Gamer

I sat on the ledge of the alleyway entrance as I just stared at the city in front, below, and above me.

Go-wait no I shouldn't use that word anymore might call down the wrong sort of attention. Mmhmm.

Dammit all. Yes, that was better. Dammit all to hell of all the places Truck-Kun Jr to mistakenly drop me into did it HAVE to be 40K?

'So, what to do?' I sighed while looking up at the sky above as it was turning a lovely shade of purple as the sun set behind the skyscrapers in the distance, outlining them in a brilliant shade of golden orange.

I get up and started pacing back and forth mumbling to myself out loud as I tried to think of a plan for surviving this Hell hole and what my goal was to be.

"First off main goal is to not die or get caught by the Four, second do not die because of Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, or Dark Eldar. Tau and Eldar are debatable as I might be spared by the two. Second either find someway to revive the Emperor so I can leverage for a favor to hide in the imperial Palace where I would be protected by the layers of heavy defenses or find a planet that will be devoured by the Tyranids and wait till it is consumed before following in the wake to reterraform the planet and live out the rest of my life there."

"Of course that is dependent on what time period I landed in, getting a ship, getting enough supplies to do all that, figuring out a place with no more Nids passing through, and the big one living long enough to reach it. Actually speaking of that, do I even age anymore? Will I ever die of old age? I mean my body is a game character's now and game characters do not really age or die of old age. Well a few gamer characters like the Fable series did allow for aging, but even then not death by old age...."

I stop pacing as a shock fills my body "Am I technically immortal now? I have no real way to test it so I guess I should just assume I am not. If after two decades pass and I am still looking young then I guess that would prove I am immortal...and then I would need to cover my face to avoid being exposed as a immortal. The Inquisition would definitely not let me go if they heard about me, unless I can get rich enough to have the excuse of using extensive rejuvenation treatments to stay young and then using body doubles to act as my kids until I replace them myself."

"But that would mean actually getting wealthy and powerful, but that would put me on the Inquisitions net. Sigh."

"Ok, before I get even more side tracked what other options do I have? Imperial Guard? Hah! Inquisition? Blam! Space Marines? Am too old and the surgery would hurt like hell." I said shivering at the memories of the space marine creation lore video's description of the surgeries needed to be a space marine.

"Right anything else? Agriworld farmer? Maybe, but no defenses and any working guy with a set address is at risk of the Inquisition and any corrupt nobles of arbites.....wait a minute, can I even speak the language on this planet? Shit!" I start freaking out as I would no doubt draw attention when I could not understand a word people are saying or respond to them. Hell the arbites might just kill me if I can't properly respond to their orders.

Fuck! This meant I can't stay inside proper society till I learned how to speak Low Gothic or whatever variant local language is on this planet. How was I going to do that? I mean with the system I could probably learn it from skill books if I could find it but I had no money or ability to break into shops and one wrong move will have me hunted down by the whole city so that is a no go.

'Be a beggar and eavesdrop till I learn the language? Maybe, but my clothes though...' I thought to myself as I looked down at my nice hoodie and pants, those would make me stand out among the beggars and get me jumped by them and sneered at by the normal people no doubt.

I spoke with resignation "I guess....I guess this means I need to go to the underhive and fight for resources and strength. For all of my goals I am going to need enough strength to defend myself or at least strong enough to run away. Best case scenario would be if I could somehow be a Rogue Trader, but that would be very unlikely. Sigh."

I raised my hand in front of my face before making a fist with it. "Yeah, I definitely need strength, I need more stats, more skills, and gear." I look back into the alleyway I dropped in and noticed that there still was no sign of anyone exiting any of the alleyway doors or even any signs of beggars and I could not hear anyone or anything besides the background noise of the city and hymns.

What part of the city was I in? I looked closer at the alleyway that I was in, specifically at the buildings. They were whitewashed two to three story rectangular buildings all going down a straight line with a curve at the end. There were no windows all along the way as far as I could see and the doors were metal with a small groove on the side. I walk up to the door and took a closer look, it should be a door handle.

I try opening the door but it did not even budge a bit, I could not even shake it. Were all the doors here like that? I try several more doors and even put my ears on some, but I couldn't hear anything. Soundproofing?

I remembered the dumpster I landed on and ran back towards the dumpster.

Ding! Skill Gained! All future notifications will be minimized to be reviewed at User's request!

Oh nice. A quick look showed me I gained the Sprint skill which would use up 3 MP/Sec but boost my speed by 10%. I reached the dumpster and immediately opened it up bracing myself for the expected stench of rot and trash. To my surprise however nothing came up and quickly looking down I saw nothing. The whole thing was empty and clean like it was never used before.

Was I in some kind of prop city? Like something a noble would make for fun with his money? Was there even a way out?

I started sprinting down the alleyway, running at full speed for 33 seconds before being forced to jog as I could no longer sprint as my mana bar had apparently depleted even though I exhibited no symptoms of fatigue.

As I walked I looked down at my hands, I didn't feel tired at all and I was not even sweating despite sprinting for half a minute in a hoodie. I really was a game character now wasn't I?

Did I need to eat? Drink? Poop? Pee? Hell do I even need to sleep anymore? Or were all those things just things I could do to satisfy the psychological habit of being a normal human?

I was going to have to test all those things out as I might not even be able to do any of those things if I wanted to if I could not buy or rob what I need.

I ran and ran and ran. I just kept running, then jogging then running again. I went left, I went right, I traveled in a loop, then through twists and turns again.

The alleyway was a mess, the directions made no sense. Who the hell made this kind of alleyway? Why were there no exits!

Ding!

At least I was gaining stat points and skill levels as I could hear them occasionally dinging in my mind. I could sprint increasingly longer after each one. In fact I even started trying to run silently which gave me the Light Foot skill which reduced my running noise and I had gained the sprint skill earlier during my run to the dumpster. Now I alternated between sprint boosted running and jogging my way down this twisted passage.

The sun was down now and the alleyway was dark. I could barely see anything and had to stop for a while, luckily there was light from the rising moons a few hours later that lit up the alleyway for me to continue moving.

At least I could now confirm, I had no human needs anymore. No fatigue, no hunger, no thirst, no need to relieve myself, no sense of mental tiredness from lack of sleep. Though that last one will have to wait till tomorrow night to be sure.

I kept running and jogging and running and jogging. Endless walls of white buildings passed by me as I got faster and faster, going longer and longer.

As the sun finally rose again I stopped.

Not because I was tired, no, but because I reached the end.

And I was pissed.

In front of me was a fucking white wall building like everything else! IT WAS A DAMN DEAD END!

I ran for what must have been at least 12 hours to get here and there was nothing!

"Damn it!" I yelled throwing a punch at the featureless wall of white, feeling a flash of pain before it disappeared and my HP bar dropping a point.

I just snapped as the rest of the night roared in my mind of the mindless endless walls and my situation coming back to me. Stuck in 40K universe, separated from my family, my mom, my dad, my little sister, my grandparents, everyone.

I snapped and roared as I just kept throwing punches at the white wall in front of me as I vented out all my frustration and fear into it.

Point after point dropped and more dings could be heard, but I ignored it all and just kept punching a red of haze in front of my eyes.

Finally I just suddenly felt tired and stopped. I slumped to my knees looking down at the ground before closing my eyes, tears falling lungs heaving with unneeded air.

Damn it why me. What shitty luck I must have to get something any nerd would want and still have it go so wrong.

As suddenly as my rage hit my current emotional status went 180 and I was calm again, my breathing evening out as I lifted my glasses and wiped my eyes,

I looked up at the wall and saw that I had left patches of blood all over its pristine white surface and looked at the corner of my vision where my HP bar was.

There flashing in red was the bar with the numbers 7/100 underneath it. I broke into a mad laugh.

I had almost literally killed myself on a wall. HahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHA!!

My mad laughter again suddenly cut off as the hysteria left me like a switch was flipped. So I guess the Gamer's Mind counted Hysteria as one of the effects it countered. Why didn't it snap me from my rage then?

Looking through the notifications list on the lower right corner of my vision I saw that I had gained a bunch of skills, one of which was Berserker. Well that explained it then, it did not remove self skill inflicted statuses.

I shakily get back onto my feet and look up at the wall around me. Guess I had to climb out of hear, but there was nothing to climb.

