Chapter 28: It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts
"A unique pillar!?" Enyo couldn't hide the amazement in her voice.
"That's… That's never happened before, has it?" Allie was equally as surprised.
"No, he's the first," Aejaz replied with a hint of pride etched in his voice.
"What even is it?" Enyo wanted to know the specifics.
Aejaz nodded at the land around him that had been blown to kingdom-come. "The pillar of destruction. Kinda obvious when someone says it out loud, huh? There're also the three aspects…" Aejaz gave a rundown of what he knew about Ares pillar.
"I guess that explains the explosions everywhere he goes," Enyo muttered. "And I'm imagining the sect didn't hassle him over the incident because of how much he, and his Shock Beads, are worth to them. No wonder Ares acts like he's king of the castle, he practically is. Tsk, tyrannical despot." Enyo seemed to have a habit of kissing her teeth out of frustration whenever mentioning Ares.
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Achoo
"Huh?" Ares was caught completely off guard by a sneeze he wasn't even remotely prepared for. "Well, that was odd."
Sneezes weren't all too common amongst cultivators.
Achoo
"Ha, guess someone's talking about me."
Achoo
"Jesus Christ! Are they writing a fucking biography!?" Ares had to stop momentarily as he almost fell off a tree branch thanks to all the sneezing. "Hm?"
A mechanical whirring noise was getting progressively louder and louder. There were also sounds of intermittent collisions and the rumbling of earth slowly heading in Ares' direction. Ares had gotten fairly deep into the forest now, and he was expecting to start finding the monsters that had been causing trouble for the locals, but he had absolutely no idea what kind of monster could possibly make those kinds of noises.
Part of the reason the treetop tigers and hydra deer were so close to the outskirts was because they had been forced out by the new monsters inhabiting their regular spots. They weren't the monsters causing issues which, alongside their undeniable cuteness, is why Ares hadn't killed them. Once the new monsters were dealt with, the tigers and deer would go back to their original habitats and stop bothering people.
He needed to bring back proof of job completion, but it had never occurred to him that he didn't know what type of monster or monsters it was exactly he was being sent to deal with. It wouldn't be anything too strong, otherwise it wouldn't have been an outer court task, but Ares couldn't think of any weak monsters that inhabited this kind of forest that would be capable of making such a ruckus. As Ares was contemplating leaving and just not bothering with whatever the creature was, he saw someone running in his direction from the same place the weird sounds were coming from.
"RUN!'' The mysterious new person didn't look or sound panicked, but was definitely running as though her life depended on it. Despite whatever danger this person was in, she had maintained an impressive degree of calmness which reminded Ares of a certain someone. On closer inspection, this person was wearing a very similar set of armour to Enyo as well, the only major difference being that she wasn't wearing a helmet. The girl yelled at Ares as she sprinted past him and off into the distance, "ARE YOU DEAF OR INSANE!? RUN YOU DAMN FOOL!"
Ares' curiosity had been piqued and, now, he was interested in knowing what kind of monster was strutting around the forest like it owned the place. If it was something really dangerous, then he would either have to kill it or warn Aejaz, Enyo, and Allie about it. He might still be in somewhat of a bad mood with them, but he wasn't going to just let them be if there was something capable of killing them wandering around.
Crash
A group of three trees were demolished and bits of wood splintered off it directly at Ares. Ares drew his sword and cut them all effortlessly before re-sheathing his sword and checking to see what the culprit of this whole mess was exactly. "Ah… seriously? This is going to be a hard fight." Ares was looking directly at the mechanised menace responsible for tearing down the forest. It was a Mecha-dryad.
Mecha-dryads are incredibly rare but also incredibly strong monsters that are variants of regular dryads. Regular dryads are existences that come into being when a tree is surrounded by large quantities of mana in the air for countless years. As weird as it is, the mana essentially impregnates the tree and thus a dryad sprouts from its roots, remaining attached to the tree for the rest of its life. Their head and upper torso stick out from the trunk and the roots effectively become their limbs. It's been argued that dryads are just sentient treasures. Although sentient, dryads cannot speak and are incredibly hostile which is the reason they are classified as monsters. Dryads are able to uproot the trees they're attached to and use them as mobile-fortresses that they ride around in and terrorise people with while using nature pillar magic.
