Datch accepted Trazyn's proposal and used the Beast Taming Glove to modify the consciousness of one Tyranid swarm.
Then he would infect the other swarms with the modified consciousness.
The heart of the plan was to use the Tyranids' gestalt synchronisation to rewrite the entire consciousness of the Great Devourer through the swarm's synaptic network.
With the plan settled, Datch waved his hand and opened a portal to the Tyranid queen-hive the Silent King had discovered.
It was a gigantic organic city holding vast numbers of Tyranid swarms and the gene sequences they had collected.
The area had already been ravaged by the C'tan. Shards of carapace, scraps of flesh, and remnants of blood vessels drifted in the void, and the escaping air and moisture had frozen into ice crystals.
Using the Mind Stone, Datch once again entered the brood's mental realm.
A shining figure appeared again and spoke to him calmly.
"It seems you have visited our race's home world."
"Yes," Datch nodded. "As you said, the Great Devourer has no physical body."
Every piece of information so far pointed to the same fact.
The Great Devourer was the collective of the Tyranid swarms themselves, spread across countless hives and individual Tyranids, with no independent central core.
"So what do you intend to do with us?" the swarm's avatar asked, its tone conveying neither fear nor threat.
Datch raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Didn't you have a strong survival instinct before? Why so passive now?"
"You are far too powerful. Nothing we do matters anymore." The figure's reply was short and frank, carrying a quietness that even held a sense of release.
"No matter how fast our race evolves, we can never defeat you."
"Whatever we do, the end is destruction. So we can only calmly accept this inevitable fate."
"But I have no intention of destroying you." Datch took the Beast Taming Glove from his game inventory.
He had used this magic item to subdue the ancient colossal being Yogg-Saron, and it had been gathering dust in storage ever since.
Now it would see the light of day again, because it was perfect for modifying a swarm consciousness.
"You intend to make us serve you, as the Ahai did, and turn us into a weapon for your wars."
The swarm consciousness sensed the threat posed by the Beast Taming Glove and raised its voice in challenge.
"Since you have been to our home world, you should know the fate of the Ahai, who tried to use us as weapons. Are you not afraid the Imperium of Man will repeat their mistake?"
"I know the Ahai were devoured and destroyed by you in the end," Datch said casually, not seeming to care.
"Knowing that, why do you still think this way?" the swarm's avatar asked with faint curiosity.
"It's the fastest way to solve the problem," Datch answered simply.
"And even if you betray us, humanity can easily destroy you."
The current Imperium of Man had inherited the technological legacy of the Squats.
With the Laughing God's help, it had also inherited the Black Library and the knowledge of the Old Ones.
It had fully inherited the Squat and Eldar tech trees, and it also had the Pantheon.
If it couldn't beat the Tyranids under those circumstances, it truly deserved to go extinct.
Datch put on the taming glove and began twisting the swarm consciousness, making it swear eternal loyalty to the Imperium of Man and engraving that will into it forever.
He also removed the Tyranids' trait of endless hunger, so they wouldn't go mad from a lack of war.
From now on, the Tyranids could still consume biomass to produce new warriors, but they would no longer be driven by that bottomless hunger.
If ordered to cease hostilities, they would quietly stay in place and wait for new orders.
After all that, Datch placed the modified swarm consciousness next to an unmodified one to see what would happen.
The instant they touched, the two consciousnesses synchronised and fused in no time at all.
When the fusion was complete, the core commands of the unmodified consciousness had been synchronised with the modified version.
Seeing the plan working, Datch acted accordingly.
He summoned Pam, the train conductor, and gave her a task: drive the Star Train carrying the modified Tyranid consciousness all over the universe, and, by modifying the swarm consciousnesses scattered across the galaxies, bring the entire Great Devourer under control.
The same method was used on the Tyranids that had invaded the galaxy.
By first taming and twisting one hive fleet with the Beast Taming Glove, then using that fleet to assimilate the others, the Tyranids in the galaxy could be brought under control.
