Chapter 406 – Warhammer! The Old Man on the Golden Throne! The Human Empire!
In the cataclysmic War in Heaven, the Old Ones were crushed by the combined might of the Necrons and the C'tan. But before the victors could divide the spoils, the C'tan pulled a fast one—devouring the souls of the Necrons themselves.
The result? The gods fell, and every god-tier civilization was left severely weakened.
Under this fragile power balance, the Milky Way entered a rare period of peace and recovery.
During this time, humanity undeniably emerged as a rising star.
At that point, human civilization had already reached a significant level of technological development. While exploring the galaxy, they discovered a higher-dimensional corridor known as the Warp.
In this strange realm, humanity learned to wield "Warp Magic"—powers that transcended the laws of physical space. These abilities became known as psionics(psyker).
Even more crucially, the Warp enabled faster-than-light travel, allowing humanity to overcome the barriers of time and distance.
From that moment on, humankind stepped into a golden age of galactic conquest!
They pushed their technology to the very edge—whether in machines or genetic engineering. Mankind stood one foot away from apotheosis.
You could say, at the peak of their golden age, humans were virtually on par with the ancient Old Ones.
But, as with any towering empire, collapse came swiftly and without warning.
A sudden AI uprising erupted within human society. Infinity legions of machine soldiers nearly wiped out all intelligent species across the Milky Way.
In desperation, humanity temporarily allied with their former enemies—the Eldar. Together, they defeated the AI rebellion. But from that day on, mankind would never again trust artificial intelligence.
The reasons behind the uprising remain unclear. It could've been demonic corruption from the Warp or that the AI simply developed true consciousness and refused to bow to human masters.
Regardless, it marked the beginning of the end for humanity's golden age.
Because what came next only got worse.
After the Iron Men crisis ended, an unprecedented Warp storm erupted. Most of humanity's Warp routes were obliterated.
And in the storm's aftermath, the Warp finally revealed its true face.
In the Warhammer universe, the Warp isn't just an FTL highway—it's a chaotic, abstract, psychic realm made of raw emotion and thought.
Every emotion felt in the material world echoes into the Warp.
When enough sentient beings channel strong emotions or beliefs into the Warp, those forces coalesce into gods.
What's worse—the Warp has no concept of time. The moment a new god is born, it exists simultaneously across all points in time.
The most infamous of these Warp-born entities are the four Chaos Gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch.
Any psychic who taps into the Warp leaves behind a spiritual trace—like a torch in the dark. That beacon draws the attention of demons.
These creatures can rip open reality through a psychic's body and pour into the material universe, unleashing utter carnage.
In other words, the Warp is absolutely crawling with evil gods and demons.
That humanity survived long enough to even have a golden age is frankly miraculous.
Only two possibilities explain it:
1. Sheer dumb luck.
2. The Chaos Gods were farming humanity like livestock—fattening them up before the slaughter.
And so, after the Iron Men fell, humanity was nearly wiped out again—this time by demonic invasions from the Warp. Their golden age was officially over.
Human civilization plummeted, just like the Tang Dynasty after the An Lushan Rebellion.
Just as extinction loomed, a golden-clad immortal known only as the Emperor emerged!
This ancient being had lived through humanity's golden age. A peerless warrior and unmatched psyker, the Emperor was the strongest human to have ever existed.
He created the Thunder Warriors, forged an alliance with the Mechanicus, and unified the fractured remnants of humanity.
He reopened Warp travel routes and stood toe-to-toe with demons and dark gods alike.
To make humanity great again, the Emperor launched a grand crusade across the galaxy—The Great Crusade—with the goal of uniting all human worlds into a single empire.
To achieve this, he used gene-engineering and Warp manipulation to create 21 Primarchs—superhuman beings crafted from his own genetic template—and engineered the Astartes, space marines built for war.
Each of the 21 Primarchs was a godlike being, skilled in warfare and leadership—essentially the Emperor's sons. These sons would help him conquer the galaxy.
But the Chaos Gods weren't about to let that happen.
They seduced and corrupted the Primarchs' "mother," Erda, and used a massive Warp storm to scatter the Primarchs across the galaxy.
