The Omegas were no longer solely focused on the children and their little adventure. Professor Omega was studying the new fighting style Billy just invented, extrapolating uses for such a power far beyond what she just saw, but still not ignoring the relatively safe method of taking someone out of commission without permanent harm.

Non-lethal weapons research was a top priority for both neutralizing foes one did not want to actually kill, like in the case of the newbie guard. As well as for capturing monsters and other wasteland creatures to study.

Any of the Aetherials could easily pick up the same skill set that Billy had just used, but she would let him spread the technique himself for now. She did not want to steal the move in a way that would take credit for his discovery.

Maybe, if she added optional flavour text to explain skills and powers and who discovered them or had the technique copied from them. That way she could credit all her sources. Although, that could cause problems if she was to reveal someone's secret move without their permission. Maybe she could add a prompt to get consent to credit someone for a discovery. or maybe she could have them set conditions for another to view the data. like for example; only other lv 50 ninjas or higher can see who developed certain secret ninja techniques.

She would have to add both Non-Lethal weapons discoveries and research as well as the question of how to credit people for their discoveries and work without slowing down the spread of power to the agenda for her next Omega meeting and their next AI meeting with Holly and Sydney.

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Doctor Omega was busy studying the terrifying old man watching the drama with the guards and commenting to himself. His harmless old man guise was clearly some kind of illusion or hologram.

He was casually preventing even a single nanite from getting inside him. The Zombie Angel Azreal had been able to block her semi-passively, but she had infected him through the new wings he crafted from infected zombie bodies. She somehow knew that even if she got nanites into his blood, his immune system would wipe them out.

She could, however, get a vague power scan and an idea of his true size and shape. He was no little old man. He was at least 6 foot 10 or 208 Centimeters tall. Solid Muscle, Impossibly graceful movements. Even more terrifying was his level, or rather, what the system told her when she tried to check his level.

Challenge Rating: Impossible

No data on system entities with more than 50 times your Xp value.

So ya, not much chance of gaining skills or knowledge from this being without his express permission and allowance.

Doctor Omega Smiled, she had been worried there would be nothing to truly challenge her on the surface. But finding out she was still a small fish meant there was still so much room for her to grow out here. Secrets she would have to work and study to obtain. She continued studying the entity's every move and breath as he was caught up with the kids and the drama with the guards.

Doctor Omega tuned out the drama and continued to study the absurdly powerful creature disguised as a scraggly little old man dressed in rags.

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Omega Scout was following a group of people from the City who passed through their surface hex on the way somewhere deeper into the desert Biome hexes to the East. They were travelling with some very odd heavy-looking gear. They seemed to have backpacks that looked like a mix of a vacuum and a wood chipper. 3 of the 6 men had these packs, while the other 3 were each equipped with an assault rifle and a huge hammer.

What could require such a loadout?

She had only managed to scout a bit of each of the surrounding hexes before now. But she had groups of 3 Aetherial Soldiers scouting the area. Each in a mass-produced version of the custom armour made for the babysitters club, each also had a giant ant modified to be a mount. She used them to help her catalogue the wasteland life, map the area, locate potential threats.

They had spotted the oddly equipped scavengers 2 hexes out of her territory, and stayed out of detection range, using telescopic sensory systems to track and watch them from half a hex away. They were following the same worn trail through the waste that Grill had used to get here, but they were not turning off the trail to the collapsed terrain or the ruins of the candy shoppe. They kept going by though, and Omega Scout had to wonder where they were headed, so she gathered the squad she had following them along with another group and got herself a Breaker Jaw ant for a mount.

2 hexes into the desert, the could see that the next few hexes were full of sand with an odd reddish hue, the desert sands in these hexes reflected a bit of light, like 1 in a few thousand grains of sand were made of a red metal. This odd section of the desert seemed to be the groups' destination. She watched with long-range scanners and telescopes as the 3 men with odd backpacks spread out and began sucking up the sand, a large stream of sand left the back of each pack out the tube that made it look part wood chipper. The sand coming out of the pack seems to have lost the rare red shine.

Each of the men working with the suction packs had a man armed with a hammer standing next to him carefully looking at the sand all around them.

Were they mining that red stuff from the desert? Why not bring a truck or larger scale mining gear?

