Chapter 386: Setting Off

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Ares was shivering from head to toe and cringing at the sight he mistakenly drilled into his brain. That was just it now, for the rest of time he would never feel comfortable in his own skin ever again knowing his fist had made contact with that thing! It was probably worse for Ares, specifically, than it would be for anyone else because the monster did have some resemblance to spiders in a way. They were still pretty bad regardless but that alone made it infinitely worse for him! If Ares had to summarise their appearance he would call them 'standing, pitch black, bone spiders with a giant 2d, muddied, eye for a head attached to their neck with nothing but creepy, wriggly tendrils. It was no surprise he thought they were skeletons earlier because their entire frame was just some weird, hollow black bone looking type of... Material? Metal? Something? It looked like a cross between old but smooth wood and rusted metal which wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to picture but it was certainly accurate. It looked ancient, actually, like the kind of thing that would signify a creature's age as being considerable as the dusty coating didn't appear to be a result of the sandstorms. Or maybe the repeated weathering down of their 'skin' was the cause? Either way, the closest thing to such a body was to imagine an old human with all its flesh burnt off and the bones having been singed black in the fire before having the impossibly dry and thin burnt skin regrow over the skeleton.

Wrinkled, dark, tubular bones.

They looked fragile but, based on personal experience, they really weren't so God only knows what these monsters were really made of and, to be honest, Ares didn't wanna know! Not that it really mattered, though, because that was arguably the thing about these monsters had that bothered him the least! You would think that honorary title, of most disturbing body part, would go to the oddly flat and perfectly round eyeball head, with nothing but a vertical slit for its pupil, that was about as the size of a paella pan but Ares was relatively unperturbed by this too. Yes he hated it. And yes he hated having put his fist through one of them earlier, because the feeling was now ingrained deep in his mind and that mushy sensation was going to give him nightmares, but there was something far worse! Yes the eyes twitched around even in death, which was completely fucking bizarre because it shouldn't be moving at all.... But it was that damn spider resemblance that was freaky beyond comparison! Unlike a normal skeleton, there were multiple arms... Or maybe legs? Either way there were multiple appendages with bony hands coming out of their upper body which made them look like a blob of bones or a really thick spider standing on two legs. Of course spiders didn't have hands at the end of their legs, they were disgusting enough as is thank you very much, but they were quite similar to this thing in terms of appearance.

Ares took a guess and assumed that these steppers could easily swap between any of those extra limbs and use them to either walk or hold a weapon if their primary limb in use was destroyed. They could fall down to the floor in any direction and still have legs immediately available to use because they were everywhere. You could cut off an arm only for another to immediately strike you. It was strange, though, because back during the fight they didn't seem to do any of this. Ares would have absolutely noticed if they were using more than two arms or legs but it never came to pass. He also tripped two different steppers and neither caught themselves on the fall with their other legs that were closer to their face and chest region. This was actually incredibly strange and, though Ares detested these things from the bottom of his heart, he was actually interested to know why they didn't make the most out of their unholy bodies.

Ares' Zephyr served a similar function, but could only ever act as two extra appendages compared to the eight or nine give or take these things had, and he used his treasure quite liberally whenever the Zephyr was put to task during combat. It would surely only make the steppers stronger so why they refrained was a very real question Ares wanted answers to! Also, yes, definitely aliens! Maybe they had some connection to the other monster in the west, the one tha gave the Juggernaut trouble? They were its brood maybe? It didn't explain the origin of the alien in the west but it would explain the sheer number of steppers, at least, throughout the rest of the desert. The giant brood-mother stepper must have been here for eons at this point and so spitting out these steppers over that many years would undeniably result in a tidal wave of the things. Ares didn't wanna know how many steppers were out there and so he decided never to use Omniscience again outside of the city / Riddlemyd unless he was in direct confrontation with these things! Just activating it for a split second earlier allowed him to see about twenty of them meandering about off in the distance, wandering around aimlessly! His earlier guess of hundreds per average journey was clearly wrong if he hadn't set off yet and had come across about fifty already. Between the thirty or so he fought, and the other twenty minding their own business, he was halfway to one hundred and hadn't even moved a single step towards his goal! It was a truly terrifying thought... That there might actually be more steppers than Xascans at this point! Did that mean the Xascans were the real aliens? From the steppers' perspective hey honestly might be....

Ares also had another question about these things... Why were they invisible? Like, sure, good for them that they were, it was an incredibly powerful ability, but why? None of their body made any sense to Ares. Why the extra arms? Why the invisibility? Everything in nature had a purpose, usually, and this monster jsut seemed to be full of random crap! Like someone had stitched together a monster based on their personal preferences when designing some super monster!... Oh... Ares train of thought reversed back into station and hit him square in the face because he might have stumbled across the answer with his musings. Lighter duo, experiments, DNA, Scylla, Sevorus... Did this bastard seriously abduct an aliens species, bring it here for experimentation, and then just dump it in the desert consequences be damned when he was done with it?! Wasn't that almost the exact same thing he did with the Scylla back in the ocean? Did this guy know no shame for his alien litterbug actions?! Surely this was just bullying of lower domain cultivators who couldn't ever possibly fight back against these amalgamations, no?! This guy needed to get some kind of hobby other than an unrelenting pursuit of science that spit in the face of nature.