Because the Warp routes were still in ruins, human colonies across the galaxy had developed independently—each with its own culture, politics, and ideology.
By the time the Emperor managed to recover his lost sons, each had been shaped by vastly different upbringings.
Some grew proud and arrogant, others brutal and sadistic. Some became grim and reclusive, while others were quick to anger. None of them turned out "normal."
This flaw in the Primarchs' personalities would become the Emperor's greatest risk.
Because eventually, more than half of them were seduced by the Chaos Gods.
Led by the favored son Horus, the corrupted Primarchs and their legions turned against the Emperor in the Horus Heresy.
Still, the rebellion alone wasn't enough to doom the Imperium. The loyalist legions were strong enough to fight back.
What truly doomed mankind was timing.
At that exact moment, the Emperor was in the middle of researching a relic of the Old Ones—a Webway Gate.
This relic offered a way to bypass the Warp entirely—an alternate route through which humanity could restore their golden age without relying on the demon-infested Warp.
But the Chaos Gods couldn't allow that.
They manipulated Magnus the Red, one of the Primarchs, into a colossal mistake that shattered the Webway.
A rift tore open in the Imperial Palace itself, unleashing a Chaos portal from which countless demons poured out—turning Terra's royal palace into literal hell.
The Emperor was forced to fight on two fronts: against the demonic horde and against his own traitorous son, Horus.
He eventually defeated Horus but was mortally wounded in the process.
Barely clinging to life, the Emperor was placed upon the Golden Throne, kept alive in a state of undeath by a stasis field—and now serves as little more than a psychic lighthouse.
That lighthouse, the Astronomican, guides Imperial fleets through the Warp. Without it, the Imperium would fall into chaos and collapse entirely.
And so, the once-great Emperor is now a half-dead, broken old man strapped to a giant golden toilet.
As for his sons, the Primarchs?
They each met their own tragic end: killed, corrupted, vanished, or left in deep stasis.
After learning the core storyline of the Warhammer 40k universe, the executives of the Megacorp held a heated discussion.
Naturally, the focus of debate was the unforgettable figure of the Emperor.
> "The Emperor really was a badass in his prime—he unified Holy Terra and brought humanity back from the brink with the Great Crusade."
> "But later on, he lost his damn mind. That whole Webway project was a disaster, and he completely misjudged his own sons. He basically caused the galaxy-wide civil war himself."
> "Sure, he won the rebellion in the end, but the damage to human civilization was already done. Meanwhile, the threat from the Warp keeps growing..."
"He can only remain forever seated on the Golden Throne, suppressing the chaotic energies… Humanity's golden age is truly gone for good. My verdict: thirty percent merit, seventy percent fault."
At this moment, Lucius offered his personal evaluation of the Emperor. A seasoned political veteran, Lucius prioritized avoiding mistakes far more than chasing glory.
If his governing style had to be summarized in one phrase, it would be: Better to do nothing than to do wrong—stability above all else.
"The key issue now is that the Warhammer universe is an extremely high-risk environment—far beyond our current ability to control."
Margaret, head of the Joint Logistics Bureau and leader of the Megacorp's "dirty work" division, spoke with a grim tone. She understood better than anyone the level of strain a chaotic, fragmented universe like this could place on corporate consolidation efforts.
The complexity of just the Star Wars universe was already enough to give them headaches. Now add the Warhammer universe into the mix?
The sheer administrative pressure might be enough to collapse the entire bureaucratic structure of the Megacorp.
V and the other high-ranking members of the Exploration Division fell silent.
Because yes—Warhammer was truly a nightmare to deal with. The sheer number of hostile species alone made integration a monumental task.
There were the Orks, who reproduced through spores and encoded knowledge directly into their genes; the Eldar, once rulers of the galaxy and inheritors of Old Ones tech; the Necrons, Tyranids, and the Tau Empire.
And then there were the Big Four lurking in the Warp.
From a naval standpoint, any war fought here would be brutal. Even if they managed to conquer it, the long-term costs of stabilization would be astronomical.
While the logistics division continued to voice fierce objections and the exploration team remained hesitant, it was the science division—led by Alt Cunningham—that finally broke the deadlock.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we must take this universe."
