It was dead.

I stared at it for a moment longer, my brows furrowing as my eyes narrowed.

Why was it dead?

What killed it?

Where did I go wrong?

Hmm, I knelt down and examined the carcass a little closer. Ah, so that was the problem. Its metabolic rate was so freakishly strong that it ended up burning through its own nervous system, essentially cooking itself from the inside, before dying. It was a good thing I hadn't included any pain sensors; otherwise, it would've been screaming and screeching in agony and I really had no interest in listening to that.

Instead, I worked on fixing the issue.

It boiled down to its source of energy. Its metabolic rate was simply unfeasible. My creation would require an immense amount of calories to even properly function and that was just inefficient. The poor thing burned through its own stomach, the other internal organs, and then its nervous system, just to try and find more calories to sate its seemingly endless hunger, to fuel even the simplest movements. To truly live, it would have to continuously ingest obscene amounts of calories, downing in minutes what would've fed hundreds of people for an entire day. Poor thing. It might've been non-sapient, but it was still a creation of mine – my first creation, actually. If nothing else, it was essentially a child – my child.

My failure of a child.

And so, with a simple thought, I dissolved its whole body and added it back to the biomass cube. I'd have to think up an entirely new body plan, it seemed, one that did not copy too much from an Astartes. Perhaps, I thought, that was why my creation failed; I relied on existing blueprints too much and failed to truly create something new, something that had never been seen before. But, how was I supposed to make something without a foundation or, at the very least, a guide?

No, I would not create an abomination.

But... perhaps, my other folly had been running before I even learned to walk. I needed to create something... much simpler, something that wasn't even technically alive. A weapon, then? Nothing as complex as a rifle, but maybe something that could replace the Power Sword? Or, at the very least, an equivalent of it, created for my Enhanced Human form, since the Power Sword was too unwieldy – not cumbersome, but it was definitely not designed for a baseline human in mind as even the grip was too thick. Hence, I needed something that would fit me properly.

Alright, that would certainly be much simpler.

A sword would've been my first choice. It was an elegant weapon, capable of inspiring both fear and glory. It was the sort of weapon wielded by heroes and legends, symbols of victory and greatness. But I desired none of that. What I wanted was an efficient weapon, meant only to kill and to do so quickly and efficiently. I had no need for greatness or glory. I desired neither of those things. I was a guardsman, born to serve and die, and my weapon had to reflect that. It would be simply, silent. It would kill and kill and kill and kill again and again – for that would be its only purpose. My weapon would not be a symbol. It would only be a tool, an instrument of death.

Simplicity...

The biomass cube had shifted, I noted, before I even gave the mental order to do so, likely responding to my subconscious. Already, it formed the rudimentary shape of the weapon I'd envisioned. It was a spear, a long one, about three meters in length, made entirely of hardened bone, infused with iron and calcium.

Hand to hand combat was one of the few things in basic training that stuck with me. I wasn't very good at it, but I still knew and can still perform all that I learned from it. One of the first melee weapons they taught us, recruits, to wield, was a pole-arm. A simple wooden shaft, smooth and hard and flexible. A veteran stood at center of a ring and invited ten of us to try and knock him down. We attacked all at once and none of us succeeded. With simple, but graceful and precise movements, the veteran had all of us on the ground within a few moments. Only few of us bothered learning how to use it and mostly because most believed, and rightly so, that martial arts had no real place in the battlefield.

And, they'd be correct. I spent weeks learning to wield that stick and it hadn't really amounted to anything.

That said, I've always wanted to wield a proper pole-arm, since I learned of it the hard way.

I turned my attention to the rudimentary weapon before me. Interesting. While the spearhead itself could retain its shape – two edges, about a foot long, shaped like a long leaf – the shaft would be capable of shortening or lengthening, depending on how exactly I planned on using it, a versatile weapon, but also incredibly simple. However, due to the nature of the material, there was no feasibly way it could possibly penetrate any form of armor – no matter how much strength I put behind it.

But, of course, the answer to that was also quite simple. I just had to improve it.

I could form just about anything with the Biomass cube, but it had to be naturally occurring things that were already present in the bodies of the genetic blueprints I've stored, which meant that I could, technically, create a ton of iron, ceramite, calcium, and a bunch of other minerals, elements, and compounds I could extract from a human and an Astartes body. Well, ceramite, while durable and resilient, was not great for creating weapons. It was much better off if used as armor. That meant, my choices were iron, calcium, collagen, and carbon. The idea that I was no longer limited to purely biological materials was... interesting, because it meant my ability [Flesh Shaping] was growing far beyond its intended purpose. I suppose it was an issue of technicalities, since I doubt I could create anything that didn't naturally exist or couldn't naturally exist within biological bodies, like glass or something.

