“If it works, it works,” I said, staring at my creation. “I guess?”

  They only had a few hours, a day and some ge to be a touch more specific, to be put together. For anyone else, expeg even just a half-w prototype in a little over a day for a new research or experiment would be eous.

  But what I say, I was eous in many ways, most of them good. I think.

  Anyway! The fact of the matter was that I had mao get something useful out of the Hrud-cum-Khrave experiments. When I began, I had high expectations. Sure, the Khrave were cowardly ts who only fought those they thought weaker than them, and thrived when the gaxy was in chaos without anyone having the leeway to do pest trol. They were ageless though, and like the messed up parodies of vampires that they were, they grew more and more powerful as they aged.

  Eldar gees and especially my new soulbones, were pretty good psychiduits, but I had a slight hunch that the Old Ones — the trolling frog-ts that they were — didn’t build either with maximum power and effectiveness in mind. They just had to be ‘good enough’ and not strong enough to prove to be a problem. The Aeldari were ons after all.

  The Khrave were not. They had been one of the first species to walk the stars along with the Old Ones back whean were still just floating clouds of gas nibbling on stars like some rown amoeba. So I had hoped that with their temptes in hand, I could make myself some psychiduits at least rivalling soulbone in potency.

  Why would I hat? Because soulbone was an absolute bitake and devoured my soul energy like a bck hole. Sure I had some leeway now with me being able to slurp up some juice whenever I was bay new moon, but my bio-energy stores were near limitless in parison. So I wanted an alternative.

  The only problem was that any Khrave I built was like a newborn, barely strohan a kitten and just about as good of a psyker as ooo. That’s where the Hrud and their freaky aging aura came in.

  The cept was simple, and I had high hopes for it w. As, it did not. For whatever reason, the Khrave es and replicated samples took badly to being artificially aged up by my Hrud drones. Meanwhile, the Hrud drones were doing their absolute best to speedrun dying from a thousand different types of cer at once while their gerains were stantly trying to disentao a mess of absolute chaos.

  Still, I had mao get some results. Not by being smart or innovative, just by brute f it, really. Having a few thousand mind-cores w at ten times the speed regur humans thought all w together on a problem had a way of solving most problems that be solved by brute-f the ‘throw shit at the wall and see what sticks’ method.

  I had a few other sub-brains to help guide them in their attempts so they were a bit more forward-thinking than just doing random shit until something worked, but that didn’t really ge the core principle.

  So that was how I now had ks of fossilised Khrave … stuff.

  They were rgely spherical with bits and pieces jutting out of them, rgely coloured in gradients of greys and brown a rgely like grao the touch. More importantly, they were pretty ductive for soul energy, almost as much as regur soulbone was but still had nothing on my lovely staff.

  Unfortunately, that was where the positives ended. Even with all the optimisation and work my mind-cores had dohese things still had a maximum lifetime of about an hour or two when in use and aimated month whe alohey would also deteriorate when in use, slowly losing their ductivity with every bit of soul energy elled through them.

  It wasly anything like what I had initially wanted, but it was something.

  I’m thinking about this the wrong way. I mused, throwing the macabre ball up into the air and catg it as it came down. It was just a bit rger than an apple, so I could fortably hold it in one hand. I have soulbone for the important stuff. Primary drones get orbs or wands made of it and I’ll be able to el much more soul energy through them. This stuff though, I give a ball like this to a million bat drones with how cheap they are and each would be able to shoot off a single devastating psychic attack much strohan their bodies would have been able to handle before turning to ash or exploding.

  Cheap was retive of course, it retty expeo make these things and age them up. But the cost was not in the ballpark of something astronomical like soulbone which made my heart ache just by thinking about making it. It also used up only bio-energy. If I was running low on that, I just had to make a few more heat-mining spikes and drive them into the cores of a p.

  Getting my cws on the whole star system in which Vallia sat was also on my to-do list for the few months. Once I had all the Tau booted, I could get started on building a Dyson swarm around the system’s star and strip-mining the asteroid belt.

  I really should start quantifying my stores, expenses and what everything costs. I sighed, shaking my head at just how fusing it all was getting. I had a vague idea of what everything cost in parison to other stuff, but maybe some numbers would be good to see it all clearly. Maybe some graphs too. I just had to rei excel sheets, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to use whatever deranged data-keeping software the Meicus used. Later. Much ter. That’s going to be super b … and I have other toys to check, anyway.

  Pushing that particur task down to the bottom of my to-do list which was ever-expanding, I snatched up the improved upon pulse rifle. It was an ugly, blocky thing with a handle and trigger strapped onto it and a hole at the other end for the bolt to leave through. Imperial srifles weren’t much better, holy, those were even blockier, but those at least had some minor artistry woven into their design. The Tau-made ons, in trast, were all every bit utility-over-form and the little mohat had upgraded this particur one didn’t really ge that.

  While about the size of an Imperial Lasgun, the Pulse Rifle was far more powerful. It fired a psma pulse, which was geed when an indu field accelerated a particle which breaks down as it left the barrel. The small circur deviear the end of the barrel — Gun Stabiliser — was housing fyroscope that art of an aim-stabilization system that allowed the rifle to remain steady on target and angled for optimal firing at a distance, regardless of factors like shaking hands. This gave pulse rifles a greater effective rahan many other infantry ons.