As for Mecha-dryads, they are the result of dryads born with a race-specific aspect, the 'automatize' aspect. Although not a unique aspect, the automatize aspect has a rather scarce chance of manifesting in new-born dryads. It's typically a lower chance than even that of a unique aspect cropping up with only one being born, on average, every year across the entirety of the domain. Although monster collectors will pay a hefty sum, Mecha-dryads have no rare parts that serve any real purpose for cultivators. They're just massive nuisances. A Mecha-dryad that's had hundreds of years to age, wizen, and grow in strength will become a global issue that requires multiple high-realm cultivators to tackle. Thankfully for Ares, the Mecha-dryad ploughing its way through the forest like a feller buncher was still in its infancy, coming in at around 24ft. If Ares were to guess, this Mecha-dryad was equivalent roughly to a mental accumulation, 7th or 8th stage cultivator, although it would inevitably be far harder to deal with than that. It was also highly likely no one actually knew of this thing's existence otherwise it would have been hunted down already. Perhaps that girl had accidentally stumbled across its hiding place and disturbed its cultivation.
The trees that Mecha-dryads are attached to become cased in metal, making them akin to pilotable robots with the dryad sticking out of its makeshift cockpit. The whirring noise Ares heard earlier was one of its weapons firing on all cylinders, shooting out steel seeds that had collided with, and tore into, the surrounding trees. The automatize aspect allowed dryads to convert nature into metal while retaining the nature pillar's original versatility. The nature pillar provides ease of shaping of magic, while the metal pillar provides solidity and lethality, making for an incredibly dangerous aspect. Dangerous, but not perfect. The major flaw with this aspect is that it was slow as molasses. Nature isn't the fastest pillar to begin with and then combining it with another slow pillar does it no favours whatsoever. If it weren't for this one glaring flaw, Ares would have had to run from this encounter no questions asked.
The Mecha-dryad noticed Ares and the tree it piloted rotated to face him. Mecha-dryads were easy to run away from, so it wasn't going to bother chasing the other person when someone else was right in front of it. The Mecha-dryad hunkered down and seven holes opened up across its frame.
Ares could hear a strange buzzing noise, so he took off running in a circle around the Mecha-dryad. There was no sense in waiting for it to fire whatever that weapon was before moving.
As he was circling around the behemoth monstrosity, the ground trembled and the tree's metallic roots burst out from underneath the earth. Whenever the roots surfaced, they would viciously whip at Ares who would deftly duck and dodge out of their way. The dirt clinging to the roots would be flicked off as the roots struck at Ares, more often than not tunnelling into his back at a painful speed, leaving miniscule, bloody holes.
Ares tried flicking an Echo at the metal tree out of curiosity, but it did absolutely nothing and just bounced off the metal frame. Not a good start but, then again, Ares hadn't really done anything yet, he was still just testing the waters. He didn't want to jump in until he knew what that infernal buzzing noise was. Unfortunately, the Mecha-dryad didn't seem keen on firing it. Perhaps it too was testing the waters.
Ares had started paying more attention to the dirt and was receiving fewer injuries the more he got used to the root's attacks, not that the injuries were anything major for his bloodline which was healing them all as soon as he received them anyway. He even used a few of his experimental pocket black holes to absorb some of the dirt being fired at him. Might as well get some testing done before the going gets any tougher.
Ares was getting a little fed up with the overly cautious dryad that had yet to actually commit to an attack, so he took out a sack of roughly 20 Shock Beads and chucked it at the tree, specifically the dryad's cockpit. It was the last large batch of Shock Beads he had on him, but he could always make some more after this.
Booooooooommmmmmm
Most of the earth hiding the tree's roots was utterly annihilated and Ares no longer had to react to sneak attacks but, annoyingly, the tree had sustained essentially no damage from that bombing. If anything, Ares had just made his own situation worse by completely destroying every last piece of cover in the immediate area. That being said, he had accomplished his goal of goading the dryad into action.
