Knowing that it'll take at least three days before the ship reaches orbit I have plenty of time to check out some other stuff that I might not be able to do if I decide to masquerade as a normal human.

Before any of that though, I had to see what all this effort rewarded me with, aside from the abundance of energy I now had. First of all, I could make gene stealers with the mind-rape effect that makes them see me as a messiah. I'd have to alter that if I ever want to use it so they don't see other Tyranids like that too and only me.

For now, that was good to have as a plan, well 'X', in case I want to get information out of someone. The slow corrupting and indoctrination that gene stealers tend to prefer isn't something I'd like to do. Not from a purely moral standpoint, it took generations for the corruption to spread.

I didn't have time like that, the galaxy would soon descend into hell, Primarchs would start popping up and the Silent King would start reassembling the Necron Dynasties. Spending centuries turning a single planet onto my side was a waste.

I could maybe change some of these effects, the mental part of turning someone into a gene stealer could be induced with Biokinesis if I got good enough at it and I was sure I could just use energy to make separate beings from myself.

Up until now, that was out of the question, I had no idea how to mold their neural pathways so they'd stay loyal to me and only me ... but now. Still changing an already existing person would be better, clones and manufactured beings barely had souls. Hmm, but if they have miniscule souls I wouldn't have to worry about demonic stuff.

Ah, so much to think about.

On a purely biological point, I could now replicate the Patriarch's form which was similar to a Broodlord, large, strong, and well-armored. It wasn't a heaven-defying upgrade like the Lictor was previously and the two forms decidedly didn't combine well, one focusing on flexibility and stealth while the other on tankiness and pure strength.

The added versatility to my toolkit was welcome though, just like the instinctive understanding of how to form a broodmind. It was a net of constant telepathic communication set up like a pyramid of set hierarchy. I didn't know how I'd use it yet but I knew it would be useful in the future, I could use it like battle meditation from Star Wars, setting up a constant channel of private communication in a battle to let combatants work together seamlessly for example.

The psychic field it deployed was an interesting find, it had neural receptors all around its body and the exhaled gaseous warp energy was directed and sensed through those. I could make some interesting things with that, just the ability to sense warp energy so clearly in my vicinity would be useful.

That Genetic Manipulation instinct I got would need a lot of work, I could tell it wasn't a real manipulation of genetics and more like a genetic virus that went through the victim and altered their genes to fit the Tyranid genome better. If I wanted to make anything other than genestealer with it, I'd need to work on it. But even now I could tell that CRISPR-cas9 gene editing we had back in the 21st century was like a child's toy compared to the masterpiece this thing was.

It was fast acting and caused an immediate mutation in the victim to fit the changed genes. The fact that this was the only way the Hive Mind used the virus was signifying how alien it was, if I could make it spread easily between infected people the effect would be massive.

With that, I've concluded my revision. All powers I've known them to have have been assimilated.

Do they have any loot though?

They did, not that I could think of a reason to take a Leman Russ battle tank with me through the tunnels and up to the surface but the thing was impressive. Somewhat reminded me of the time I saw a Tiger tank in a WW2 museum, kind of pathetic that I could compare our historical tanks with this considering 20 thousand years passed between the creation of the two.

Where were my hover tanks? These fuckers had hover-bikes but couldn't make hover tanks, I was disappointed, to say the least.

It looks ugly too.

Whatever, I was tempted to take meltas and grenades from the stock of weapons these guys had but I decided not to. I was going to be meeting a human ship crew in a few days and appearing armed to the teeth in military-grade weaponry wasn't the best first impression.

I wasn't any less deadly without them either so it wasn't much of a loss.

I was gaining headway on absorbing memories too, with the addition of telepathy into my toolkit it was much easier but I'd still have to test and perfect it before I could eat targeted memories or even all of them. Right now it came through in fragments, without any context of when or where the memory took place.

It was a pain, to be honest, but the ability to just take whatever I wanted out of the mind of my dead enemies was too good to pass up.

Let's see, what else do I need to do before the meeting?

I checked out the rooms the astropathic choir was supposedly housed in and found the place as a molten slag. I guess the demons held a grudge or didn't want any distress signals or messages to leave the planet and something similar happened to all of the Mechanicum bases I found.