  Or so the faint memories my mind-cores mao dig up about them said, but most of those cims I could firm with a quick application of my aura to s the on while matg the bits to my basiderstanding of teology. The knowledge dump I had gotten from Zedev wasn’t really all that good, or helpful with this, but it gave me a rather solid foundation in the advanced stific theories that were entirely alien to my 21st-tury brain.

  The Warhammer fandom liked to on the Meicus for their rather silly ons designs and their unwillio innovate, but I felt it was rather unfair. Especially now. If what was now in my brain was what a regur tech adept was expected to know, they were all exceptional stists. I had stuff ihat made the tiny ss of quantum physics I had learned from videos ba Earth seem like child’s py.

  Still, it was just barely enough to uand the basics of how this humble pulse rifle worked. Though it was a bit easier on an unmodified one, in which every partment was ten times as rge and as such, much easier to make out. The monkey had gone wild on minimising what was already in there and adding a few new bits that I could only guess the purpose of.

  Ohought was supposed to press the psma bolt, while anave it a … resonance? A frequency? Why though? There were simpler bits too that I could uand at least. A switch which allowed the shooter to s between firing big fuckoff bolts of psma and smaller pew-pew bolts while another just pensated for the kickback.

  Fancy stuff. Finding that monkey in Inquisitor Thrace’s vaults might have used up all the luck I had collected in my life. It was going to pay major dividends. The little fellow had already upgraded a railgun too and was now busy fiddling with a mobile shield geor the Tau mostly used on some of their heavy tank-equivalents.

  Before jumping into testing, I took a moment to have a sed, more thh check of all the updates I had received from my mind-cores on surveily trolling drones down on the phe people were going wild down there, riots were in full blow and some settlements were just petering on the edge of absolute anarchy. Some were calmly terrified, but I didn’t care much about those for now.

  I quickly authorised some nohal for a few towns, while also allowing another few hundred sneaky droo excrete a calming cloud of invisible pheromohe tter could take care of most riots, turning them into peaceful protests and pining, while the prior took care of the few asshats who thought this was their shot at turning themselves into warlords or some variant of that. I would be having none of that, not until I had officially made this whole phe Tau’s problem.

  Thankfully, it seemed religion was a much smaller part of their life than I’d feared. I loathed zealots with a burning passion, and I couldn’t ever really uand how their strange minds worked.

  I shook my head at the thought. That was one part of why I didn’t want there to be an anised religiored around me. If I had to deal with what Guilliman had to gh every day for being ‘The Demigod Son of the God-Emperor of Mankind?’ I was going to murder someone. Probably a lot of someones.

  Fae was tolerable because she wasn’t too vocal about her fawning and such, but it was still weird. I had more important stuff to do than to brood over that stuff though, like testing my oys for example.

  With a thought, I grew a slew of various Tyranids at the other end of the room. Rippers, Termagants, ifexes, Lictor and a pair of Hive Tyrants aealer Patriarch, then I shouldered the inal pulse rifle, aimed it at a ripper and pulled the trigger.

  Its stock smmed into my shoulder with a satisfying kickback as the bolt of psma sped forth with a distinctive hiss and smashed into the bulldog-sized tyranid. Its carapace didn’t even fracture, it just had a fist-sized hole seared into it, as did the creature’s flesh and bohe bolt had ght through, burning a matg exit hole oher end and stopped only o burned a finger-deep hole into the back wall. With that having been made of a psteel-like biomaterial, that was actually more impressive than it having goraight through a ripper.

  With a shrug, I pulled the rifle back up and aimed it at the arget. Pulled the trigger, and watched it fall over with a hole through its chest. Well, Gaunts weren’t that tough, anyway. The ifex, the arget in the queue, held up better. Its carapace fractured, and the bolt pierced through, but it robbed the bolt of most of its power and it petered out after just searing the surface of its flesh. It took ahree bolts fired at the exact same spot for me to reach what went for the creature’s heart.

  The Lictor fell quicker, though that was to be expected. It was an ambush predator and the psma bolt went right through its tentacle-cd fad scrambled its brain. The st two foes, though, proved to be too tough a nut to craeither the Hive Tyrants nor the Patriarchs had any wound ohat could be eveely called lethal, not even after I emptied out the powercell — which had enough power in it for fifty bolts.

  I threw the rifle away after that, letting my Telekinesis carry it back to its pce while I snatched up the improved-upon pulse rifle and marvelled at its much sleeker design. It was about the same size as the previous one, but the boxy look was gone and in its pce was a … still weird gun, by my Earth sensibilities at least. It had only a fe edges, with most of its outline being drawn by softly curving lines. Well, I had wanted a futuristic-looking gun, and I got it I guess.

  I shouldered it and skipped over the first twets, aiming the barrel right at the sed still ifex. I pulled the trigger and smiled as I barely evehe on’s kick. It fired with a deep hum, the bolt somehow denser and thicker than before as it sped forth at maybe one and half the speed it had previously.

  The ifex’s carapace fractured instantly, its flesh beh seared as the bolt burrowed in deep and it tio burhen. I hopped on over and peered into the hole while I sed it with my aura, grinning as I saw more and more of the creature’s flesh burn a. It didn’t quite reach the tre of its chest where its heart, lungs and other important ans were, but it was a hing. In the end, the glob of psma didn’t quite kill the ifex, but it sure as hell would have caused it some serious trouble had this been an actual bat enter.

  Grinning to myself, I turned my gaze on the railgun. Those things were powerful enough to be pced oau’s APCs — Armoured Personnel Carriers — and their rger cousins were even used on their spaceships.

  I wonder how much the little monkey mao enhahat thing.

  P3t1