The walls were too smooth and the dumpster that lined the place occasionally were not tall enough to boost me as all the buildings were at least 2 stories.

I would either need to make something to grapple up the sides or jump. The first is out of the question as I lacked the materials and I was not destroying my clothes for rope. So guess I would have to as in the words of a certain time travelling samurai 'Jump Gud' and learn fast.

That last part made me stop however, why DID I have to leave fast? I mean this place was perfect for grinding wasn't it? Empty of people and from what I can tell surveillance, isolated, self contained, plenty of space, I did not need supplies. I could grind as much as I wanted here without fear of being discovered. Hell not a single aircraft was seen in the skies above this place when I was running the whole night.

How should I grind?

Remembering all the previous gamer fics I remembered before I got an idea. I just had to combine everything into one routine to train everything at once.

I had to jog for constitution points, sprint for sprint skill, jump for the skill to get out, twirl for dexterity hopefully, maybe do a few jump skill boosted flips, try to silently run, do math problems in my head for intelligence with increasing complexity and....what? I could not train luck or wisdom as I did not know how or lacked the materials for it, but what about strength?

I look through the notifications again and noticed that I had also gained a passive skill, Physical Resistance, Unarmed Fighting, and Pain Tolerance. That gave me an idea, a stupid one, but I was safe enough to do it here.

I would punch the walls to level up my strength, Physical Resistance, Unarmed Fighting, and Pain Tolerance till my HP was almost gone, then go jogging and sprinting till my HP was back up to full again then repeat it all over again.

If it wasn't for the fact that the pain very quickly disappeared, which did kind of make me wonder why a pain tolerance skill was even made, I would not even consider punching a wall multiple times let alone once. That was mad!

But well, I guess I was in a mad mad world now wasn't I?

I took one look back at the bloody dead end behind me and began grinding, sprinting and twirling down the damn long ass alleyway like a demented ballerina.

Hopefully the planet is not attacked or something while I am here, or worse someone actually sees me grinding.

Please?P

I finally stopped as I reached the end of the alleyway again for the fortieth time today making another mark on the bloody wall as the sunset. 21 marks. Three weeks, that was how long I had been training in this long ass alleyway. Three long weeks isolated from people alone with my thoughts and grinding. Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself doing a post exercise ritual of stretches even as they are not needed, letting the wind that occasionally flowed caress my naked body. I had inventoried my clothes and glasses after I started noticing my shoes becoming a bit worn out from the constant running, wanting to preserve my clothes for when I have to be in public with people, and that my glasses didn't actually do anything for me anymore. Plus running barefoot let me train my pain tolerance against the concrete ground. I take a look at the gains I made over the past 3 weeks of nigh constant training.

"Notifications summary" I said reading the screen that popped up summarizing the gains I had made since I started my training.

Notifications Summary

Levels Gained: 5

Stat Gains:

+25 Strength

+33 Constitution

+64 Dexterity

+76 Intelligence

+2 Wisdom

+1 Luck

Gained Skills:

Sprint Level 63

Berserk Level 1

Unarmed Combat Mastery Level 23

Pain Tolerance Level 21

Parkour Level 9

Physical Resistance Level 21

Jump Level 48

Light Foot Level 36

Acrobatics Level 43

Observe Level 6

Power Strike Level 1

Meditate Level 11

Rip Level 18

Craft Level 8

Willpower Level 16

Perks Gained

Deep Well - Gain double the increase to MP from each Intelligence point.

Cat's Grace - Always land on your feet, keep your balance easily, and reduce fall damage.

Suffice to say I had made quite a lot of progress towards both my skills and stats. The never ending running, jumping, flips, and sadomasochism against the closest wall rapidly leveled up my related skills and stats till they started slowing down past level 15. Then it was just a matter of quantity and perseverance to just keep pushing despite the boredom and common sense in my head telling me how stupid I was to hurt myself like this. That last part was what gave me the Willpower skill which let me focus on a task and not lose the Will to continue a action, perfect for long term isolated grinding. I did take the occasional break to try some new things like meditation which restored my mana, but honestly my Sprint skill's increasing mana efficiency combined with my rapidly increasing intelligence, from just doing successively massive amounts of ridiculously large brute force calculations which gave me more mana, made it inefficient time wise to grind.

I did get to practice some crafting and observation once my combat skills and strength started getting hard enough to break pieces off of the walls which I used to craft crude stone tools. I was not strong enough to rip the lids off the dumpsters yet to make some metal tools, but I was getting there. In fact I gained two new perks from reach the 50 threshold for my intelligence and dexterity stats. Other than that I few lucky moments where I managed to avoid going over the alleyway entrance ledge gave me a luck point and I apparently had a daily quest that gave me 500 experience points for doing enough exercise routines every morning. It was great as the increase in levels increased both my health and mana and restored them instantly when I leveled up, allowing me to increase my grinding efficiency. However, the list of skills should have been higher, I tried out various special moves like the Rokushiki from One Piece only to either get not notifications or a notification stating that my stats were not high enough to acquire certain skills. I even tried to use mana to create the classic mana bolt spell, but failed as I simply could not feel the mana that was suppose to be inside me according to my MP bar. I tried to feel the energy that was supposedly speeding me up during the Sprint skill, but I could not feel anything. The MC's of so many comics and fanfics lied to me, it was not easy at all!

I also tried to create a ID create and of course failed as I could not gather any energy in my hands and because I remembered something very important about Instant Dungeons. I remembered that the MC's green hair'd martial arts friend explaining about how to get in and out of ID spaces. One of the things he said was that Gaia would help them make the spaces. So even if I could gather energy in my hand to release it, would it even make a ID space since I was not on Earth and Gaia might not be real here or would I end up calling a warp entity instead? It never did make sense to me why creating a entire physical illusionary reality would cost no MP to make or any detailed knowledge or training. Just up goes your hand and there you go.

While meditating I debated whether or not to try to gain psyker powers since as a Gamer I should be safe from corruption since I had the Gamer's Mind skill. In the end however, I was just too afraid to walk down that path, I mean look at the strongest psykers in the galaxy like the Emperor and Magnus and all those weaker than them? One is crippled, another is a demon, and the others are either basically on Execution watch by Imperials or at constant risk of being possessed by demons who want to eat your soul. Hell no to that life even if it does seem to grant immense power if the wiki descriptions of beta and alpha level psykers are true. If I had a chance it would probably better for me to become a Blank somehow, or stick strictly to mana only powers as those are not warp based. That little session of thinking actually got me the two Wisdom stat points so I guess I was on the right track?

"Character Sheet" I said as my sheet appeared in front of me. showing me the fruits of my labor.

Character Sheet

NAME: [UNDECIDED]

OCCUPATION: THE GAMER

RACE: HUMAN

LEVEL: 6

NEXT LEVEL: 67.18%

HP: 680

HP REGEN: 9.52 HP PER MINUTE

MP: 1970

MP REGEN: 19.7 MP PER MINUTE

STRENGTH: 35

CONSTITUTION: 43

DEXTERITY: 74

INTELLIGENCE: 86

WISDOM: 12

LUCK: 11

STAT POINTS: 25

MONEY: 0

I felt a lot better now with almost 7 times more life than I started with and presumably my dexterity and Sprint combined with Acrobatic should let me dodge most things that weren't las guns...which just happened to be the most common weapon in the Imperium. Sigh. At least I could confidently say I could leave this alleyway at anytime now. My Jump skill passively increased my max jump height by 10% per level with a active boost of 100% per level so now my jump height passively was boosted by 480% while active would bring it to 4,800% which equated to 2.9 ft and 25 ft respectively which was amazing considering I could only jump at most 6 inches before from just standing. I could now reach the top of some of the smaller buildings now and pull myself over, I took a quick look before and all I saw were more of the same houses and alleyways, but no people. I was seriously confused as why was there the equivalent of an entire city's worth of infrastructure left unused yet still be clean with no sign of staff? If it was not for the fact that the end of the alleyway showed a thriving city with ships flying about, I would have thought I was on some xenos or dead world. Which did bring the question to mind of WHY was there no aircraft space or otherwise above this false city?

I lightly hopped on my feet seemingly floating on air as I silently moved from side to side rapidly as a nervous tick that I developed while training even while resting.

Breath in, Breath out. In. Out.

Feel the wind. Be calm.

