Under normal circumstances,
war was never a problem for the Orks.
A bit of spilled blood,
a few days of sunlight,
and the soil itself would sprout more of their kind.
With reproduction faster than weeds,
Orks never feared losses.
But the Tyranids were something far beyond "normal circumstances."
They were far more merciless.
They devoured not only animals and plants,
but also minerals, soil,
even microscopic life suspended in the air.
Anything that existed—
anything at all—
was consumed completely.
Where Tyranids passed,
nothing remained.
Not even the dirt needed for growing new Orks.
In this situation,
not only were Ork corpses consumed,
even the environment required to spawn new Orks was stripped bare.
The Tyranids' strategy was the absolute extreme:
a sterilization so total that even the battlefield itself disappeared.
Unsurprisingly, the Orks' once-limitless reinforcements began to dry up.
Their suicidal charges, combined with the overwhelming Tyranid numbers,
only accelerated this decline.
It was now entirely foreseeable—
the Orks' life force was waning.
Extinction was no longer a distant possibility…
but an imminent reality.
Within less than five years,
the Tyranids had devoured more than half of the Andromeda Galaxy.
The once planet-spanning Ork hordes had been reduced to scattered remnants.
---
Even the Ork Gods Felt Something Was Wrong
Gork and Mork—
the Ork racial gods who normally lounged in the warp doing absolutely nothing—
finally sensed that something had gone horribly wrong.
Even with brains as broken as their followers',
they understood one thing:
The entire Ork species was approaching a crisis.
Although Orks never lacked numbers,
the Tyranid threat was fundamentally different.
Thus, Gork and Mork—
despite their own fractured minds—
tried to intervene.
They attempted every method available to them
to influence the battle between the Orks and the Tyranids.
But the Hive Mind was far too experienced.
It had devoured countless species who possessed their own gods.
This was nothing new.
Drawing on its long history of victories,
the Hive Mind sealed every possible path through which Gork or Mork could interfere with realspace.
They could not descend.
They could not act directly.
At most, they could broadcast faint signals or warnings.
Powerless, the two gods could only attempt one last move:
order the Orks to retreat.
---
Telling Orks to Retreat…
…is like telling a storm to sit still.
Orks come in only two mental varieties:
Severely brain-damaged
and
slightly brain-damaged.
Reason does not exist.
Strategy does not exist.
Long-term planning absolutely does not exist.
And Gork and Mork themselves?
Not much better.
Expecting coherent orders from two gods
who can barely form proper sentences
was a hopeless dream.
It was brain-damaged gods giving orders to brain-damaged children.
Predictably—
it failed completely.
The Orks heard the "retreat order"
and interpreted it as…
a motivational battle cry.
Shouting their gods' names,
they charged the Tyranids with even greater enthusiasm.
Their suicidal fury took even the Tyranids by surprise.
Even the Hive Mind, having witnessed countless species die,
found this level of "passion for death" impressive.
Gork and Mork, watching helplessly from the warp,
felt like vomiting blood—
but could do nothing.
---
As wave after wave of Orks hurled themselves into the swarm,
their bodies provided the Tyranids with endless biological samples.
The Orks' DNA—
heavily encrypted by the Old Ones—
began to yield under this relentless biological analysis.
Their strange, paradoxical "technology tree"
and countless fragments of Old One–derived information
were gradually decoded.
With this data, the Tyranids advanced rapidly.
Soon afterward,
using Ork biotech,
the Hive Mind achieved a breakthrough in biological spores.
Many Tyranid strains were modified to acquire a terrifying, strategic-level ability:
Cellular Proliferation
When severely wounded,
Tyranid organisms could divide into smaller functional units—
creating new bioforms on the spot.
They became nearly impossible to kill through conventional means.
If even a single fragment remained,
it could become a new swarm.
To truly destroy one,
every single particle of its body had to be obliterated.
This ability turned every Tyranid organism
into a one-creature army—
a mobile base capable of infinite division.
The Hive Mind was pleased.
"An excellent technology…"
it murmured.
--
This new power reminded the Hive Mind of an opponent far more terrifying—
the force that had once driven it into exile:
the Eldrazi.
Every Eldrazi could alter their derivative broods
according to their personal inclinations.
Many Eldrazi broods possessed
forms capable of infinite self-division.
One becomes ten.
Ten becomes a hundred.
A hundred becomes countless millions.
It was a deluge of living matter—
an ocean of flesh and hunger.
Even the Hive Mind, master of the Tyranid swarm,
had once been overwhelmed in numbers.
Now, having obtained a similar ability,
it felt a renewed confidence in its long flight.
It hoped its next prey would be a civilization possessing parallel-universe traversal technology.
--
The Silent King believed the Hive Mind was merely a minor boss—
a stepping stone on the way to fighting the star sea Abyss and the Eldrazi.
He was entirely unaware
that the Hive Mind itself
had no desire to face either final boss again.
Its frenzy of devouring worlds
was not born from ambition alone—
but desperation.
It was desperately gathering enough resources
to flee into another universe
before the Aeon Cronos
and the Eldrazi Legion
devoured everything.
...
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