Grill Smith son of Krewton Crunchmaster descendant of the warrior God Slag, had been shoved into the back of his own mind by his angry God, his own self-pity burned away in the fires of his deities righteous fury.

He was left in a kind of cold observational state.

There was no pain, or anger at his god for ripping open a section of his mind to help the god manifest a divine blade, but there was no joy when his body flew towards the infected Angel. All he could do was coldly watch and observe the battle as his God pushed on the section of his mind that was creating the divine great Falchion, blowing it up into a giant meat cleaver with a 4-meter long blade, made of a swirling mass of blue and golden energies.

The angel easily dodged the first mighty swing of the cleaver, then flew to the side just in time to avoid Slag throwing the enormous meat cleaver at him. Before the angel could recover from the near miss, Slag was on top of him again, a 2 meter long, great falchion made of energy in each hand.

The angel managed to summon a pair of swords of his own, one black and one white and parried the wild swings just in time. The smug look of victory replaced by one of utter fury; distorting what was clearly once a beautiful visage of masculine perfection, a face made for a quiet gentle smile, marred by black veins and a look of pure rage. Altogether the effect was more horrifying than any rotting face of a normal zombie.

Slag pondered why the corruption of an Angel seemed objectively worse than a normal horde of zombies, maybe that is why they targeted the orphanage, the angel is now as corrupt and depraved as he was once kind and brave.

“You interfere where you are not allowed or welcome tiny Orc-God.” The angel said with a snarl as their swords clashed

Grills body laughed as Slag responded through him. “Oh, honey! you done fucked up, not only was I invited into my follower's body, this battle hits on all three of my domains.” he chuckled menacingly at the angels shocked expression ”Oh yea, you know, that is like full-on divine intervention territory.”

“There is no way throwing a cleaver at me is a part of 3 divine domains.” the angel said with renewed condescension

“My first domain is Battle, I was Called to witness the angel of war below devastate your army in a glorious slaughter” Slag instructed while never letting up his relentless assault.

His god and the angel fought each other to a standstill, but Grill felt more pressure of his mind, he realized then that the great cleaver was still in the air, Slag just altered its shape to be more like a fusion of a boomerang and a meat cleaver. Then tweaked its trajectory a bit.

And now it was coming back.

Grill coldly observed that the change had been a mix of mental and divine energy, so there was no visible effect for the angel to notice that something had changed, he may have felt the divine energy manipulation normally, but not while 2 other divine blades keep swinging at his face.

“My second domain is Freedom, and your infected feather even now tries to enslave the body and soul of a minor follower of mine, you see, when she can't finish her meal she offers it to me, and since all her meals are prepared by a priest of my religion, they are more easily converted into faith.”

The angels face is twisted with rage “no, the half-troll child is MINE!!! I have plans for her, I am only even here for HER, SHE WILL NEVER BE FREE OF ME!”

The Gods laugh was cold and malicious this time. “My Third domain is cooking”

Now the angel's face was beet red, with unrestrained fury. “WHAT DOES COOKING HAVE TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS!!”

In the next exchanges of sword blows, Slag feints and appears to leave himself open to a strike, but just as the enraged angel leans into the strike...

The giant divine cleaver makes its return visit. The Angel is perfectly aligned in the air for the cleaver to cut through the base of both wings, then it goes through one last shift before vanishing, flicking the white and black wings to the Orc Chef God, whose swords had also vanished.

The Angel Had a moment of pain and stunned disbelief before falling into the mass of Zombies and Colossal Ants below.

Wait, when did all those ants join the battle?

Grill never really got an answer to that though, his God flew back to Grills original position behind the massive spider tank lady, who was now standing directly over the downed troll girl. Several of the massive spider legs seemed to be operating on the Girl, she had not fully turned yet.

Even in his cold state of mind, he thought that it must be another miracle, the infected feather had gone right into the little girl's heart. She should have had less than 30 seconds before turning, most likely immediately exploding; killing the other little girl and damaging the Lady trying so hard to save a dumb orc and a bunch of kids she had never seen before.

Time stopped in a bubble coming off of the God possed orc, The Spider-woman, the girl Tiffany's body, was just outside the bubble, a few legs and part of the back of the spider woman were in.

Grill felt the now familiar pressure on his mind as the god created a stove and table out of energy, he dropped the Wings onto the table, hundreds of tiny hands pulled all the black and white feathers and put them into a jar on the table.