She got her answer as a large red metallic scorpion about the size of a large dog popped out of the sand, and one of the men cracked into it with a hammer sending the scorpion back a few feet and stunning it for a few seconds, then it charged and he knocked it away again. This repeated about 10 times until the hammer shattered and the man jumped back to be replaced by another hammer wielder, who knocked the scorpion back again.

Five hits into the second hammer, another scorpion appeared and the man with the unused hammer went to engage it. The men with the packs began to work their way back towards the edge of the hex. Once the second hammer broke as well, all of the men began to run for the edge of the hex while the last man with an intact hammer fended off both scorpions and then ran as well, dropping the nearly broken hammer into the sand. The scorpions did not follow past the border of the red sand desert hex

Once outside the hex, the 6 men began to cheer and hug each other. They exchanged high fives and other arcane signs of congratulations. To Omega Scout it seemed like they had been quickly routed, but they were acting as if they won. They began to head back to town the way they came. Their mission, apparently, complete. The Ex hammer men were now equipped with their guns and began scanning the way back for hostiles.

The two red metal scorpions hung out at the edge of the hex until the sand miners were gone. Neither creature had so much as a scratch on it. No wonder they had not bothered trying the guns on the creatures. If enough heavy blows to break a hammer, even a stone one, could not scratch one, bullets would have just ricocheted off of them without even slowing them down. That seemed to be all they wanted, to slow them down for a bit.

Once the miners and scorpions had left the area, Scout moved to the border, she had her men and ants wait outside the red desert hex. Then she went in.

Now Entering Unique Biome: Red Scorpion Nest( 7 hexes, 6 desert hexes surround the nest and core hex)

This Unique Biome is controlled by a system Entity more than 50 times your Xp Value Biome Conquest currently set to difficulty rating: Impossible

She stopped a few steps in and pushed her hand into the sand, using her nanites she was easily able to sift out the red bits. She could not identify the material, beyond that it was nearly indestructible red metal thrumming with energy. Even though she did not know what it was, she did recognize it now.

This was the same red dust the people of the Scavenger city used as currency, A single grain was a dust dollar, most people had a simple implant or vacuum-sealed tube, that could transfer grains of the dust between people and vendors.

She noticed that Professor Omega had also tagged the Dust Dollars for additional research to discover their mysterious origin, as other factions are willing to go to war with the area for the substance. The Boy Wang Shu was almost killed so his faction could conquer a city to help hunt for this 7 hex patch of desert.

Omega Scout added a report on the origins of the dust to Professor Omega’s request. Then she opened up the creature modification and design interface that Omega Core and Doctor Omega had been working on.

She pulled up the genetics of a few species of worms or other invertebrates with digging abilities. She had a database of pre-war creatures to use from Sydney, as well as from his studies of similar post-apocalyptic creatures that entered his lab's area of influence over the last thousand years.

So she had quite a few options, she ended up picking a Rock biter worm species that Sydney had studied many different specimens of over the years. The worm could coat itself in a shell of the strongest metals it could eat, and strengthen it’s teeth the same way, Sydney included a report of one with mithril teeth and hide that tore up several floors before he managed to trap it in a pool and drown it.

Omega made them much smaller and added abilities to help them use the dust as is, rather than try to digest and incorporate the metal. This way its hide and teeth would coat themselves in the dust as the creature burrowed through the sand, Excess dust would gather in a modular organ similar to the dust capsules that the scavengers used as wallets. The organ could be teleported back to base and replaced with a fresh empty one regularly to keep the creature from getting full.

With all the changes the worms were part biological and part golem, They were, basically, magic mining robots, that powered themselves with mana taken from the energy-charged sand they would dig through. They could grow a little, and two large ones can merge and then split into 3 small ones so that they can reproduce.

She tossed 12 into the sand and set them to spread out, 2 per desert hex, they were not to leave the red desert, or enter the central nest hex. They were to just dig up money for mama, reproduce, and avoid the indestructible scorpions.

Scout chuckled to herself as she left the area on her Breaker Jaw ant mount. She would have to add what to do now that they were rich in their next agenda. As well as the discovery of the existence of a creature more than 50 times their level, and some additional research into other uses for the dust, besides as money or micro-batteries. All things that should spark the interest of her other-selves.

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The old man was having the time of his life. Not since his last visit to a Toon biome had he been so amused. The silly young man had almost created a lethal situation by pulling a gun on some kids.

