The Lord of Change wrote furiously, recording major Warp events; whispering eulogies beneath its breath, bestowing blessings upon the hymns of divine war.
Slaanesh cast down a gaze from the Palace of Pleasure, lazily rising to pause eternal revelries, seeking fresh stimulation from this duel of gods.
Nurgle threw open the doors and windows of his mansion—the loving Father of all reassuring the boisterous Nurglings, inviting Greater Unclean Ones to watch the clash together.
"Power!"
The Blood God slammed his fists onto his drums and roared to the heavens, explaining the origin of all strife.
It was power. Whether expressed through fists, weapons, or ideals, all were manifestations of power—and the fundamental catalyst for conflict.
"Strife! Violence! Slaughter!" Khorne extolled conflict and struggle, his eyes burning with fires of rage as his roar shattered the firmament: "Rivers of blood across the stars!"
---
Beyond the veil of reality, the dark powers formed a vast circle like spectators surrounding an arena, letting out bloodthirsty roars.
Inside the Overlord Sanctuary of the World Engine, the Supreme Overlord raised his head, his gaze piercing through the steel ceiling, as if beholding the monstrous faces of the dark gods and daemon lords.
"What are they anticipating?"
Hearing footsteps approach, he turned to face Blazkowicz advancing step by step, understanding dawning within his mind: "So that is how it is."
"The gods strain their necks," the Supreme Overlord raised a tentacle, pointing first at Blazkowicz, then at himself: "They anticipate the fall of a demigod—either me, or you."
"Heh... heh!" He let out a raspy, low laugh, "Unfortunate for them, the one falling today will not be me!"
The moment his words fell, the Supreme Overlord's body twitched violently. His hideous mouthparts, dripping with thick bile, split wide open to vomit forth a whip handle.
The handle was monstrously grotesque; tiny tentacles squirmed along its pommel, its body radiating a soul-captivating malevolence, while its tip blossomed into a black hole ringed with razor-sharp teeth.
As black tentacles stroked the whip, filthy shrieks erupted. Countless Rangdan souls bound together to form the whip's cord, emanating unbounded hatred toward humanity.
Behind the Supreme Overlord, the Wise One looked upon the whip, a flicker of anguish flashing through its eyes.
That whip was an absolute artifact of dark design.
It was forged from the fallen souls of the Rangdan throughout the war—combining the despair of genocide with hatred for humanity, bound together through Warp sorcery.
Its very existence was built upon the extinction of the Rangdan!
The Wise One felt pity for those souls condemned never to rest, silently mourning for its kin.
Yet it could not stop the Supreme Overlord, nor could it save its species. It could only watch helplessly as the Rangdan Empire fell to human hands, its people's souls sinking into eternal hate.
Grasping the whip with his tentacles, the Supreme Overlord lashed out in a violent arc!
Space hissed and tore. Wherever the soul whip swept, the World Engine's steel architecture dissolved, the clean, glassy cuts demonstrating the whip's terrifying power.
"If the gods wish to watch, let us give them a proper show!"
He let out a vengeful roar, his voice laden with malice, his eyes glinting with bitter malice.
RUMBLE—!
The pyramidal palace dissolved as steel flowed like liquid ripples, twisting forces reshaping the physical laws of reality.
The ceiling vanished, matter reassembling from the subatomic level as the grand palace transformed into a square dueling arena.
Such was the terrifying majesty of a demigod!
---
Blazkowicz never halted his advance. Looking up, he beheld a sky filled with a sea of stars. Beyond the veil, the legions of the Chaos Four encircled the arena without end, blotting out the stars.
Yet wherever his gaze fell, the hordes of daemons dared not meet the eyes of the Slayer.
The Chaos Four and the foul abominations beneath them—cruel and menacing—stared down with eager expectation, settling in to watch a duel within physical reality.
Blazkowicz's face remained grim and resolute. In his grip, the Crucible quivered slightly, yearning to drink deep of divine blood.
"Hideous," Blazkowicz's eyes settled on the whip, seeing the trillions of souls trapped within.
They shrieked relentlessly, driven by Warp sorcery to channel divine authority through hatred and agony.
This entity—an ascendant god warped and nameless—had created the Rangdan species to aid his own ascension, and had even used their very souls to forge a weapon of slaughter.
No further words were needed. Blazkowicz charged into the square arena, pointing his blade at the Supreme Overlord, his eyes bursting with unbounded killing intent.
"HA! HA! HA!"
The Supreme Overlord burst into sudden laughter, swinging his whip to lash at the cosmos, pure hatred bursting from his eyes: "I do not fear you!"
"Slayer!" he shrieked, dark mists swirling around his form: "Allow me to exact a portion of humanity's debt from your flesh!"
"You ruined my grand ascension!"
---
Darkness shrouded the realm as light plunged into the abyss.
The Blood God cast down a torrential river of blood to veil the arena, granting the two demigods free rein to unleash their full might.
The daemon hordes howled, their eyes wide as they watched the battle of gods!
In an instant—a microsecond beyond even Greater Daemonic comprehension—a violent clash echoed across the arena as two supreme wills collided.
Black mist detonated while crimson thunder roared.
