Chapter Summaries

Veronica resigned from leading the Yellow Turban Army and gathered a fleet of volunteers to journey to Terra in search of the Celestial Master Zhang Jiao. Meanwhile, Cheng Mingrui faced the seventh trial in Khorne’s arena, where his opponent was the restored Aeldari God of Battle, Khaine Bloodhand.

• Veronica announced her resignation and said she would travel to Terra to seek the Celestial Master Zhang Jiao.
• A veteran persuaded Veronica to let Yellow Turban Army members join her expedition, and around thirty thousand volunteers assembled a fleet.
• The Yellow Turban Army fleet entered the Warp with Veronica at its helm, and she briefly saw a vision of the person she missed most.
• Khorne announced that Cheng Mingrui’s seventh opponent would be a true god and summoned Khaine Bloodhand into the arena.
• Khorne explained that Khaine’s power had been restored but that he was not at his peak, assuring Cheng Mingrui that the contest was fair.

Cheng Mingrui and Khaine fought in Khorne’s arena, testing their powers as Khorne judged Khaine to have a slight advantage. Their battle became a contest of endurance, while the Machine Empire’s forces suffered heavy losses against the Necrons.

• Khaine struck Cheng Mingrui with the Flaming Longsword, but Cheng Mingrui blocked the blow with his aqua-blue longsword, and their clash devastated the arena.
• Khaine summoned waves of divine weapons that pierced Cheng Mingrui, but a tortoise shell protected his head, letting him shove Khaine back and counter with water spikes.
• Khaine and Cheng Mingrui ended the first round with their abilities tested; Khorne judged Khaine had a sixty percent chance of victory but favored Cheng Mingrui.
• Khaine and Cheng Mingrui fought for most of the day without tiring, turning their battle into a prolonged contest of endurance.
• Necron Warriors wiped out waves of Autonomous Robots, while Necron fleets drove the Machine Empire’s fleets into retreat despite being vastly outnumbered.

The Nightbringer returned and annihilated the Machine Empire and Necron fleets across an entire star system. In Khorne’s arena, Cheng Mingrui gained the upper hand against Khaine, but Khaine unleashed his full power and engulfed Cheng Mingrui in a massive attack.

• The Nightbringer emerged from a Necron warship and destroyed every fleet and the star system with a sweep of his scythe.
• Cheng Mingrui wounded Khaine deeply and evaded his flames, striking Khaine’s essence and raising his odds of victory.
• Humiliated and desperate, Khaine sacrificed his reason to gain power and began growing beyond the arena’s restraints.
• Khorne enlarged the arena and stopped suppressing Khaine’s size and divine power.
• Khaine grew into a towering pillar of fire and brought his enormous palm down, engulfing Cheng Mingrui in blood and flames.

Cheng Mingrui defeated Khaine by shattering his core and destroying his head, becoming a demigod with the divine authority of the God of Battle. Khorne revealed that the final trial had not yet begun and showed Cheng Mingrui a vast battle centered on Terra.

• Khaine attacked Cheng Mingrui with flames, daemons, and clones, but Dorn's carapace and Cheng Mingrui's chain blades and Frost Battle Axe protected him and cut down his attackers.
• Cheng Mingrui used the Frost Battle Axe to freeze Khaine's arm and push through the daemons, while Khaine concentrated his flames around his chest.
• Cheng Mingrui survived Khaine's fiery eruption, broke the core in Khaine's chest, and leaped free with his longsword.
• Cheng Mingrui hooked his chain blades into Khaine's shoulders, launched himself upward, and drove his longsword into Khaine's forehead, exploding his head.
• Cheng Mingrui recovered in Khaine's flames and blood as his soul grew and he became a demigod with the divine authority of the God of Battle.
• Khorne applauded Cheng Mingrui, said the final trial was not yet due, and showed him a four-light-year battlefield centered on Terra where loyalist and traitor fleets fought.

