Having stopped the Necrons' attack with the Infinity Gauntlet, Datch set up the amazing medicine-making machine.
Then he fired Rick's portal gun, and a green portal appeared out of nowhere.
Rick's portal gun could connect to different parallel worlds; in theory, it could get Datch any item at all.
He reached into the hole of green light, groped around for a while, and pulled out a bottle of correction fluid in a white plastic case.
"This ought to be able to lift a curse laid on living things."
After fiddling with the correction fluid for a while, Datch tossed it into the machine's intake chute.
The machine swallowed the correction fluid with a low growl, and a strange light flared.
A few seconds later, a bag of white powder labelled "Correction Concept" shot out of the discharge port.
Datch stowed the powder carefully, reached into the green portal again, and took out a fragment of mottled tortoiseshell.
When the tortoiseshell went into the intake, the machine growled once more, gave off an eerie light, and shook violently.
A few seconds later, a bag of powder embodying the concept "Long Life" shot out of the discharge pipe.
"The set is complete."
Holding the two bags of powder, Datch muttered something to himself and opened a spatial portal with the Infinity Gauntlet.
With a light lift of his hand, he pushed the tomb-battleship Song of Oblivion through the portal and into orbit around a blue planet.
The planet had no intelligent life and no land; its entire surface was covered by ocean.
Datch poured the Correction powder into one sea, then poured the Long Life powder into a neighbouring sea.
Once dosed, each sea's effect became permanent, lasting unless the sea itself were destroyed.
Preparations complete, Datch used the Infinity Gauntlet again and hurled the Necrons from the battleship into the sea.
Countless cosmic zombies plunged into the Correction sea like dumplings dropped into a pot.
The instant they hit the water, their living-metal bodies underwent a dramatic change.
Silver-white metal gave way to growing flesh; living-metal joints regenerated into real bone and tendon.
The energy-transmission paths inside their bodies turned into blood vessels and nerve endings.
The Necrons floundered their way aboard the rescue ships, instantly restored to what they had once been — those who feared death, creatures of flesh and blood.
They stared at their palms, touched their faces, and were beside themselves with excitement.
The Correction concept distilled from the correction fluid had fixed, at the root of their genes, the error of "living-metal-isation" — the error into which the star-gods had tricked the Necrons and which the Silent King had forced upon them.
Before those who feared death had even finished celebrating the return of their flesh, Datch threw them into the sea that held the concept of Long Life.
When they crawled out of the sea again, the curse of their short lifespans had been completely lifted.
Having witnessed such a miracle, many of those who feared death, their flesh and blood restored, firmly declared their support for Orikan, the Nameless One's choice, and acknowledged him as their supreme ruler and lord.
Szarekh's fervent supporters could not hide their agitation at the sight.
In the end, apart from a few stubborn old men, every one of those who feared death who had regained their flesh chose to swear loyalty to their new leader, Orikan.
It was not that they had never sworn loyalty to the Silent King. It was just that the Nameless One had given them far too much; they could hardly refuse to become his dogs.
The Nameless One, who had overturned the biological curse and permanently banished the curse of early death by cancer, was the true saviour of the Necrontyr.
The Silent King could not compare with him.
Of course, not every Necron could be turned back into living flesh.
Those reduced to bare programmed instinct could never return.
To undo the biological binding, one had to extract the remaining fragments of the original personality from the data-core; those fragments served as the anchor for rebuilding the soul.
People who had lost their memories through sixty million years of sleep and endless cycles of death and regeneration, who had completely forgotten the past and become empty husks…
Even the last traces of their humanity had been concealed and altered again and again during the long sleep.
Such existences were beyond recovery.
Unless the Nameless One himself stepped in, turned back time, and pulled them from the past into the present.
The problem was that Datch the Player had no wish to do such tedious work for a bunch of NPCs.
At its peak, the Necron population had been unimaginably vast.
He was just a working stiff; he had come here to play a game and unwind, not to work overtime like livestock driven to hard labour.