Feel-wait, somethings wrong. The wind is different today. I was intimately familiar with the smell, strength, and frequency of the wind that flowed down this alleyway, what with being awake 24/7 and being able to remember a lot more due to having higher intelligence stats. The wind carried a stronger smell of something like gasoline, likely promethium, and was choppy like something was interfering with it. Was something flying in the alleyway?

Thinking of people actually being here made me pale as I had left obvious signs of my presence what with the numerous cracked walls and blood all over them up and down the alleyway. No doubt they were going to investigate this area and call for more people.

I had to run! No! Wait, I had to spy on them, maybe I could learn something from them. No! No that is dumb, if they can get here that means they have a flier that means they could just run me down if they chased me. The other path would be to kill them to prevent that, but that would only be required if they discovered me. I was not willing to kill another human being just to satisfy my curiosity, I was not some kind of monster or beast dammit!

Clutching my shaking fists I sighed and quickly put back on my clothes and proceeded to finally leave, before a thought came to me, how was I going to leave this city? From what I recall the sides of the city were a straight drop like a cliff, and I could not be sure the other end of this city of alleyways would be different. Gah! What should I do?

DING!

QUEST CREATED!

ESCAPE THE GLORY OF ALKAZERE!

A UNKNOWN HAS INTRUDED INTO YOUR TRAINING ALLEYWAY FOR UNKNOWN REASONS. DECIDE THEIR FATE!

GOAL: LEAVE OR DEAL WITH THE UNKNOWN

REWARD: LEAVE THE GLORY OF ALKAZERE, GAIN ACCESS TO THE WIDER WORLD, 1000 EXP, HIDDEN REWARD

PENALTY: STILL IN THE CITY, DISCOVERED BY LOCALS, BE A CRIMINAL, DEATH

ACCEPT OR DENY

Well, guess that answers my question. What the hell was a Alkazere though?

I click the Accept button and prepared myself. Breath in and out. I was ready. First I needed the high ground. I activated the Jump skill and using a nearby dumpster leaped onto the top of the closest second story building and then leaping on top of the next door third story building. Another thing I noticed as I ascended was that none of the buildings here had windows, only metal doors. Were they in fact storehouses? Using Observe on them never revealed what was inside so I was left in the dark. Ignoring that train of thought I proceeded to Sprint and Jump my way silently across the rooftops towards the edge of the alleyway. The time required reduced massively as I moved in a straight line instead of following all the twists and turns of the alleyway.

In less than an hour I was within sight of the edge of the city and I could hear something. A kind of thrumming sound like that of a propeller spinning at high speeds, but I did not see any fliers. Laying down on top of a roof I looked carefully over the side and waited. I saw what it was in less minute it was a large propeller powered hovercraft with balloon like cushions on the side like one of those Earth water hovercrafts, big enough to carry four people. There were all wearing the same kind of uniform, gaudy bright blue and gold with a lot of tassels and I could see that they were armed with a pistol and a saber. A nobleman's house guard perhaps? The vehicle was large, almost like a tank with a symbol on the front a sword crossing a gear. Mechanicus aligned perhaps?

As the vehicle passed by me I noticed something, the back of the hovercraft was wide, hidden by the fan on the back, and the air cushions made a good place to perch on, I could possibly hang and hide in the back there when they left. I just had to make sure I was not detected by these people as they got back to wherever they were coming from so I could leave the craft at somewhere along the way back. Maybe I could land on a roof of another of the buildings on the city?

Well it was either this, run away, or knock out/kill the guys, which would end up pretty badly for them as I would most likely have to destroy any communication devices they had, but even then I don't know how to pilot that thing. So guess hitchhiking it is then.

DING! STEALTH SKILL GAINED! EAVESDROPPING SKILL GAINED!

Oh, nice. I focus my ears on trying to hear the people on the hovecraft even I followed behind them stealthily. a few buildings behind, making sure to follow them just out of sight using the buildings for cover. Eventually they stopped at the end of the alleyway and get out. I laid flat on my stomach and watched them from afar yet still within hearing range. They were visibly distressed and afraid, though none seemed to say anything, bravado and position jockeying perhaps? They started speaking to each other in a language I could not recognize and examined all the dried blood prints and smashed cracked walls, luckily I did not leave hand prints when I smashed those walls, just blotches of blood.

I could hear increasingly frantic and fearful whispering with the most fanciful among them barking a order at them most likely to shut up and ordered the one who piloted to most likely leave. The vehicle slowly rotated around after the three got back in and I slowly circled around to the back of the hovercraft and silently dropped down behind the noisy vehicle and carefully climbed slowly onto the rotating vehicle careful to not suddenly disturb the vehicle by placing my weight too quickly on one side and pulled myself completely behind the fan section, and proceeded to grip hard. So here I was now grabbing the sides of a hover crafts fan frame, sitting on a cushion, and waiting for the vehicle to finally take off. Which it did with haste as the floor underneath me rushed past my feet which was only a half feet off the ground. I tried not to grunt as the hovercraft made the twists and turns to exit the alleyway and had to contain as fearful gasp as I saw the floor disappear beneath me and the city far below stretching forever.

The hovercraft tilted as it accelerated downward, causing myself to force myself down lest I float upwards and be revealed to anyone looking at the back of the hovercraft compared to having to look closely. Gripping the cushion as best I could with one leg I swung the other so I could maneuver myself so that I could look under the cushion so I could see how high we were as we moved. We were still pretty high up but I could see us heading towards a pair of high towers that were close together and would pass just above them. I practiced a bit and my high dexterity stat and Acrobatics skill would actually let me jump in between walls like those old Megaman games, so I guess this would be a good a place as any to drop off. Plus I could see heavy foot traffic at the bottom of the towers so I should be able to avoid most detection and hide in the crowd upon landing.

I rapidly did some calculations based on the height of those towers and my own abilities and calculated the optimum landing site that should let me avoid the attention of any looking around or looking out the window. Plan formulated I waited for the hovercraft to enter the optimum position, a couple minute passes and I let go, dropping down, leg still hooked to the cushion and rotated. Upside down now before I fully leave the hover craft I give a light kick off the bottom of the air cushion, just enough to give me enough horizontal velocity to make it to the side of the nearest tower.

Seconds passed as the air rushed past my face, Gamer's Mind keeping my terror in check, right as I am about to hit the side of the building I tuck and roll with the building before contorting my leg to allow for me to kick off the side towards the other tower. Soon I was kicking my way down from tower to tower going faster and faster till I was a blur to most people, unnoticed or dismissed as a figment of their imagination.

With one last kick I land in what looked like ANOTHER alleyway except this one much more dirty! I quickly thought and readied my body and it was ready! Just as I was about to hit the ground I kicked off the ground at a angle to deflect the velocity into rotational energy, leaving me spinning rapidly in the air like a top before I twisted again to land on my feet, sweeping my hands and feet around int a circle to absorb and direct the leftover kinetic energy into punches that I sent into the air, causing small air distortions to form for a split second and leaving my whole body sore but clean. Ow. At least it only lasted a bit till Gamer's Body removed the pain.

I stretched my legs and rotated my arms around to make sure everything was fine, which they were due to the skill, but force of habit and all that.

DING!

QUEST COMPLETED!

MAP FUNCTION UNLOCKED!

1000 EXP GAINED!

HIDDEN REWARD ACQUIRED!

GACHA SYSTEM UNLOCKED!

YOU MAY NOW GAIN GACHA TICKETS IN PLACE OF QUEST REWARDS!

HIGHER DIFFICULTY QUESTS WILL OFFER HIGHER TIER GACHA TICKETS!

WARNING! ONCE A GACHA TICKET REWARD HAS BEEN CHOSEN ALL OTHER REWARDS WILL BE LOCKED OUT!

'Sigh, great now I even had a gacha system mechanic too' I thought closing the screen mentally while brushing the dust off my sleeves and tucking at my clothes to make sure they look presentable I proceeded to walk towards the moving crowds at one of the end of the alleyway.

Time to actually begin living in this mad galaxy.

AN: Man figuring out Gamer skill and stat gains suck. Anyways EARLY CHAPTER UPDATE! REJOICE!

