Chapter Summaries

The Imperium annihilated Grozam’s invading fleet, captured him, and prompted Alien Empera to lead his forces toward the Sol System. The story then shifted to Nagase Taku and other Players entering the Twisted City horror instance, where Nagase witnessed the college student’s death while Imperial agent Lite searched for the Chaos God behind the game.

• The Imperium’s fleet destroyed most of Grozam’s forces, and Tyberos led Carcharodons warriors aboard Grozam’s ship and captured him.
• Alien Empera learned that Grozam had been captured and led his subordinates toward the Sol System to investigate humanity.
• Nagase Taku drew the Insight talent and entered Twisted City with nine other Players, memorizing the instance’s survival hints.
• Nagase Taku refused to join the muscular Player’s group, while the college student ignored a warning and was killed by a monstrous loli.
• Lite entered Twisted City undercover and searched for the Chaos God behind the rule-based horror instance.

Nagase Taku searched Twisted City for a safe place to spend the night, using his Insight talent and begging to survive its conflicting rules. Meanwhile, Lite tested a plan to find the power behind the city by capturing people and following their strings.

• Nagase Taku abandoned plans to squat in an empty house or take a job after encountering the dangerous rules of a residential complex and parking lot.
• Nagase Taku earned money by begging and approached Qiru Hotel, where the resurrected male student pressured him to stay together.
• Nagase Taku used the hotel complaint line to summon armed soldiers, who removed the red-uniformed receptionist; he then checked in with a black-uniformed attendant and found the rules had changed.
• Nagase Taku rode past a red, incorrect floor and reached a designated floor shrouded in oppressive darkness, while a red-uniformed staff member led the mutated female office worker into a hotel corridor.
• The fitness guy and the surviving Players concluded that rule violations could cause mutation, death and revival, or assimilation into different factions.
• Lite hung captured people in an unfinished building, intending to follow their puppet strings and find the one controlling them.

Lite captured and subdued anomalies in Twisted City to provoke its repair program and track the hidden mastermind. After defeating five projected beings at an abandoned construction site, he traced the city’s repairs to a hotel and headed there.

• Lite used Imperium surveillance to monitor Twisted City and captured anomalies, while the trapped creatures watched him beat a muscular anomaly into submission.
• Lite waited at an unfinished estate for the repair program to respond, then defeated and captured five black-and-white projected beings that approached him.
• At midnight, Lite’s Proton Detectors revealed that the anomalies replacing those he had captured had emerged from a hotel.
• Lite concluded that the hotel served as Twisted City’s repair backdoor and went there.

Nagase Taku and the other Players survived Twisted City’s beginner trial after Scholar Lite sheltered them and the Imperium attacked the domain. Back in the Reincarnation Space, Nagase joined a team and heard that the administrators had appeared, suggesting a major conflict was beginning.

• Nagase Taku opened sealed hotel rooms for their rewards, then became trapped in the corrupted time-space and fled the aberrations chasing him.
• A black-and-white figure identified as Scholar Lite rescued Nagase and the muscular man’s group, shielding them as he fought through the hotel.
• Lite revealed his identity and protected the Players with a Geller Field while Russ and Imperium forces invaded the Warp domain and battled its monstrous inhabitants.
• The system ended the instance and teleported Nagase and the other Players away, while Lite avoided extraction and left a monster for the Reincarnation Players.
• Nagase formed a team with the muscular man and the others in the Reincarnation Space, where they learned that the administrators had shown themselves.

Nagase Taku witnessed Delirium’s zealots invade and destroy Reincarnation Space, then fled with his teammates as the Imperium overwhelmed the Players and killed the administrators. Elsewhere, Russ defeated and captured the God of Distortion, while Tech-Priest Qiuwo revealed the Imperium’s plan to assimilate countless universes through the Reincarnation Game.

• Nagase Taku learned from Players in a bar that Delirium’s zealots had devastated worlds and factions, then saw administrators arrive as the invasion of Reincarnation Space began.
• The Imperium’s Titans and soldiers overwhelmed the city’s defenses, killed many Players, and forced Nagase Taku to return to his private area and urge his teammates to escape to reality.
• Celestine led the Imperium’s victory, captured an administrator, and ordered his memories extracted before his execution.
• Russ fought the God of Distortion in its ruined domain, defeated it, and dragged it away as the Imperium’s forces drove back its followers.
• Tech-Priest Qiuwo explained that the Imperium planned to study strange-tale corruption and use the Reincarnation Game to assimilate humanity across countless universes.

The Imperium extracted the God of Distortion’s memories while Qiu Chen rejected Lite’s leave request, and Nagase Taku refused Yamato’s attempt to recruit him. Elsewhere, Wuxie awakened in a Serpentfolk youth’s body as the Ork invasion breached the Immortal Immortal Realm’s barrier.