Had he killed one even by mistake he would be branded a child killer by the system and shunned or killed by his peers. True villains could bypass such restrictions, have a minion or monster do the evil deed for example, leave them in a room full of deadly traps or a thousand other creative evils.

Thankfully instead of the often tragic side of the system that he was used to. The child kicked the noob so hard his soul fell out for a second until the kid shoved it back in to hide his "mistake".

It was easily the funniest thing that the old man had seen in years. The old man assumed that the other kids were this boy's friends or sidekicks. Until he scanned them and realized he was the second-lowest level in the group of five children.

His interest was extremely peaked.

The strange trollish princess toddler who had seemed to alternate between speaking like a toddler and like a proper princess walked forward towards the other 2 guards. "Mr. Smith tell bad men to leave" before she hit a button on an orb and tossed it between the men and herself.

One of the men yelled "Grenade!" Before he dropped to the dirt covering his head.

The other stared at the orb and seemed to be talking to himself. "Mr. Smith the orc? Didn't he die too?"

The grenade-like object did not, in fact, explode. In a flash of light appeared an annoyed-looking, full-blooded, Orc, wearing a bloody butcher's apron and wielding a cleaver made of pure energy. Meat hooks and knives swirled in the air around him like they were hunting for more meat.

The guard who stayed standing took a step back from the orc who must have an epic situational bonus to intimidate right now.

"Mr. Smith? What happened to you?"

The two men went back and forth for a bit demanding explanations of each other and generally ignoring all the kids who were now digging through the ruins and assembling corpses.

The old man was blown away by the grit these kids showed in the face of so much death.

The non-troll little girl with pigtails bounced over to his side. She looked up at him, past his false face and stared into his true eyes.

"Wanna listen to my music with me? I'm making Mr. Thing help cause I am not very strong yet." She gestured first to one of her earbuds then to the little tentacle horror dog helping to shift rubble off of a corpse.

He realized that she had a pre-apocalypse music device, so he shrugged and nodded. Then he picked up the little girl and sat her on the ruined wall next to him so that the cord could reach one ear for each of them.

The song "Gengis Khan" by Miike Snow played and he began to tap his foot to the beat when the little girl asked. "Why are you pretending to be a little old man?"

The man was unused to even demigods seeing through his disguise usually only a true S ranked being of level 9 or 10 could see through his glamors.

"How can you see me?" I turned the question back on the child to delay.

"Oh, I can't. Mommy can't even see you. Even her magic dust can't affect you. So she is showing me the outline of you based on where her dust can't go. So right now you look like a big ghost man coming out of an old man's back to me."

"Oh. That's interesting, I wondered what that tingle was. I keep meaning to learn a microscopic vision power for situations like this. Since you answered even though you asked first. I appear like this for 2 reasons, people underestimate weak little old men even when they are somehow somewhere that no normal old man could survive. The other reason is to avoid gaining new worshipers"

"Why do people worship you?"

He laughed "I used to be a God, my religion took some deeply evil turns, which started to make me act more evil then I wanted. So I killed all my worshipers and gave control of my divine realm to a friend. After about a hundred years I lost my S rank and went back down to the A ranks. Now I help my friend dispense justice on unruly demigods in the same way he polices the Gods. It only happens occasionally that I am needed to work. So, the rest of the time I wander the world. Seeking to learn new skills and find ways to stay entertained."

"Wow, Mr. What should I call you? I am Omega Junior"

"Greetings Omega Junior, my true name could bring ruin on this land, so you may call me Buddy, Buddy the Blood God, or I guess Ex-Blood God, but that doesn't sound as good"

He was unsure why he was being so honest? Maybe he just wanted to blow the girl's mind a bit. She just nodded like meeting a demigod was a normal event for her. Then he took a closer look at her eldritch guardian beast. He reasoned that maybe he was pretty normal compared to a little girl who keeps a being like that so closely bound to her. Either way, he certainly was not bored for once.

He had also found his target. His friend wanted him to investigate a system entity known as Omega. Here her daughter was, telling him that this Omega had figured out the shape of him and showed that shape to her child somehow before he located her at all. He had not been so interested in an assignment since the muppet street cookie cult case over a hundred years ago.

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Deep in the sands of the Red scorpion desert, something moved and the sands above exploded sending a fresh wave of sand and Dust Dollars across the other six hexes of the unique biome.