He poured something into the jar and the feathers dissolved into what now looked like a silvery sauce of some kind.

Then God then split each wing in half lengthwise. Inside the flesh of each wing, he sprinkled spices made of energy and then some of the divine silvery feather sauce.

He then slapped half the black wing onto half the white wing and vice versa, slathered the oddly fused wings with the rest of the silvery sauce.

Slag then pulled the top off the table wings and all, the table legs vanished, as the tabletop morphed into an oven tray, that the Chef God put into the giant oven that he created earlier. The time in the bubble sped up for a moment, then suddenly the wings were cooked.

The chef God carried the tray of wings to the edge of the bubble with the frozen Girls fighting for their lives, he picked up the first of the massive wings and held it in front of the mouth they shared, Grill thought that the God was going to take a bite.

Instead, the Chef God yelled “EAT!” before their mouth and the massive wing distorted and suddenly for a glorious moment, Grill tasted the most wonderful meal of his life. Then it was over, and the wing was gone.

Before he had time to contemplate the odd power, he was holding the other wing in front of the Spider tank lady, then for a final time, the god yelled “EAT!” and the food in question vanished into the surprised woman's face hole.

His God's presence fled his body then, his divine mission apparently now complete.

Then Grill curled up into the fetal position at the Omega woman’s spidery feet and blissfully passed the fuck out.

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Omega, the clone of the avatar of the deadly sin of pride; Alpha. Shapeshifter merged with a highly advanced magical nanite swarm. B ranked system recognized immortal. Girl with only really a few hours of clear memories in the last several thousand years. Was doing surgery, while commanding a battle from several fronts, most of the nanites in her half of the swarm were either frantically harvesting zombie brains, or copying designs into a rapidly growing database of zombified creatures and peoples, very little would improve her battle forms right now, but the data was key to the surgery.

She needed to understand the horrific fusion of magic and disease that made up the zombie virus infecting the poor girl, but it seemed to be a higher-order virus then most of the zombies had, it was like trying to cobble together a cure to the black plague from a dozen similar but less deadly plagues.

Of the other half of the nanites controlled by Omega Scout, 80% were here; either as what looked like a 6-year-old girl with a laser lance riding a Super Major Ant that took up almost a quarter of the battlefield or as the dragonflies flying around dropping scent trails to better command the Colossal Ants tearing into the zombie horde. Many of the ants were also directly infected with nanites for better control, and to allow Omega Scout to infect zombies with her ants' bites.

The Last 20% of Omega scout was going deeper into the nest on a hail mary plan that involved her temporarily separating her mind from the rest of the swarm. So neither Doctor Omega, or the main 80% of Omega Scout knew when or if the plan would work, or even exactly what the plan was. Nor did they have time to think about it as the zombie lieutenants crushed ants or smashed smaller turrets using the dead ants as oversized clubs.

Most of the main horde was down now, but that left the stronger zombies more room to fight, and they were much smarter, using other zombies as cover, or makeshift shields to allow them to close on the turrets popping out of zombie piles and smash them to bits, nanites could rebuild them, but it took time, and concentration, both of which were resources in critically short supply.

Her only saving grace was the possessed orc cook, she had just enough processing power to watch the fight above in case the angel would become a threat again, she had no way of knowing if the orc could win, but she had managed to spray the angel with bullets a few times. The fucking thing didn't even notice, but some nanites inside the bullets managed to cling to the wings and torso of the angel to start trying to scan it.

She was only able to get some of its basic system data, its powers were blocking her scans somehow, but seeing as the system registered it as a B Rank 25 zombie arch-angel, she did not like her odds of harming something more than 8 times her level while fighting its army, and doing a surgery.

Congratulations Nanotech Golem Swarm "Omega"; you have met the Requirements to learn the C Rank Power; Scan.

Congratulations: your Scan power has upgraded from Range: Sight, to Range: Sensed. You can now scan the basic system data of any system entity you can sense.

Congratulations Nanotech Golem Swarm "Omega"; you have met the Requirements to learn the B Rank Skill; System Interaction.

Omega segregated a small portion of her mind to allow herself to be floored, and consider the new data, this was her first B rank skill. Her main powers were B rank, but they seemed to just be a representation of what she had become, this was the first skill that she never would have learned had she and the swarm not eaten each other and evolved.