Alt swept her gaze across the room. Her insistence on assimilating the Warhammer universe boiled down to one simple reason:
The golden-age human civilization of the Warhammer universe had mastered far too much lost technology—especially tech that the Megacorp had yet to unlock.
Chief among them: time manipulation.
Back in their golden age, humans had weapons capable of unraveling targets at the entropy level or collapsing them into black holes—time cannons.
They had erasure guns that could delete events from the timeline, and temporal displacement devices that could hurl enemy fleets into the distant past.
They even had time travel systems that allowed entire armadas to leap millions of years across history in a chain of jumps.
For the scientists in the Science Nexus Division, those two words—control time—held irresistible allure.
And beyond time manipulation, they possessed an arsenal of devastating weaponry:
Stellar Extinguishers the size of suns (810,000 km in diameter),
Ship-mounted black hole weapons,
Supernova catalysts,
Planetary Doomsday Energy Cascades,
to name just a few.
In terms of raw firepower, both the Megacorp and golden-age humans had the means to obliterate entire star systems.
In other words, their power levels were more or less on equal footing.
If they could successfully integrate the Warhammer universe and recover even a fraction of those ancient technologies, the Megacorp could legitimately ascend to the ranks of a god-tier civilization.
Altering the universe and rewriting the physical constants would no longer be a fantasy—it would become a viable goal.
This was the closest the Megacorp had ever come to a quantum leap in advancement. There was no room for retreat now.
The conservatives, centrists, and radicals each had their say—none willing to give an inch.
Then, newly promoted Imperial Governor David Martinez raised his hand in support: "I agree with Director ."
In David's view, the primary danger in the Warhammer universe came from the Chaos Gods dwelling in the Warp.
While other universes under the Megacorp's control also had high-dimensional spaces like the Warp or various FTL realms, those dimensions couldn't support gods of Chaos-class magnitude.
The Chaos Gods needed Warp-like environments rich in psychic energy to maintain their power.
As things stood, only two other universes had similar structures:
The Void dimension from StarCraft,
And the forest moon of Endor from Star Wars.
But seriously—could the Chaos Gods hope to match Kerrigan and Amon, two fully entrenched local god-level entities? The moment they entered that universe, they'd suffer from "environmental debuffs."
As for Endor?
That's a no-go. Even Li Ang didn't dare send a team to mess with the magical teddy bears there. The Chaos Gods wouldn't last five minutes against those two-dimensional furballs.
So, even in a worst-case scenario, the Chaos Gods wouldn't be able to directly threaten the Megacorp's home universes.
Besides, Alt had a point: Warhammer tech filled gaps in the Megacorp's current knowledge. Even partial assimilation would bring enormous gains.
Seeing the conversation growing increasingly gridlocked, Li Ang finally spoke.
"This matter will be decided later. For now, I'll open a Stargate and send a scouting unit to survey the situation."
Different Warhammer timelines presented vastly different risks. If they arrived in an era where the Emperor was half-dead and chaos reigned, then caution would be necessary.
But—if the Emperor was still active and seated on the Golden Toilet, alive and well—then there was still hope.
With that, Li Ang left the Allverse Base Headquarters, leaving behind the AI Loki to maintain order and act as arbiter in his absence.
---
Three days later, the Megacorp's reconnaissance team passed through the Stargate. The division leaders remained behind in the war room, anxiously awaiting their report.
During this time, every corporate executive engaged in rigorous simulations and contingency planning, gaming out every potential disaster that might occur once they entered the Warhammer universe.
They prepared for the absolute worst.
But soon, the scouts brought back good news.
The Stargate had connected to a timeline during the late stage of the Great Crusade!
At this point in time, the Emperor was still at the height of his power. The Primarchs were still loyal, fighting under his command. The galaxy-spanning heresy had not yet erupted.
Even the Chaos Gods in the Warp were lying low—no apocalyptic events on the Megacorp (yet).
Yes, danger was brewing beneath the surface. But as far as entry points go, this was the best they could ask for.
The human Imperium was flourishing. The golden age still glimmered, and much of the lost technology was still intact.
Armed with this intelligence, the Megacorp now had a clear plan: ally with the Emperor, and help humanity dodge the incoming cataclysms.
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