered. I really hat bio-sword upgrade from the Swarmlord. Focus on deg that first.

  [Aowledged. Task Priority updated.]

  The sword dissolved in my hand, the bio-energy making it up seeping into my body.

  I saw a bit of my overcharged body’s capabilities just now, but let’s see how much damage I do with no ons.

  I flickered again, appearing above the wouyrant as the other three were rushing at my previous position and smashed my boot into its skull. It didn’t get pulverized as I hoped it would, but I tore the skull off of its neck with the fory well-angled kick.

  I so myself, not pulverizing one of the stroyranid bio-forms with a single kick was making me disappointed.

  Soul energy joined bio-energy in my body, pushing it further beyond what ossible. Bio-energy was a miraculous thing, but it was an energy of realspace, a part of the physical universe and it worked is rules even if those rules were rather bendy in this weird gaxy.

  Soul Energy didn’t care. My mind sped up, my vision cleared and time seemed to sloith bio-energy, my mind could barely keep up with the speed at which my body was moving, so I had to rely on my instincts to work faster than my mind when I truly pushed my body to the limit.

  Now it all seemed slow in parison. I could already slow my perception down to a thousandth of what a normal Human could have, but now I could probably put even the fastest Eldar to shame.

  Onlythe extreme detail with which I saw the world around me now told me that time didn’t just stop for me. The Tyrants were moving, but they might as well not be.

  I walked up to one and smashed my fist into its chest with only a moderate force behind it.

  My armour fractured and broke and I could feel much more break u, but I ig. The Tyrant didn’t move as my fist sank into its carapace. The hardy armour that I somewhat struggled to break through gave no more resistahan the surrounding air.

  I cut ba the soul energy rushing into my body and time sped up again.

  The Hive Tyrant burst apart like a mosquito on a windshield, its torso pulverized just as I hoped the previous one’s head would have been with its ravaged limbs and head flying away so fast they broke through the sound barrier.

  I shook my poor hand with a grimace, bio-energy regeed both my body and the broken gau with only a thought, but that didn’t really ge the fact that my hand was turned into a grotesque flower with bloody petals of flesh hanging limply in all the wrong dires. My fingers and most of the gau was just as much gone as the Tyranids torso.

  “I’ll o hold back with that until I make a stronger armour.” I murmured to myself, turning my gaze on the remaining two Hive Tyrants crouched like cats waiting to poun their prey.

  And just like with cats, me ‘notig’ them had them jumping at me.

  More out of reflex than anything, Atiesh appeared in my hand and I cast an overcharged Eldritch Bst like the one I made Kairos — that feathery fuck — eat right into one of them.

  The weirdly overpowered staff protected me from the debilitating effects of the spell beyond my current form’s capacity to el, but I still felt like instead of a truck, a whole void-ship smashed into me.

  I threw the staff at the st Tyrant and it went sailing at it like a trag missile, stopping right before it and ing the beast up in a slew of psychic threads that didn’t let it as much as twitch.

  Meanwhile, I closed my eyes and slowly circuted my twin energies through my body to rebuild my damaged psychic els and heal whatever else my little panic Spell damaged.

  With Atiesh eating up most of the damage, I was ba tip-top shape in only half a minute, during which my serpents sizzled out. I looked around, watg the piles of carbon ash left behind by all the Tyranids throwing themselves mindlessly into the abyssal fmes and the wave of them bursting through those ashes already.

  I hopped over to the bound Hive Tyrant with a single floaty leap and ed my fingers around Atiesh, the staff vibrating in what I felt was happiness under my touch.

  The Hive Tyrant snarled and struggled, its jaws snapping only teimetres away from my face.

  I smirked up at it and smashed it into the ground. The beast stayed tied at around two meters away from the tip of my staff so as I twirled my staff around; the Tyranid was smashed into the dirt left and right like some plush toy.

  It didn’t damage it much, but after a dozen or so of these, I mao shake off the sour taste of these trashy aliens making me panic left in my mouth.

  With that out of the way, I tightened my hold oyranid. The psychic ropes tied themselves around its limbs and neck, and then I pulled. The beast screeched, bones and carapace built to withstand bolter fire and artillery not breaking so easily.

  The swarm started colpsing ohout the serpents to hold them back, but the chaff wouldn’t need muy attention to keep away. Stray thoughts sent sychic shockwaves bsting out of my body, but that was more than enough to send gaunts and rippers barrelling through the air and take dozens of their kin with them as they smashed into them.

  ruly don’t mean mu the face of true power. I smiled, then giggled. That was a thought I wouldn’t have imagined myself ever thinking not long ago. I thought myself weak, in the grand scale of things, and I still did. If I am weak though … they are nothing.

  The Tyranids didn’t relent, trying to swarm me and when that failed, pincer me, but without any heavy hitters like the poor Hive Tyrant whose limbs just gave out, they had no hope of even scratg me.

  The first to give way was the carapace, crag with a siing ch before muscles and tendons too gave way with a wet tearing sound apanied by the beast’s dying howl. Then it was dead, its earing off without too much effort.

  I huffed, pulling the corpse in aing a slew of white tendrils burrow into it. Only a few seds ter, not a drop of its blood remained. That took some effort, though not too much. With the Soulbone skeleton, I should be able to tear hive Tyrants apart as easily as I do Rippers now.