As I walked and seamlessly integrated with the stream of Humanity I was bombarded with a stream of information. After being completely alone for 3 weeks I seem to have somehow forgotten just how loud, active, and smelly the environment could be. The footsteps and conversations of thousands washed over me, signs of all kinds advertised their wares to people that seem to have come from all over the place. I could see a man wearing a turban talking to a man looking like a actual medieval knight, while across the street was a dour faced bucket head wearing arbites with a hand on a shock maul watching the crowd stoically. The people all around me were wearing clothing in a vast variety of style, color, and extravagance in some cases which made me inadvertently think of the pink god with a shiver. There were also a bunch of people with cybernetics, and given that I came from modern day Earth I wasn't ashamed to admit I may have stared at them in both fascination and disgust, carefully hidden of course, when I first saw them. To actually have technology implanted into your body with surgery sent shivers down my spine. A lot of them were either wearing red, most likely Adeptus Mechanicus affiliated, or were dressed like fancy nobles with guards in tow, well dressed like nobles in comparison to the rest of the crowd who kept out of their way anyways.

I was certainly in some form of market district, likely one that caters to off world travelers considering the vast contrasting styles of the people in the area. This was great as it made me stand out less, even better was the fact that my eavesdropping skill was earning its keep as it rapidly leveled up as I walked by dozens of stores with people haggling in a variety of languages. This was a nigh ideal place for me to grind a lot of skills such as eavesdropping, stealth, observe, and learning various language skills.

DING!

Though the nigh constant dings from my system was a bit annoying. I gotta say though, no one really ever mentions just how weird it is to just suddenly KNOW things. Like for instance in between language levels I suddenly realized I could curse in 3 different languages in like 12 different ways when I had no idea the second before. It was a bit jarring but I found it helped to just ignore it and just not focus on it at all and let is kind of work like muscle memory after trying out a few innocent phrases like 'I wonder where' or 'Hmmm, that looks useful.'

I just kept walking through the district which was huge. I walked for a good 4 hours and have to reach the end of this market. I did seem to notice that the place is subtly curving though, was this market spanning and entire outer ring of the hive city? Looking up at marveling at the hive spire that went past the clouds I suppose it could very well be. Though it being a long walk was another good thing for me as that meant that anyone I did pass by will no doubt have forgotten me by the time I walk all the way around again preventing any suspicions about a frequently seen man walking by their store buying nothing.

Needless to say with the vast variety available to me, my Observe skill rapidly leveled up to the point that I could get some useful information from it. I looked at random worker #421 and mentally thought/activated 'OBSERVE'

NAME: TOC TIC

OCCUPATION:

GENDER: MALE

JOB: LABORER

TITLE: NONE

LEVEL: 25

NEXT LEVEL: 23.02%

AGE: 25

RACE: HUMAN

ATTRIBUTE: NONE

STRENGTH: 17

CONSTITUTION: 15

DEXTERITY: 10

INTELLIGENCE: 7

WISDOM: 7

LUCK: 3

STATUS: EXHAUSTED

EMOTION: JADED, LISTLESS

BACKGROUND: TOC WAS BORN IN THE HIVE CITY OF GOLGOTHA PRIME TO A PAIR OF LOVING PARENTS. TRAGICALLY HE LOST HIS PARENTS TO A ARBITES RAID WHEN THEIR BULLETS PENETRATED THE WALLS AND KILLED HIS PARENTS AS COLLATERAL DAMAGE. HE HAS GROWN UP ALONE AND MAKES A LIVING WORKING AS A MANUAL LABORER TO ANYONE WILLING TO HIRE A PAIR OF HANDS. HE WORKS LONG SHIFTS DOING WORK OTHERS WILL NOT IN ORDER TO MAKE ENOUGH TO SURVIVE THE WEEK AS HE MOVES FROM DISTRICT TO DISTRICT TO AVOID BOTH GANGS AND ARBITES LOOKING FOR WEAK MEAT. NOW HE CURRENTLY WORKS AS A MOVER, LOADING AND UNLOADING GOODS TRANSPORTED TO HIS BOSS' STORE. CURRENTLY ON BREAK.

So far from what I can tell the base stats for normal full grown humans range from 10-20, with those born gifted or trained having stats in the range of 20-30, while those who are both gifted and trained having stats ranging from 30-40. That is of course not taking into account augments and equipment or any other special circumstances which could raise or decrease stats. Like with the guy I examined he most likely didn't have a chance to be educated or have a choice on what he could do or figure a way out of his situation which explained his low intelligence and wisdom stat while his whole life could be summed up by that luck stat. Lastly, their levels seem to correlate with their age, on average people will have a level equal to their age with the people worse off having lower levels while those healthy and strong being of higher levels even if their stats didn't truly accurately reflect what they could do. All of this followed a chain of logic that made sense to me as only I was under the Gamer system where my physics was overwritten to follow video game logic. This meant while I could use the information from observe as a general indicator of the capabilities and threats of other people, I couldn't treat it as gospel, as Humans are always full of surprises.

I kept on walking, making sure to always stay moving with the largest stream of people away from buildings or transport systems. Listening, walking, OBSERVING. As I walked I occasionally took a few breaks hanging out on the wall whenever I saw a shop with something interesting. I cast observe on all of their goods which ranged from anything from food to vehicles, giving me a good standard on which to compare other things down the line to make sure I wasn't being ripped off when I finally had money to buy stuff. Also, some shops had security systems which let me know just what exactly I had to watch out for in terms of surveillance. The cameras reminded me of CCTVs and some even had skulls with red lights in their sockets watching the customers, creepy.

Taking another break on a empty stretch of wall I decided to enter the HELP Menu to see what else I could do with the Gamer System.

'HELP MENU' I thought to myself

I entered the HELP MENU, which gave me access to a list of commands I could use to access the additional functions.

Character Sheet

Inventory

Skills

Relationships

Map

Party

Options

Gacha

I was quite happy to see that the Party function was included as that meant I could possibly train up a squad of space marine level companions if I ever found any that I could actually trust.....which meant that I probably was never going to use that function considering Chaos, psykers, and the Inquisition being a thing. Fuck.

Meanwhile, the map function was much more currently useful as it recorded everything with a 30m radius of me leaving a clear indication of where I had been and what I had passed as it also recorded the name of the stores I passed next to easily identifiable icons. It even had a toggle-able icon legend letting me pick and choose what I could see with a search bar at the top in case I was looking for somewhere specific.

Other than that the Option menu only had a few things in it, mainly sound, notifications, and surprisingly enough Hotkey controls. Seems I could create a custom hotkey, either a gesture, command, or a combination of both to use a skill or spell or even a chain of them. That would be very useful once I had more skills or spells to use as it meant I could rapid fire things one after another without thinking. I could probably do all of Overlord's buffing scene in less than a second. If I went down the wizard route anyway, gotta make sure that doesn't open me up to the Warp.

The sound option funny enough was to control the level of background music and whether or not I had subtitles. Both of them were set to default off and I didn't bother to change them as they would just be a distraction. The background music option had a list of recorded background music from areas I passed through, so at least I would have some sort of entertainment if I ever had to take a long trip or do a stakeout.

The notification option though that had more than just setting how the notifications would act both in and out of combat, it also included how I would control the other functions, mainly if they would be thought, voice, or touch based. I immediately set them all to be thought controlled as I couldn't ever guarantee I would be able to be speak or move should I ever needed to use my system.

I quickly checked through the other functions to see the changes to my stats, skills, and empty Gacha ticket indicator, ignoring the question marked relationships as I lacked the information to figure them out besides just keeping an eye out, before pushing off the wall and continuing my walk in the ocean of Humanity.

For hours I casually walked, witnessing everything from slaves to nobles or noble servants moving around purchasing goods and moving items. I eventually got a notification that I maxed out in LOW GOTHIC, and several other planetary languages. That was going to be very helpful in the future no doubt about that. I also kept an eye out for more alleyways especially those near guards as those should have less criminal elements inhabiting them hopefully.

During my long ass walk I came up with a plan. I needed to acquire some gear, which meant I needed to either make some money or make it myself. My crafting skill was pitiful right now as I lacked sufficient quality materials to make items to level it up quickly. However, my inventory held the solution. It had a recycling function.

I could recycle items in my inventory into raw resources and base components to be used to craft other things though at a last of like 33% if I judged the mass of rocks I recycled from my failed stone daggers right.