First she checked the description of the new Power, Scan seemed to be a power, but had such a low Xp value that it barely even qualified as a C Rank power, but then the upgrade from sight to sensed, increased the per rank cost of the power from 1000 XP to 5000 XP, which would make it much much harder to level up, it was already rank 5 with a max rank of 31, which is what she guessed her level would be if converted into C Ranks.

Next, she checked the System Interaction Skill, it was kinda vague; saying it increases one's ability to interact with the system, she only had 1 of a max 7 Ranks in the skill, skills had a max of your rank +4 so even a level one can have 5 ranks in a skill theoretically. Each rank of System Interaction cost 2500 XP which was 10 times the 250 XP per rank of her ‘Science!’ skill, but the Science skill could go to level 35(her 31 C Rank + 4). Still, she hypothesized that a level 7 B Rank skill would be at least twice as powerful as a level 35 C Rank skill due to it costing as much a level 70 C Rank skill.

Since the system seemed to be at the very least aware of everyone and everything and what they can all do. It might even give them little boosts, or a direction to grow by allowing everyone to clearly view their own strengths and weaknesses. Like right now, she had a Scan power that could be used by any of her senses, sight or touch being obvious ones, but she had actual scanners, radar, sonar, and nanites touching people from the inside, would all of these work with the Scan power?

Only one way to find out, so the portion of Omegas mind that had been contemplating these new abilities started scanning EVERYTHING!

She used this new data to populate doctor omega and omega scouts vision with health bars that show a percentage of an enemy's health remaining, plus symbols for status effects, like paralysis caused by nanites blocking signals from the brain for example. Above each health bar was a basic system designation and a level/rank, like; Zombie 5(C ) above a regular looking zombie or Flesh Sculpted Zombie Runner 22(C ) above the scorpion tailed zombie, as it climbs all over a tank zombie to avoid damage. Tank Zombie 15 (C ).

The data would not turn the battle on its own, but it was useful for context. Using the data from Continuous use of Scan to make her own vision more game-like seemed to be grinding Xp on her System Interaction skill like mad; it was already halfway to level two. She figured her earning both abilities at the same time meant she triggered unlocking both when trying to analyze the zombie angel fighting the Orc above her. It also probably meant the two abilities synergized well.

She tossed a scan at the orc and was shocked by the data

Grill Smith, Orc Chef D(75)

60% Health

Active Effects:

Enhanced Endurance (D rank Orc Passive Feat)

Big Game Chef (C Rank Orc Chef Passive Achievement)

Deific Possession (S Rank Blessing)

Then there was a second Scan result page she got at the same time:

Possessed Orc A(10)

97% Health

Active Effects:

Divine Meal Planning (S Rank Skill)

Omega cursed to herself, what the fuck gives someone that big of a boost in Ranks, he is at least 4 times the level of the angel right now, if he wanted to kill him he probably could have, no wonder he has had no trouble keeping the dammed thing busy.

Then she saw the angels wings get cut off, and the orc fly back down with them, even more surprising is how much the loss of the wings affected the angels level. She had tossed another Scan at it almost on reflex just to see how much health it had lost.

Fallen Zombie Arch-Angel 11(B)

55% Health

Active Effects:

Divine Meal (S Rank Skill Effect)

‘What is even happening right now’ she thought to herself.

Then suddenly the world stopped along with 97% of her mind, only her back spider legs could still think, it took them a moment to realize the rest of the swarm was fine, just stopped, somehow.

She didn't want to stop supporting herself just in case the world started back up again, so she made a tiny sonar scanner in each leg and sent out a pulse, using Scan on any results.

She was in a bubble with the Orc and an energy stove and energy table.

She made more scanning devices and even a few small eyes camouflaged with the leg carapace. This finally allowed her to see that the Orc was using a bubble of sped up time to Cook the angels wings.

She guessed he was being literal and insulting the Angel when he said: “I'M GONNA MAKE CHICKENS WINGS!!!” both calling him a Chicken and calling his shot. She could appreciate the brazenness of telling your opponent exactly what you were planning in such a way that seems unlikely to really happen.

She continued to scan and Scan everything, there was a moment when the Mutilated Zombie Arch-Angel Wings in the oven’s system designation changed to Divine Meal(Aether Wing). She was really curious about what that would do, she doubted it was just an interesting source of nutrition or biomass anymore.

She saw the possessed Orc yell “EAT” and then eat a wing all at once, his real level jumped from D(76) to C(10) and his system designation changed from Orc Chef Chief to Orc Chef Paladin, she had never seen someone evolve to a higher rank before, she did not remember her own jump to C Rank, even if she would never forget her ascension to B Rank. So maybe it was more accurate to say she had never seen it happen to someone else.