  I hopped up into the air and caught myself with a bit of TK, sending myself dashing through the air like a bird. I wao see how ehis swarm was iy; I knew Baal was already cut off from the rest of the Hive Fleet, so reinforts wouldn’t be raining from the sky for these bugs.

  Val and Selene were going wild, both enjoying the ck of Demons trying to worm themselves into their souls. One much more thaher, my ears could pick up the Eldar’s maniacal ughter even when he was barely a flickering dot in the distance.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I sent to Selene, just to be sure. I could tell she wasn’t injured or anything, but it couldn’t hurt to che.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ She sent back.

  ‘I’m going to look around for a bit,’ I said. ‘I want to see how many of these bugs there are, if there is anything I’ll be ba a blink.’

  ‘Be safe.’ She sent, and I couldn’t help, but smile. Sure, she was trying to tell me to shut up a her focus on the bat, but I could feel the care in those words too.

  ‘You too.’ With that, I let the telepathik dim and pushed it into the bay mind for a mind core to monitor.

  I sent out an order to my swarm of diligent little butterflies still flutteriween the horde of alien moo collect as much bio-energy as possible before hiding somewhere.

  If I keep this up until the fleet arrives, I should have more than enough bio-energy for the foreseeable future … unless I want to pop out an army of es or something. Bio-energy produ roblem I’d been ruminating over for a while, but I decided that until I settled down somewhere for any substantial amount of time, abs biomass was the way to go.

  I could build a swarm of satellites around a sun, or farm Orks, but all that would ime and a lot of free space without prying eyes to be worth it. Calcutions showed that a full Dyson Sphere would me the equivalent of a single ifex ed each day on average.

  Bio energy was more about geic potential energy than any sort of real physical quality biomass had. Sure, I could vert some from sunlight, but eating a Hive Tyrant would always be more worth it iime and effort department.

  I was also sidering building some sort of stationary neural ter that I could ect to telepathically, but as with a Dyson Sphere or Swarm, Baal wasn’t the pce for it. I only had a week at most here before I had to either make a hasty exit before they torpedoed my ass, or just move on.

  I knew I had what the big blue man wanted, but there was a doubt in me about my ability to vince him of that. Primarchs are supposedly all instinctual master tactis and geniuses … supposedly. You couldn’t tell that based on how they acted, though I guess high IQ doesn’t mean they ’t be an idiot. *cough* Magnus.

  S just a dozeers above the ravenous horde with jaws and cws trying to rip into me every, I sed the Tyranids. I could feel some of the stronger bio-forms already rushing towards me, but I was faster, they wouldn’t catch up.

  I crested over dunes, spping away any unlucky little bugger with a mental wave as I spread my seowards the horizon teeming with aliens. The ground was barely visible and the sky was dotted by the flying terparts of the little monsters.

  I sidered going invisible for my scouting run, but I promised a lot of dead aliens to Dante, so murder it was. I mehe fact that despite being the perfefiltrator — with me being able to take on the face of anyone while also being quite good at using illusions — I was only ever killing aroying things ht.

  ime. I promised to myself.

  Psifmes burst to life, c my whole body before spreading to both of my sides like a pair of huge wings that let fire ah rain down on the unfortuyranids below. With a thought, I formed the fmes into the image of a gigantic bird made entirely of fmes with me at the ter. I hope they are watg. Doing this when nobody sees me would be … pretentious.

  My senses picked up faraway explosions in several dires, the Astartes were still going ur excursions to take down anything that could threaten their fortress it seemed, but most of them seemed to be pulling babsp;So they are watg me, us? Good.

  I hem to uand our power, I o pnt a seed of fear and respeto them. Xenophobia was hard-wired into these damned Space Marines, iations with Xenos only ever happened when killing them would not be worth the effort.

  I wasn’t delusional enough to think I could take down the ining fleet alone, maybe if I spent months infiltrating each ship and pnting explosives, but even that wouldn’t ensure I could actually win. Space Marines were some of the best warriors in the gaxy, and the fleet was led by a blood and flesh Primarch, in all his fate-bending glory. I didn’t want to fight them, I probably couldn’t, no matter how smart, sneaky or powerful I was.

  That only left iatioion and maybe a bit of respect. I knew Guilliman respected Dante, and I saved him, hopefully that would lend me some respect too. Even if he is no less Xenophobic than the rest of the Imperium, he at least knows when an alliance or trade is more beneficial than a battle to the death.

  I slowed to a stop, paying little attention to the infer in my wake. As I flew, Psifames fell in burning droplets that sent infernos spreading through the mindless hordes.

  A smirk spread on my lips. So that’s how they are doing it.

  The ndscape ged a fair bit from the barren sandy dunes, morphing into a maze of sandstone mesas with steep little ges separating them, some of which even had the smallest streams flowing in them.

  That wasn’t the objey curiosity though, it was the hundreds of cave openings hidden in the deepest parts of the valleys and ges. They opened up like gaping bck maws spewing out rows of screeg aliens non-stop, each of them sp not even a scrat their shiny carapabsp;Newborns.

  Curious … let’s explore a bit.

  P3t1

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