Chapter Summaries

Eli recovered in the hospital after saving Alpharius, who questioned his motives and struggled to explain his selfless act. Eli’s simple belief in protecting his coworkers changed Alpharius’s view of loyalty, and Alpharius left promising to bring him real roast meat.

• Eli woke in the hospital and was relieved to find Alpharius unharmed.
• Alpharius interrogated Eli about why he had risked his life, proposing that he had acted for status, strategy, or religious zeal.
• Eli rejected Alpharius’s suspicions and explained that he had saved a coworker because he cared about him.
• Alpharius realized Eli’s loyalty had no price or ulterior motive, then solemnly tucked in his blanket.
• Alpharius left, promising to treat Eli to real roast meat, while Eli wondered how he would afford it.

Alpharius’s warmth reached Omegon through their soul link and restored his fading humanity on a Slaugth death world. Days after recovering, Eli returned to the archives looking for Alf, but could not find him.

• Alpharius felt warmth from Eli’s words, and it traveled through the soul link to Omegon.
• Omegon stopped eating a Slaugth larva and, repulsed by its entrails, remembered that he was human.
• A few days later, Eli was discharged from the medical department and went to the archives to find Alf and claim his promised roast meat.
• Eli searched the archives but found no sign of Alf.

Eli was dismissed from his scribe post only to be compulsorily conscripted into the Terra Supreme Command Academy. He arrived at the elite academy thinking of Alf and the roast meat Alf owed him, but immediately drew ridicule from wealthy cadets.

• Eli learned that Alf had been transferred to a higher-level archive without saying goodbye.
• An Interior Ministry official delivered an order relieving Eli of his scribe duties and conscripting him to the Terra Supreme Command Academy for three years of officer training.
• Eli packed his belongings and flew from the underground archive to the academy in the Himalayan Mountains.
• Eli arrived in a cadet uniform with his shabby canvas bag and felt out of place among the wealthy new cadets.
• A cadet mocked Eli as a lost miner.

Eli was mocked by the noble Valerius Saul but unintentionally turned the insult around, winning laughter from the crowd. After Valerius stormed away, Cassius thanked Eli, and the two introduced themselves as future classmates.

• Valerius Saul ridiculed Eli’s name and mocked his Terra origins while refusing to shake his hand.
• Eli mistook Valerius’s insult about his smell for praise and joked that Valerius should become a battlefield scout because of his keen nose.
• The crowd laughed at Valerius, who threatened Eli before leaving the landing pad with his lackeys.
• Cassius introduced himself and thanked Eli for standing up to Valerius’s contempt for people born to technical personnel.
• Eli introduced himself to Cassius and welcomed him as a future classmate.

Eli endured a brutal first month at the academy, where Valerius and his followers made him a target. During an impossible logistics simulation, Eli recognized the historical figures being presented, but the chapter ended before he gave his plan.

• Alpharius watched Eli endure Valerius’s provocation and form an alliance with a young Adeptus Mechanicus member, then recorded the results of his social stress test.
• Eli struggled through the academy’s punishing physical training and advanced lessons while Valerius and his followers repeatedly humiliated him.
• Eli persevered by completing the training and memorizing the Dataslate Cassius had lent him.
• Deputy Dean Ferrus Manus gave the cadets a logistics analysis lesson, and Eli recognized the figures from records he had copied as a scribe.
• Ferrus Manus assigned the cadets an impossible battle plan for the Centaurus Reclamation Campaign, and Valerius questioned whether the scenario had any solution.

Eli proposed a precise plan to break through the xenos blockade, but Valerius accused him of treason for citing supposedly classified records. Deputy Dean Ferrus Manus revealed that the sources were publicly available in theory, though accessing them required an average wait of eighty-seven years.

• Eli proposed using three modified Gladius-class frigates to evade the minefield and star fortress before boarding a xenos supply ship for fuel and ammunition.
• Valerius challenged Eli's figures and accused him of stealing top-secret Imperial records and being a spy.
• Eli said he had read and copied the documents while working in the underground archives, leaving the classroom alarmed.
• Ferrus Manus said Eli's cited sources were unclassified historical documents, but required applications to hundreds of forms across seventeen archive districts and an average eighty-seven-year wait.