The one thing you can count on from a city is that it will generate huge amounts of wastes. All of those wastes could be collected and recycled easily by me. I just had to find out where all those wastes were going and intercept them before they end up in the Underhive where the scavengers and gangers would fight over them. The only reason no one at this level would actually scavenge from here is the guards, and they are not prepared to watch out for someone of my skill level. After all if someone is on this level already they do not need to scavenge for some scrap. It's like expecting a guard watching out for gangers to try to detect a space marine scout infiltrator. Just way out of expectation.

That meant I could circumvent the security forces nearby and access the guarded alleyways and collect the trash. I had already marked several alleyways connected to shops that would most likely have to throw out some inventory or other things and marked alleyways near them that weren't guarded or had guards that needed to patrol multiple areas, leaving it temporarily unguarded.

I resolved to do that after doing the same to every area on my walk, until I either made a full circle, or I reach the point where I could go no further.

That came up a lot sooner than I expected as a couple hours later I looked up a large gothic structure that reminded me distinctly of a train station. Looking inside that looked exactly what it was and more. I could hear various transports leaving and see people entering and exiting large and small elevators. So this was most likely a transport hub to other districts and down the various lower levels.

Turning around I began walking back to the alleyways I marked, in a few more hours it would be around for me about 3-4 AM so most people should be either tired or unobservant from long shifts and there would be less lighting present in the alleyways, though there was not much to begin with anyways.

Reaching the closest unguarded alleyway I entered silently and scanned for any signs of surveillance equipment. The alleyway was dirty and smelly and devoid of people. Perfect. I leaned against the wall and looked back out at the slightly smaller mass of moving people. So many people even at this time of the night. Geez.

After making sure that no one was paying attention to me I looked around the alleyway to make sure there was no one inside and if there was nothing for me to collect. Nope nothing.

Looking up I see that I would need to make 3-4 jumps off the walls to reach the top, I begin heading deeper into the alleyways so no wandering eye would catch my blatantly inhuman feat and raise a fuss.

I soon reached a T junction and looking down the side alleys they also revealed to be absolutely devoid of people and cameras, perfect.

I bent down and JUMP at the wall across from me, then proceeded to kick off the wall to propel myself further upwards and kicked off again and again before landing on the roof of the building. Silently crouching low, listening, in case there was anyone on the roof or someone spotted me below and raised a alarm. A few moments passed before I relaxed and proceeded to scan the rooftops of the other buildings nearby, seeing nothing except various rooftop cooling equipment and towers.

Seeing the coast was clear I began running and roof jumping towards my target alley, easily clearing the space in between buildings like a bird. I quickly reached the marked alleyway and poked my head over the edge of the roof to scan the alleyway. It was a lot cleaner that the one I entered from and the guard at the other end was facing outwards. The other end of the alleyway was devoid of people as well. Even better was that there was a dumpster and from the looks of the partly opened lid, it was full.

Ugh, damn, now for the hard part, actually grabbing and touching the filthy, smelly ass trash. Taking one quick look again at the guard I proceeded to drop over the edge, landing on my feet silently next to the dumpster. I crouched down behind it and opened up my inventory, making sure that it was parallel to the floor so I could easily just drop items in and behind the dumpster so the light from putting in items would not alert the guard. I also stored away my jacket and shirt to keep them clean. I then held my breath (wait do I even need to breath anymore?) and silently lifted the lid hoping that the damn thing was not rusty and squeaky.

Luckily it was not.

DING!

Not now system!

Looking inside I could see a bunch of bags with bugs crawling over them. Steeling myself I quickly grabbed the bags and dumped them into my inventory as fast as possible, ignoring the disgust building up within me. I quickly cleared out most of the trash leaving the ones without bags and looked like they were not worth recycling enough to be touched and leapt towards the roof again.

I proceeded to repeat this twenty more times before calling it a night as the sun began to rise and hid inside a cluster of rooftop equipment which had surprisingly a lot of space.

I looked down in disgust at my arms as they were filthy and I had no real way to clean them. I rubbed them against the roof of the building to scrape as much of the filth as I could but even then it left a of stains on me. *Shudder*

Time to see if the fruits of my labor, opening up the inventory I began using the system to open up the bags of trash which instantly got sorted and added by the inventory system without needing me to take them out and put it back in manually. Nice.

Soon enough I had few pages full of damaged or destroyed materials and began sorting things out between recycle or keep as some items were worth keeping if I could repair them. I found a lamp, a case of a half dozen crumpled field rations, a few chits which were recognized as the system as valid local currency, a couple las packs, a chipped knife, what looked like a intact lasgun except it was actually just a toy model, a actual functioning if slightly scuffed las pistol, seemed like it was accidentally discarded given that it still had a half charged pack, and a few serviceable local style shirts and pants. The best things however were five dataslates that were still functional despite some damage to their casing and screens, even better was the notification that popped up when I touched the last one.

DING! DATASLATE FOR THE SKILL TECH USE (IMPERIAL) DETECTED! WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN THIS SKILL? YES/NO

Jackpot!

AN: Summary of skill/item gains will be provided next chapter. Enjoy people! Likes and Feedbacks Please!P

As the last of the trash is recycled and I finish going through my training regiemen for the daily quest exp I take a look at my gains.

"Notifications summary" I thought, reading the screen that popped up summarizing the gains I had gained since I left that fake city thing, I found it to be quiet decent for about 12 hours worth of grinding. Eavesdropping and Stealth skills really got advanced from being in a large crowd,

Gained Stats

+2 Wisdom

+1 Luck

Gained Skills

Craft Level 1

Eavesdrop Level 20

Language: High Gothic Level 1

Language: Low Gothic Level Max (All future local planetary dialects shall be included for ease of writing)

Light Foot Level 3

Observe Level 15

Repair Level 1

Salvage Level 3

Stealth Level 20

Tech Use (Imperial) Level 1

Gained Items

Damaged electrical lantern

6 field rations

model lasgun

laspistol

3 las charge packs

Chipped knife

4 Dataslates

Two sets of damaged Golgothan style outfits

7 Credits

6 units of rare earth metals

78 units of common metals

52 units of plastics

37 units of cloth

Seems like salvaging items gave me both Crafting and Repairing skill exp so that just gave me even more reason to go dumpster diving.

I look at the language skills I gained, particularly the maxed out Low Gothic skill before taking a look at the dataslates. I wonder if there was anything useful in there? Like if the basic info on this planet or events going on, or even what time it was. Depending on where and when exactly I ended up, things could either turn out ok or I should start blowing my brains out with the laspistol right now.

Taking a breath, wait, I took a breath, I really should see if I need to breath and this is a good as time as any. Taking a deep breath I take out the four dataslates and proceeded to....turn them on. I am ashamed to say that even with the Tech Use skill it took me more than a couple minutes to figure out how to turn them on. Stupid backwards advanced future tech.

Then I had to spend a couple more minutes on figuring out how to actually navigate the damn things. You would think the future equivalent of a digital book reader would be simple to use, but nope, it's actually a bit more complicated then I expected.

At least the date was easy to find as it was clearly labeled on the top right corner of the local equivalent of a digital newspaper. That's right seemed the 4 dataslates I acquired were just newspapers. Seems I was in M41 941 which did not really help me much considering I never really did take the time to remember the years of specific events. So this gave me no real clue what was going to happen in the near future except for the fact that I would be facing Tyranids at some point and that Cadia would fall with Guilliman reviving.

However, the thing that really got my attention was the headline on the latest newspaper edition. In bold text were the words

'MASSIVE BOUNTY OF 10 MILLION THRONES PLACED ON ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THE DEFILER OF HIS ROYAL GOVERNOR'S 'THE GLORY OF ALKAZERE!''

Reading through the article I felt a headache starting to form. It seems that the empty 'city' I was in was not a city at all, but was instead a giant fucking vanity project the governor built that was meant to be seen from space. The whole damn city would form a image of the governor in a suitably heroic pose that was highly detailed when looked at from orbit by all those arriving. It seemed that a anonymous report of a weird noise was reported coming from the art installation and a team of the governor's own guard went to search, and found a trail of destruction and blood all across one of the many 'lines' that made up the piece of art.