Cheng Mingrui watched the Second Siege of Terra while Boss Slick dreamed within the Ork network, and Cegorach began reuniting his scattered consciousness. Cegorach revealed that Boss Slick’s final red protocol would create a Krork consciousness powerful enough to kill every god.

• Cheng Mingrui rested beside Khorne and watched the Second Siege of Terra as Boss Slick drifted through a dream of Ork battles and celebrations.
• The Harlequin Troupe Flower Twig performed an unprecedented play in Cegorach’s hidden Webway sanctuary, completing a ritual to gather Boss Slick’s consciousness.
• Gork and Mork confronted Cegorach, but a golden mask blocked their attack and Cegorach invoked the word “Krork” and the final red protocol.
• Gork and Mork stopped opposing Cegorach and left, allowing Boss Slick’s scattered consciousness to coalesce more quickly.
• Cegorach explained that the red protocol would unite the Krork into a godslaying consciousness meant to eliminate every supernatural being and leave the universe to mortals.

Cegorach tried to persuade Boss Slick to help change the universe’s future, admitting he wanted to use him while revealing that he was one of the Old Ones. As Cegorach began telling the Old Ones’ history, Boss Slick started to believe him.

• Boss Slick rejected Cegorach’s offer, accusing him of manipulation and saying he was content helping the Boyz.
• Cegorach revealed that he knew Boss Slick came from another timeline and a higher dimension, but Boss Slick remained suspicious.
• Cegorach admitted that he wanted to use Boss Slick and asked whether he would let the world remain half-dead or create a different future.
• A force from a higher dimension shattered Cegorach’s masks as he tried to speak, but he managed to reveal that he was also known as one of the Old Ones.
• Boss Slick began to take Cegorach seriously, and Cegorach started recounting how the Old Ones arose near the beginning of the universe alongside the C’tan.

Cegorach explained to Boss Slick that the Old Ones and C'tan had discovered they were characters controlled by higher-dimensional writers and had secretly resisted them. He argued that Games Workshop’s need to keep expanding Warhammer 40,000 might let their resistance succeed, then warned that Tzeentch spread corruption through books and knowledge.

• Cegorach showed Boss Slick how the Old Ones and C'tan had shaped the universe before the Higher-Dimensional Beings began writing their story and drove them into senseless war.
• Cegorach described how the Old Ones and C'tan created weapons and gathered immense energy to resist, but the Higher-Dimensional Beings dismissed their struggle and shifted the story’s focus to humanity.
• Cegorach explained that the Old Ones hid their collective consciousness inside him and manipulated the story so he survived Slaanesh and the Black Library became part of the setting.
• Boss Slick asked whether Cegorach meant that characters in a story could not defeat their writers, and Cegorach said the Old Ones were nevertheless close to winning.
• Cegorach said Games Workshop’s need to keep expanding Warhammer 40,000 would make it add more lore and empower Tzeentch, who corrupted the Imperium through books, knowledge, and curiosity.

Cegorach showed Boss Slick the Black Library’s failed futures, in which attempts to save the 40k universe repeatedly ended in disaster. The final vision revealed Tzeentch reaching into reality through an Enslaver possessing a Games Workshop editor named Joseph.

• Cegorach explained that he had refined Tzeentch’s summoning spell and used it in a thousand failed attempts to create a better future.
• Boss Slick grasped the Black Library’s sphere and saw that humans summoned from Blue Star repeatedly failed to improve the 40k universe.
• The possible futures showed that Tzeentch discovering the truth and taking the Black Library would extinguish the last hope for mortals.
• A purple presence controlled Joseph as he typed a story in a Games Workshop studio, and a coworker left without noticing anything strange.
• Despite the studio’s power being cut, Joseph’s computer kept running as his text described Tzeentch reaching across dimensions.
• An Enslaver emerged from Joseph’s screen, seized him, and burrowed its tentacles into his body as the first step in an invasion of reality.