The dryad looked surprised that such a weak human was packing such a massive punch. It decided to try and kill Ares as soon as possible in case he had any more tricks up his sleeve, tricks that might actually pose a threat. The dryad opened up the holes on its tree's frame further and shot out seven, different coloured, gigantic oleander flowers. The flowers were normal at the centre, but coated in razor sharp metal around the spinning edges, making them function like buzz-saws. As for the colours, they weren't just purely aesthetic. There was one for every colour present in a rainbow and each had a unique property that Ares had to figure out the hard way as he continued to scurry around.
The red was by far the fastest but, rather than homing in on Ares and chasing after him like the others, it simply hovered a slight distance away from him, constantly draining his blood.
The orange was a wheel of flames that left a burning trail wherever it passed, making it difficult for Ares to run circles around the tree in the same path repeatedly without injuring his feet.
The yellow would periodically send out jolts of electricity that would zap Ares. Luckily, this one was one of the easiest to deal with defensively as Ares just had to block it with the Zephyr. Doing this while on the move was certainly a hassle, but getting paralysed in the leg would probably be the death of Ares right now, so he wasn't exactly complaining.
The green was the sharpest of the lot and could split itself into smaller parts that would try to cut Ares off by intercepting him. The original flower, which stayed further back to prevent its destruction, was able to keep constantly producing more of the little ones. Ares was having to use his Zephyr not just to block the electricity, but also as a platform to take unexpected paths thanks to the orange and green flower's combination hampering his route.
The blue constantly fired shards of ice at Ares that were far more painful than the dirt pellets from the roots which, thankfully, stopped attacking. Ares mostly just accepted that he was going to get hit by some of these and let it happen. The Zephyr could have blocked them if it wasn't busy doing a million other things at once. Instead, he relied on his bloodline to patch himself up and keep his body from freezing over from the inside.
The indigo was pulsing away near the back of the seven flowers, emitting a strange humming sound that kept making Ares teeter and nearly fall asleep on the spot. Every time it hummed, Ares could smell a sort of fragrant pollen entering through his nose, making him drowsier with every passing moment.
The purple was simultaneously the worst and the simplest to deal with as it had arguably the most obnoxious effect, but it was also the one that bothered Ares the least frequently of the lot. If Ares ever made direct eye contact with the centre of the flower, he would hallucinate and momentarily lose sight of the flowers. Everything but himself and the dryad would turn invisible until he ran disintegration magic through his mind to remove the mental attack. If Ares was in the mental accumulation realm, he probably could have prevented these attacks but, right now, he simply had to avoid looking at it.
Indigo had to go. Ares thanked his lucky stars there wasn't a defence and/or healing oriented flower, otherwise the indigo flower would have had far too much time to keep doing its thing while Ares' attention was focused elsewhere. It was by far the most annoying of the flowers and also the most likely to be the cause of his death if he didn't do something about it relatively soon. Ares had tried throwing a Shock Bead at it, but the yellow flower simply zapped it before it got into range. Echoes would probably be unreliable on a moving target so Ares was going to have to cut it with his sword. Ares hadn't used his Shift yet, so he could still use that to catch the dryad and the flowers off-guard. As much as he wanted to avoid revealing all the cards up his sleeve, it was getting progressively more and more necessary to do so as the dryad was readying its seed guns. Ares planted his foot down and swivelled on his heel. He ran directly at the red flower and slashed vertically in an attempt to force it to the side. He wasn't actually trying to deal with any of the other flowers just yet, but he was at least going to try and draw them into firing on themselves accidentally before he Shifted away. His plan worked as the red flower flew out of the sword's path, crashing directly into the orange flower, causing both to lose a few petals. Seeing the success of his plan be far greater than what he had hoped for, Ares changed his immediate plan of action and reached out with his hand.
"Not Even Light!"
The art was far stronger than the portable versions he had been throwing around earlier to deal with the dirt even if this version could currently only affect magic. It appeared directly behind the red and orange flowers, preventing them from escaping backwards while also denying the ranged flowers a chance to fire on Ares as he dealt with the two in front of him. This of course didn't stop the yellow and blue flowers from trying to shoot at Ares, but it was to no avail as the pitch-black blob devoured any and all magic that came even remotely close to it. The flowers couldn't get near to it either as they were also constructed with magic, meaning they would be sucked into the endless void if they weren't careful.
