"A Gamer?"

"Yes, I'd recognize that energy anywhere."

"Tsk, will it be a problem?"

"Strangely, I don't think so; this one does not appear to be a transmigrated soul, like the last one. No, it's a human – a mortal soldier of the Imperium of Man."

"How... interesting. What happened to the last one?"

"Locked away in a Tesseract Vault and banished into the darkness."

"He arrived in the war against the Old Ones, correct?"

"Indeed... that one caused quite the ruckus, before the Silent King sealed him away."

"And the others?"

"Dead. Gamers are too dangerous to be left alive and unchecked."

"And this one isn't going to be a problem?"

"I don't believe so, but we will have to wait and see. His energy is similar, but is arranged differently. He is also far weaker than the last one."

"Do we even still possess the means to seal Gamers away? I had thought we ran out of such devices."

"Seal away? No. But we still possess weapons powerful enough to destroy them."

"But we won't need to, yes? This one, as you said, is a human of the Imperium."

"Indeed. We shall have to wait and see."

"And the Lord of Mirrors? I can already feel that creature's gaze upon the galaxy. It took the Void Dragon itself to banish that thing the last time."

"As I said, we can only wait and see."

Once I completely subsumed Telros' body, it then became a simple matter of absorbing everything and everyone I could absorb, which included the corpses of the Traitor Astartes, their Power Armors, the remains of the cultists and heretics, and even the two Rhinos, both of which seemed to hold tiny measures of warp energy inside them, which was weird, but I didn't think about it too much. Once that was done, I sprinted up to the facility and ate the guards that shot at me with small las pistols. Their aim was terrible; an Ogryn with a stubber could hit more targets than these crazed fools. So, killing them wasn't a problem; in fact, I didn't even kill most of them.

I discovered that I could, in fact, liquidate people into raw Biomass just by holding them and absorbing them. The look of horror on the heretics' faces as their bodies melted down into primordial soup was cathartic. They screamed and fought back, but it was all for naught, of course. Once I began devouring them, they couldn't run; the effect was slower on a living creature as opposed to a dead one, but it also had the unintended side-effect of keeping me anchored to the living creature that I'm trying to devour, which meant no one was getting away once I began the sucky-suck.

Okay, there was probably a better way to describe what was happening, but it was rather accurate. After all, I was, in essence, absorbing their physical forms into myself, alongside their armor and weapons and, strangely, even a tiny bit of warp energy. Indeed, every single cultist that I devoured, those that were alive when it happened, anyway, seemed to hold a tiny flicker of warp energy that quickly be added to my reserves. I also noted the fact that quite a few pieces of technology, usually the ones that were advanced enough that I had no idea how they functioned, seemed to hold a tiny measure of warp energy, like the Bolter Pistol I had in hand or the Power Swords. They were machines, but somehow had a spark of warp energy in them, a spark of the soul.

It was a strange thing.

And I definitely did not know how that worked. The higher mysteries of the machines were for the Tech-Priests to ponder – not me.

That then gave me the idea of just absorbing the tormented, daemonic factory instead of wasting a ton of explosives to destroy it. After all, was it not a form of technology? As I ran my hands over its screaming, horrific walls, however, I found that my power did not recognize it as technology. No matter how much it made sense in my head, there truly was an apparently limit as to what my power recognized as technology and what didn't. I could, however, absorb the corrupted warp energy that seemed to linger in its walls and in the machines that lay within. The voices and the screams all begged for me to end them, to grant them the Emperor's Peace, to bring an end to their torment and suffering. The worst part was that I almost seemed to recognize as a few of the voices, the screams of agony.

They begged for death.

So, I gave them just that.

The Emperor's Mercy came swiftly to those who asked it and painfully to those who resisted.

I reached out and placed both of my hands upon the surface of the wall. And there I felt the system telling me that this was not technology and, therefore, could not be absorbed and converted into Raw Materials. But neither was it flesh to be converted into Biomass. I felt, however, the tortured and corrupted mass of warp energy, which I could absorb. So, I began devouring the energies that permeated the structure. The unholy aura that surrounded it diminished immediately. And the screaming faces and bodies upon the concrete quieted and calmed, eventually, but slowly fading away until they disappeared completely.

And so, the spikes and random pointy bits that was weirdly common in heretic architecture slowly receded, until they too disappeared. I kept my hand upon the structure for a moment longer and noted the distinct lack of any... corruption – both physical and spiritual. The building, the factory, was sterile, lacking even the barest trace of warp energy that was strangely present in most things.

Screams and roars of confusion echoed from within, which told me that there were still plenty of heretical scum still inside, likely the workers who worked the engines and the masters that whipped them into a frenzy. The sounds of running and functioning machinery did not stop, however, but now I was... less hesitant to destroy the place. After all, it would be an affront to the Machine-God of the Tech-Priests if I destroyed a perfectly-functional factory that was suddenly now free of daemonic influence. I maintained Telros' form and armor as I stepped inside, where I was greeted by a host of broken machines and rugged conveyor belts and malformed weapons. There were many heretics within, likely those who worked and possibly maintained the forges. They seemed to panic when they saw me, but they did not immediately attack.

