I knew taking on the form of a Lictor fully wasn't the most pragmatic thing to do in my situation.

It took fuck loads of energy to remake it and it burned more energy to keep it running than a human. I was curious how it kept going without feeding for so long in the lore but as I learned it stored nutrients in a much more effective and compact way than humans did through fat.

With all that said I didn't regret it a single bit.

My energy reserves even expanded greatly in the last three days since I managed to kill the bug. The vastly superior senses of this predatory form allowed me to track down six nearby ritual sites just like the one I found myself in before.

Since these surrounded the original location in the shape of a rough circle I had to backtrack a bit but I didn't feel the time wasted, on the contrary. Even if I only stayed in this form I'd be able to keep it alive for two decades if my instincts were right and my human form for one more.

You would think that a body as superior to a human as this one would consume several times the energy but it used up the energy or more accurately to store nutrients in its body much more efficiently.

All in all, I was very satisfied.

With the last bunch of human remains absorbed just an hour ago, I was already back on the skyline and ready to make a beeline toward the city center.

I didn't bother using the chameleon skin as there wasn't anyone to notice me and it burned more of my precious energy stores to do so.

My strong legs propelled me over to the next rooftop almost fifty meters away without much effort, even as I landed I barely felt the impact of the fall. It was effortless, instinctive. I weighed about a thousand kilograms in this form but my steps were silent and as light as a feather, never even making a single crack on the ground when I didn't want to.

This was the result of having managed to perfectly analyse both the body and the mind as it worked in tandem while the beast was alive, I grasped the instincts, the muscle memory and the reflexes all and made them my own.

On that note, I decided not to replicate some select parts of the brain. I knew that it was a one-in-a-billion chance but I didn't want to leave it to luck.

The brain had to be altered a bit and even though it hurt me I decided to remove most of the organs corresponding to its psychic abilities. No fear-inducing scream or anything like that for me. The brain was obvious but the rest of its abilities relied on that part of the brain feeding them the energy so with that gone and me being unable to do its work myself those had to go for now.

Maybe when I understood these things more in the future I could look into those psychic organs once more but until then they were useless wastes of both space and energy in my body.

On my next jump, only my right-clawed feet touched the ground as I immediately bounced forwards again onto the next building. Still, this was mostly just a jog for this body, I could run circles around any human athlete even at this speed but that isn't saying much.

It's hard to say specifically how fast I was but it seemed at least eighty kilometres per hour and I could push myself further than that with burning additional energy.

At this speed, I reached my goal faster than I expected. I was enjoying the speed and the thrill of the adrenalin-inducing travel I'd been doing which was one of the personal modifications I'd done to this form. Thanks to analyzing both this form and hundreds of human ones even if those were somewhat rotting I had an understanding of the biology of both to such a degree that both earth doctors and Xenobiologists here could only blink.

Doing simple modifications to fit my needs better was quite easy and I even designed a human form that looked the same but was made up based on the Lictor in most parts.

Unsurprisingly one of the hardest parts to do was the brain but I managed that too after a handful of failed tries. Making it subconsciously control and regulate the alien body parts was a bit of a challenge but it took my conscious mind off of my tedious task of tracking down and eating corpses.

Previously I was wondering when I'd find a living human to observe their brain functions to understand how they worked more but then realized I was a moron. I could just look at my own, even if my soul was able to think on its own and me being only a replica of a human, it was enough. The brain worked just as it would have without those other things so it made my job much easier.

Once I neared the giant spire I opted to forgo going through the other buildings that might have something interesting in them. From that close it wasn't too hard to notice the obnoxiously giant crests on the sides of some of the buildings. I didn't recognize most of them but a few did ring a bell.

The winged skull of the Imperial Guard and the weird scale in the shape of an ' I ' with a fist in the middle standing for the Adeptus Arbites were the two that might prompt a visit after the Palace.