Of course, the Tyranids were spread across many star systems, and converting them all would take a long time.
In the meantime, Datch handed control of the Pantheon over to the Emperor and the Primarchs, leaving them to choose people fit to be entrusted with the Warp.
After heated discussion, the Emperor and the Primarchs completed the task.
Every human hero in the history of the Imperium of Man was granted a title and honours in the Pantheon and could wield its power.
As soon as it was established, the Pantheon began repairing the distortions in the galaxy, restoring it to its beautiful state before the War in Heaven.
At the same time, it would explore and rebuild the primordial Warp beyond the Milky Way, and so transform the entire universe.
The Milky Way was only a tiny, insignificant corner of the universe.
The Warp in countless other galaxies was still in its primordial state, waiting to be illuminated by the radiance of the Pantheon.
With the Tyranid and Pantheon problems sorted out, Datch took his beloved dog Yogg-Saron and set out for the far reaches of the universe.
He wanted to find the ancient race the Old Ones had banished and conclude a permanent peace treaty with them.
That ancient race had ruled the galaxy before the Old Ones. They had wielded immense power and could reshape reality by their will alone.
After their defeat by the Old Ones, they had been banished into the void at the edge of the universe.
If he could find them and form an alliance, the Imperium of Man would gain a powerful ally of irreplaceable strategic value.
Unfortunately, his hopes were dashed.
Before Yogg-Saron had been subdued by the Beast Taming Glove and become Datch's loyal servant, it had been broadcasting a dire warning.
"Get out of here! This is not home. Do not come near again."
Clearly, the ancient race had heeded Yogg-Saron's warning.
They had all left their hidden dimension, fled into the endless void, and departed this universe forever.
Datch was speechless. Unable to find the ancients, he had no choice but to return to the Warhammer universe.
With nothing else to do, Datch suddenly had an outrageous idea.
He took Rick's portal gun out of his game inventory.
According to the lore, this gun could open portals to any parallel universe.
If he really had time-travelled, this item should be able to take him to any universe he wanted.
"I'll hold off on turning in the quest. First I'll try this and see whether I really time-travelled."
Datch activated the portal gun's search function, which could find parallel universes matching specific criteria.
When used, the portal gun projected a holographic interface listing countless parallel universes.
Datch quickly swiped across the screen and entered his first keyword: "superhero."
The search interface refreshed at high speed, narrowing the range down to a unique subset of universes packed with recognisable features.
After filtering, he picked one universe and set it as his destination.
When the portal gun's indicator light turned green, he fired a shot into the air and opened a portal.
Stepping through, Datch arrived in an unfamiliar city and set foot on a concrete road.
A scorching wave of heat, carrying concrete dust and the acrid smell of burning fuel, hit him in the face.
In the distance, the dull roar of collapsing buildings and continuous explosions mixed with screams, sirens, and the high-pitched whine of engines.
All around, civilians fled in panic as buildings exploded one after another.
In the sky, aliens on anti-gravity flyers were mercilessly bombing the human city.
Airships with plasma cannons on both sides were strafing the ground.
With a roar, countless fragments were flung into the air by the blast, glittering in sunlight that wavered through the scorching air.
Looking around, Datch saw a thick blue beam of energy shooting straight into the sky from the roof of a distant building. It was holding open a wormhole that kept expanding.
The strange alien creatures were pouring out of that wormhole.
"Run, buddy!" A middle-aged white police officer in uniform, carrying a little girl on his shoulder, shouted as he ran past Datch.
"Alien monsters have invaded New York! Get to the subway station! The military's set up a shelter there!"
"Alien monsters have invaded New York." Datch frowned slightly.
The item really worked. It feels like I really crossed into another universe.
ROAR!!
A roar sounded behind him, and Datch looked toward it.
A green giant leapt down from the top floor of a burning apartment building and, with a single blow, smashed an alien and its ship into the wall of an office building across the street.
