Chapter Summaries

Dovell and the veteran fought a group of Orks in a corridor, suffering devastating injuries as they tried to survive. Dovell killed the last Ork with his lasgun, then pointed arriving soldiers toward the fallen veteran as he became unable to move.

• Dovell threw a frag grenade into the corridor, killing several Orks, while the veteran fought the survivors.
• Dovell blinded an Ork with radioactive dust, but the Ork struck his gun and smashed his helmet with an axe.
• The veteran killed one Ork and, despite losing an arm, wounded the blinded Ork with his chainsword and dagger.
• The Ork threw its axe into Dovell's shoulder, then pinned the veteran and battered him.
• Dovell dragged his lasgun close and fired at the Ork, killing it as it collapsed on the veteran.
• Other soldiers arrived, and Dovell pointed them toward the veteran before he could check on him.

Lin Fan and Yarrick cleared Orks from a building and found wounded soldiers and a dead comrade whose dog tags suggested he came from Heglas Hive. After the Kasare Legion arrived to reinforce Hades Hive, Yarrick called Domisilon and told him Lede had died.

• Lin Fan and Yarrick fought through the building, killing Orks and finding wounded survivors among the dead.
• Lin Fan found a one-armed soldier who pointed out his mangled comrade, and Yarrick recovered the dead man's dog tags.
• Yarrick tied the straightened dog tags to the surviving soldier's wrist and said the dead had served the Emperor.
• The Kasare Legion landed at Emperor's Word Plaza to reinforce Hades Hive and prepare a counterattack.
• Yarrick called Domisilon and told him Lede had been killed, promising to send his ashes back.

Domisilon surveyed the devastation in the industrial district and mourned the lives lost, then joined Yarrick, General Westad, and Sage Kaos to plan their next move against the Orks. With their forces and equipment depleted, the meeting ended with a decision to defend the city and wait for support from the Styx Line.

• Domisilon held the industrial district with gang enforcers, workers, and militia while Ork infiltrators attacked survivors and production remained crippled.
• Domisilon drank alone amid the ruins, lamented the dead, and spoke to a photograph of Lede while recalling their past.
• Five days later, Domisilon, Commissar Yarrick, General Westad, and Sage Kaos met to plan the battle against the Orks in Hades Hive.
• Domisilon and Yarrick reported that the industrial district needed extensive recovery and that their output was largely committed to repairing damaged vehicles.
• General Westad explained that his Legion lacked the equipment for a counterattack, so the group agreed to defend the city and await forces advancing from the Styx Line.
• An unidentified attendee asked to speak as the meeting concluded.

Priest Delia presented her research on Orks to the war council, arguing that all Orks possessed psychic power through an independent Waaagh! network. Her explanation gained support from Sage Kaos and Commissar Yarrick, and she prepared to reveal an even more startling finding.

• Lin Fan suggested that the war council hear Priest Delia's research on Orks, and Sage Kaos supported the idea.
• General Westad summoned Delia, who nervously began presenting research based on information Lin Fan had given her.
• Delia explained that Orks reproduced through spores and released the most spores when they died.
• Delia argued that every Ork was a psyker connected through an independent Waaagh! network that could make things work according to Orks' belief.
• Sage Kaos and Commissar Yarrick supported Delia's theory, and she grew confident enough to prepare an even more explosive revelation.

Delia explained to Yarrick and Westad how Ork technology and weapons were shaped by Waaagh! energy and belief, then proposed exploiting that belief to strengthen Imperial lasguns. Yarrick and Westad considered how her claims could change the Imperium’s approach to Orks, while Domisilon wondered if he was dreaming.

• Delia described how Orks inherited technological knowledge and used Waaagh! energy to make crude weapons work, including Tankbusta Axes capable of piercing tanks.
• Yarrick asked why the Orks had not conquered the universe, and Delia said they enjoyed fighting and that greater knowledge limited their ability to believe in unlikely outcomes.
• Lin Fan watched Delia explain Ork lore to Yarrick and Westad, hoping they would compile a Greenskin Encyclopedia, while Magos Kaos listened nearby.
• Delia argued that Ork weapons drew power from their users’ beliefs, and Yarrick acknowledged that their unreliable ammunition still penetrated heavy armor.
• Delia and Magos Kaos suggested making lasguns louder and brighter to exploit Ork beliefs, while Yarrick and Westad reflected on the two Mechanicus members’ unconventional methods.
• Domisilon bit his hand and wondered whether he was dreaming.

