"Damn it, that idiot…"

Peter gritted his teeth, his mind drifting to the face of the venerable one atop Heavens Mountain. The memory of his time studying within the Sea of Souls on Heavenly Mountain returned vividly to him.

The beings of Paradise, including the gods themselves, each carried hidden flaws within their spiritual seas, flaws known across the divine world but never fully understood. Only the Venerable One who controlled the core of Paradise Mountain knew precisely what these defects really were.

Peter, the Angel of Punishment, knew one thing, he had lost the ability to learn. Yet even with that awareness, he couldn't integrate his own deficiency into the derivatives that made up Heaven.

What he and the other angels lacked wasn't simply the ability to learn new information. What they lacked was imagination, the ability to create new technology, to innovate, to change their own way of thinking. Their minds were bound,and their learning was complete.

A shackle existed deep within Peter's mind, an enhanced version of the "Seal of the Mind." It wasn't a metaphor. It was a literal seal, an artificial command embedded into his soul.

Below the angels, the common warriors of the Heavenly Army, those who never ascended to legendary rank, still retained some faint semblance of learning. They could comprehend orders, operate weapons, even master basic technology. After all, if they couldn't even handle firearms or mechs, the entire Heavenly Army would be a cosmic joke.

Yet even their so-called learning was not true learning. It was imitation, rote repetition, an artificial form of understanding. And it all began with how they were born.

There were two types of birth within Paradise.

The first type was viviparous birth, humanoid warriors born into ordinary families. Their destinies were sealed before their first breath. From the moment they opened their eyes, they were soldiers. Or, more precisely, officers.

Their purpose was not to fight on the front lines but to serve as conduits for command, relaying orders between companies, divisions, and ranks. Their education was rigorous to the extreme.

From birth, they were enrolled in the Academy of War Angels, where for thirty long years, they were drilled in combat theory, battlefield strategy, and the sacred doctrines of Paradise.

During this time, they underwent body-enhancement surgeries that reshaped their bones and strengthened their nerves, transforming them into living weapons of obedience.

When they finally emerged from the academy, they were no longer human in mind or heart. They were refined killers, proficient in countless tactics, trained to calculate death with a cold precision, and capable of dissecting battlefields like machines.

For the sake of orders, they could slaughter infants without hesitation. For the sake of victory, they could burn entire worlds.

To them, life, any life, was meaningless. Even their own existence held no value beyond service. Their purpose was singular: to expand the reach of Heaven and spread its divine gospel across all realms.

They were not men, not in any natural definition of such a word.

The second type, however, was even more disturbing.

These were the biochemical soldiers, mass-produced warriors of the Heavenly Army. Unlike their viviparous counterparts, they were not born of mothers but engineered in vats through advanced cloning and biotechnology.

Their creation cycle lasted no more than a month. Within that single month, their undeveloped minds were force-fed knowledge by colossal neural machines.

Every bit of their understanding, from the holy scriptures of Heavens Mountain to the operation of mechs and cannons, was uploaded directly into their brains like data.

Their "education" was not learning but programming. Their consciousness was a system booting up with a main directive for war. Their emotional processes were kept in a semi-active state, functional enough to obey, dulled enough to never question orders.

Unlike the officers, their physical enhancements occurred during the embryonic stage, built into their genetic code. Once complete, their power levels stabilized between Stage 3 and Stage 5, the variation depending on how long they survived and how much their mechs evolved with them.

These soldiers did not think, they operated.

Paradise was not a paradise at all. It was a factory, a brainwashing forge that mass-produced perfect servants of divine order. Every being born within it, whether human or clone, was another link in its great machine.

Their flawed spiritual seas did not hinder their combat prowess. In fact, those flaws perfected them as tools of war. They lacked doubt, empathy, and imagination, three things that could break the illusion of obedience.

But even this was only the surface of the truth.

Because within Paradise existed one more class, the true angels.

Compared to the warriors and officers of the Heavenly Army, the angels were an entirely different species. The difference between them was greater than the gulf between humans and beasts, greater even than the divide between men and insects.

The angels were nobles of the Heavens Mountain, They did not rise to power, they were born with it. Each angel emerged into existence already at the Legendary level.

Above them stood angels of demigod and spirit rank, whose very wings shimmered with the essence of cosmic rules.

Peter and his followers belonged to this upper echelon. Their power far surpassed that of common gods. They didn't use symbolic divinity but true divine fire.

Together, these beings formed the expanding force of Heavens mountain, a legion of perfection spreading its light across the void.

⸻———x——————

In the current war, the glorious legions of Paradise Mountain had slaughtered nearly seventy percent of the Zerg swarm. The skies burned with holy light. The ground was slick with insect blood. Yet no matter how hard they struck, the final thirty percent refused to die.

It wasn't a matter of ammunition. It wasn't exhaustion or lack of will.

The remaining thirty percent of the Void Insectoids were mutating, reproducing and evolving. Their numbers multiplied faster than they could be destroyed, their forms changing with each generation, adapting to every divine weapon hurled at them.

In the distant gray tides, countless eggs began to crack open.

From their shells crawled shapes unlike any the angels had seen before, creatures whose forms were distinct, alien, and disturbingly new.

The Zerg were evolving before their very eyes.

What is the Zerg race's most prized advantage? Was it the massive number of warriors large enough to overwhelm any enemy, or the terrifying ability to adapt to the environment?

Actually, none of these are true.

The real Zerg are the Void Zerg that Cillian, Peter, and the others encountered.

Their most prized ability actually exists within their bodies, in their blood, and in their genetic sequence.