It stood obnoxiously at the very center of the city, extending more than a hundred meters above the second-highest building to show both the authority and narcissism of the Governor who was residing here only weeks ago. I would have thought he was overcompensating for something if I didn't already know that this was the norm in the Imperium.

I was quite sure this was the grimdark galaxy I knew of by now. If the Lictor didn't make it sure the giant fucking golden statue of the Emperor did quite well. Unfortunately, he was currently lacking his gloriously shiny head and his upper body was a bit molten but he had three others of him on either of the four sides of the Palace.

I jumped a few buildings to get a view of another of the statues and realized that this one was somehow cut down in the middle but both sides still stood there steadily. Someone must have had a grudge. So petty.

I held back a giggle as I already knew how that would result in my current body. I had the extendable jaws of a xenomorph from the alien movies and a good forty tendrils for a beard, well not quite as my tentacled beard was as much my mouth as were my jaws. It was weird but kind of cool, I could sell the eldritch horror vibe far better now than before as a white mop.

It wasn't what I would have picked if I had the choice and I might whine but this was by far the best outcome of a Transmigration into the Warhammer universe that I could think of. Yeah sure I could have been the Big E or a Primarch but they had their own shit to deal with and having to deal with four evil gods that want to eat your whole race's soul wasn't something I envied.

Neither did I want to give my soul to any of those assholes, turning into a demon was a scam, even a Demon Prince. The only good part of that was that they were immortal as long as their demon daddy liked them. There was a downside at the end. As soon as they didn't like them they were nothing more than snacks.

Eh, too much thinking again.

The vastly increased brainpower was making me overthink and go on endless tangents, sometimes on several simultaneously. I didn't even notice it at first but I was sometimes thinking about multiple things at once but then I caught myself.

I shook my head, making my tentacles flap around and smack against my hard carapace.

I readied myself, lowering my body onto the ground to steady myself with my clawed arms. I set my gaze on my targeted location, an aerial landing pad just under the feet of the molten statue, and without any need for extra preparation or overloading my muscles with energy, I leapt.

For a few seconds, I swam through the air and then effortlessly made my landing just where I wanted. My claws dug into the ground to halt my momentum faster and then I quickly bounded towards the already vandalized gate.

The place was so disgustingly luxurious even on a floor this far from the top that it was nearly incomprehensible to my human sensibilities. Carved marble walls seemingly from single giant tiles extending several meters with gold running along it shaping into intricate forms. So much damned gold.

Golden frames for paintings, golden sculptures looking like they were halfway into the wall and all of them depicting some battle of historical significance.

I had to be prepared for more, the topmost floor was usually the personal residence of the Governors while the few below were for his family and servants and the ones below even that were for social events and stuff like that.

Those halls and hallways would be even more disgusting than this.

I flailed my tentacled beard in what accounted for smell for Lictors as the composition of the air and its many different contaminants were made clear to me. Smog, dried blood, metal, machinery, wood, and the list went on and on until I recognized the smell of old paper along with wood in considerable quantities.

The ugly wastes of both space and money sped past me as I rounded corners, sped down hallways and ran through rooms faster than some cars. The floors went by quickly as I relied on my trusty super-advanced senses to lead me to my target.

I knew that they had some sort of a computer here but I wasn't a tech priest so I didn't have the faintest idea how I would have to caress that thing or something to make it tell me what I wanted to know. Paper and books were much more reliable, those wouldn't need dumb things like passwords or lighting incense while I fingered their ports to satisfy its spirit.

Soon enough I was right at the entrance of the library which blessedly escaped the wrath of the vandals who fucked up the planet. The door was broken through and a few bookcases were blown up but beyond that, the rest was mostly intact.

Even if this place wouldn't have some of the probably extremely classified stuff I'd want like where is what in the galaxy, including every alien empire, I'd have to go through some of it just to make sure that I wasn't in some sort of Alternative Universe of Warhammer.

As my chitinous body morphed into my soft human one, I looked on in horror at the seemingly endless library.