Eli earned full marks for his tactical simulation after Vice Dean Ferrus Manus verified the evidence behind his plan, while Valerius was left humiliated. Ferrus promised to protect Eli from interference, but Alpharius anticipated that Valerius would seek revenge during the upcoming outdoor combat exercise.

• Vice Dean Ferrus Manus gave Eli full marks after his tactical logic core rated Eli’s plan at a 73.4 percent chance of success, and gave the other cadets zero.
• Valerius blamed unseen interference for his defeat, unaware that Alpharius had planted a scrap of archive references to guide Ferrus Manus’s investigation.
• Ferrus Manus told Alpharius that he would keep observing Eli and protect him from illogical human factors.
• Alpharius anticipated that Valerius would target Eli during the upcoming Outdoor Simulated Combat Exercise.
• The academy assigned Valerius to command the elite Blue Team and Eli to lead the Red Team, made up of cadets regarded as misfits.

Eli led Red Team in an unconventional campaign against Valerius and Blue Team, using traps, sabotage, and the battlefield’s sewers to wear them down. As Blue Team grew furious and demoralized, Eli’s teammates began to enjoy the fight.

• Eli rallied Red Team and ordered them to avoid direct combat, aiming instead to make Blue Team sick of pursuing them.
• Valerius led Blue Team to Red Team’s empty command center and ordered a thorough search of the mountain forest.
• Blue Team encountered concealed traps, foul mud, slippery stream stones, sabotaged rations, and a looping song planted in their communications by Cassius.
• Eli led Red Team through the underground sewage system, launching hit-and-run raids while the team listened to Blue Team’s angry curses.
• Eli explained his asymmetric warfare strategy to his admiring teammates, while Cassius reconsidered how much victory depended on equipment and bloodline.

Eli led Red Team to victory over Valerius and Blue Team with a midnight sewer ambush using filth-coated Toilet Blades. His fame grew, and when instructor Brutus abused him, the Inquisition arrested Brutus after uncovering his corruption, while Old Al secretly concealed evidence of his own involvement.

• Eli and Red Team burst from the sewers at midnight and eliminated the sleeping members of Blue Team with Toilet Blades.
• Valerius charged at Eli in a rage but was caught in a vine net, ending the exercise in Red Team's overwhelming victory.
• Eli became famous at the academy, while Valerius sought ways to ruin him within the rules.
• Brutus forced Eli to clean a tank's exhaust ducts in freezing weather and prepared to strike him for alleged misconduct.
• Inquisition stormtroopers arrested Brutus over an encrypted ledger detailing decades of embezzlement and other crimes.
• Old Al secretly hid a miniature data-hacking terminal in a garbage bag after the arrest.

Eli graduated and was assigned to command the struggling 404th Infantry Regiment on the Ork-infested Kalida Sector frontier, where he quickly improved the soldiers’ conditions. During his first major battle, a series of uncanny mishaps devastated the Ork assault, and Eli urged his men to fire.

• Eli used a mysteriously delivered tactical note to pass his final simulation exam and graduate.
• Valerius Saul arranged for Eli to be sent to the Kalida Sector as supreme commander of the 404th Infantry Regiment, but Eli eagerly accepted the assignment.
• Eli arrived at the Ash Plains Defensive Line and began improving the regiment’s trenches and securing supplies for the soldiers.
• The 404th ate a full meal for the first time in three months and began to see Eli as a commander who treated them as comrades.
• During the Ork attack, their Big Iron Vehicle fired into its own forces, while jams and infighting opened gaps in the assault.
• Eli called the mishaps a miracle and ordered the 404th to open fire.

Eli and the 404th Regiment survived a string of seemingly miraculous victories, secretly aided by Space Marines protecting him under the Primarch’s orders. When a disastrous reconnaissance mission trapped them before a hundred thousand Orks, Eli chose to hold the Webway Rift so the main force could escape, but his soldiers joined him in a desperate last stand.