Despite my dislike towards the technophile priests I tried figuring out how their cybernetic interfaces work, they had something like a super sci-fi internet if I remembered correctly called the Noosphere and I really wanted to get a connection to it.

Alas, the cybernetic interface was more complex than I thought and I knew anything that could create a link between the brain and a machine would be complex as hell but I still underestimated it. I had to begrudgingly accept that tech priests were actually knowledgeable and intelligent scientists even if calling them that felt wrong.

Scientists researched and strived to invent and push technology forward while these guys worshipped toasters and lit incense as a way to make machinery work. The only reason I somewhat liked the blue fish people was that they actually invented stuff and had futuristic technology, I already knew that I'd have a blast stealing all of their knowledge from them.

Necrons were stagnant, like most other factions but their tech was the apex of what tech could be so it was forgivable. When you had stuff that atomized your enemies and dimensional teleportation tech you could take a break from advancing further, though 60 million years was still a bit too much.

Having phase-blades makes up for their shortcomings, gotta get one of those.

After I finished daydreaming about all the tech and knowledge I was going to steal from various people I got back into the present. There were still things that needed doing and time was running out as I stood around like a moron in this damp and dark cave.

My pose shifted and in the next moment, I was gone, pushing my newly donated muscles to the limit without needing to spend energy to heal them. I felt the wind on my face despite there being zero air movement down here, my white hair flowed in the air like a cape behind me as I let my lips shift into a grin.

A normal human couldn't even see me if I ran into them at this speed.

I'd need Eldar samples to push my speed further but it was already far beyond human, even calling it superhuman was a stretch. Comparing me to humans was just inadequate to describe me. I could murder them without an effort before and after the upgrade just the same.

I was now on my way to rectify a previous mistake, I didn't know how but I forgot about the mutant societies living under hive-cities until recently when on my hunt for the gene stealers I sensed a few of them still stalking through the undercity.

Plus plagues, how could I forget biological warfare? I could replicate anything organic, that included parasites, infections, bacteria, and viruses of any kind. What better place to collect the worst of those than the undercity rampant with mutants, plagues, and everything else people would want to forget?

With all the extra sensory organs and nerves I've implanted into my human form, finding the track of some mutants wasn't even a challenge. I appeared on a higher railing, looking down on the male mutant currently drinking from a water source I'd rather not describe the quality of.

Scales covered parts of his skin and his head looked like you stopped a were-wolf from transforming halfway through, the bones were somewhere between a canid and a human skull but the skin was entirely human which made him look so hideous that it was almost impressive considering it came from a tentacle monster such as myself.

I'm grateful, smooth snow white tendrils are elegant unlike whatever this thing is.

I was already tilting forward, almost letting myself fall on top of him to end his miserable life when I had a thought. Wasn't this a good opportunity to get used to fighting in this form? Rather than the Lictor one where it was instinctive.

I nodded to myself as I kicked myself away silently from my perch, launching my body straight at him like an arrow. I formed a dagger as long as my forearm out of Lictor bone material and made it as sharp as I could.

My dagger struck first, sinking wrist deep into his shoulder before my knees bore into his back. He was easily knocked over from the force and I landed on his back without much trouble from me, his spine had some trouble on the other hand, most evidently that my right knee impacted in so hard that it snapped.

I tore my wrist along with the makeshift dagger out of him, rending his right arm off along with most of his shoulder but I didn't let him reorient himself. He screamed in pain in one moment and went silent in the next, my dagger buried into his deformed head.

I stood up, wincing a little as my soft skin was torn in places and I had to restitch it. I didn't find any biological material I could replace human skin with so I had to settle for reinforcing it with my current knowledge of biology. Unfortunately, Tyranids, who accounted for that knowledge, had no care for aesthetically pleasing skin.

Tendrils extended from my fingertips and encased the mutant corpse, it looked like a white cocoon once it fully covered him. I pulled it and the cocoon constricted, eating at his skin, flesh, scales and organs. The thing collapsed upon itself into a small ball before even that was absorbed.

Nothing too good but he was resistant to a bunch of ugly things, first and foremost: radiation.