Boss Slick agreed to fight Tzeentch and the Chaos Gods to protect Earth, then tried to consult the Black Library for information about the coming battle. On the Ice Planet, Cegorach delivered his final joke to Tzeentch, who mocked his faith in mortals and demanded to know what he really wanted.

• Cegorach asked Boss Slick to fight again to stop Tzeentch from spreading the Warp to Blue Star, and Boss Slick reluctantly agreed.
• Cegorach vanished, and Boss Slick prepared to search the Black Library for knowledge of his future enemies.
• Tzeentch approached Boss Slick's body on the Psychic Power Convergence Tower, but Cegorach appeared and said he had come to tell one final joke.
• Cegorach declared that mortals would shape the galaxy's future, and Tzeentch laughed at him and called mortals too weak to control their destinies.
• Tzeentch accepted Cegorach's joke and demanded to know what he was really seeking.

Tzeentch discovered that Cegorach had vanished after making him laugh, then shattered the Tears of the Old Ones and awakened Boss Slick's buried command to go to Terra. Boss Slick prepared to confront Ynnead before heading to Terra, while Little Slick persuaded Boss Copperhead that a great Waaagh awaited there.

• Tzeentch realized Cegorach had truly ceased to exist and chose to postpone investigating higher-dimensional beings.
• Tzeentch shattered the Tears of the Old Ones, releasing the power and the Emperor's imprint inside Boss Slick.
• Boss Slick destroyed his body, but his reunited soul was overwhelmed by the command to go to Terra and kill the Emperor.
• Boss Slick planned to confront Ynnead before going to Terra and sent part of his consciousness to Commorragh.
• Boss Copperhead learned that Little Slick had awakened, reunited with him in a fight, and heard that Boss Slick wanted them to go to Terra.
• Little Slick convinced Boss Copperhead that Terra held an even greater Waaagh, and Boss Copperhead eagerly agreed.

Boss Copperhead devised a way to use the Orks’ waaagh! energy and a mathematical model to find a route through unstable space to a Webway Portal, while Little Slick prepared to help lead the Orks toward a final waaagh!. Meanwhile, Tzeentch continued manipulating the Great Devourer as a massive Tyranid fleet gathered to attack Terra.

• Little Slick told Boss Copperhead that Boss Slick expected him to find a way to reach the waaagh!, and Boss Copperhead began building equipment from his Power Armor and salvaged components.
• Boss Copperhead proposed using Weirdboyz to channel waaagh! energy and a changing mathematical model to locate and navigate to a Webway Portal.
• Little Slick offered to channel the energy himself, improve the equipment, and turn the journey into a waaagh! race so more Boyz could follow.
• A vast Tyranid fleet gathered near Segmentum Solar under the Great Devourer’s orders, preparing to target Terra and study the Emperor.
• The Great Devourer attacked Tzeentch’s Crystal Maze with psychic power and a Warp spell, but Tzeentch dismissed the effort as meaningless and raised more palaces.

Tzeentch tempted the Great Devourer with the promise of an endless feast and a vision of a future where the Emperor’s power sealed Terra away from it. After Tzeentch left a magical bubble that produced a hostile Mutant Zoanthrope among the Tyranid fleets, the Great Devourer began trying to capture it alive.

• Tzeentch urged the Great Devourer to join the Chaos Star, promising it access to the genes of the Primarchs and the Emperor.
• Tzeentch showed the Great Devourer a vision of a devastating battle on Terra, where the Emperor’s power trapped the Solar System and cut the Tyranids off from their desired prey.
• The Great Devourer scanned for Tzeentch and discovered a bubble of Warp Magic, which appeared in the middle of the Million Tyranid Fleets and produced a Mutant Zoanthrope.
• The Great Devourer tried to reconnect the Mutant Zoanthrope to the swarm consciousness, but the creature repeatedly severed its psychic tendrils.
• The Great Devourer sent a Bio-ship to attack, but the Mutant Zoanthrope crushed it with psychic force.
• The Great Devourer mustered more Bio-ships and ordered them to attack only in close combat so it could exhaust the Mutant Zoanthrope and study its genes intact.