• Eli led the 404th Regiment through an Ork firing gap and toward an ammunition depot, where a Squig-triggered explosion routed the Orks with fewer than fifty Imperial casualties.
• Unpainted Space Marines revealed that they had covertly engineered the regiment’s victories and continued protecting Eli under orders to preserve his mortal experience.
• Over the next six months, Eli’s reputation grew as the 404th repeatedly won battles with few losses.
• Eli led four companies on a reconnaissance mission, but a faulty report brought them into a camp holding a hundred thousand Orks and cut off their retreat.
• Eli ordered the main force to flee through a Webway Rift and prepared to hold its entrance alone, but the adjutant and the wounded soldiers joined him.
• Eli and the 404th detonated explosives and formed a firing line against the Ork vanguard, beginning a desperate last stand.

Eli and the surviving 404th Infantry Regiment were rescued from a massive Ork assault by a mysterious squad of Space Marines, who destroyed the Ork army and led them to safety. Their leader revealed himself to be Alpharius, leaving Eli stunned by how enormous he had become.

• Eli and his soldiers were nearly overwhelmed by Orks until a squad of deep-sea-colored Space Marines appeared and rescued them.
• The Space Marines killed the Ork Warboss, detonated explosives in the gorge, and caused the Ork horde to collapse into chaos.
• The Space Marines led Eli and the surviving 404th Infantry Regiment to a concealed underground cavern.
• The squad's towering leader gave Eli roasted meat, revealed his face, and was recognized as Alpharius.
• Eli asked Alpharius how he had grown so large and whether he had eaten fertilizer.

Eli accepted Alpharius’s offer to bring the 404th Infantry Regiment into the Alpha Legion as the Eye of the Hydra after learning Alf was the Primarch Alpharius. In the years that followed, Eli and his soldiers served alongside the Legion, using blunt, unconventional tactics that sometimes influenced Alpharius’s plans.

• Eli ignored Alpharius’s revelation at first and complained that the roast meat needed cumin and chili powder.
• Alpharius revealed that he was the Emperor’s twentieth son and explained that the Alpha Legion needed Eli’s honesty as an anchor.
• Alpharius invited Eli and the 404th Infantry Regiment to join the Alpha Legion’s Eye of the Hydra, promising room, board, and seasoned roast meat.
• Eli agreed to the offer and shook Alpharius’s hand.
• Over the next few years, the Eye of the Hydra supported Alpha Legion operations with underhanded tactics, while Eli also offered Alpharius simple battlefield suggestions.

Alpharius and Eli traveled to a Slaugth-infested death world to find Alpharius’s missing twin, Omegon. They found him alive among stranded survivors, but Omegon coldly dismissed Eli as a useless piece of meat.

• Alpharius’s intelligence network revealed that Omegon was missing on a remote death world occupied by the Slaugth.
• Alpharius and Eli traveled there aboard a prototype ship powered by a Dimensional Engine that avoided the Warp.
• Alpharius, Eli, and an Alpha Legion squad crossed the toxic wasteland and found a camp of stranded survivors.
• Alpharius reunited with Omegon, who bore extensive scars and showed no warmth toward his brother.
• Omegon called the Space Marines barely useful and questioned why Alpharius had brought Eli, whom he considered unlikely to survive.

Omegon planned to use the scavengers as bait to reach and kill the Slaugth brood leader, but Alpharius rejected his willingness to sacrifice them. When the Slaugth surrounded the camp, the group fought into the nest, where Omegon led them through its dangerous tunnels.

• Omegon proposed sacrificing 642 scavengers to distract the Slaugth while he and Alpharius reached the brood core.
• Eli denounced Omegon for treating the scavengers as fodder, and Alpharius demanded that his brother abandon the plan.
• Thousands of Slaugth erupted from the ground and surrounded the camp, forcing the group to charge into the nest.
• Alpharius ordered the Space Marines to protect the mortals, while Eli helped the terrified scavengers keep moving under their cover.
• Omegon led the group through the nest's labyrinth, warning Alpharius about lethal spores and lurkers overhead.

