The Black Library.
This was the single largest library in the entire galaxy, bar none.
Uncounted wraithbone constructs hovered beneath the high vault, radiating a soft, psychic luminescence. The light expanded and receded like steady breathing, illuminating endless rows of bookshelves that stretched away into the deep darkness.
Ten thousand profound secrets—knowledge dense enough to break the skull of any scholar who dared seek it—slept quietly here. Countless lies were birthed within these halls, only to be exposed and shattered like thin bubbles in a single instant.
Deep inside the library stood a elevated dais.
Upon the dais, a deity dressed like a court jester paced back and forth.
His figure was slight and thin, his face covered in thick greasepaint, his features rendered blurred and uncertain by a shroud of mysterious force.
As he moved back and forth, the surrounding space seemed to dissolve like wet paint on an Impressionist canvas, running loose before snapping back into shape just as quickly.
His gestures were absurd and comical, every movement carrying the exaggerated cadence of a circus performer.
Yet no person who knew this entity's true identity would ever dare dismiss him.
Cegorach, the Laughing God.
The sole surviving deity from the Fall of the Aeldari.
Beneath the platform, a band of Harlequins tilted their heads back, exchanging glances.
"How long has the boss been acting like this?" a Solitaire asked in a low whisper, his tone laced with raw confusion.
Standing beside him, Sylandri Veilwalker stared with a strange expression at the figure jumping down from the stage one moment and vaulting back up the next. "Ever since that suffocating aura that nearly made us all feel the chill of death dissolved... Lord Cegorach has been like this."
Anxiety clouded the eyes of all the Harlequins present.
To them, their master's bizarre antics were a standard part of daily life. But any Harlequin could see that Lord Cegorach was genuinely anxious right now—frantic, even.
You never mentioned you planned to perform yourself today, Sylandri thought silently to herself.
Yet unlike the clueless troupe around him, Cegorach was truly on the verge of going mad.
Was this some kind of joke?
Ynnead, the Whispering God, had actually resurrected.
Ever since the fall of the Aeldari pantheon, Cegorach had led his followers into the hiding places of the Black Library, single-handedly struggling to preserve the final ember of their race.
In the twenty thousand years since, he had never experienced anything so utterly absurd.
The Whispering God arrives... and then the Whispering God leaves?
Just dropping in for a casual visit?
Cegorach's mind was a complete blur of confusion.
From his perspective, this was a terrifying ghost story.
The moment he realized the fifth Crone Sword might be a fatal trap laid by the Ruinous Powers, he had acted immediately, dispatching his Harlequin troupes to intercept it.
Though that operation failed, Cegorach reacted quickly, scrambling to draft plans to persuade the Ynnari not to act recklessly.
And right in the middle of all this, Ynnead had just casually sprung to life.
It had nearly scared him out of his wits.
As the last remaining god of the Aeldari, Cegorach burned every second with the desire for vengeance against Slaanesh.
However, he would never allow the price of that vengeance to be the utter destruction of the Aeldari race.
Cegorach possessed such a fierce love for his people that he could never drag them into a shared grave merely to strike back at She-Who-Thirsts.
His authored work, The Final Jest, was meant only to leverage the threat of Ynnead's revival to force Slaanesh into preserving a portion of the Aeldari out of self-preservation—buying the continuation of their bloodline while suppressing Ynnead's full awakening forever.
That was the absolute last resort.
A final, helpless compromise.
A tragic end.
And now?
Cegorach circled the dais over and over, a thought refusing to leave his mind.
Should I send a few more Harlequin troupes out to inspect the situation?
He discarded the idea almost as fast as it formed.
Things in the material universe were entirely wrong right now. A god was actively walking the physical realm.
Compared to the Four Ruinous Powers seated deep within the Warp—who struggled to project their full power directly into realspace—a entity that could move freely in the material realm was true horror incarnate.
The upper limits of his power were completely unknown, his alignments and inclinations entirely obscure.
As the final hope of the Aeldari, Cegorach could not afford a single line of wishful thinking.
If he sent a Harlequin troupe out and that god consumed their souls like an offered snack—or worse, tracked them back to locate the Black Library—everything would end in absolute ruin.
