Chapter Summaries

Steve Rogers tried to reach Hulk by refusing to fight, but Hulk beat him and knocked his broken body into the sea. Steve’s plea reached Hulk at the last moment, leaving the raging monster sobbing as Tony faced him.

• Steve threw away his shield and approached Hulk, insisting that they had to wake him rather than fight him.
• Hulk repeatedly struck Steve until the Purifier's deck ruptured, and Steve's body fell into the ocean while Kang stopped Quicksilver from reaching him.
• Tony attacked Hulk with a Shockwave Blast and the Purifier's weapons, but Hulk kept advancing toward him.
• Little Charles sensed Steve calling for help from beneath the sea and asking him to connect to Hulk's mind.
• Steve's memories and plea to protect Tony and the world reached Hulk, who stopped before striking Tony and broke down sobbing.

After Steve’s sacrifice, Hulk protected the survivors from the Council of Kangs’ bombardment while Tony Stark recovered and activated the Purifier Battleship’s Dimensional Locator. The ship continued to fall as the Kangs rushed to stop it.

• Judge Kang ordered the Dimensional Legions to attack the damaged Purifier Battleship, and Hulk stopped crying to tear apart their champion warrior.
• Hulk charged into the legion soldiers and slaughtered them, forcing Judge Kang to order the Kang Warships to destroy the ship.
• Hulk absorbed the annihilation beams and shielded the survivors, even as the Kangs’ concentrated bombardment burned and broke apart his body.
• Little Charles reminded Tony Stark that Steve had died to give them a chance, and Tony regained focus and activated the emergency brakes and Dimensional Locator.
• Judge Kang detected the Dimensional Locator’s space-time fluctuations and ordered the Kangs to move around Hulk and destroy the battleship.

Tony and the Avengers fought Judge Kang’s forces while Tony activated the Temporal Locator, and Conqueror Kang turned against the other Kangs as the Quantum Realm descended into reality. The battle left Steve dead, and Bucky and Quicksilver waited for Miles to return amid the transformed world.

• Tony and the Avengers fought off the attacking Kangs, while Little Charles used a psychic storm to incapacitate many alien warriors.
• Tony opened a passage from the Quantum Realm, and Vision arrived to help battle the Kangs as Tony confronted Judge Kang.
• Quicksilver recovered Steve from the sea, and Bucky used a force-field generator to rescue them from a Kang.
• The Temporal Locator activated, and Conqueror Kang appeared, destroyed two Kangs, and blasted the remaining variants away from the device.
• The Quantum Realm descended into reality, changing the sky and turning the seawater into floating droplets.
• Bucky and Quicksilver laid Steve’s lifeless body on floating wreckage and waited for Miles to return.

Tony Stark and Dr. Pym’s plan sent hundreds of Kangs into Quantum Realm Time Loops, where Legion began killing them, while the heroes prepared to pursue the survivors. At the same time, Nurr fought Marcus in Ancient Egypt, and Miles used Scott Lang’s Spacetime Module to disrupt Immortus as he summoned the Eternal Crystal.

• Hank Pym and Janet confirmed that the dimensional inversion had begun, sending Kangs into Time Loops where Legion crushed them; Judge Kang was also killed by Legion.
• Tony Stark returned to Acacia City with the others, placed the lifeless Steve Rogers in an emergency pod, and learned from Hank Pym that 176 Kangs had been transferred but were adapting and rewinding time.
• Nurr’s arm regenerated into biological armor after Marcus broke it, but Marcus transformed his own arm into a blade and overwhelmed him; Nurr charged again despite his injuries.
• Immortus revealed the intact Eternal Crystal and distorted spacetime around Miles, who secretly ordered Scott Lang to act.
• Scott activated and threw the Spacetime Module, unleashing a storm across the battlefield, while Miles attacked Immortus with his Phoenix Avatar.

Miles used the Eternal Temple and Uodo to break free of Immortus’s control of history, revealing the Temple as a giant Sphinx and unleashing a battle against Immortus’s multiversal armies. Meanwhile, Nurr and Marcus were trapped in an Infinite Storm where countless versions of their duel played out, and Miles’s plan was to make a victorious Nurr’s possibility become reality.

• Miles killed Immortus’s body with a Phoenix attack, but Immortus returned with the Eternal Crystal and distorted Miles’s history.
• Miles activated Uodo, revealing that the Eternal Temple had become the Sphinx, whose spacetime suppression freed him from Immortus’s attack.
• Miles told Immortus he had three more trump cards, while Scott attacked Immortus and Miles psychically directed Thebes’s citizens to evacuate.
• The Sphinx and Mechanical Jackal Legion fought Immortus’s Eternal Legion as armies poured through spacetime vortices across Thebes.
• Genesis fought the invading forces and learned from Miles that Nurr and Marcus were battling inside an Infinite Storm rather than being lost or set against each other by Miles.
• Nurr explained that the Infinite Storm divided his fight with Marcus into infinite simultaneous battles, allowing Miles to make a victorious Nurr’s outcome the sole reality.