Ares took another swing, this time horizontally, to catch both flowers with the same attack. Just as the blade reached the first flower, Ares coated the sword in disintegration magic, allowing it to cut through effortlessly. He then briefly turned it off during the gap between the red and orange flower, only to re-enable it just as the sword connected with the orange flower. This was incredibly difficult to pull off, and may have seemed excessive, but Ares still hadn't recovered the mana he'd used from his run-in with the axe-wielders in the morning. He was trying to keep as much mana in reserve as he could as he knew he would need a fair bit for the dryad later.
Speaking of the dryad, its seed guns were ready to fire. As soon as Ares' black hole disappeared, it let loose with reckless abandon. It kept firing at Ares' position even though the first few rounds had kicked up so much dust that nothing was even visible anymore. The dryad only ceased fire when the guns overheated, only to find Ares missing. It looked around just in time to witness Ares running his sword through the indigo flower, destroying it for good. Thanks to the dryad's over-aggressiveness, it hadn't seen Ares use his Shift art to move over to the flower, meaning Ares could use it once more before it cottoned on to what was happening.
Ares decided the green one was next on the list. Removing it would give Ares full freedom back to run in whichever direction was optimal for him to both dodge and attack the other flowers, this would be particularly important given that Shift was about to lose its surprise factor. Ares Shifted behind the green flower and swung down vertically. The swing was far slower than Ares had expected it to be and missed. Between the ice in his veins and the sleepiness, his physical state was starting to deteriorate. Fortunately, his bloodline was working overtime to deal with the ice and was keeping Ares afloat with a mixture of adrenaline and pride so unbelievably excessive that Ares simply refused to stop moving.
As for how the swing missed, the green flower had just barely reacted to Ares presence in time and disassembled itself at the centre to dodge the strike before re-merging and flying away. As it was leaving, it also created a few miniature flowers and sent them straight at Ares to cover its retreat. These small flowers were unimpressive on their own, but the purple flower had reared its head and flown directly behind them, blinding Ares.
"Pain in the ass," Ares grumbled. He could no longer tell which direction he was about to be attacked from; he just knew it was going to be a lot at once. He ducked down and activated one of the runic patterns on his Zephyr. The engravings glowed brightly and the Zephyr formed itself into a protective dome around Ares.
He would still take damage and feel pain whenever the razor flowers cut past the Zephyr but it was significantly dampened and he was spared physical wounds, that was what was important. The red flower had taken its toll and caused some serious blood loss. Preventing any injuries that would cause even more bleeding would do Ares a lot of favours in the long run as his weariness was slowly, but surely, catching up on him. It also meant his bloodline's regenerative properties wouldn't lose out on any of its effectiveness as it was enhanced based on what percentage of his blood was still present in his body. It was still ludicrously good even at low percentages, but the higher the better.
Ares turned the mental attack that was lodged in his mind to dust and undid the Zephyr rune. The first thing he noticed was that the remaining four flowers were all now flying much closer to one another. This was only natural as it would prevent Ares from Shifting in safely. The element of surprise was gone now.
"Stupid Ares!" Ares smacked his forehead. "Why didn't you think of this before!?" Ares had managed to frustrate himself. Wasn't this scenario perfect? If they were all grouped up like this, a single Grand Annihilation would deal with them all in one fell swoop!
He should have used his Shift art earlier!
Ares chalked up this lack of foresight to a lack of sleep and the fact that he was even more tired thanks to that stupid indigo flower. The real danger of that thing wasn't even its ability to make you fall unconscious, it was its ability to make you feel groggy and impair judgement.
Ares started dashing around again while herding the flowers so that when he blew them up, they would be in the path of the dryad.
"Perfect." Ares slid to a halt, took a single step towards the flowers, and gracefully swung his sword in a perfect arc.
"Grand Annihilation!"
Ares couldn't help but admire the beauty of this art every time he used it. His only regret was that there was no idyllic scenery around to blow up, as he'd already done so with his Shock Beads earlier. The chain explosions were like music to his ears, a melodious cacophony of chaos that left even the very air gasping for breath. The universe trembled with every detonation, hammering and batternig space wherever the art graced the world with its presence.
A short while later, the explosions finally settled and Ares could no longer see any flowers whatsoever. They had been completely removed from this plane of existence, never to be seen again. In their place was a trench that the explosions had dug out.