• The God of Distortion relived the War of Extinction, its rise after the cultivation age collapsed, and its role in creating the Reincarnation Game before Imperium machinery resumed probing its memories.
• Tech-Priest Qiuwo ordered Qiu Chen to gather more samples and focus on the God of Distortion’s creation of the Reincarnation Game, and Qiu Chen rejected Lite’s leave request.
• Nagase Taku returned to his apartment, refused a special department’s demand that he join Yamato’s forces, and resolved to contact his teammates about Delirium’s followers.
• Wuxie awakened in the body of a Serpentfolk youth from the Mountain Dragon Family, vowed to avenge the youth, and found the Primordial Divine Cauldron intact in his sea of consciousness.
• Scarface and the Ork Boyz broke through the Immortal Immortal Realm’s barrier and prepared to launch their invasion.

Scarface led the Orks against five Immortal Emperors and killed them, after which the Imperium’s forces annihilated the snake race in the Undying Immortal Realm. In the True Martial Realm, Wuxie punished a family elder for threatening his branch, but a roar and falling meteors interrupted him.

• Scarface charged the five Immortal Emperors, whose attacks could not overcome his green barrier, and killed them in a brutal close-quarters battle.
• Scarface survived with grave injuries, and a Grand Technician announced that he was still alive as the Orks turned on the remaining snake race.
• The Orks massacred the snake race across the Undying Immortal Realm, leaving its cities and sacred lands in ruins.
• In the True Martial Realm, Wuxie beat a family elder and pinned down the junior who had tried to molest his maid.
• A powerful force tore open the sky above Wuxie, followed by a strange WAAAAAAAAGH roar and countless meteors.

The Imperium devastated the Snake Clan’s city, where Gambling Addict’s Orks killed Wuxie after shattering his Primordial Divine Cauldron. Across Universe 04, the Imperium pressed its assault on the Upper Heaven Realm, while Tech-Priest Regula and Tech-Priest Feila clashed over how to breach it.

• A meteor assault brought Orks and other enemies to the Snake Clan’s city, and the Patriarch led the clan’s defenders into battle.
• Wuxie revealed his King Realm strength and attacked the invading Orks, but the Absolute Light Divine Formation failed and a beam erased the clan’s ancestral grounds.
• Gambling Addict had a Gretchin smash Wuxie’s Primordial Divine Cauldron with a rusty sword, then left Wuxie trapped and weakened until the Gretchin killed him.
• Man Hu led Imperium soldiers against the defenders of a sacred mountain as the Warp fell silent and the Imperium’s weapons overwhelmed their formations.
• Yorn and the Raven Guards infiltrated the great hall, killed wounded experts, planted bombs, and destroyed the formation cores, enabling the Imperium’s final assault.
• Aboard Macragge’s Honour, Calgar sought a way to breach the Upper Heaven Realm, and Tech-Priest Feila challenged Tech-Priest Regula during their discussion.

Magos Regula described the Heavenly Abyss’s defenses, and Calgar approved Anvil’s plan to break through using blood sacrifices. As the Imperium prepared to invade the Upper Heaven Realm, its ancient rulers raised a secret realm to train geniuses, but the Mask Organization’s first battle revealed the enemy’s power before a warship crossed the Heavenly Abyss.

• Magos Regula explained that three fortified weak points guarded the Heavenly Abyss, while Anvil proposed using a Warp-fueled blood sacrifice to bypass it; Calgar approved the plan.
• Nine ancient beings created a time-accelerated secret realm to train geniuses, and Immortal Emperors and Dao Ancestors sent the strongest young cultivators inside.
• A Fire Clan prodigy founded the Mask Organization with other powerful geniuses and led them toward a city guarding the Heavenly Abyss.
• The Mask Organization saw an Immortal King die and fought Orks whose weapons weakened cultivators’ secret arts, until a powerhouse’s formation repelled the attackers.
• Cultivators’ power and the spiritual energy around the city increased over the following days, allowing them to crush the invading Orks and plan a counterattack.
• A little over two months later, a rift opened above the mortal world and an Imperium warship bearing a two-headed eagle emblem emerged, having crossed the Heavenly Abyss.

Calgar led the Imperium’s assault through the Upper Heaven Realm, using sacrificed Xenos to power its advance and destroy the realm’s core. As the last resistance collapsed and Calgar prepared to strike the Guardians, Guilliman received a report of a vast Tyranid force and the Database announced its fifth stage had opened.

• The Imperium used Sage Feila’s machine to sacrifice powerful Xenos, navigate the Warp, and drive its fleet into the Upper Heaven Realm.
• Calgar advanced toward the Plateau while Ufthak and the Imperium’s armies slaughtered the defenders, and the Mask Organization fled into a realm already ruined by war and the End-of-Dharma tide.
• The Fire Clan being who had founded the Mask Organization killed itself after its members lost hope of escaping the devastated Upper Heaven Realm.
• The nine supreme powers sent a secret realm of prodigies into the eternal spirit realm, while Calgar rejected calls to wait and prepared to lead a strike against the Guardians.
• Guilliman reviewed reports of an enormous Tyranid force whose Hive Shadow overwhelmed the Astronomican, then received notice that the fifth-stage Database had opened.