I breathed in, grinning. None of the choices worked well by themselves. They'd either be too soft or too brittle. So, I decided to combine all of them to create a unique compound, specifically tailored for my spear. Carbon and iron resulted in steel – pure and untainted, glimmering like silver and starlight. And then, I infused that steel with crystals of calcium and fibrous strands of collagen, creating a vast and interconnected network that, I figured, would keep the compound incredibly flexibly and resilient. The next matter, then, was increasing mass and density. I transformed more of the biomass cube, increasing the mass of the spearhead until it quadrupled, before I then forcibly compressed it back to its original shape and size, while maintaining the quadrupled mass, further strengthening the material. I then honed the edges of the spearhead and the tip, ensuring that the entirely of the cutting edge was only a single atom thick.

It wouldn't slice through everything, of course, but I figured it could slice right through most things it'd come across. Though, I wasn't sure how well it'd carve through Power Armor, but I could just send it to my Inventory and bring out the Power Sword if I ever had to fight another Traitor Astartes.

My weapon now bore an almost crystalline appearance, white and silvery, glowing faintly, but unmistakable in its form. I moved it across the open air, my ears catching the whistling sound it created. I tested its heft, passing it from one hand to the other. The spear, as it was then, which was about three meters long, weighed about thirty kilograms. The only reason I could swing it as easily as I could was due to the augmented muscles of my Enhanced Human form. I ran the spearhead across the ground, which was made entirely of solid stone, and watched as the edge seemed to sink right through as though it wasn't encountering anything solid.

"Rah!" I lunged towards the nearby wall, a fortification built to withstand artillery shells, made entirely of rockrete and further fortified by giant stone slabs. The spearhead pierced right through with ease, stopping only at the shaft. Smiling, I pulled it out. "I'll have to train in the basics of pole-arms once again if I'm going to make effective and efficient use out of you."

My final act was to record the spear's entire constitution into a genetic blueprint, ensuring that I could easily make another one if I lost this one, which was an unlikely, but also entirely possible outcome. After all, it'd make for an awesome projectile. It then appeared in my list of Genetic Blueprints, labeled only as Spear Creation, costing about thirty kilograms of biomass. And, I figured, it would also need a name – a proper name, considering it was my... first successful creation. "I dub thee Alba Hasta, the white spear."

Hidden Quest Completed: Create Something Using Your Skills!
Reward/s:
1 Random Weapon Token
1 Random Entity Card

My eyes widened briefly. It's been a while since I achieved any quest, really. But this was the first time I received items such as these. The descriptions for both were largely identical. The Random Weapon Token was more or less akin to a Gacha Token; however, the artifacts I'd receive from it was limited to weapons only and it didn't seem to have a rarity level. The Random Entity Card would summon, as the name might've suggested, a random entity from across the Omniverse. Both were interesting, but I didn't think this was the right time or place to test any of them. So, I simply kept both in my Inventory.

I then sent the rest of the Biomass Cube into my Inventory, before I... hmm.

Was I really just going to sit here and do... nothing?

Frowning, I scaled the nearby wall and climbed to the top. There, I surveyed the surroundings. The taint of the great enemy, it seemed, was washing away. The sky, at least the portion of it that was right above me, had returned to its natural hue; the distant horizon was still blood red and cackling with baleful lightning bolts, but I knew it was in its death throes. The Carcharodons were still within my line of sight, but they were distant specks now, having left a small river of blood in their passage, an entire contingent of traitorous guardsmen, slaughtered to the last.

Soon enough, this world would be free. And I... didn't have to do anything anymore.

Huh... this was a strange sensation. I hadn't quite the right words to describe it but... we were winning. And I helped. I, Pery Anatinus, a Guardsman, in service to the Emperor and to the Imperium, helped to make a difference in a war that would've otherwise consumed the whole planet.

It felt... oddly satisfying.

No, it felt good to know that my service was not at all in vain and that the God Emperor himself recognized my efforts, my existence.

Smiling to myself, I found a stack of sandbags and sat on it, before closing my eyes. Everything seemed calm and peaceful and-

"ROOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!"

My eyes snapped open just in time to see a mountain range in the distance getting vaporized in a storm of fire, shadow, and golden arcs of lightning. And then, I felt it, the magnitude of two presences, pushing down against the very world itself, causing even the tiniest grains of sand to dance and shake and shudder. The Balrog and the Emperor, it seemed, were locked in an epic and terrible duel. A veritable storm of power flooded the entire planet, cracking apart a large portion of its crust in a spiderweb of furrows and trenches that stretched on for miles and miles. A rain of flaming rock and melted stone was sent blasting across the entire Kuresh region and, I figured, even further out. The Mountain Fortress shook and crumbled, before it finally shattered, falling apart into debris.

A titan of raging flames emerged from the dust cloud. It was the Balrog, wielding a sword so utterly massive it could've cleaved apart an entire Hive City in a single swing. But then it fell, wrestled to the ground by an equally gigantic figure of shining gold, wielding a similarly burning sword of light. Their blades collided. And the resulting shockwave toppled just about every mountain within a thousand mile radius, kicking up mighty storms of burning glass and dust.

My mouth hung open, eyes widening. "By the Emperor..."

I leapt off the wall and ran down the mountainside. Everything, everywhere, was collapsing into rubble and ruin. Nowhere was safe. And I still had no idea what I was supposed to do.

AN: Happy New Year!