The Mecha-dryad was currently stuck inside of the trench. It looked furious as not only had it lost its main method of attack, and would have to cultivate for a few months to get the flowers back, but also because it was completely trapped. It kept trying to raise its metal stump over the ridge of the trench but could never quite manage to escape successfully.
Ares was also furious; his Grand Annihilation had done nothing but leave a few dents here and there. Unacceptable, blasphemous even! It's the pillar of destruction damn it, not the pillar of tickling. But, despite his seething anger, he was fully aware that the metal surrounding the tree was impenetrable to him right now. Nothing Ares had in his arsenal would be able to deal with that degree of sturdiness unless he was allowed to hack away at the hull with disintegration magic for a entire day straight. His nagging pride refused to let him turn around and leave though. Between his bloodline, his obsession with the destruction pillar's all-encompassing might, and his own stubbornness, he couldn't bear to walk away and admit defeat. Think brain, think! Ares could sense his mana was running extremely low, he knew he was only getting progressively drowsier, and the dryad was still basically unharmed. He needed to end this quickly. Ares started running through what other people would do in his situation to try and come up with ideas. Aejaz? No. Appa? No. Li Li? God no. Dirk? Somehow even worse. Onno? Good for running away. Water Guy? Still no. Lightning Guy… No… But… HAHAHA, IT'S SO SIMPLE! Ares was incomparably joyful when a pretty reliable plan came to mind. "Lightning Guy, I owe you one!" Ares dashed straight towards the dryad with what little energy he had left to spare.
The dryad wore a confused expression on its face and couldn't help but start to feel anxious. Why was the human running toward it? Its outer shell was hard enough to block even sensory enhancement cultivators, what was this human trying to accomplish? The human had already failed to damage the tree twice now, what could he still possibly have left that could outdo cultivators two entire realms higher than him?
The truth?
Nothing.
Ares had absolutely nothing left.
The only thing he really needed though was a different perspective and some ingenuity! This little trick of his was going to run him dry on the mana front though, so this had to work out for him, or he was going to have to drag himself away in shame. He was also still going to have to make sure he didn't, you know, die to the dryad too. Just because it was immobile, that didn't mean it couldn't still defend itself. It had no more ranged attacks at its disposal now which certainly made things much better but, on the other hand, Ares didn't have enough mana left to splurge on Shifts or other arts. He was going to have to do things the hard way and put in a bit of elbow grease!
The dryad manifested a colossal, earthen, log from the mud and wrapped the tree's metallic branches around it in order to pick it up. The tree dragged the log horizontally in an arc along the ground to swipe at Ares.
Ares jumped as high as he could before making a platform with the Zephyr and jumping again to get enough height to vault over the log. Ares rolled as he landed and broke out into a sprint. He leant his sword arm back while running and hurled the sword straight at the tree's base. He arrived at the sword and stepped onto the hilt sticking out of the ground, using it to boost himself slightly higher as he sprung off it. Once again, he used the Zephyr to give himself a mid-air jump which allowed him to just barely reach the top of the dryad.
The dryad looked up, and back over his shoulder, in a fit of rage and raised his hand to recall the branches carrying the log. The branches coiled up and around the tree, rising to the top to go and fend off the intruder.
Ares found a flat surface on top of the dryad and stamped his foot down. The echoing sound of his foot stamping was indicative of a hollow structure, which confirmed his plan could work. An evil smile crept up on his face until the branches came hurtling toward him, at which point his face soured a little. There were really a lot of branches to deal with, and all of them were aiming at his foot as it was giving off traces of mana. Ares grabbed the first one to come flying in and wrestled with it in his grasp to prevent it from escaping. A second branch attempted to sweep low, but got stomped on by Ares' free foot. Two more rushed in and Ares was running out of limbs. He slapped one, which dealt with it momentarily, before reaching out to grab the other, using it to then wrap around the branch he had just smacked, dealing with both in one fell swoop.