Miles fought Immortus to seize the authority over history while the Infinite Storm plan subjected countless versions of Nurr to battles with Marcus. One Nurr finally defeated Marcus and became Apocalypse, leaving him alone amid the surviving Marcus phantoms.

• Genesis learned that Nurr had agreed to die repeatedly in the Infinite Storm plan for a chance to defeat Marcus, while Miles intended to rewrite history by defeating Immortus.
• Miles used the Portable Psychic Amplifier and Sphinx to challenge Immortus for control of history, declaring that he would make the true Apocalypse be born.
• Across countless battlefields, Marcus killed Nurr after Nurr, while the surviving versions kept fighting and evolving.
• One Nurr gained control over sand and Molecular Manipulation, wounded Marcus, and died after using his final strength to attack him.
• On the final battlefield, Nurr evolved beyond Marcus's abilities, defeated him, and assimilated his body and knowledge.
• Nurr declared himself En Sabah Nur and Apocalypse as the remaining Marcus phantoms watched.

Iron Man and Vision defeated Kang in the Quantum Realm, while Scott Summers and Miles fought to hold back the invading forces as Miles searched for a way to secure Nurr's victory. Miles and Immortus then battled to define history, and Khonshu revealed a primordial fragment of the Benben Stone to call upon Ra's will.

• Iron Man and Vision defeated silver-armored Kang in the Quantum Realm, then met TVA agent Hunter B-15, who said she served the true God of Time.
• Scott Summers used Miles's telepathic battlefield guidance to destroy a TVA device and clear the battlefield's collapsing flank with a devastating optic blast.
• Miles found that Nurr had won in only one of 864 trillion battlefields, and he and Immortus began using History Rewrite to make their preferred outcome real.
• Immortus tried to force one of countless Marcus victories into reality while Miles called on Moon Knight Genesis, T'Challa, and Buster for help bringing Nurr back.
• Khonshu revealed a primordial fragment of the Benben Stone, which Immortus recognized as a means of calling upon the sun god Ra.

Khonshu used the Benben Stone to let Ra intervene in the present, helping Apocalypse emerge from the Probability Storm after surviving 864 trillion possible deaths. Apocalypse defeated Immortus’s Time Doppelganger and refused his offer, but Immortus responded by summoning versions of himself from countless timelines.

• Khonshu explained that the Council of Kangs had erased or imprisoned most gods and sent the Benben Stone toward the Probability Storm to give Ra one chance to affect the present.
• The Benben Stone rose from the black ocean of probability, and Ra’s power poured into Apocalypse as the countless versions of Marcus and Apocalypse’s failures collapsed into one reality.
• Apocalypse emerged in Thebes reborn, defeated Immortus’s Time Doppelganger with force-field control, and then tested Miles in a psychic clash before they agreed to postpone their conflict.
• Immortus offered to make Apocalypse master of the Multiverse, but Apocalypse refused and declared that he would take power for himself.
• Immortus threatened to destroy the timeline and summoned versions of himself from countless parallel universes.

Miles and his allies battled Immortus and his countless time doppelgangers for the Eternal Crystal, only to learn that the crystal was inseparable from Immortus. Conqueror Kang destroyed Immortus’s crystal manifestation and claimed the crystal, then confronted Miles as Psypoint.

• Apocalypse and the others attacked Immortus’s doppelgangers while Miles used the Eternal Crystal fragment to locate the original crystal.
• Apocalypse, Buster, and the others fought over the Eternal Crystal as Immortus repeatedly transferred it; T’Challa and Scott Lang were exiled from the current era after touching its power.
• Miles used the Sphinx’s psychic amplification chamber to control the doppelgangers, letting Apocalypse seize the crystal, but Immortus revealed that it was part of his being and could not belong to anyone else.
• Immortus used the shard to restrain Miles and tried to kill him, but Uodo’s metallic tendrils attacked and devoured that doppelganger.
• Conqueror Kang struck the crystal’s manifestation with a spacetime-disrupting beam, crushed Immortus, and caught the Eternal Crystal before addressing Miles as Psypoint.

Conqueror Kang seized the Eternal Crystal and used it to erase Immortus variants, but Apocalypse resisted the crystal’s effects and drove Kang back with Miles and the Sphinx’s help. As Miles realized Immortus still had the Eye of Agamotto, Immortus transformed into Supreme Doom on the battlefield.