Blazkowicz brought the Crucible down in a cleaving strike, met head-on by the Supreme Overlord's soul whip. Their artifact collision unleashed an ear-splitting shriek that pierced through dimensional layers, echoing across both physical reality and the Warp.
The god-slaying daemon inside the blade laughed with cruel malice, its edge transforming into spectral fangs that tore into the soul whip.
Agonized souls wailed as the murky whip twitched and contorted. Its tip tore through space, snapping around at a vicious angle to strike Blazkowicz's back.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Fragments of Archon armor flew into the air as the outer plating shattered, the whip carving a deep scar across his back.
Agony reverberated from the depths of his soul as concepts of malice seeped through. The whip bypassed his physical armor to inflict damage directly upon his spiritual form.
A sharp pang struck Blazkowicz's soul—a spiritual attack capable of tearing a mortal soul to shreds a billion times over—yet it elicited only a slight furrow of his brow.
Enduring the soul-piercing pain, Blazkowicz parried the whip aside with his right hand, his left raising the Super Shotgun as blazes of fury ignited along its double barrels, aimed straight at the Supreme Overlord.
Pulling the trigger, crimson flames erupted from the muzzle, slamming brutally into the demigod's host!
"Ungh!" A muffled grunt escaped the Supreme Overlord. Forcing back the agony, his eyes burst with a barrage of invisible blades aimed directly at Blazkowicz's eyes.
Blades of pure mental force—the signature talent of the Rangdan species.
Wielded by the Supreme Overlord, their power was absolute, warping dimensions wherever they passed, capable of slicing through any physical substance through sheer will.
Yet Blazkowicz was faster. Channeling force into his palm, he cast aside the Super Shotgun and caught the invisible blade in his bare hand.
The Supreme Overlord froze, utterly unable to comprehend how intangible psychic force could be seized by a physical body.
CRACK—!
Before his shock could fade, Blazkowicz applied sudden pressure, shattering the mental blade into pieces. In the same motion, he hurled a crushing punch forward, the retractable arm-blade springing forth to thrust straight between the Overlord's eyes.
Darkness surged, and in the next fraction of a second, the Supreme Overlord vanished.
Blazkowicz's fist struck empty air; turning his head, his gaze locked onto a position a thousand meters away.
In this first round of probing, the Supreme Overlord had suffered slightly—the bullet wounds on his skull healing rapidly back to their pristine state.
Floating a thousand meters off, he stared with deep dread at the blood-red Crucible.
Raising a tentacle, the Supreme Overlord held the whip before his eyes, inspecting a microscopic nick on its surface where its power had been slightly eroded.
Upon the surface of that malevolent blade, he had glimpsed a curse—a fundamental property designed to despise, negate, and erase gods and all supernatural entities.
---
"Eradicate this filthy abomination!"
The Void Dragon bellowed inside the Archon armor, its virtual avatar swinging its fists, itching to step onto the field and strike in person: "Looking at him makes me sick!"
"Mm," Blazkowicz acknowledged with a low hum. From that brief exchange, he felt that the Supreme Overlord's physical vessel was far less formidable than the Void Dragon had been.
His battle against the Void Dragon had been a grueling ordeal unlike anything he had ever experienced. Only after a prolonged, desperate engagement had he managed to subdue that overlord of the material realm.
He recalled the Super Shotgun back into dimensional space. Bullets infused with the Emperor's power could not inflict decisive harm upon a true demigod. After all, within the Warp, the Emperor could not eliminate the Supreme Overlord while simultaneously maintaining the Astronomican and the psychic communications of Terra. Bullets bearing his power signature were even less potent in physical reality.
Blazkowicz grasped the hilt with both hands. The Crucible expanded rapidly, transforming into a massive broadsword.
The god-slaying concept imbued within the Crucible was the absolute bane of divine entities.
Gripping the broadsword with both hands, Blazkowicz's gaze hardened. The Mark of Blazkowicz upon his chest blazed bright with every breath—in this moment, man and blade were one!
Killing intent filled the arena as an uneasy gale swept across the stage.
The bloodthirsty audience fell silent, while the gods stared intently at every shift—the true fight was only just beginning!
"Watch for an opening," Blazkowicz warned the Void Dragon. Driving power into his legs, he closed the thousand-meter distance in the blink of an eye.
Crimson light blazed with terrifying fury as the Crucible carried endless killing intent, wrapped in the concept of god-slaying. The wicked tip of the blade tore open the veil of reality, piercing directly into a Warp rift.
The Supreme Overlord's eyes widened as his mental field expanded to track Blazkowicz's impossibly fast form.
His obsidian eyes were completely filled by the crimson arc of the blade.
Within that blinding light, the demigod could almost see a vision of his own defeat.
"Authority!" he murmured softly, no longer able to dismiss Blazkowicz's threat.
To cross the cosmos bearing the ominous title of Slayer without falling meant his sheer power was beyond question.
Slime-coated tentacles squirmed as the soul whip was raised high, the Supreme Overlord focusing every shred of his consciousness upon the battle before him.
Intangible force expanded outward, saturating the entire arena, enveloping the warrior swinging the blade.
The divine authority of ascension descended upon the material universe, elevating the battle from one dimension straight into another!
The entities of the Warp held their breath—the second round was a fight to the absolute death.