The lush, green Ork "crop" of the Andromeda Galaxy stood little chance against the Tyranids after the latter had fully mastered biological spore technology.
Already weak, the Orks' resistance became utterly insignificant.
Within just a few exchanges, they were harvested clean.
Years later, after taking a long detour, the Tyranids finally reached the Milky Way.
This time, however, the enemy they faced was unlike anything before.
They were met by a coalition composed of hundreds of powerful civilizations.
Over time, The Pan-Species Covenant, which had originally consisted of only a few dozen members, expanded severalfold by continuously absorbing new civilizations from every direction.
Driven by two shared goals—survival, or at the very least successful escape—
these civilizations, forced from their homelands by Aeon or the Eldrazi Legion, unleashed astonishing levels of latent potential.
Despite their vastly different life forms, the races displayed remarkable unity and coordination.
Relying on this unprecedented cooperation,
all manner of strange tactics and unconventional inventions emerged one after another, like bamboo shoots after rain.
Through sheer effort, they managed to withstand the Tyranids' frenzied assault,
holding back the incomprehensibly vast swarm outside the Milky Way.
Only a handful of smaller Tyranid detachments managed to slip through and roam the galaxy.
--
After this upheaval, the internal situation of the Milky Way became… peculiar.
Cultivators researching immortality, beings pondering transformation, carbon-based lifeforms obsessed with the future, silicon-based species intent only on fleeing to other universes, elusive spirit entities appearing and vanishing without warning—
An overwhelming variety of races crammed into the galaxy all at once, making what was once boundlessly vast feel strangely crowded.
Regions that had once been desolate and empty were now quietly occupied by foreign civilizations.
In this new reality, casually destroying a barren planet could easily provoke brutal retaliation from a powerful nearby civilization.
As a result, the balance of power within the Milky Way was completely reshuffled.
The former local powers—the Chaos Empire, the Human Empire, the Aeldari—
were all subjected to merciless beatings from wave after wave of newly arrived outsiders.
These foreign civilizations, each at least comparable in strength to the Human Federation at its peak, viewed the native factions as little more than primitive apes.
--
That arrogance, however, did not mean the galaxy was harmless.
The enormous crimson vortex at the ruins of the former Aeldari Empire—
the Eye of Terror—taught many of them painful lessons.
As large numbers of extragalactic civilizations poured into the Milky Way,
the Eye of Terror seemed to activate some hidden mechanism.
What had once been relatively stable suddenly began spewing Warp daemons at a rate far exceeding anything seen before.
The endless, tide-like assaults—undiminished no matter how many were slain—
gave many civilizations an unsettling sense of déjà vu, as if facing another Tyranid swarm.
The surge in Warp daemons also meant a dramatic increase in Warp energy erosion.
Given the Milky Way's already abnormal overlap with the Warp,
this escalation further strengthened the daemons' ability to manifest.
Previously, Warp daemons that managed to enter realspace were heavily suppressed—
often retaining less than one percent of their original strength.
This led to embarrassing situations where even Daemon Princes or Greater Daemons could be slain by groups of mortals.
Now, however, the daemons could easily wield several times their former power within the Milky Way.
This qualitative shift allowed even low-tier Warp entities to begin demonstrating their true nature.
Take the Bloodletters of Khorne—
humanoid Warp daemons wielding blades, considered among Khorne's lowest-ranked followers.
Within Khorne's domain, the Brass Citadel, where red-black metal, stone, and bloodstained brass dominate,
countless Bloodletters are slaughtered daily like harvested grain by other daemons.
In the past, when Bloodletters entered realspace, their already modest strength was further suppressed.
Even seasoned mortals armed with energy weapons could kill them.
But now, with their power partially unleashed, their inherent ability began to shine:
Plundered Evolution.
Though merely a negligible fragment of the God of War's authority,
Khorne's blessing allows Bloodletters to siphon a portion of power from every being they kill—regardless of race or strength—storing it within their blades to enhance themselves.
This means that with enough luck, a single battle could multiply a Bloodletter's power severalfold.
Given a sufficiently large war, it was no longer impossible for a Bloodletter to ascend directly into a Greater Daemon.
In this regard, they resembled juvenile demons from the abyss:
weak at the start, but possessing terrifying potential—each born with an innate cheat.
No cultivation, no training required.
To grow stronger, all they needed to do was keep killing.
Give them even the slightest opportunity, and they would snowball rapidly.
And it wasn't just Khorne.
As the "game" grew more interesting, the other Chaos Gods also began gradually loosening the restrictions on their followers' power.
The Human Empire, the Aeldari, and many other races that had once dismissed Warp daemons as insignificant
were swiftly and brutally taught otherwise.
More than one extragalactic civilization suffered catastrophic devastation after high-tier Warp daemons were summoned within their territories due to careless mistakes.
As a result, dozens of powerful legions were now permanently stationed around the Eye of Terror,
tasked with blocking further daemon incursions.
Yet as the overlap between realspace and the Warp continued to intensify,
daemons found it increasingly easy to come and go.
Across the galaxy, they whispered temptations to frustrated mortals, urging them to conduct summoning rituals,
allowing the daemons to descend into realspace and add yet more chaos to an already unstable Milky Way.
...
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