• Conqueror Kang appeared, defeated Immortus in one move, and took the Eternal Crystal.
• Kang unleashed the crystal’s power against the Immortuses, erasing dozens of them, but Apocalypse resisted and struck Kang through his defenses.
• Miles shared his temporal perception with Apocalypse, and the Sphinx helped counter Kang’s spacetime powers as Apocalypse pursued and battered him.
• Immortus contacted Miles through the crystal shard, rejected Miles’s offer of no trust, and claimed that he would never lose.
• Miles realized Immortus still possessed the Eye of Agamotto, while Immortus transformed into Supreme Doom before Apocalypse and Kang.

Supreme Doom, revealed as Immortus, fought Conqueror Kang beyond the current timeline while Miles and his allies ended the Kang Legion’s invasion of Thebes. TVA Agent Mobius then gave Miles a Time Controller showing that the conflict had moved to the Void and that stopping it required confronting its root cause.

• Supreme Doom used the Eye of Agamotto to attack Conqueror Kang’s timeline, but Kang escaped through a time-space portal, and Immortus followed him.
• Miles directed Sphinx to seal Thebes’s time-space vortices, trapping the Kang Legion in the past while Apocalypse, Buster, and Genesis destroyed its forces.
• Miles prepared to pursue Immortus and Conqueror Kang, then met TVA Agent Mobius and his agents as they emerged from a golden portal.
• Mobius gave Miles a Time Controller whose timeline map showed Immortus and Conqueror Kang battling in the Void as new Kang anomalies multiplied.
• Mobius explained that the war was destabilizing the Multiverse and said they had to start at its root, then departed with his agents as Miles prepared for the next battle.

Miles and his allies entered the Void Dimension to confront Immortus and Conqueror Kang amid a war between the Kangs. After Conqueror Kang used Miles to draw the Variant Kangs’ fire, Miles revealed his third trump card: an alliance of alternate versions of himself.

• Miles and Apocalypse arrived in the Void Dimension and saw Conqueror Kang’s Damocles Base battling Immortus and thousands of Variant Kangs.
• Deadpool reunited Miles with Scott Lang, Sam the Falcon, and T’Challa, and Miles recruited Scott to infiltrate Damocles Base.
• Scott Lang shrank to approach the Eternal Crystal, but Conqueror Kang detected him, and Miles teleported into the throne hall to challenge Kang for the crystal.
• Conqueror Kang used the Eternal Crystal to erase Miles and Scott, then revealed that his apparent body was a robot and blasted them into the battlefield.
• The Variant Kangs targeted Miles and Scott, while Immortus confronted Miles; Miles activated the Time Controller and summoned alternate Miles Zeros through portals to form the Miles Alliance.

Miles used Loki’s list and the Time Controller to summon Miles Zero variants from across the Multiverse and form an alliance against the Council of Kangs. The variants joined the fight after the Kangs mocked them, while Miles discovered a connection between the Black Spirit King, Uodo, and Aurora, then rescued a young Miles before continuing toward End-of-Time Castle.

• Miles opened portals to summon parallel-universe versions of himself, including Cyber Miles, Mage Miles, and Power King Miles, and subdued the first three who attacked him.
• The Council of Kangs mocked the gathered variants, prompting several of them to join Miles and fight; Immortus ordered the Kangs to attack, and the variants began destroying their forces.
• Spirit Miles and Magnetic Miles devastated Kang fleets, and Magnetic Miles recognized the Kang Taijun Core’s Uodo as a version of the consciousness he had created.
• Magnetic Miles sensed Aurora through Miles, reacted to seeing her, and told Miles to protect her before returning to battle.
• Miles changed course to rescue a young Miles from Kang soldiers, then let him remain in the battlefield to salvage enemy technology and continued toward End-of-Time Castle.

Miles uncovered how Doom and Loki had outmaneuvered Immortus, while Loki contained the War of Kangs and the dangerous Miles variants inside the Eternal Crystal. After the conflict’s effects were settled across the Multiverse, Miles asked Loki to take him to an old friend: David Haller.

• Miles deduced that Immortus had altered history to turn Supreme Doom into an avatar, while Doom had hidden his true consciousness with Loki’s help and sought control of the Eternal Crystal.
• Conqueror Kang lost control of the Eternal Crystal, and Apocalypse, Tony Stark, Hulk, and other allies emerged to confront him as the Avengers assembled.
• Loki appeared in the Void, froze time, and trapped the Kangs and Miles variants in an endless war inside the Eternal Crystal, then explained that he had contained the threat and separated Miles’s Earth into three parallel universes.
• Loki returned the displaced survivors to their worlds, where Steve Rogers showed signs of life, Scott Summers reunited with Rachel, and Apocalypse left Thebes with Genesis following him.
• Miles asked Loki to find someone, then traveled to an unnumbered Mutant universe and told a wary David Haller that he was looking for a friend.

The author reflected on Volume Five’s sprawling Kang Dynasty plot, explained how it ended with Loki trapping the War of Kangs in the Eternal Crystal, and outlined future story arcs. Exhausted and worried about dwindling readership, the author said they were considering pausing the story about Miles to begin a new book.