I need a way that satisfies both ends, the Laughing God thought, his brow creased as his fingers tapped his chin, his mind racing.
Then he froze. Sensing something, he whipped his head up.
Having managed the Black Library for over twenty thousand years, the Laughing God's perception of this domain was sharp beyond measure.
A moment ago, he had caught the distinct trail of an uninvited guest.
In the very next instant, Cegorach's figure vanished from the platform, leaving behind a group of Harlequins staring up at the empty dais in total confusion.
And in the following breath, the figure that appeared before the Laughing God was the exact person he had just been thinking of—the one entity he least wished to encounter right now.
Or rather, a deity.
"Hi. First time meeting—how should I address you?"
Adam raised a hand in greeting, his tone casual, as if he had merely been taking a stroll.
Beside him, Yvraine and Eldrad Ulthran stood with strange expressions, performing a formal salute to this sole surviving god of their kind.
The Laughing God froze.
His immediate instinct was to reach out his hand.
Not to shake hands, of course, but to mobilize every defensive mechanism built into the Black Library to banish this intruder, before instantly altering the spatial coordinates of this place so no soul could ever locate it again.
Yet his fingers merely twitched before dropping limply to his side.
Forget it.
The fact that the other party was already standing right here meant it was already too late.
In the presence of an entity capable of wiping the Eye of Terror off the map, the moment he entered your line of sight, any resistance lost all meaning.
So the choice left to make was quite simple.
Across Cegorach's painted face, a broad, almost servile smile spread at breathtaking speed, and he stepped forward with eager enthusiasm.
"Oh, don't stand on ceremony! You can just call me Cogorach!"
He beamed, rubbing his hands together in front of his chest. "I've admired your name for a long time. Everything you've accomplished is truly something I've marvelled at from afar. To be honest, I've wanted to meet you for ages!"
As he spoke, the Laughing God couldn't help asking, "Though before we begin, could you show a little mercy and tell me... how exactly did you find this quiet little corner of mine?"
He simply couldn't hold the question in.
It made no sense. The Black Library's defenses had been constructed by his own hands, unbreached by a single outsider for twenty thousand years.
Even with those Ynnari standing beside him, it should have been impossible!
Those Ynnari weren't Harlequins; they didn't possess the precise coordinates of the Black Library, meaning they had no way to lead anyone here!
Adam shrugged casually.
"That was a minor oversight on your part. Whether they knew the coordinates or not didn't matter—I only needed to hold the premise that I could reach your Black Library through them."
The Laughing God fell silent.
As the master of the Black Library with a view spanning millennia, his understanding of this galaxy far exceeded that of almost any living being. He had witnessed no shortage of entities with bizarre and terrifying powers.
Even so, facing an ability that completely disregarded common logic, he could only barely grasp its operational premise, feeling a profound sense of awe.
As expected of a primary contender for a Warp godhead... to be capable of even this, he thought secretly, casting aside his final lingering hopes as his habitual smile settled back onto his face.
I just hope the final outcome is something acceptable, the Laughing God prayed inwardly.
If the intruder's demands were truly unbearable... well, he probably wouldn't have any good counter-measures anyway.
Aside from lying flat and taking it.
Ten minutes later.
"Whoa—why didn't you just say so earlier?!"
The Laughing God's mood took an abrupt 180-degree turn.
He had originally assumed the best possible outcome would be getting forcibly dragged under this reality-warper's command, reduced to a subservient vassal of the Imperium of Man much like a certain unfortunate blue-skinned species.
He had never imagined this.
The terms offered were so absurdly generous that even the Laughing God—who had witnessed endless cycles of galactic war and decay—felt momentarily dazed.
With conditions this good... there can't be a hidden catch, right?
Habitually, he began using a mind crammed with two hundred centuries of trickery and deceit to analyze every word spoken. Yet the posture displayed before him remained completely sincere, without a trace of falsehood.
Besides, considering this was a newly risen god, his credibility was infinitely higher than the ancient, decrepit deities of this universe—the sort of characters you couldn't even trust to return a borrowed power bank.
It seemed... this wasn't impossible to trust?
"So what you mean is... you plan to facilitate full cooperation between the Aeldari and Humanity? A non-aggression pact, comprehensive technological exchanges, and standing together against threats including the Necrons and Chaos?"