Lin Fan tested a modified laser gun designed by Delia and Kaos, and the results showed it could devastate Orks but struggled against armor. The weapon was approved for production as the Beast Suppressor Type I Laser Gun, while Delia’s research awaited verification in the Armageddon war.

• General Westad questioned Yarrick about his captive Orks, and Yarrick explained that he had studied their language with limited success.
• Lin Fan tested a standard laser gun on two restrained Orks, finding that it could not penetrate their armor and only injured their unarmored arms at fifty percent power.
• Lin Fan fired the modified gun, whose intense flash and roar made aiming difficult, but its shots caused severe damage to an Ork’s arm and frightened the uninjured Ork into believing it was dying.
• General Westad judged the modified gun suitable for suppressing charging Orks despite its poor range, low power, and ineffectiveness against armor.
• Domisilon began producing the weapon as the Beast Suppressor Type I Laser Gun, and Kaos was assigned to report the project to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Forge General Gregory reviewed Magos Kaos’s proposed laser gun barrels and approved their production, while reflecting on the loss of the Titan Legion and the dangers of unrestricted research. He returned to increasing Steel Ball’s wartime output, leaving his hope for peaceful technological progress as an unattainable wish.

• Forge General Gregory grieved the Titan Legion’s destruction on Armageddon and resented Mars headquarters for preventing its withdrawal and recovery.
• Magos Kaos sent Gregory designs and production data for a new set of laser gun barrels and requested authorization to manufacture them.
• Gregory examined Kaos’s proposal, judged it a safe rearrangement of known technology, approved it, and reported it to Mars headquarters.
• Gregory recalled a past researcher whose experiment had created a machine that consumed a planet and its 12 billion inhabitants.
• Gregory resumed adjusting Steel Ball’s production lines as the war’s growing demands strained industrial output.

Lin Fan and 3rd Company fought Orks in the lower industrial district, using a Beast Suppressor laser gun to drive them back. When Magos Kaos warned of a likely ambush ahead, Lin Fan went to scout alone, unaware of the exaggerated legends and protective charms the soldiers had made around Captain Soap.

• Lin Fan accompanied Archmagos Kaos while Delia inspected Beast Suppressor production and 3rd Company swept the lower hive for Orks.
• Magos Kaos warned that Orks were nearby, and the Orks emerged from the buildings to attack 3rd Company.
• Lin Fan used the Beast Suppressor to mow down Orks and suppress their charge while Old Jock and the other soldiers returned fire.
• The Orks fled, and Magos Kaos estimated a 78% chance of an ambush ahead.
• Lin Fan ordered his soldiers to wait while he scouted the empty plaza alone, and they accepted because they trusted Captain Soap's reputation.
• The soldiers' increasingly wild stories about Captain Soap's marksmanship and their small protective statues remained unknown to Lin Fan.

Lin Fan and Kaos the Sage fought through an Ork ambush in the industrial district. After the battle, Kaos transformed into Trazyn the Infinite and addressed Lin Fan as the “Subjective One.”

• Lin Fan followed Kaos the Sage into a plaza, where Orks collapsed the tunnel behind them and trapped the pair.
• Outside, the soldiers set up defenses and bet on how long Lin Fan would take to escape, while Old Jock joined in.
• Ghostface and his Blood Axe Kommandos attacked Lin Fan and Kaos, but the two drove the Orks back with gunfire.
• Lin Fan and Kaos planned to sweep the area again to reduce the Ork threat to the industrial district.
• Kaos revealed his true form as Trazyn the Infinite and asked Lin Fan what he should call him.

Lin Fan spoke with Trazyn in the Solemnace Museum and learned that Trazyn had met the first Subjective One, a woman named Bai Huan. When Lin Fan asked about the limits of Subjective Ones' abilities, Trazyn began recalling what Bai Huan had done.

• Trazyn transported Lin Fan from Armageddon to his Solemnace Museum and offered him wine.
• Trazyn explained that he had redirected Lin Fan's drop pod and found him through a War in Heaven device around his neck.
• Trazyn revealed that he had been the first overlord to communicate with the first Subjective One, a woman named Bai Huan.
• Lin Fan said he did not recognize Bai Huan, leaving Trazyn disappointed.
• Lin Fan asked how powerful a Subjective One could become, and Trazyn began retrieving memories of Bai Huan's deeds.