And this ability is their unparalleled evolutionary ability. However, for these Voidlings, the word "evolution" seemed somewhat inaccurate.

Because the term "evolution" refers to organisms mutating in their environment and gaining the ability to gradually adapt.

The Zerg simply activated the genes within their bodies.

The Zerg did not "evolve" is the traditional sense of gaining new cells and genetic mutations, then simply activated genes which were already present, what they were doing wasn't really "Evolution" rather a "Transformation".

——————x——————

"Angels above, what is this?"

A Heavenly Army commander cried out in disbelief.

"Is this thing also a Zerg?!"

In front of his position, several monstrous beetles, each the size of Titans, were devouring the corpses of fallen Heavenly soldiers like starving beasts.

Their mouths protruded grotesquely, shaped somewhat like a pig's snout, yet far more unnatural. The structure extended into a deep, spiral-shaped mouth filled with layer upon layer of razor-edged teeth.

At that moment, the Titans were still feeding, tossing mangled corpses into their grinding mouthparts.

In the next instant, fountains of blood burst forth from their throats, cascading down their armored bodies like rivers of crimson. The outer rims of their spiral jaws were lined with serrated fangs, each tooth thick as a tower. Even from a distance, the commander could estimate their monstrous scale. The exposed serrations of these kilometer-tall beasts were hundreds of meters long.

If it were just their size, perhaps he wouldn't have been so horrified. But everything about these Titan-level Zerg was beyond comprehension.

Their massive bodies were covered in interlocking layers of chitin, each plate cracked and ridged like the dried riverbeds of a dead world. Beneath that armor, their limbs pulsed with terrible strength. Every time one of their thick legs touched the ground, the earth shuddered violently, leaving behind craters large enough to swallow entire squads.

No living creature should have been able to bear such mass, and yet these monsters stood, their movements disturbingly fluid for beings that large.

And in that moment, the commander finally understood, this was why the previous unit had vanished. These were not enemies meant for mortals to face.

"Fire! Angels' followers!"

Despite the despair curling in his gut, the commander's voice was steady. He did not retreat, nor did his soldiers waver. Not a single warrior under his command showed even a flicker of fear.

This was the nature of the Heavenly Army. They were the warriors of Heaven, attendants of the angels, bred and born to fight in the name of Heaven. To them, death was not failure, it was a formality, a brief interruption in eternal service.

Even their commanders were not truly bound by mortality. Their souls, connected directly to the angels, would simply be reborn beyond the battlefield. And as for their bio-engineered soldiers, those were endlessly replaceable.

With no hesitation, the troops raised their standard rifles and opened fire in perfect unison.

A storm of bullets rained down on the monstrous beetles, sparks flashing across their chitinous armor. The sound echoed across the battlefield, metal against living stone, but the impact was purely superficial. The shells barely scratched the surface.

Pairs of compound eyes turned downward from the heavens.

"..."

The commander's blood ran cold. Without wasting a heartbeat, he switched on his communicator and began transmitting.

"Requesting immediate support! Unidentified Titan class Zerg, repeat, Titan class Zerg! We're outmatched, need divine-grade reinforcements now!"

Even as he spoke, he knew the truth. He could empty every clip, sacrifice every soldier, and it would change nothing. These monsters were beyond anything the local forces could hope to contain.

But the poor commander had no way of knowing what the appearance of these creatures truly signified.

"Warning: Hostile peak legendary level creature detected on Battlefield 112478."

Inside Peter's command post, the voice of Maeve, echoed calmly through the chamber.

Peter didn't even glance up from his console.

To the gods of Paradise, creatures of that caliber were hardly worth mentioning. Legendary while dangerous, were highly common. Peter himself commanded several thousand of them stationed across the Heavenly Mountain sector alone.

In his mind, Maeve's alert was little more than background noise.

But then, Maeve spoke again.

"Number of hostile legendary peak-level creatures: 378."

Peter's expression faltered.

"Update: 377 confirmed. Our angels have engaged."

Maeve continued without emotion, her voice smooth and mechanical.

"Warning: Hostile demigod-level creature detected on Battlefield 165527. Number of hostile demigod-level creatures: 241."

Peter straightened slowly, his calm demeanor fading into disbelief.

Suddenly, Maeve's eyes flickered red. Streams of data poured across the display walls, and her voice multiplied, no longer monotone but urgent.

"Warning! Warning! Enemy presence confirmed on Battlefield 026797… new readings detected… updating threat index…"

Dozens of alerts cascaded across the command center. The air thrummed with mechanical sirens, the hum of holy engines, and the rhythmic beeping of overclocked processors.

Peter's gaze darted across the displays, but the numbers made no sense.

A dozen minutes later, Maeve recalibrated and delivered her final report in a chillingly calm voice.

"Total number of hostile entities above legendary level: one hundred thirty million."

Silence fell across the room.

"Five thousand six hundred unique species identified."

"All classified as insectoid-type lifeforms."

"All confirmed to have hatched within the last fifteen minutes."

Peter stared blankly at the holographic map as it turned crimson. Sector by sector, the icons of Heavenly outposts vanished, swallowed by waves of red.

The once uncountable swarms of lesser Zerg had shrunk, only one-tenth of their peak population remained. But what had emerged in their place was something far beyond the old swarm.

It was as if the entire Zerg race had awakened from hibernation.

It was like they had shifted from the slow, expanding rhythm of "standby" mode into the full force"performance." mode.

This was their true form.

And for these awakened Zerg the war had only just begun.

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