There was no visible change, in fact, she would not have known how much he suddenly grew in power if not for using Scan on him every few seconds. It seemed more like the God possessing the Orc was just using this opportunity to strengthen a follower. Not that she could blame him, she would probably do something similar in his place.

So she was pretty surprised when the god ended the time bubble and fed the other wing to her in a similar manner.

“EAT”

The spider legs had barely caught the rest of the swarm up on what happened in the time bubble when the other wing distorted and vanished into her mouth.

Not only did she get the data she craved from the Angel Wings, just like her swarm had devoured it. Each wing had vastly different powers, one was a source of life and light magic, while the other was a source of dark and death magics. Meaning the Angel had managed to hold on to many of its divine powers even after becoming a Zombie. This seemed to allow it to master 4 normally opposing types of magic.

She gained the ability to convert her regular mana into these 4 types of energies, which immediately gave her an edge on the infection raging in her little girl tiffany, the light and life mana were able to cleanse the infection from the girls brain, most likely much like the Angel must have done to keep some sense of sanity and the holy powers it wielded.

Her heart was black as night though, the feather had fused with it, making it a source of the angels advanced zombie plague, meaning that even if she had killed the angel and devoured it for its powers, she still would not have the ability to stop the girl from eventually turning.

But this knowledge did not cause her to lose hope. For whatever cooking method that the Orc God had used; had also given her a 5th type of energy to work with, the power of the Aether, a fusion of light and dark, as well as life and death, A power she now recognized from Holly's Crystal. The teleportation power she was using to store matter worked by sending the item to a sub-plane then moving it there before letting the object pop it back into reality. That was why living things needed to be inside a shell of some kind for her power to work, whatever she sent could not be harmed by this other plane. A plane made up entirely by this Aetheric Energy, almost like the raw stuff souls are made of.

So she decided that if she could not stop Tiffany from turning into a being infected by darkness and death, she would balance out the change with light and life, and try to make her a being of the Aether. It had to be better than being a zombie.

First, she used the light wings power to make the girls Mind a source of light and life, so it could defend itself from her black heart. That stabilized the energies, but the change was still happening, there was some kind of change happening to her stomach, making it develop a highly unstable acidic and infectious orange substance, Similar to the explosive goo in the boy who was turned at the beginning of the fight.

Thankfully he was disabled early on for the goo was part of a suicide attack that could instantly kill beings a full rank and many levels above the original zombie, this must allow freshly turned E Rank children to kill high-level, D Rank adults. Their flesh would absorb the death energy from the kill and restore the self-destroyed zombie within a few days too.

It was that last part that must be why the Angel wanted to turn the girl so bad, as a 2-year-old Troll and Ogre-Mage hybrid she would easily reach the C Ranks by the time she was full-grown, with that explosive ability and enough time to level she would have eventually been able to kill or infect B Rank entities Like other Angels or Omega, and the self-repair ability mixed with the regenerative effects her Troll blood would make it much faster and easier for her to restore herself after self-destructing, and her Ogre mage blood would increase the magical and kinetic damage from such an effect, It was a perfectly terrible Combo, that Omega wanted no part of.

So she started her attempts to reproduce the Aetheric energy in that explosive goo organ. It now drained magical energy from her heart and mind, and mixed it in the Goo to create a stable source of Aetheric energy, then modified it. The Goo was now a silver colour, it was just as infections as before, but only to Zombies, it targeted their dark energy sources and converted them to Aetheric energy.

That is right, Rather than let her be a tool to make armies of zombies, she would be a plague on the undead and the mother of a New Species of Aetherials.

However the problem was completing her full transformation, or rather the quantity of dark and light mana needed to make her whole body a source of aether, her goo could not infect herself as she had not completed the change to a full zombie. If she let the infection spread to the brain the goo organ would lose the light energy that it needed to keep making Aether, and the Goo would revert to the orange Zombie goo. So she needed a ton of light mana…

Every Omega, Ant, and Turret all suddenly turned to focus on the downed Angel and the new fleshy wings he was frantically making out of a pile of dead or disabled Zombies.

The angel noticed the pause in the battle and looked decidedly uncomfortable at all the looks he was getting. He asked a question, sounding decidedly less cocky then earlier. “what now?”