Lin Fan asked Trazyn why Bai Huan had been far more powerful than he was, and Trazyn concluded that Lin Fan’s knowledge of the setting made him fear its dangers and limited him. Trazyn called him an “Immersed One,” leaving Lin Fan troubled by whether he could ever become a true Subjective One.

• Trazyn recounted how Necrontyr superweapons and their attempts to erase a star sector had failed to harm Bai Huan, who later played with the ancient Orks and Aeldari.
• Lin Fan compared himself unfavorably to Bai Huan, explaining that he could be injured, lose consciousness, and had little combat ability beyond shooting.
• Lin Fan told Trazyn how he had come to this world, and Trazyn said his knowledge of the universe’s history, dangers, and future distinguished him from Bai Huan.
• Trazyn explained that Bai Huan knew little about the universe and treated it like a dream, while Lin Fan’s knowledge made him fear attacks and their consequences.
• Trazyn named Lin Fan an “Immersed One,” and said he could not advise him on becoming a true Subjective One because he was only an artificial intelligence bearing Trazyn’s name.

Lin Fan and Trazyn discussed humanity and the Imperium before Trazyn upgraded Lin Fan’s necklace and let him return to his troops. The chapter ended with a scene of Rogal Dorn carrying the wounded Emperor to the Throne after Horus’s defeat.

• Lin Fan asked Trazyn whether he had found GW on ancient Terra, and Trazyn said his archives held no record of it.
• Lin Fan explained that humanity could thrive under good governance, like in Ultramar, but suffered under ineffective rulers on many Imperial worlds.
• Trazyn gave Lin Fan a contact shard and upgraded his necklace with an inertia nullifier that could withstand roughly one Volcano Cannon hit.
• Trazyn said exactly twenty-one minutes had passed since the ambush, then walked out with Lin Fan and revealed that he had delayed them to watch the show.
• Lin Fan discovered his soldiers had been betting on how long he would take to defeat the Orks and resolved to find a commissar to discipline them.
• After Horus’s defeat, Rogal Dorn carried the wounded Emperor toward the Throne, while the Emperor described seeing the Chaos Gods in the Warp.

Delia examined the exhausted workers on a corpse-starch production line and questioned their treatment, while Lin Fan tried to explain why humanity’s natural bodies and ingenuity mattered more than bionic modifications. The chapter left Delia pondering whether life’s capacity for self-reproduction could surpass the reliability of manufactured machines.

• Crypteks gave up trying to erase or alter Delia’s data and assigned her to inspect a starch production line.
• Delia saw that workers and overseers were exhausted, and learned that laborers received only a protein bar and corpse-starch porridge for each eight-hour shift.
• Delia asked why Lin Fan had no bionic modifications, and he argued that life had come before machinery and humanity had advanced through its own ingenuity.
• Lin Fan asked Delia whether machines could learn, adapt, and reproduce as humans did, leaving her to consider whether random living beings could be better than fixed-quality products.

Delia developed a food-production reform after discussing humanity and the Machine God with Lin Fan, and the changes reached Hades Hive’s starving workers. Ron and his family tasted an improved ration bar and went to sleep with a fragile hope for a peaceful future.

• Lin Fan’s ideas about humanity and nature inspired Delia to reconsider industrialization and improve her mechanical body while retaining her human appearance.
• Delia told a Machine God priest that a new production incentive could restore hope and productivity, beginning with an STC fragment for food.
• Ron returned from his factory shift and watched corpse collectors carry away Mrs. Annari, who had fought Orks with a welding torch.
• Ron shared a heavier, sweeter ration bar made under Delia’s reforms with his wife and daughter, and they ate it with tearful satisfaction.
• Ron fell asleep imagining a peaceful Hades Hive where he could walk through an indoor park with his family.

Imperial reinforcements helped secure the Styx Line, and after three months of integration, the Imperium’s forces pushed the Orks back toward Hades Hive. Lin Fan and his troops prepared to join the Space Wolves in an assault on the Ork camp where the Steel Skull Titan Legion had fallen.

• Imperial reinforcements arrived on Armageddon, allowing exhausted Styx Line troops and damaged vehicles to rotate to the rear.
• The Astra Militarum regiments integrated and trained for three months while hive-city residents were armed and trained, building a force of more than fifty million troops.
• Imperial forces advanced across the subcontinent, breaking the Orks into scattered tribes and pushing the front to Hades Hive.
• Lin Fan and his troops prepared to attack an Ork camp alongside the Space Wolves, where the Steel Skull Titan Legion had been defeated.
• Lin Fan saw wrecked Imperial vehicles and buried Skitarii skulls near the camp and anticipated a grueling battle.