Guilliman learned through the system that Calgar had conquered Universe 04 and began preparing a grand welcome and honors for the returning expedition. He tasked Imperial Chancellor Terra LeBlanc with organizing the celebration discreetly, while considering plans to manage Transmigrators and control the Tyranids.

• Guilliman received the system message confirming Calgar had conquered Universe 04 and decided to prepare honors and a grand welcoming ceremony.
• Guilliman considered establishing a Transmigrator management agency after learning that a manipulated Transmigrator had sacrificed an entire world to The Unliving.
• Guilliman reflected on the Imperium's expansion, the fifth phase of the Database, and the possibility of turning the Tyranids into a controlled brood legion.
• Guilliman summoned Imperial Chancellor Terra LeBlanc and gave him a draft plan for a discreet celebration of the conquest of Universe 04.
• Terra LeBlanc agreed to organize a magnificent ceremony after Guilliman revealed that the Imperial Expeditionary Force would soon return.

Terra LeBlanc left Guilliman determined to meet his expectations as the Imperium prepared to exploit its conquest of Universe 04 and begin a fifth-stage upgrade. Calgar helped defeat the nine Guardians, but a relic sword left him mortally wounded, and he was rushed back to Terra in a stasis coffin as the Imperium celebrated its victory.

• Guilliman told Terra LeBlanc that Universe 04 had been conquered and the fifth-stage Database secured, then planned new upgrades and sent Lion to another universe.
• Guilliman continued managing the Imperium while anticipating an eventual war with powerful beings whose interests its expansion would threaten.
• Calgar led Primaris Warriors into the ancient palace, where they fought through the Xenos and confronted the nine Guardians.
• Calgar and his warriors battled the Guardians; after most of his force fell, Ufthak charged in and helped secure the victory, while Calgar killed one Guardian and another was captured.
• Calgar's wound from an ancient sword reopened after the battle, and medical sages placed him in critical care as the Imperium celebrated Universe 04's conquest.
• The upper echelons learned that Calgar could not be healed and was being returned to Terra in a stasis coffin for Guilliman to save.

Macragge's Honour left the battlefield carrying the critically wounded Calgar in suspended time, while Jaghatai enforced the emergency route order at a transit station. On a desolate plateau, a weary armored man encountered an old man and began recovering memories that identified him as Sigismund.

• Calgar's treatment team sealed him inside a sarcophagus that halted time and shielded him from the Warp, and Macragge's Honour departed for Terra.
• Asagami Shion and a delegation from Universe 03 stopped at a vast diversion fortress and marveled at the Imperium's scale and power.
• Jaghatai silenced merchants protesting the route closure, dismissed the station supervisor, and ordered the replacement to hold traffic until Macragge's Honour passed.
• Jaghatai explained that the Imperium could not afford to lose a legendary hero.
• A weary armored man crossed a barren plateau and met an old man near an approaching storm.
• The armored man recalled a red-armored warrior calling him his chained brother, Sigismund, and saw the familiar face of a yellow-armored warrior.

Sigismund recovered his memories, learned from Malcador that he could return to the living world, and set off along a road through the wasteland. Meanwhile, Vashtorr tried to recruit Nurgle’s daemons and ordered a defiant one forced into a Daemon Engine.

• Sigismund remembered his life, from his brutal childhood on Inonus through his service in the Seventh Legion and his death after fighting Abaddon.
• Sigismund met Malcador in the wasteland, and Malcador told him he could return to the real universe by following a newly appeared road.
• Malcador gave Sigismund water before Sigismund set off, then vanished along with the road and the boulder.
• Vashtorr offered Nurgle’s daemons freedom from Nurgle’s control in exchange for signing his contract.
• A Nurgle daemon refused Vashtorr’s offer, and Vashtorr ordered it thrown into a furnace and made into a disposable Daemon Engine.

Vashtorr’s forces captured another region of Nurgle’s domain and launched an assault on a rotting mountain range, seeking to drain Nurgle’s power. Meanwhile, Loken and the reborn Luna Wolves advanced through the Plague Garden toward a horde of Nurgle’s defenders, and the chapter ended as Loken ordered them to attack.