BOOM!!
The ship exploded, engulfing the alien.
Then the green giant grabbed the shattered wall with both hands, leapt again, and vanished into the distance.
"If my eyes don't deceive me, that's the Hulk from the Marvel Cinematic Universe." Datch frowned, looking where the Hulk had disappeared.
The universe he was in was at the climax of Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the Battle of New York.
Backed by Thanos, Loki had used the Mind Stone and the Tesseract to open a wormhole and ordered the Chitauri army to attack New York.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had urgently assembled Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye, forming the original Avengers to defend the planet from the invasion.
"I've come to the Marvel Universe. So I was never playing a game. I really time-travelled."
Datch muttered to himself, looking down at Rick's portal gun in his hand.
There was no way the rig he had bought had the processing power to run two huge-IP holographic VR games at once.
Only now did Datch finally accept that he really had crossed space and time.
He hadn't been trapped in a game with no way out. From the moment he pressed "Start Game," it had all been real…
His very existence had been torn from his original world and thrown into the Warhammer universe.
"Isn't 'cross over into Warhammer and swear loyalty to the Emperor' supposed to be a meme?"
"Why is it an actual time-travel?!"
"Whoa."
"Buddy, I'm talking to you; why aren't you running?" The middle-aged officer saw Datch standing there in a daze.
He handed the girl to a woman who was running desperately toward the subway station, then ran over to Datch and tried to pull him toward safety.
"Didn't you hear me? There's a unit evacuating civilians at the subway station. And did you escape from a comic convention or something? That costume is seriously weird!!"
Datch gently shook off his hand.
"Why run from a few aliens? I can wipe them all out with a snap of my fingers."
The officer stared at Datch as if he were looking at someone with a few screws loose.
"Hey, you've been playing too many role-playing games."
"You think this is a movie? Wipe out aliens with a snap of your fingers? What are you, some kind of wizard king?"
At that moment, a whistling sound came from the sky.
Stark, clad in his Iron Man armour, dropped down from above.
The red-and-gold armour gave a low, muffled mechanical clunk as he landed.
It was covered in scorch marks from plasma blasts and dents from close-range collisions with Chitauri ships.
As soon as he landed, he flipped up his faceplate and looked at the officer.
"Why are you still here? Evacuate, now!"
The officer looked at a loss. "I'm trying to get this guy to come to safety with me."
When Stark turned to scold the reckless man, he noticed Datch standing in front of him.
Datch reached out and lightly tapped Stark's armour.
"It feels real. Everything looks real."
Stark: "…"
Is this guy mentally ill or something?
Read the room. Quit talking nonsense.
"Whoever you are, it's dangerous here. Get to the subway station! I'll handle this."
Stark told Datch, "And don't get in the way of me fighting those damn alien bastards."
Datch looked at Stark, but had no intention of explaining anything.
He didn't want to waste time. He stretched out the hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, ready to wipe out the Chitauri army invading New York.
Besides, if he snapped his fingers, the Time Bureau would immediately notice the anomaly and start investigating. Then he could follow that thread and unravel the secrets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
When the time came, he would lead the Emperor and the Primarchs to conquer this entire universe and raise the Imperium's double-headed eagle banner.
As Stark and the officer watched, Datch snapped his fingers.
The next instant, a strange wave spread outward.
In a flash, the Chitauri army above New York was reduced to ash.
Stark, in his Iron Man armour, and the officer beside him both went wide-eyed.
The aliens really got wiped out with a finger snap?
Just how strong is this guy?!
The instant Datch snapped his fingers, an ear-splitting alarm rang out across the entire Time Bureau.
As the timeline began visibly and rapidly branching, the Time Bureau's senior officials fell into a panic and urgently dispatched an action team to investigate.
But before Datch ran into the Time Bureau's action team, a bald sorceress approached him first.
"Outsider, you have disrupted the balance of time!"
…