Besides, if the number of those who feared death grew too large, it would cause problems down the line.
Better to leave them half-dead, like the Craftworld Eldar.
After eliminating the few remaining diehards, Orikan seized control of the Song of Oblivion.
The gigantic tomb-ship, once the Silent King's own, became Orikan's new flagship.
The ancient runes on the hull that had symbolised the Silent King's supreme authority were replaced with the emblem of Orikan the astromancer.
Next, with the Nameless Ones' help, Orikan inherited the Silent King's entire legacy as supreme ruler.
The dynasties that had once sworn loyalty to the Silent King were all astounded when Orikan came calling at the head of a band of warriors who feared death.
At first they took it for a hallucination, but after scanning those warriors several times over, they confirmed the new supreme ruler really could lift the biological curse.
To be rid of the curse, most of these dynasties' rulers chose to swear loyalty to Orikan and back him as supreme ruler.
As for the stubborn dynasties that regarded the Silent King as the only legitimate ruler, Datch did not care.
He simply dispatched star-gods in Orikan's name to make war on them.
Utterly powerless against star-gods restored to their peak, those dynasties were wiped out in an instant.
With those dynasties settled, Datch planned to help Orikan solve the problem of the Stormlord.
The Stormlord Imotekh had been the high priest — no, the high general — of the Sautekh dynasty.
Of all the Necron rulers who openly challenged the Silent King's authority, he was the most powerful, the most cunning and the hardest to deal with.
Before the Great Sleep, Imotekh had been merely a high general of the Sautekh dynasty.
But during those sixty million years the dynasty's previous phaeron had suffered a mishap and lost his memories, and could no longer be revived.
When the Sautekh nobles awoke, they quickly realised that their phaeron was gone.
So the nobles began vying for the phaeron's throne, sparking one civil war after another.
One Necron ruler with his eye on the throne woke the high general Imotekh in order to secure victory.
He hoped the famed commander would help him seize the phaeron's throne and put down the civil war.
The capable Imotekh did put down the civil war — just not in the way his awakener had wanted.
That ruler's plan had been to use Imotekh's military genius to expand his own power.
But in Imotekh's eyes, these short-sighted nobles, starting civil wars willy-nilly inside the dynasty and squandering its limited resources, were the root cancer of the whole mess.
Imotekh raised an army on his own and, within a single year, destroyed everyone who had tried to claim the phaeron's throne.
Thus he became the undisputed phaeron of the Sautekh dynasty, wielding unimaginable military might.
Through brilliant strategy and extraordinary wisdom, he won the backing of many dynasties and built a power that could challenge the Silent King.
Imotekh and Szarekh were not cut from the same cloth.
The Stormlord did not care in the slightest about the extinction of the Necrontyr as a living people.
He and his followers believed that the Necrons — with bodies of steel and endless lifespans — were better suited to the present galaxy.
A living-metal body did not fall ill, did not age, and never hindered battlefield tactics through the frailty of flesh.
The only problems left to solve were reproduction and the preservation of reason.
Solve those two, and the Necrons would have no weakness at all and could easily conquer the galaxy — indeed, the entire universe.
For Orikan to secure his position as supreme ruler and establish true dominion over those who feared death,
a heretic like the Stormlord absolutely could not be left alive.
The man would never surrender, and he would sooner die than accept having his flesh restored and the biological curse lifted.
He and his followers would never recognise Orikan, the puppet ruler installed by the Imperium of Man.
"The Nameless One is wise."
"A scoundrel like the Stormlord ought to be given a thorough beating."
When the Nameless One turned his attention to the Stormlord, Trazyn was the first to step forward and declare his support.
The Silent King was now a specimen in his museum, and the Stormlord was likewise a piece he could not afford to miss.
The two were of equal commemorative value, equally worth collecting and handing down to posterity.
Orikan was also very excited.
If even the Stormlord fell, no one would be able to challenge his rule.
The dynasties still sitting on the fence would abandon all wishful thinking and come over to his side.