• Khorne, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch attacked Nurgle’s realm from separate fronts while the Imperium’s invasion intensified.
• Vashtorr transformed a captured region of the Plague Garden into an industrial domain, weakening Nurgle and strengthening itself.
• Vashtorr calculated its forces’ chances and sent its enslaved mechanical legion to attack a rotting mountain range.
• Loken and Torgaddon led the reborn Luna Wolves through Nurgle’s corrupted domain, with Maked spotting the enemy ahead.
• Loken’s warriors encountered walking corpses, fanatics, Plague Drones, and plague vehicles, and Loken ordered them to kill the defenders.

Loken and the Luna Wolves fought through Nurgle’s forces, crossed a diseased river, and advanced toward a corrupted forest. Meanwhile, Sigismund and Rann surveyed a vastly changed Terra and awaited a celebration that might explain the Imperium’s transformation.

• Loken rallied the Luna Wolves against Nurgle’s walking corpses, while incoming attack skiffs destroyed many enemies and Plague Drones.
• Loken led the warriors across a river of sludge and corpses under fire, and one Luna Wolves warrior was dragged beneath the water.
• The Luna Wolves crossed the river, fought through the defenders, and Loken killed a powerful Nurgle Daemon before the warriors advanced toward the dark forest.
• Sigismund left the recovery ward and stared at Terra’s immense platforms, buildings, and greenery as Rann admitted he also did not understand the changes.
• Rann told Sigismund that a coming celebration might answer their questions, while both men struggled to accept how much the Imperium had changed.

Sigismund and Rann watched children play in the sanatorium gardens and shared memories of their childhoods on Inwit. Their conversation was interrupted by Archamus, who had awakened after ten thousand years and urged them to talk about the coming celebration instead.

• Sigismund remembered how Sera had sacrificed herself to save the orphans of Innonus and how her death taught him what he should fight for.
• Rann told Sigismund how his adoptive clan had believed he was destined to unite Inwit, until Dorn arrived and Rann chose to follow him.
• Archamus appeared at the sanatorium, weak and needing a support frame, and reunited with Sigismund and Rann.
• Archamus complained that Rann was repeating an old story and suggested they discuss the celebration, the God-Emperor, or the children in the garden.

Sigismund, Rann, and Archamus reunited on Terra and discussed the Imperium before Sigismund resolved to challenge Fulgrim over an old grudge. Meanwhile, Guilliman and Belisarius Cawl examined Calgar’s cursed wound and concluded that only a fifth-stage Primaris upgrade could give him a chance to survive.

• Sigismund, Rann, and Archamus reunited, recounted their lives after the Horus Heresy, and marveled at the Imperium’s present-day power.
• Rann told Sigismund that returned Loyalists were dueling captured traitors and explained that Abaddon was repeatedly beaten; Sigismund then resolved to challenge Fulgrim over the Saturnine Wall.
• Macragge's Honour returned to Terra through the Webway, bringing the gravely wounded Calgar to Guilliman’s laboratory.
• Guilliman and Belisarius Cawl examined the rusted sword that had wounded Calgar and discovered that its curse was erasing his body and soul.
• Guilliman ordered preparations for Calgar’s fifth-stage Primaris upgrade, warning that failure would leave him no choice but to remove Calgar’s soul.

Calgar survived the fifth-stage enhancement after the God-Emperor rescued him from a strange darkness filled with visions of an ancient battlefield and a headless woman. As the Imperium prepared to expand its conquest into the myriad heavens, Cherubael appeared to a wounded man whose beloved had been abducted, offering him power and vengeance through a contract.

• Calgar crossed a lifeless battlefield and entered a dark realm where a headless woman repeated that the Human Emperor was dead and the Dao was gone.
• The God-Emperor shattered the darkness, called Calgar back, and carried him out of the realm.
• Calgar awoke in an operating room after his fifth-stage enhancement surgery, then fell asleep in a cultivation pod while his body recovered.
• Guilliman left Calgar with Cawl and focused on preparations to develop Universe 04 and launch the Imperium's future conquest of the myriad heavens.
• A wounded adventurer mourned the shepherdess and her adoptive father after Mormon elders abducted her and killed her father.
• Cherubael appeared to the man and offered him power to protect the shepherdess and take vengeance if he signed a contract.

A desperate man accepted Cherubael’s contract to gain power and save Lucy, while Terra LeBlanc organized a grand ceremony to welcome the returning Expeditionary Fleet. The celebration began on Terra and aboard the Sovereign Supreme, leaving the parade about to start.

• The man agreed to give Cherubael his soul in exchange for power to save Lucy, and Cherubael marked him with a charred emblem that granted him power over time.
• Terra LeBlanc coordinated the welcoming ceremony, which brought officials, soldiers, and selected people from Universe 04 together for the Codex Astartes parade.
• Savage Sky, Roger, Asagami Shion, Sigismund, and Rann attended the ceremony as honored guests.
• Sigismund warned Rann that Asagami Shion might be a Living Saint after noticing her resemblance to Euphrati Keeler.
• Ceremonial cannons and bells sounded, and the Imperium’s celebration ceremony began.