The war did not end.
It simply failed to finish.
Ainz Ooal Gown hovered above the battlefield, his robes untouched by ash, blood, or the screaming winds created by constant artillery fire.
Below him stretched a panorama of ruin so vast it bordered on abstract art: burning tank columns, cratered plains, half-melted fortifications, and the steady, disciplined advance of yet another Imperial Guard regiment.
They marched forward despite everything.
Despite seeing tanks cleaved apart by invisible blades.
Despite watching comrades erased by holy pillars of annihilation.
Despite entire companies vanishing into spatial distortions that folded reality like wet paper.
They marched with lasguns raised with banners fluttering and voices chanting prayers that no longer reached anyone listening.
Ainz watched them in silence.
"Twin Maximize Magic: Reality Slash."
Two intersecting rifts tore open the air itself. The front line ceased to exist in a soundless moment of nonbeing. The ground behind them collapsed inward, sucked into the screaming absence left behind.
The regiment behind the first stepped forward without hesitation.
Ainz felt something unfamiliar.
Fatigue.
Not physical—his body did not tire—but conceptual. The kind of exhaustion that came from realizing you were trying to empty an ocean with a spoon.
'The Imperium does not retreat.'
'And the Orks, Unhelpful As Ever'
Below him, the orks were having the time of their lives.
"DEY KEEP COMIN'!"
"BEST FIGHT EVA!"
"BONEBOSS MADE DIS EVEN BETTA!"
A Nob, missing both arms and riding a looted tank like a bucking animal, screamed incoherently as he fired a gun with his feet.
Another ork attempted to headbutt a Chimera.
It worked.
Ainz stared.
'These creatures thrive on attrition.'
Which made them catastrophically unsuited for his temperament.
He was a ruler, a planner.
A being who preferred absolute, irreversible outcomes.
This endless cycle of reinforcement, destruction, and replacement offended him on a philosophical level.
***********
The sky darkened.
Thunderhawks roared overhead, drop pods screamed as they punched through the atmosphere.
Ainz felt it before he saw it.
Power.
Discipline.
"Space Marines," he murmured.
The drop pods impacted.
They opened.
Angels of ceramite and hatred emerged, bolters already roaring. The orks charged them with joyous abandon.
For the first time since arriving on this world, Ainz felt resistance.
Bolter rounds detonated against his barriers. Psychic null fields scraped uncomfortably against his magic.
A Librarian raised his staff.
Ainz countered instantly.
"Greater Break Item."
The Librarian's force staff shattered.
The Space Marine still charged.
'He knew they would.'
They will never stop.
That realization settled into Ainz's mind with chilling clarity.
*********
Ainz descended slowly, landing amid the chaos. Fire parted around him. Orks froze mid-swing as he passed.
He looked at the battlefield.
'This world cannot be pacified through force alone.'
The Imperium's strength was not its weapons.
It was logistics, faith and unwavering obedience.
And those could be repurposed.
Ainz raised his staff.
For the first time since arriving in this universe, he stopped holding back.
He spread his magic throughout the entire world.
"Maximize Magic:Mass Control Species"
The spell circle appeared beneath him, spanning kilometers. Ancient runes—alien even to this galaxy—burned into the crust of the planet.
The warp recoiled.
Every ork stopped, their eyes dulled.
Then sharpened.
Every human felt it, an authority that did not ask, bargain, or inspire.
It commanded.
Across continents Imperial Guardsmen lowered weapons, Commissars hesitated, unable to pull triggers, officers knelt, knees buckling against their will.
In orbit, fleet crews froze at their stations, astropaths screamed as their minds were overwritten by something ordered.
The Tyranids died instantly, their synaptic link collapsed, biomass slumping into inert flesh.
Ainz's voice echoed everywhere.
"This world now operates under my authority."
No one resisted.
They could not.
*********
A Space Marine captain attempted to move.
His armor locked.
He knelt, not in shame, nor in surrender.
In acknowledgement.
Ainz approached him.
"You will stand down."
The words embedded themselves directly into the warrior's cognition.
"...Yes Master," the Marine replied.
The Imperium of Man had lost a planet.
And it did not even realize how.
**********
Hours passed.
Fires were extinguished and factories were restarted.
Orks organized into labor mobs—loud, inefficient, but obedient.
Imperial command structures reformed beneath new directives.
Ainz stood atop the highest manufactorum spire, surveying a world that now moved at his will.
'An empire requires stability.'
He had achieved it in a single spell.
Emotion suppression dampened the surge within him.
Still, he allowed himself one thought.
This Imperium will not forgive this.
He smiled anyway.