The Great Devourer defeated the Mutant Zoanthrope at the cost of more than 150,000 Tyranid ships and ordered the Swarm Consciousness to hatch a powerful new unit using the wreckage. A month later, the unit had become an enormous, ravenous threat, and an independent consciousness inside the Swarm Consciousness defied the collective.

• The Mutant Zoanthrope unleashed a massive psychic blast, but the Tyranid Fleet resisted until more than 150,000 ships were destroyed and the creature finally collapsed.
• The Great Devourer consumed the Mutant Zoanthrope and found its flesh and genes ordinary, but its fusion of Warp energy and flesh inspired the creation of stronger Tyranid units.
• The Great Devourer ordered the Swarm Consciousness to use the remains of the destroyed ships to hatch a new unit, sacrificing a wounded World Devourer as the first Hatchery Pool.
• The new unit grew rapidly, developing a segmented body, many eyes, a clawed arm, and mouths that demanded ever more biomass.
• After a month, the new Hatchery Pool had grown larger than an ordinary planet, and the unit was approaching galaxy-level size while consuming a thousand Tyranid Bio-ships each day.
• The Swarm Consciousness considered asking the Great Devourer whether to stop, but an independent consciousness resisted its attempts at suppression and declared, "We will devour! We will evolve! No one can stop us!"

The Swarm Consciousness collapsed as a newly hatched Tyranid unit became Calamity Devourer, a god that devoured Tyranid fleets and turned toward Terra. As Calamity Devourer and Boss Copperhead’s Orks arrived, the Emperor tried to rise from the Golden Throne, but a pair of flaming hands forced him back and offered power.

• The aberrant consciousness influenced the Swarm Consciousness, and the Swarm found its source in the new unit hatching in the Hatchery Pool.
• The Hatchery Pool rejected the Swarm Consciousness’s order to kill the unit, and Calamity Devourer consumed the Swarm’s fragmented minds as it ascended to godhood.
• Calamity Devourer devoured Tyranid fleets, stars, and planets before the Great Devourer severed their connection, losing a tenth of its mass.
• Calamity Devourer turned toward Terra as its Tyranid avatar approached, while Boss Copperhead led Ork vehicles through a Webway Gate beneath the Mariana Trench.
• The Chaos gods watched as Calamity Devourer lunged to swallow Terra, and the Emperor tried to rise from the Golden Throne.
• A pair of flaming hands forced the Emperor back onto the Golden Throne and said they would lend him power.

Tzeentch and Khorne opened a protected battlefield around Terra, where Orks faced powerful opponents in supposedly balanced duels. Boss Slick emerged as Gorkamorka after defeating Calamity Devourer, leaving the battle’s next stage uncertain.

• Tzeentch accepted Khorne’s decision to delay the Emperor’s ascension, and Khorne and the Emperor created a separate battlefield to protect Terra.
• Abaddon faced Boss Copperhead, whose gauntlet stopped his Chaos-powered sword before a punch sent him flying.
• Khorne’s barrier paired Primarchs and other fighters with Orks, while Rottooth faced Perturabo and Rambo faced Guilliman.
• Boss Slick wondered whether the Emperor or Khorne would be his first opponent, but Calamity Devourer swallowed him instead.
• Boss Slick burst out of Calamity Devourer, revealing the combined power of the Orks and becoming Gorkamorka.

Boss Slick fought Calamity Devourer after it transformed into a black-hole-like body with thirteen segmented heads. He smashed all thirteen heads, but Calamity Devourer’s central maw swallowed him and began devouring him.

• Calamity Devourer survived being gutted and transformed the battlefield and its body, while Boss Slick drew power from every Ork in the galaxy and grew enormous.
• Boss Slick’s green energy flattened most of the Maws of Devouring, but Calamity Devourer swallowed much of the blast and struck back with annihilation energy.
• Boss Slick endured the attack and used Gork’s Fist to destroy one head, then smashed two more with Gork’s Fist and Mork’s Brick.
• Calamity Devourer’s remaining heads bound and bit Boss Slick, but he tore free and punched apart all thirteen heads.
• Calamity Devourer’s severed segments began to regenerate, and its central black-hole-like body swallowed Boss Slick to devour him.