The governor was understandably furious at what he perceived to be an attack on himself and ordered for a massive manhunt for the rebel heretic that dare destroy his beautiful artwork and use it for a no doubt heretical ritual with all that blood so the local Ecclesiarchy was also up in arms and going on a witch hunt. Joy. Even worse was that things like this attracted any nearby Inquisitors of the Ordos Malleus and Hereticus who most likely have psykers in tow to assist them. I really do not want to try to tangle with them or seeing how my Gamer System would interact with their powers as the interaction might mean it would be easier to track me or not. Better not to take the chance, plus I still don't know if my System is stronger than the Warp and the beings within and I really did not want to take the chance with that particular test.

So that means I needed a place to hide and a background that would not draw attention. No way was I going to hide in the underhive, because while there was no doubt it would be very easy to hide in there, it would also have a very high chance of me fighting gangers, mutants, and worse in there as a fact of life. Fights that could potentially attract attention if I keep winning, and no way was I going to just keep running and let myself get hunted by even more people. So that meant staying here in the middle hive cause the upper hive would no doubt be covered in surveillance and guards normally, not to mention now of all times.

I needed a place out of sight and out of mind that no one would really look. I mean I look young and normal so I had that advantage going for me. I just needed a position of utter normality something to distance me from the idea of a alleyway breaker and bleeder. Something so pathetic and worthless that there was no possible way it could be me. I looked through the areas recorded on my map at the various shops I had passed before stopping on one. It was a restaurant, restaurants were pretty common from what I could see, and every restaurant needed dishwashers. There was easily over a dozen restaurants and surely one of them would be willing to hire a kid willing to work for cheap. The job would also have the benefit of keeping me out of sight in the back and let me build up social skills with my fellow coworkers, multiple birds, one stone.

First however, I needed to get clean. I looked down at myself and curled up my nose at the filth. I haven't showered in weeks, only the fact that I did not really seem to sweat anymore kept me from smelling worse than I was now. So first get clean, then go job hunting. Looking at the map again I marked the closest restroom icon and proceeded to sneak my way off the building, through the crowd, and into the restroom with all the speed and stealth I could muster.

Looking around inside I did not really see anyone, and it did not really look any different than a regular restroom you would find on Earth, though it lacked mirrors, proper lighting, looked a little dirty, and the materials were different but the basics were still the same.

Heading over to the sink I turned on the tap and inspected the water for anything strange before finding nothing and proceeding to first clean my arms of the dumpster gunk. As I was washing my hand I had a idea, could I store water in my inventory without a container? Opening up the inventory screen I placed it in a sink next to me and turned on the tap, watching as the water did disappear into the screen without issue, yes! Now I had a large supply of water if I ever needed it even if I did not actually get thirsty anymore. At least I could now shower or bath anywhere I wanted. As I watched the water from the sink flow into the inventory screen I suddenly had an idea. Could I enlarge the screen?

Looking around the restroom and finding no one, I keep one ear on the entrance and proceed to grip the edge of the inventory screen and pull it while willing the rest of the box to stay still.

My eyes widen in happiness as I see the screen stretch across the rest of the sinks and I proceeded to turn on the rest of the sinks. smiling as all of them dumped their water into my inventory. Yes! This opened up new possibilities for me as it meant that I could also store items larger than I thought was possible.

'I'm going to need to test this out later' I thought to myself as I turned off the sinks and closed my inventory and proceeded to leave the restroom, entering the dark alleyways again. I proceeded to experiment a little more and made myself a makeshift shower by crafting a bathtub out of some plastic and filling it up repeatedly with water. The crafting system was strange. I did not need the recipe to make certain items as it seemed to unlock once my skill is high enough, but items that were at or under my skill level that I discovered were not included in my unlocked recipe list. So to clarify my Craft skill unlocked more recipes as it leveled up, but there are also other recipes not included that I either have to find or make myself before it is recorded. Also, the really strange part of the crafting system is that when I click on the craft button to make the recipe it takes no time, it literally takes less than a second for my hands to blur into motion and the item to appear. I remembered the actions I took, but they make no sense, like the fact that I smashed a bunch of plastics together which proceeded to melt and meld together into a solid piece and my hands then proceeded to instantly shape them into a proper bathtub of uniform thickness.

It was a a bit frightening as I basically had no control for that split second, but amazing as well since it meant I could very quickly make whatever I needed as long as I had enough resources in my inventory, though looking through the recipes showed that some of them did have prerequisites such as tools or equipment which made sense.

Noting down those discoveries for later I went ahead and gave myself a really violent bath as I basically scrubbed off the entire top layer of my skin, making use of my Gamer's Body to basically regenerate a clean new layer of skin. Next was fixing up the clothes I found in the trash as the crafting system had a repair option, some mental math revealed that repairing them would cost more in materials than just simply making a new one due to their heavy damage, but I did not have the recipe for the current outfits. I was going to need to need to find some way to gain the recipes of items I had like some sort of reverse engineer option. Man, the possibilities of that if I could gain recipes for power armor and power weapons. *Drools*

Wiping the drool away I take a quick look at myself in my repaired clothes and thought I looked good enough.

Time to job hunt.

Surprisingly enough, it actually didn't take me that long to find a job. I ended up as a dishwasher for a pretty busy restaurant called the Little Golgotha for a particularly successful fat man by the name of Josef Titon, seems that his cleaning servitor broke down so he needed a new hire to take its place. The pay wasn't that good and I had to pull double duty as a janitor and dishwasher, which made me gag in private later on behalf of the people eating, luckily I would keep clean for them. At least I had a Cleaning skill now to make things bearable as it let me finish my work a lot faster, giving me some free time. 12 hour work shift, but that was only from dawn to dusk, so good for me as that kept me out of the day time traffic and searchers, leaving me the night to roam and prowl about to do what I want. Another plus side at least is that I can chat with my fellow dishwashers and waiters that come and go as they appreciate someone willing to lighten their load and keep it a secret.

The biggest benefit of this? I had an alibi for my existence in the middle hive as a worker for the restaurant and could claim to be an orphan from a now defunct orphanage that went under a few years ago that I obtained the information on from a particularly chatty old man who could not stop talking. I also now had a source of income with no expenses. No food, water, or even rent. After using my first payday to purchase a bunch of really cheap slightly damaged blank data-slates I immediately headed towards the local equivalent of a library that was open 24 hours for some reason and sat down at a cogitator. My time in the restaurant was paying dividends as interacting with various electronics in the kitchen gave me several more levels of Tech Use (Imperial) which let me actually figure out how to use the cogitators. It was both familiar and strange as the clunky brown box was both extremely advanced yet archaic at the same time and smelled heavily of incense and oil. I could even see some non augmented or slightly augmented people in red robes wandering around.

I accessed the world's version of the internet and proceeded to spend the rest of the time searching and saving various how to equivalent videos and instruction manuals for a wide variety of subjects. I made sure to set them up for experiments to see how the Gamer System interacted with various states of data-slates.

1. One data-slate filled with the theory on how to cook

2. One data-slate filled with how to videos for woodworking

3. One data-slate filled with written instructions on how to mine

4. Four data-slates with a combination of 1 & 2, 2 & 3, 1 & 3, and all of the above for different skills each

All of the other data-slates were filled with both 2 and 3 as the data could be easily transmitted from pad to slate to slate so it was not that big of a deal to move them around once I finished testing the 7 test slates to see what would be the best use of them.

Walking out of library I get out of sight of the tech adepts and find a trashcan with a lid on it, open a inventory inside of the can then drop the stack of data-slates into the can and close the lid before the light could be seen then closed the inventory before leaving for my rooftop home.

As I made sure I am properly hidden by the machines once more I take out the data-slates and begin absorbing the test slates one by one and recording their effects.

1. No prompt to learn skill as expected.

2. Gained skill at level 1, multiple levels gained if more videos are absorbed either all in one slate or multiple, but only of the content is different than what I had absorbed before.

3. Same as 2

4.1 Same amount of level gain as 2 and 3 theory seems to add nothing

4.2 Same amount of level gain as if adding 2 and 3

4.3 Same as 4.1

4.4 Same as 4.2

So in essence theory is worthless to me, and gains from both video and literature are essentially the same as long as the content is new to me. Another thing is that while data-slates with more advanced techniques require me to have a prerequisite in skill level before I can learn it, if I have sufficient lower level content along with it it will allow me to learn it, as the lower level content will level my perquisite skill to either at or higher than the minimum requirements. Also, as long as there is new content in the data-slate then even if there is mostly old one then the whole slate will be consumed, so that means I could just download everything into one slate and absorb it all together instead of absorbing multiple data-slates with me having to only remove any advanced skills I have yet to reach the skill level for or have insufficient skill materials to feed the perquisite skills.