Omegon’s plan led the team into a Slaugth trap deep in the Brood Nest, where the xenos leader overwhelmed them with a collapse and psychic interference. As Omegon faced a lethal strike, Eli shoved him clear and took the venomous tentacle through his chest.

• Eli and Alpharius noticed that the Slaugth were retreating too quietly as Omegon led the team toward the nest’s core.
• The Slaugth leader revealed itself in a vast cavern, mocked Omegon, and collapsed the ground beneath the team into a prepared trap.
• The team landed deep in the Brood Nest, where elite Slaugth attacked as the leader’s psychic interference disrupted the Space Marines’ equipment.
• Omegon ordered Alpha squad to prepare to detonate their reactors, but Alpharius refused and continued fighting.
• The Slaugth leader struck at Omegon with a blue-tinged tentacle, and Eli shoved him aside, taking the attack through his chest.

Eli sacrificed himself to save Omegon, killing the xenos leader with a grenade, but died from his wounds after the survivors escaped. Alpharius mourned him as Omegon struggled to understand why Eli had saved him.

• Eli shoved a grenade into the xenos leader’s mouth, killing it and ending its psychic interference field.
• Alpharius caught Eli and led the surviving Space Marines and scavengers out of the nest.
• On the surface, Alpharius tried to treat Eli’s fatal chest wound while Omegon demanded to know why Eli had saved him.
• Eli told Omegon that he had acted out of care for Alpharius’s brother, then asked Alpharius to add more cumin next time he roasted meat.
• Eli died in Alpharius’s arms, and Alpharius clutched his body and sobbed.

After Eli’s death, Omegon abandoned his ruthless worldview, and he and Alpharius reshaped the Alpha Legion around protecting the weak. A month later, a powerful fleet calling itself the Human Liberation Union appeared before Horus’s forces, claiming it had come to reunite with humanity.

• Omegon knelt beside Eli’s remains and recognized the warmth and humanity his brother Alpharius had once tried to show him.
• One month later, Omegon and Alpharius honored Eli with his battered Entrenching Tool and declared that the Alpha Legion would defend the weak and fight monsters.
• The Alpha Legion and the Imperialis Militia cheered their new guiding principle, while a faint golden light faded from Eli’s Entrenching Tool.
• A fleet of more than a thousand advanced warships appeared before the Vengeful Spirit without passing through a visible warp rift.
• The Human Liberation Union transmitted a message declaring that it had come to reunite with its human kin.
• Horus ordered his forces to contact the Astropath array and report the encounter to the Emperor.

Jian Ya offered the Imperium five hundred worlds, priceless Dark Age technologies, and a way to travel without entering the Warp. When the Emperor demanded to meet the mysterious creator behind these advances, Jian Ya invited him and Malcador to a private meeting, despite Malcador's warning that it could be a trap.

• The Emperor arrived with Malcador and the Imperial leadership to meet the fleet Dawn and its ruler, Jian Ya.
• Jian Ya pledged five hundred unified worlds to the Imperium and presented Dark Age STC blueprints and gene repair technology.
• Jian Ya explained that the Dimensional Engine folded space to travel without entering the Warp.
• The Emperor realized Jian Ya had not created the technology and demanded to meet its true creator.
• Jian Ya invited only the Emperor and Malcador to meet the creator privately, and Malcador warned the Emperor not to go.

The Emperor met Liu Zhipeng, the mysterious guardian who had offered the Imperium five hundred worlds and Dark Age technology, and learned that Liu considered himself the Emperor’s divine counterpart and brother. The Emperor accepted the possibility of this alliance cautiously and asked what Liu intended to do next.

• Horus urged the Emperor to take the Luna Wolves as guards, but the Emperor went to meet the hidden figure with Malcador and Jian Ya.
• The Emperor saw Liu Zhipeng’s holographic projection and recognized him as the young man who had given him a USB drive in twenty-second-century Earth.
• Malcador raised his psychic staff against Liu, who dismissed the threat and explained that he and the Emperor came from the same source.
• Liu described the Emperor as humanity’s human nature and himself as its divinity, then called the Emperor his brother.
• The Emperor remained wary despite Liu’s words and asked what he planned to do next.