There were still more though, and a lot more at that. Ares activated another rune on his Zephyr, this one allowed him to control each 'wing' as though it were another limb. This little trick allowed him to hold off a little longer by tangling with two more branches. One particular, tiny, conniving branch slithered across the metal surface, faced Ares, and paused briefly as if to mock his inability to stop any more branches. It picked up the pace and went to speed past Ares before realising it had made a serious miscalculation. Sure, Ares had no arms, legs, or Zephyr parts left to block, but that didn't mean he couldn't use his head! And not in the thinking kinda way. Ares had thrown his head back and then forward in a headbutt motion but, instead of following though, because headbutting a plant was as useless as it was idiotic, he opened his jaw and bit into the metal branch, while using disintegration magic, as hard as he could. It gave off a foul, earthy taste that was as bitter as it was stale and the metal was hurting his teeth but, hey, it bought Ares more time, and time was of the essence.
Another set of two branches came spiralling over and, this time, there really was nothing Ares could do anymore; he had no limbs left to spare and no mana he could afford to use to stop them. Both branches tore through him, one in the calf and one in the ankle. The sudden jolt of pain, combined with his strained mana, almost made him slip and lose control over the other branches, but he managed to keep steady through sheer willpower. To put it simply, Ares refused to lose to a tree. That was what this has devolved into. Ares was outwardly grimacing but inwardly rejoicing as he finally felt comfortable his plan had been executed sufficiently well enough to kill this damn thing, and just in the nick of time too. Ares had finally reached the point where he only had one art worth of mana left in him, and he thanked his lucky stars he chose to do meridian expansion before skeletal structuring, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to pull this off due to a lack of adequate mana supply. He was also praising himself for not being wasteful with his disintegration mana earlier with the red and orange flowers.
The Mecha-dryad had manifested another log, albeit smaller than the last one, and had its remaining branches lug it up to its head to smack Ares in the gut, sending him reeling off the Mecha-dryad and far off into the distance. It had sent him tumbling far enough away that Ares managed to crash into a tree despite having blown up all the ones in the area they had originally been fighting in. The tree trunk Ares crashed into split near the bottom and gradually tipped over as he slid down its side into a sitting posture with his legs stretched, his arm around his wounded stomach, and his back against what was left of the base of the tree. Every tiny movement made Ares feel as though his world was spinning and his abdomen was splitting. He couldn't help but be reminded of the time Enyo had rammed him into a tree but immediately decided that this was far worse.
The Mecha-dryad had gone back to trying to free itself from the trench it was in to no avail. Eventually, it started to use the log it had beaten Ares with to dig its way out and was finding success until it was distracted by Ares yelling at it.
"HEY YOU, SHITHEAD!" Ares just wanted its attention, but he was also in a terrible mood which was why he was cursing like a sailor. Thankfully, he was about to unload a whole lot of stress in a few seconds. "YOU SEEING THIS?" Ares held up his palm and poked it with his finger, light swirled on the other side of the palm, and a Shock Bead formed and plopped to the ground.
A look of pure horror came across the dryad's twisted face as the implications of what it had just seen dawned on it.
Ares had remembered Lightning Guy's fight with Slick but, more specifically, his stunt with the ice-prison. The reason it was impossible for Slick to break it in time was because he had to do it from the outside. Certain things were easier to break from the inside in one fell swoop. This was doubly applicable to the dryad as its metal casing was just a shell. The tree inside it was just plain old wood and that was what the dryad was physically attached to. No amount of metal coating could save it from an internal explosion and Ares had just spent the last 30 or so seconds repeatedly spawning Shock Beads inside its fragile body when he had planted his foot on its head. Ares had never thought to use Shock Beads in such a manner. Technically, what he had just done was no different to burying them inside of a regular tree, or a piece of metal, and thus was perfectly feasible. It also got him thinking about potentially planting them inside of humans. As for the mana consumption, although detonating multiple would cost him a lot of mana, stacking them up meant he only needed to detonate a single one to make them all blow up, like with what happened at his stall during Cultural Appreciation Day.
The dryads' mad scrambling did nothing for it, even it itself couldn't break through its own defences to get rid of the pile of Beads that it was now painfully aware was rattling around within its inner sanctum.
"YOU WANNA KNOW HOW MANY IS IN THERE? HELL, ME TOO. I LOST COUNT. GOOD LUCK ON THE OTHER SIDE, YOU ROBO-FLORIST FUCK!" Not Ares' finest vocabulary but, for the first time in a long time, he was really out of it.
"SHOCK BEAD!"