Feeling very happy about the results of my research I quickly transfer everything into a single data-slate and begin removing everything that kept me from just outright eating it, placing them into their own individual data-slates for later. Once all of those were removed I clicked accept and winced a bit at the sheer amount of knowledge that now crowded my head. Ok, maybe there is a good reason not to put everything into one sitting. Ouch.

I massaged my head and for once in over 3 weeks I decided to take a nap hoping my migraine would be gone by the time I woke up. Hopefully, that sleeping in bed removing status effect thing was still a actual thing here.

I crafted a crude bed using cloth and plastic and laid down, closing my eyes and letting myself drift off to sleep.

DING!

My eyes snapped open at a screen that popped up in front of me

YOU HAVE AWOKEN RESTED! HP AND MP ARE RESTORED BY 100% STATUS EFFECTS ARE REMOVED!

Oh hey it worked, and I wasn't attacked last night, even better! I take a look at my System's clock and found that I still an hour before it was time for me to go to work so I started planning. What I needed to do is lay low and get stronger. I could rapidly gain strength without having to train by just simply eating more skill books or skill data-slates to be exact. I however could not just simply download everything from the internet in one sitting nor could I download the stuff that I want for like things like combat without seeming suspicious. So that meant I needed patsies. People willing to do the work for me. My recycling efforts have netted me some rare metals which would be trade-able for a decent amount of credits that I could hire people with, plus I could craft stuff eventually to trade with.

However, first I needed to know who I could hire and if I could trust them, and then I needed a disguise.

So while working I spent one train of thought on my work and chatting away with my coworkers and another of my plan to enter the criminal side of the hive city. I would need to level up my Persuasion, Intimidation, and Observe skills as those would let me control others better and to prevent any backstabs. Plus it would let me actually locate those willing to do work for money on the side. If I really needed to, I could also work as a info broker and smuggler thanks to the Observe skill giving me more info as it levels up, and my inventory letting me sneak entire shipments around unseen. Speaking of which.

I turn to look at my bed, it was a simple 6' x 4', much bigger than the inventory screen, but as I now know I could enlarge and move the screen. So the question is could I just 'scoop' up the bed or does it only work for things I can carry or move?

I stretch out the inventory screen and proceed to move it along the ground to be the bed it just stopped at it, unable to move forward. I took hold of one side of the bed and easily lifted the whole thing off the ground and willed the inventory screen to move forward and watched as it swallowed up the bed.

Well that is good, I can move the inventory screen mentally, but I cannot enlarge it mentally, and it can accept anything as long as I can carry it. Wait what about taking it back out? I immediately close and open up the inventory again seeing that it returned to its default 1.5' x 1' sized box. I tried to take out the bed and it immediately stretched to 4' wide and the bed could come out, putting it back in kept the size the same. Guess there was just one more thing to test, something I didn't dare test before due to lack of materials.

Is the inventory screen visible to other people?

"Hello, can you take just a quick moment of your time?" A man heard a young voice calling out behind him, turning around he saw a young man with glasses and messy but clean hair holding a piece of paper.

"Look kid frak off, I ain't interested in whatever you are selling." He said gruffly, he just got off a long patrol shift and just wanted to get a drink and relax.

"Oh, I am not selling anything, I just wanted to ask you if you could read to me what it says here, my father was very excited last night when he saw it but he didn't tell me what it was before he left the house and now I am trying to find him. I'll even give you these credit chits, it's all that I have." The young man said holding out a fistful of chits. Damn is the kid a idiot, who can't read in the middle hive? Fine whatever, you could use some more drinking money.

The man takes the data-slate from the guy and looks down at the slate, finding it to be a cheap news-slate, it was just the headline about that vandal that messed up the governor's damn money sink and the reason why you had to do the long patrol shifts now. You felt irritated at being reminded of that and toss the slate back at the young man and grab the chits from his hand.

"It's just that stupid news article about the Governor's bounty on the idiot who messed up his property, your dad is probably out their being like all those other idiots trying to find the information to cash in for the bounty. Go home kid and stop wasting your time." He grunted out, with his last words being a bit sympathetic, the kid's dad was most likely going to end up dead when he tangled with the wrong sort of people also looking for that information for that cash. Putting that thought out of mind he stomped into the crowd leaving the kid behind, never seeing the smile that grew on his face like it was Emperor's Day.

I looked at the back of the man leaving with a smile on my face as I looked down at the data-slate in my hands, the data-slate with the inventory screen layered over it. I man had to touch through it to turn the screen on and he did not even notice it. This was glorious news as that opened up a lot more options for using my inventory in public.

Now I could properly plan now that I had knowledge of all my options and tools. First, I gotta get to work, and dashed through the crowd towards the restaurant, gotta keep up my alibi and grind my skills.

*Half A Year Later*

I quickly washed the dishes in the tray in front of me, now long used to the toil and instant cleanliness I could impart to the dishes and other such filth, when I suddenly heard my name called.

"Hey Noman! Go throw out the trash!" The voice of the restaurant owner Josef called out even as he berated the cooks who were preparing the main courses for a special RSVP event tonight.

I had been working here for 6 months now and the owner has gotten pretty used to having me around and didn't bother paying to fix the broken servitor I replaced as I did more work than it and for cheaper too.

While he was not a bad boss per say he really could have stood to pay me a little more and yell a little bit less. If only he knew who exactly he was yelling at. I had made a name for myself as a thief by the name of tri2. Someone that many in the underground wanted found due to the massive bounty placed on my head by the Adeptus Mechanicus for the theft of their data archives and by others for thefts of various miscellaneous items and books. Though to be fair other than the data archive theft the other thefts were not even done by me and more by the people I hired instead. No point in putting myself personally at risk after all when there were people greedy enough to do it for you. That wasn't to say I couldn't have done it myself, I did not slack off in my own personal training a single day the past 6 months.

The night after the discovery that my inventory screen was invisible I immediately took off to find the closest mass waste disposal site and snuck into the facility. The place was not really guarded other than some limited automated surveillance which which was never really designed to detect superhuman infiltrators. I mean what augmented person would even care about literal crap? I did.

I made full use of my strength and extendable inventory screen to quite literally scoop and lift entire chunks of the waste mountains composed of compressed trash blocks into my inventory. It actually took me significantly more time to sort and recycle it all than to collect the literal hundreds of metric tons of trash. While that very very rarely lead me to acquiring any repairable items, it did however net me metric tons of raw materials, both common and rare. I was not even talking about just rare earth metals but as in rare materials such as plasteel, diamantine, and even slivers of adamantium on rare occasion. In short, it allowed me to have a very sizable and stable source of income to support my more illegal activities.

I spent more than a month grinding away my social skills, gathering trash, training my Tech Use skill, increasing my intelligence, and most importantly of all creating and raising my Hacking skill. Now just why would I need hacking skills? One word. Blueprints.

Every manufactorum in this hive as well as all of their products were either made with a STC blueprint design or had their designs stored in the local Adeptus Mechanicus temple data archive with no hard copies except in the hand of the business owners which would be those in the upper spire. That meant if I wanted to gain access to useful blueprints for things like weapons and armors I would need to loot it from the archive as every Mechanicus temple was connected together on a wireless network. A fact that I brought from what I am pretty much sure was a heretek that was looking for additional funding for his own secret projects.

It took me another two weeks before I was actually ready to hack into the temple and even then it required outside assistance. The reason for the week was because I had to track down and hire the services of dozens of underground hackers, data miners, and hitmen. Now I wasn't go to kill anyone, I strive to make sure no one died in anything I did. I wasn't ready to become a murderer, despite the legality of my actions. I had a operation timed for the end of the week so that every single one of them would be, as they were paid in advance, operating in sync to distract the tech priests. First the hitmen would cause alarms to be raised at various manufactorums that require the presence of tech priests to appear to troubleshoot the problem before non lethally neutralizing them or just occupying them. Shortly afterwards the hackers and data miners would essentially hit several vital system with DDOS attacks and work not to successfully break in, but to divert as much resources towards stopping their intrusion. Meanwhile, I would be using a personally designed rig to subtly infiltrating the network using access codes and security procedures provided to me by the same heretek, with a promise to share all data gained with him which I agreed to.