Boss Slick escaped Calamity Devourer by summoning an ancient Great Axe, killing its avatar and grievously injuring its true body. He then entered Khorne’s trial and faced the God-Emperor, as Cheng Mingrui witnessed Veronica and her fleet destroyed near Terra.

• Calamity Devourer consumed Boss Slick’s consciousness and memories, but could not devour his Waaagh! fighting spirit.
• Gorkamorka summoned an ancient Great Axe and cleaved through the darkness, killing Calamity Devourer’s avatar and forcing its true body into a restorative slumber.
• Boss Slick recovered his memories and chose Khorne as his next opponent.
• Boss Slick entered Khorne’s arena and encountered the True Self Consciousness Khorne had taken from him.
• Veronica led the Yellow Turban Army’s remaining warships to Terra, where the God-Emperor destroyed the ships and burned Veronica and the others to ash as Cheng Mingrui watched.

Cheng Mingrui fought the God-Emperor in the eighth trial and won by exploiting the Emperor’s lingering humanity. The God-Emperor died, leaving Cheng Mingrui with a fading final message and the fate of the Imperium in his hands.

• Cheng Mingrui revived as the Yellow Heaven Incarnation and began battling the God-Emperor on Terra.
• Cheng Mingrui struggled against the God-Emperor’s overwhelming power and saw no clear weakness.
• Khaine’s blood-and-flame longsword broke when the God-Emperor struck, but Rogal Dorn’s face stopped the killing blow.
• The God-Emperor hesitated as his love for humanity resurfaced, giving Cheng Mingrui a brief opening.
• Cheng Mingrui pierced the God-Emperor’s divine core with the Chain-linked Twin Blades and killed him.
• The corpse on the Golden Throne crumbled to ash, and Cheng Mingrui heard the Emperor thank him and apologize before the voice faded.

Tzeentch celebrated the completed Chaos Star and the expansion of Chaos, believing the gods had secured victory. Khorne appeared and attacked Tzeentch, challenging his rising power.

• In a vision, Tzeentch watched an alternate timeline where the Emperor ascended after devouring most of humanity and fought the other gods as the Dark King.
• Tzeentch explained that the Dark King's authority lay at the Chaos Star's center, while the Emperor's final struggle in the current timeline had helped save most of humanity.
• Cheng Mingrui ascended as the God of Battle using power from Khorne, the Emperor, and the seven previous trials, completing the Chaos Star.
• The Chaos Star began breaking the Old Ones' restraints, but its expansion slowed because several of its points lacked power and most Chaos Gods were not contributing.
• Tzeentch turned to watch the battle on Terra and declared that everything was going according to plan.
• Khorne crossed time and space, punched Tzeentch, and confronted him because the Chaos Star's expansion strengthened Tzeentch's power and challenged Khorne's standing.

Cheng Mingrui and Boss Slick fought with their consciousnesses while Tzeentch and Khorne began their own battle. Cheng Mingrui saw little chance of winning through attrition, so he struck before Boss Slick finished gathering power, and their clash engulfed the arena in blinding light.

• Tzeentch and Khorne began fighting as Cheng Mingrui and Boss Slick clashed in Khorne's arena.
• Cheng Mingrui and Boss Slick traded blows, each believing the other had been corrupted and seeking to kill him.
• Boss Slick gained the upper hand, and Cheng Mingrui realized his wounds would accumulate if the fight continued.
• Cheng Mingrui gathered power for a decisive strike and attacked before Boss Slick could reach his peak.
• Boss Slick brought down his Great Axe against Cheng Mingrui's Fire Daemon, and their collision filled the arena with white light that threatened its barrier.