The entire Necrontyr civilisation would enter a new age under his guidance.
Deciding to follow that nameless man had been a truly brilliant move.
"Trazyn, I have walked on thin ice my whole life. Do you think I'll make it to the other shore?" Orikan asked him with deep feeling.
"Don't worry. You'll drown for sure, you bastard."
Trazyn despised his sworn enemy from the bottom of his heart.
Damn it — did you become phaeron through your own efforts?
It's all because you suck up to those in power.
No amount of striving can match a single stroke of luck.
A man like Orikan becoming supreme ruler — outrageous!
...
"Once the Stormlord is settled, the Necron problem will be solved."
"Not only did they escape extinction, I also helped lift the curse on their bodies and brought the galaxy a happy ending. That ought to bump up my ending rating."
Datch muttered to himself, raised the hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, and opened a spatial portal.
Every action the Player took affected the final rating.
Especially on a first play-through, it was best to aim for a good ending.
The other endings could wait for later runs.
Datch had no intention of spending much time on the Stormlord.
Ever since obtaining a top-grade item like the Heart of the Universe, he had given up on raising great armies to fight NPCs.
All he wanted now was to smash hostile NPCs quickly and have them sing "Conquer!" in unison.
Meanwhile, the Stormlord Imotekh was discussing the state of the galaxy with the phaerons and rulers loyal to him.
Their conference room lay inside a gigantic tomb-ship.
The dome was carved with the design of the Sautekh dynasty's oldest war-banner.
Many phaerons and monarchs did not attend in person, joining the conference by hologram instead.
Around the circular table, pale-blue holographic figures flickered into being one after another.
"Orikan has replaced the Silent King and won the allegiance of the rulers of the Nihilakh and Novok dynasties," one ruler's hologram announced gravely.
"Orikan has the backing of the Imperium of Man. I hear the Nameless One appointed him the new supreme ruler." Another ruler cut in, his voice thick with contempt and anger.
The Necrons were the oldest and most powerful race in the galaxy; they had once defeated the ancient saints in the War in Heaven.
To submit to humanity was a disgrace.
"Exactly. Orikan and his lot are our shame."
"One day they will answer for it."
"..."
After hearing out the many phaerons and lords, Imotekh chose his moment to speak.
"Whatever choice those dynasties make, we must hold to one principle: ours is the noblest race in the galaxy, and we will never submit to humanity."
"And those who fawn on humanity like servants are no longer members of the Necron race."
The phaerons and overlords agreed with him.
"Exactly. We can never recognise them as our kin."
"We must settle accounts with that man Orikan."
In the midst of the phaerons' and overlords' heated debate, an alarm suddenly blared through the entire conference hall.
The Necrons swiftly identified the cause: an anomaly in the structure of space-time.
Before Imotekh could react, ripples suddenly spread through the conference room.
Before the assembled phaerons and overlords could react, a spatial passage opened before their eyes.
The star-gods Datch had rescued and restored to their former glory burst through in force.
In the mind of every Necron present, names surfaced one after another: the Void Dragon, the Burning One, the Nightbringer.
The phaerons and monarchs in attendance, along with their many attendants, trembled in terror.
In that instant, they were forced to remember the horror of being ruled by the star-gods.
"Gentlemen, were you talking about me?" The star-gods parted for Orikan, who stepped out of the passage with his staff in hand, making a truly imposing entrance.
The phaerons exchanged glances. Were these really the star-gods they remembered? Since when had they been so easy to order about?
Every time the star-gods they had betrayed and shattered broke free of a hyperdimensional cube, they had sworn to wipe the Necrons out completely.
How had Orikan made them so obedient?!
"What are you doing here? Do you want a war?" Imotekh asked Orikan coldly.
Orikan laughed. "A war? You useless cowards — you dare speak of war to me, the supreme ruler appointed by the Nameless One?"
"The star-gods could tear you fools apart with a single order."
"I came here only to give you a chance to swear loyalty to me."
...