Of course I made sure the rig was no where near the market district where I was based and that I had a escape route planned.

On the day the operation started it was a total nightmare for the hive city. Digitally at least, on the surface nothing was really happening, no alarms were going off, no fires, no explosions, no outpouring of guards or skitarri. It was a completely different in the digital realm. Viruses crashed against vaccine programs, brute force hacking juggernaut systems tunneled through firewalls only to be met with superior processing powers and programming of dedicated tech priest neural wafers. Infiltration attempts by dozens of throwaway rigs sending out billions of differently generated access attempts were denied and back tracked through various relays that quickly self destructed along with the rigs as they were compromised.

In the thick of it all my months of grinding my intelligence, money, and Hacking skill paid off. I was an equal to any normal mentally augmented tech priest with my intelligence and equipment, but with their own access codes and procedures I could easily predict and circumvent their logical security and bypass their defenses undetected given all the chaff I had prepared.

The plan all hinged on just how long the hackers and data miners could keep the tech priests occupied, which would not be long. Now to steal the entire data archive would most likely fail because of one simple fact, data transfer speeds. There was only so much data a single port could handle without giving anything away. So I did away with the secrecy once I reached the archive in digital space and unlocked its defenses. I sent an order for it to send parts of its data through every single output port to prepared temporary wireless networks and equipment crafted to handle vast instant data transmissions. Then, the networks would cut the connections to delay the trace and the data would proceed to be transferred in the same way again and again multiple times until they all reached a single hidden rig located within the edge of the underhive space, where a very special rig would forcefully eject its 2 custom made high capacity data-slate blocks. Said data blocks would then fall into a inventory screen opened right below it ahead of time a couple of days before the rig itself was built and delivered a week ago. Thus giving myself an alibi from even the flimsiest of time framing from the construction of the rig and my presence in that part of the hive using the elevator, especially with my short time there.

After that operation I laid low, like really low. No going out back to my previous roof home, no going out to raid dumpsters, no outside excursions at all. I immediately went to ground, and then below ground. I hid under the dumpster behind the restaurant where I literally ground away the ferrocrete from beneath the dumpster, with my bare hands to prevent any noise, to create hidden tunnel and a cave to hide in while I was not working. A good thing too as the Adeptus Mechanicus were PISSED, to say it lightly. For their holy relic to be actually broken into and raided, even if none of the data was actually lost, but still stolen, was a Heresy that could not be tolerated by any means. They must have pulled off a lot of favors as entire regiments of PDF, Imperial Guards, alongside skitarri and tech priests were doing pretty much door to door searches of every single damn area that had one of the rigs at the end of the relay network. My heart clenched at the news that several hundred people were either burned or taken away by the Ad Mech for further questioning as I was not sure if that was because they actually found something criminal about them or if the people were just going to suffer for no reason.

Even the market district was searched and that was on purpose with a middle relay network on a random rooftop as it would have been too suspicious for nothing to have been found in a single district. I spread the suspicion out everywhere to dilute the trail with the inventory trick at the end to cut the trail dead stop. I hoped that would have made them eventually stop searching after a month max, I underestimated the rage of the unfeeling machine cult.

Three months later and they were still searching the hive top to bottom like a Inquisitor seeing a cultists waving at him from a window.

That was not the worse part however, at the end of that third month a rumor was going around the underworld grape vine, with said rumor only even reaching me because the one giving the rumor to me had no idea I was tri2. Needless to say with the amount of heat I brought down upon the hive with the sheer size mechanical hornets nest kicked I was pretty much persona non grata with a majority of the criminal underbelly with only my own disguise and refusal to share any information or have a fixed location saving me from them just outright selling me out. That and the fact that they don't any suspicion of having any connection to me reaching the Mechanicus.

The rumor was there was a Inquisitor on the planet. A rumor I believed with all my heart and soul. Why?

A quest had popped up then.

DING!

QUEST CREATED!

AN INQUISITOR OF THE ORDO MALLEUS HAS ARRIVED ON PLANET! HE SEARCHES FOR BOTH A SUSPECTED CULTIST AND FOR THE THIEF BRAZEN ENOUGH TO STEAL FROM THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS. FOR WHAT REASON AN INQUISITOR WOULD SEARCH OUT A THIEF? WHO KNOWS, BUT IT IS PROBABLY NOT GOOD NEWS FOR YOU. HE WILL NOT GIVE UP UNTIL HIS QUARRIES ARE FOUND AND ASSISTING HIM ARE HIS PERSONAL RETINUE GATHERED AND TRAINED OVER DECADES OF LONG SERVICE. A TEAM THAT EVEN A ROGUE TRADER WOULD BE HARD PRESSED TO OBTAIN.

GOAL: ESCAPE OR DEFEAT THE INQUISITOR AND HIS RETINUE!

REWARD: FREEDOM, +10 LEVELS, OR RARE TIER GACHA TICKET

PENALTY: TORTURE, DEATH, ENSLAVEMENT, WORSE

ACCEPT/DENY

Something I noted back then about my Gamer System was that unlike the original Gamer System it was based off of, it does not grant quests for everything. Only for important things related to my survival. So no easy quests for just washing dishes, but a quest for killing the enemy in front of me or completing a mission/operation.

So I became even more careful making sure to either be in the restaurant at all times or underneath the main street when it was busy, and when it was not, well I put my Willpower skill to the test as I used every last inch of my focus to empty my mind to make it as mentally dead as possible to try to have nothing for a psyker to detect. If that was even how he or she would detect me, or if the Gamer's Mind would shield me from detection or if I even had a 'soul' or presence in the warp to even detect. For all I knew I was as psychically attractive as a rock, but I could not take that chance.

Two and a half weeks later and I was still here, doing my routine, hiding in plain site and mundanity, and the Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisitor were still searching the city. Worryingly so is the fact that the Inquisitor seemed to have tracked something I missed and was slowly investigating the districts that formed a straight line to the market district. He was on the scent somehow and I still had no idea how to escape without the Inquisitor finding out.

'Dammit, I didn't expect the situation to become this troublesome for so long' I thought to myself with a sigh as I grabbed the trash bags piled by the door to the back alleyway. I opened the doors and pretended to drag the bags out before closing the door and just dropping them into the dumpster.

Hearing a sound I look towards the entrance of the alleyway towards the main street and notice two large guys with clubs in their hands. Arbites. Why were they looking at me? I did nothing to raise suspicions did I?

I stayed still just watching them and they proceeded to walk towards me.

Should I stay still? Should I run into the restaurant?

No, that would bring attention to the restaurant and that might raise alarms with someone which could bring disaster to me and my workplace.

Besides I did nothing so there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe they are just here to shake me down for money? I could Act very well now and give them 'all that I have' routine and let them be on their merry way. Nothing to raise a fuss over.

So I kept still looking like a frightened rabbit as the men, and damn were they tall, towered over me.

"Hello-" Before I could even finish my greeting the feeling of the club smacking me in the face hard registered and my mind went into overdrive, bullet time kicking in with the adrenaline as I processed what just happened.

Millions of thoughts and plans went through my mind before a conclusion was reached.

'Play dead and listen' which I immediately did so letting my body go limp and hit the ground as if someone who was knocked out would, my head bouncing audibly from the hard ground.

The two men say nothing before one of them kicked me over hard. I remained limp and breathing shallowly.

"He's out, grab him." I feel large hands gripping me by the waist and tossed over the shoulder like a sack of potatoes and then carried away.

We were moving towards the main street, shit, I could not break free in public, why oh why didn't they just take me deeper into the alleyway to do whatever criminal act they were obviously planning to do?

The sound of the pedestrian traffic didn't even abate when we entered view and my Eavesdrop skill picked up some worrying things.

"Ah another one."

"Shit glad that wasn't me."

"Damn he's young"

"Isn't that the janitor?"

"Hope it's quick for him"

As I am tossed into what feels like a metal box filled with bodies, still pretending to be unconscious, I can hear them say a frightening thing. "Another one for the regiments to Armageddon."

I frightfully keep myself limp even as I wanted to break free from my captors and escape deeper into the hive to escape this fate.