Lin Fan’s assault squad prepared to rescue human slaves while Imperial forces and Space Wolves attacked the Ork-held Titan Graveyard. The Space Wolves landed amid the Orks’ defenses, and the chapter ended as their battle began.

• Lin Fan watched the Imperial artillery bombard the Ork positions and coordinated his squad’s plan to locate and rescue human slaves.
• Lin Fan inspected the advanced self-repairing armor Trazyn had given him, while its AI, Little Yi, excitedly commented on the battlefield.
• Kaiser Whitefang and the other Space Wolves descended in drop pods, evaded Ork fire, and crashed into the enemy forces.
• Wodhaus, Bennett, and Kaiser Whitefang led the Blood Claws and Grey Hunters out of their pods to fight the Orks.

Space Wolves cleared the landing zone while Lin Fan led his 3rd Company toward a suspected slave camp. The company reached the camp’s gate and came under fire from Orks, Gretchin, and a Gorkanaut as Lin Fan crawled through the ruins to find a way to disable it.

• Bennett and White Fang led the Space Wolves in clearing the Orks from the landing zone while Wodhaus coordinated covering fire.
• Kaiser Whitefang nodded to Lin Fan, then led the Wolves toward an Ork fortress as Lin Fan ordered his unit toward the slave camp.
• Lin Fan used Little Yi’s scanner to locate 472 humans and 240 Orks near a scrap heap.
• Lin Fan’s 3rd Company reached the camp entrance and was suppressed by a Gorkanaut after Lin Fan destroyed its zappy gun before its Void Shield activated.
• Over a hundred Orks and more Gretchin fired on the 3rd Company while Lin Fan crawled through the ruins, seeking a high point from which to attack the Gorkanaut.

Lin Fan and his squad attacked the Ork camp, where he disabled a Gorkanaut and gave Tech-Priest Delia time to restore it for their use. After the squad pushed deeper into the camp, the chapter ended with Lin Fan thinking about the Hive Mind eating too many Blood Angels on Baal.

• Lin Fan discussed Little Yi's limits, including its inability to replicate itself without the highest-level permissions, and decided to keep its technology secret from the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Lin Fan leaped onto the Gorkanaut, broke into its head, and killed the Mekboy operating it, stopping the vehicle's gunfire.
• With the Gorkanaut's fire support gone, the 3rd Company exchanged fire with the Orks and Gretchin, who began retreating.
• Lin Fan ordered Tech-Priest Delia to restore the Gorkanaut, and she began modifying its cockpit while troops guarded her.
• Lin Fan led Old Jock and the others deeper into the camp as more Orks arrived, and Damian used the Beast-Tamer Lasgun to help drive back the enemy.
• Lin Fan complained that Little Yi let bullets hit his body instead of protecting him, and Little Yi joked that it feared damage and pain.

Lin Fan used Delia’s modified impact-fuse melta bombs to destroy the Orks’ advancing Killa Kans, forcing the Orks to retreat and attack from a distance. As the 3rd Company checked its losses, Little Yi questioned the existence of Warp energy, and Lin Fan heard the Emperor urge him onward to the Great Crusade.

• Lin Fan opened the ammunition crate and hurled modified melta bombs, melting a Killa Kan and the Orks around it.
• The Orks recognized the danger of Lin Fan’s bombs, retreated, and ordered Gorkanauts to provide suppressive fire from afar.
• Damian’s Beast Tamer laser rifle overheated after he killed many Orks, while Lin Fan asked Little Yi to check the company’s casualties.
• Little Yi reported thirty-seven losses and said she could not clearly detect the Orks because the signal worsened near them.
• Little Yi dismissed Warp energy as superstition, and Lin Fan reflected on the Emperor before hearing him say, “Get moving, rookie. We’re going on the Great Crusade.”

Joseph was captured by the Orks and forced into a slave mine after Haigelas fell. There, he discovered that Private Annie, the soldier he had rescued, had also survived.

• Joseph was herded with the other human prisoners as an Ork boss declared them slaves.
• A nobleman offered the Orks money for his freedom, but the boss judged him a liar and killed him.
• The Orks drove the prisoners deeper into the mine, where Joseph spotted a familiar figure.
• Joseph recognized the figure as Private Annie, the soldier he had rescued on Haigelas's outskirts.