The Laughing God's eyes lit up.
He quickly glanced at Yvraine standing next to Adam. If the information she had relayed earlier was true, then this human before him was the number-one benefactor who had saved the Aeldari Whispering God.
To possess such a massive debt of gratitude owed to him and still offer a helping hand... it was practically a gift falling straight out of the sky!
And the gift was landing square on the head of every Aeldari in existence.
"It seems we've reached an understanding."
Adam nodded in satisfaction at Cegorach's quick decision. "In that case, shouldn't you fulfill the condition you just promised me right away?"
"Of course."
Without a moment's hesitation, the Laughing God offered a light gesture.
Two books vanished from a shelf deep inside the Black Library, appearing in his hand an instant later.
"These are the Book of Damnation and the Atlas of the Webway from the depths of the Black Library. The Atlas of the Webway records knowledge of every node-city within the Webway—it's the most comprehensive navigational map of the galactic Webway, completed bit by bit over twenty thousand years by my own hands.
With this, using the existing material strength of the Imperium of Man, you can fully perform deep-level exploitation of the Webway."
"You certainly know how to play ball."
Adam accepted the two volumes, his gaze falling first on the Atlas of the Webway. This was no ordinary book made of paper, but a construct carved from wraithbone. Uncounted characters of information flickered across its smooth surface, continuously reorganizing and shifting.
Having examined it, he turned his attention to the second, far more famous tome—the Book of Damnation.
This book had been crafted during the Webway War by stranded Tech-priests, using the skin of a Silent Sister from their squad who had willingly sacrificed herself.
The material of this book was human skin, upon which dense red dots and lines intertwined to paint a panorama of pure hell.
To those poor souls who had once been lost inside the Webway, the Webway itself was the physical incarnation of hell. Yet this record of a hellish landscape would future-proof human civilization, guiding them toward an exit out of that very purgatory.
Adam gave his hand a calm shake, replicating a paper duplicate of the skin-bound book right in front of everyone present.
Then, with a gentle flick of his fingers, the original Book of Damnation vanished completely, and a Silent Sister with a completely bewildered expression materialized in its place.
Her eyes were wide, her armor reflecting the psychic light of the Black Library, completely unable to comprehend why she was standing here.
The Laughing God: "..."
This casual display of impossible power left both the Aeldari deity and the mortals utterly dazed, their faces filled with disbelief.
In their golden age, the ancient Aeldari had indeed possessed the power of infinite reincarnation.
Back then, as the Aeldari pursued sensation to its absolute limits, death was nothing more than a brief, lighthearted farewell.
The soul would return to the Pantheon, only to be reborn into the cosmos in the very next breath.
That had been an era that truly achieved a cycle of life and death.
Yet it was precisely that extreme indulgence that ultimately gave birth to the horror of Slaanesh.
Even so... not even ancient Aeldari technology could pull a Silent Sister—who had willingly sacrificed herself millennia ago—back into existence, intact and unchanged down to the last detail.
As expected of him!
Adam obviously had no time to explain matters to this freshly resurrected, thoroughly confused Silent Sister.
Raising his hand, he gave her shoulder a gentle nudge. Her figure dissolved instantly, transported straight back to far-off Terra.
Her old friends in the Adeptus Custodes and the Anathema Psykana could fill her in on what had happened over the past ten thousand years; she might even find a few familiar faces among the Companions who had once fought by her side.
Afterward, Adam turned his gaze back onto the Laughing God.
"Are... are we still doing more? I probably don't have much else here..."
The Laughing God raised both hands in mild embarrassment. "I mean... as you can see, I don't really have anything else that can be of help."
"That might not be true."
Adam eyed the slight, thin deity, a meaningful smile touching the corners of his mouth.
"You are a god who has lived for twenty thousand years. In a sense, your understanding of the Warp—and your sheer experience—is far deeper than a certain Master of Mankind currently sitting on the Golden Throne."
"So, I'd like to learn a few more reliable, actionable strategies from you."
He paused, looking straight into Cegorach's eyes hidden behind the heavy greasepaint.
"For instance... how do we permanently eliminate the Four Gods of Chaos?"