• The author described how the Quantum Realm storyline expanded into a long battle spanning multiple eras and The Void.
• The author said Loki had deceived the Kangs and Miles, then pocket-universed The Void Dimension and the War of Kangs inside the Eternal Crystal.
• The author outlined plans for later volumes featuring Galactus, the Black Spirit King, the hells, future threats to the X-Men, and Doom’s Battleworld.
• The author said Volume Five had been exhausting to write and that few readers remained, despite feeling the story had improved.
• The author considered pausing Miles’s story to write a new book, while intending to return to this one later.

The author announced plans to start a new book before returning to fill in missed chapters of this one, and listed eight possible concepts for readers to consider. The author left the choice undecided and asked readers which story they wanted.

• The author said the new book’s title would be announced within three days and that work on this story would resume after the new book was finished.
• The author described a magical-girl parody, an online-game otherworld conquest story, a fantasy world-hopping story, and an urban superpower story as possible choices.
• The author previewed a DCEU superhero story and a Naruto fanfic but said neither was planned for now.
• The author outlined a low-magic lordship fantasy and a satirical space-governor story as further possibilities.
• The author added a Disney-style fairy-tale dragon story as another option and asked readers to say which concept they preferred.

Soren, a young dragon, sheltered the forest’s small animals and called them his friends, but their dependence and his angry rejection left them vulnerable to wolves. After losing them, Soren dreamed of White Deer, who urged him to travel and understand the world; he vanished from the forest and appeared as a boy near a human town.

• Soren spared a mother rabbit and her babies, then drove away wolves that threatened them.
• The animals gathered in Soren’s cave, and he refused the wolves’ demand to surrender them because they were his friends.
• When lambs and other animals insisted that Soren stop eating meat, he angrily drove them from his cave.
• The wolves killed the animals, and Soren chased the pack out of the forest, leaving it empty.
• White Deer told Soren that his kindness had made the animals lose their vigilance and urged him to travel, learn, and understand the world.
• Soren disappeared from the forest, and a boy appeared near a human town.

Xia Wen arrived in the hyper-realistic game Ark Era, activated his Astral Mark, and equipped an electromagnetic spellcasting glove and Arc Chain module before Shelter 71 came under attack. He joined the defense and used Arc Chain to kill several flying monsters, but the spell rapidly drained his Sanity and capacitor.

• Xia Wen registered as ACSII and received the Electromagnetic Induction talent at Shelter 71.
• Veteran player Ash Immortal sold Xia Wen a Basic Spellcasting Glove and Basic Arc Chain module, and Xia Wen spent his remaining coins on a revolver.
• An explosion breached Shelter 71's defenses, and Xia Wen teamed up with Honest Young Master to join the battle outside.
• Xia Wen cast Arc Chain to electrocute several Acid-Spraying Ants, then saw that the spell had consumed over twenty percent of his Sanity and thirteen percent of his capacitor.

Xia Hai traveled to Moon City on the Northern Lights and discussed alchemy with Professor Lin, who identified himself as a former professor of the Alchemy Academy. A Deep-Sea Leviathan Whale struck the train, and Xia Hai secretly used his ability to save Professor Lin before joining him in an effort to reach the damaged engine.

• Xia Hai told the passengers that he was a freshman at Moon City University's Alchemy Academy.
• Professor Lin questioned Xia Hai about alchemy and urged him to learn reverence.
• A Deep-Sea Leviathan Whale burst from the ocean, destroying the Northern Lights' force field and sending the train crashing into the sea.
• Xia Hai slowed time in his perception and deflected broken glass that would have killed Professor Lin.
• Professor Lin insisted on reaching the second carriage to inspect the engine, and Xia Hai agreed to help him.
• Professor Lin told a train attendant that he was Lin Jianheng, former chief engineer of Universal Heavy Industries, while Xia Hai recognized his name as the book's author.

The Northern Lights’ engine unit failed after a Deep-Sea Leviathan’s source energy shockwave, leaving the train at risk of flooding before rescuers could arrive. Chief Engineer Lin Jianheng entered the engine room and began assessing the damaged matrix.

• Train Chief Liu Changhe learned that the source energy transmission array had short-circuited and the drainage valves had failed, giving the crew less than half an hour before the engine room flooded.
• Duan Fei said rescue personnel would arrive in fifteen minutes, while Alya Jones sensed an unknown presence outside the train and tried to lock onto it.
• Liu Changhe argued that the engine unit could not be repaired in time as seawater rose around the machinery.
• Lin Jianheng entered the engine room with a young man, and Liu Changhe recognized him as the chief engineer.
• Lin Jianheng inspected the terminal’s error warnings and frowned at the damaged engine unit.