Ah, they weren't aware that I was here to kill them. And, by extension, they weren't aware of what had occurred outside, which was strange, since no one was trying to be quiet and I was rather certain that most of the heretics I ate alive were screaming as I dissolved their bodies into primordial goop. Whatever the case, it was to my advantage as I took a brief moment to truly glance around and survey the battlefield. For starters, the first thing I noted was the fact that everything in here was broken in some way or another, likely because the machines were dependent on warp energy and corruption, and I got rid of both, meaning they wouldn't be able to function properly.

Still, I didn't want to destroy this place in the off-chance that a team of Tech-Priests might have some use for it, in service to the God Emperor's eternal crusade. The second thing I noted was that the facility was definitely larger on the inside than it was from the outside, which was strange, but not something I'd not seen before. There were many floors, each one connected by ramps and stairways, not to mention the massive machines that were blowing out steam and smoke everywhere, which I could see through with the optical tech on Telros' helmet, which meant every Astartes likely had something similar. Beyond the optics, however, my senses were enhanced to such a degree that I could hear and smell every heretic within the ruined factory.

There were at least a hundred of them, scattered all over the facility, like vermin.

Ridding this place of all the filth that inhabited it would be... annoying.

I'd need, at least, some assistance.

Wait, don't I have that Entity Card? I shrugged as I pulled said card from my Inventory and briefly eyed the image of a small, furry, white creature on its surface. I had no idea what it was, but context clues – based on the name – told me that it was something called a rabbit. And I had to admit that it was rather cute, despite the entrails it was biting into or the mountain of bodies it sat on. The Rabbit of Caerbannog. Based on the description, all I had to was throw it up into the air and it would summon the entity that was held within. The entity would then fight by my side for a full ten minutes or until it is destroyed by my enemies.

So, I did just that. I tossed the card into the air, where it caught flame for a brief moment, emitting a soft flash of silver and golden light. And, when I glanced down, a small and rather cute creature was on the floor in front of me. It was barely larger than a standard helmet. And nothing about it indicated that it was at all capable of killing anything. It possessed no claws or anything that could be used as a weapon – natural or otherwise. I stared at it for a moment, raising a brow as it sniffed the air and turned its back to me. It then darted forward and disappeared into the haze of steam and smoke.

And that's when the heretics began screaming.

Faster than even my Astartes senses could follow, dozens of them died within moments, a small, shadowy thing darting to and fro. The heretics blindly fired their weapons, the blasting of las-pistols and the roars of stubbers filled the air, before they were drowned out by the sound of screams and squelching, ripping flesh. I blinked. "By the Emperor..."

The small, furry creature was killing them all, ripping through their throats, till all the flesh was gone, before moving onto the next, doing so at speeds that mere men would not be able to follow. Just what in the Emperor's name was this thing? Were all rabbits like this or was this one special because it came from a place called Caerbannog?

My eyes widened further when it ripped open the chest of a heretic who wore armor – Carapace Armor, the same stuff worn by Cadian Storm Troopers. And such a small thing tore through it as though it wasn't even there. The armored heretic let out a pained scream, before he died. I was pretty sure he was already dead before he even started screaming.

I may have to reevaluate my view on potential dangers. Now, it seemed, even the smallest and least-threatening creatures, at least, in appearance, could, in fact, be more than capable of ripping my head from my body.

Seeing as the Rabbit of Caerbannog was killing everything inside without my help, I figured I'd venture deeper into the factory to see just what was going on and what the heretics were working towards. Of course, I absorbed any and all biomass I could as I passed – no point in wasting them.

As I walked further and deeper into the facility, I began to note one simple thing: I had no idea how this place worked or what it actually did. The mangled weapons and armored vehicles told me that this was some form of assembly plant, but that just a hunch. I also noted the fact that the Rabbit of Caerbannog had killed damn near everything in this place. My senses, enhanced to inhuman levels by the body of the Traitor Astartes that I was now wearing, told me that, aside from the rabbit itself, I was alone. That small, furry white thing had killed every single heretic.

Breathing in, I quickly shifted back into my original form, sending all my equipment into my Inventory as I retook the glorious body I was born with. Donning a new set of clothes, including a pair of pants and boots, and a somewhat usable shirt of flak armor was easy. I didn't even have to do much, actually, just summon them over my body. The body of an Astartes may have been stronger, faster, and more resilient, but the transhuman warriors were far from human; and there was no denying the glorious perfection of the human shape. I actually did a few poses when I transformed back, because I'd found a reflective surface that worked well enough.

[Self-Shaping] Level up!

[Self-Shaping] is now at level 3!

And, suddenly, as before, a surge of knowledge and power flooded me. And I knew, then, that I could begin to splice the physical attributes of every living creature I devoured, taking traits that I found vaguely useful and placing them on some other body, allowing me to design an entirely new physical form. However, my options were limited. And I couldn't make massive changes just yet.

It was also in that moment that the Rabbit of Caerbannog lost all the time it had and disappeared.

Well, this was mission accomplished, I suppose.

So, after devouring the rest of the corpses and whatever other technology I could find - stuff that I didn't think I'd need to put in my Inventory, such as the ruined weapons and armored vehicles that laid about the place - I headed back out and resumed making my way towards Kuresh. The greater mission remained the same: I had to find out what happened Praxtor, find out what the enemy was planning, and flush them out of the world. All in a day's work for a loyal guardsman.