Actually, both Sevorus and Brainiac needed to take a step back. Multiple steps back at this point, even! Just how many monsters over in the west of the desert were failed experiments terrorising Xasca? Hell at this point maybe even the fellahin were all descendants from Sevorus' dumb-assery too! Wasn't Dominus born here in Sheryashka? Could he not have smacked this Sevorus guy upside the head for messing with his home planet even once?! Well, actually, he mentioned chasing the guy a fair bit so maybe he tried to but the guy hiding out on his birth planet, under his nose, was nothing if not shameful! This dork needed to invent a weapon art that cured blindness! Ares could have sworn he heard the dumb mutt make an ack noise in his head because Ares had really hit the mark with his insult. Dominus must have felt rather embarrassed at the state of Sheryashka currently. To be fair, this might have happened after he committed suicide but it was still ridiculous that he left no defensive measures in place to prevent this. Who leaves their home unguarded with people like Sevorus running about?! Ares was definitely going to have to spruce up this domain at some point for its own sake... When his cultivation improved he could set up some automated explosive runes that blasted anyone looking to cause trouble on a large scale. It would be better than nothing and clearly Sheryashka needed it as it was the global punching bag of stronger cultivators everywhere, apparently.

So now what?

What was Ares supposed to do with this awful imagery stuck in his head?! Well first things first, there was one thing he absolutely, categorically, simply HAD to do. Ares took out the Nyxian Prowler, walked over to Aejaz, and gave him a nightmare to remember! Why on earrth should Ares suffer alone!? Let everyone else in on the paranoia train!

"AHHHHHHHH?! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!" Aejaz, as expected, freaked out and started cradling his body and wrapping his arms together in front of his chest. His shoulders shook and he grimaced with gritted teeth as he shut his eyes and shook his head. He'd been dawdling about, wondering what Ares was up to as he helped everyone else load the caravan, only to get jump-scared by an incredibly unwelcome image in his brain! "Damnable brother! What did you just implant in my head?!" Aejaz' cries had attracted a lot of attention and he made is sound like Ares had shoved parasite into his ears or something. Ares couldn't help but chuckle evilly at his brother which just made the crowd even more concerned about his antics...

"Hehehehe. Cute isn't it?" Ares was acting like a villain right about now and Aejaz was truly at a loss here! "That's what Steppers look like. If I have to see it, so do you!"

"Hell no! Get this crap out of my brain! I will steal the memory, dislocate it from my body, and you can disintegrate it!"

"Hehehe. Nope... Oh, what this? Everyone else seems really interested in our conversation? Would any of you like to see these adorable steppers too?" Ares gleefully grinned under his hood and rubbed his hands together as he approached the crowd like a hunchbacked back alley peddler offering shady potions to lost children. He practically reeked of mal-intent!.. And yet a few of the people here were actually somewhat interested in finding out what the steppers were actually like... These were the people that had decided to stay after the attack, after all, so it was only natural they had a bit more fight in 'em compared to the other wusses! Ares knew this and was trying to exploit that bravado so that he could spread the misery!

"Don't fall for it! It's a terrible decisi.... Ughhhhh" Aejaz spotted a stepper's footprints off in the distance and wanted to hurl at the thought of what was lurking around nearby... He then realised the corpses of the previous steppers were still littered all around and he wanted to cry! He was this close to running back into the city and never leaving it ever again! These things were worse than the twisted! Plus they were actually everywhere whereas the twisted would only appear occasionally. Heck they stopped showing up altogether after Hunter laid down his gadgets!... Minus that one on his fishing rod but that didn't count... These steppers were impossible not to come across after leaving the city even if you didn't get into a fight with them!

"May I see?"

Ares had a taker! He turned around like a man possessed, excited to find another victim, only to find out it was the fellahin lady!

"Eh, you? Are you sure?" Despite spreading the image being his one goal right now, Ares was still hesitant to do it to this person in particular because she seemed nice enough. She was here protecting people for free and was a part of the Fellahins who regularly sacrificed themselves for the safety of the city...

"Mhm. I already have a rough idea of what they might look like anyway so I'm not going to be too fussed if it ends up being accurate."

"How do you know what they look like?" Now Ares was stumped! Weren't these things supposed to be completely unidentifiable?

"We fellahin have had our suspicions for a while now about the steppers. Our boss, the Juggernaut, has fought a monster that can turn invisible before and it was an incredibly tough foe with its bony exterior... It even forced her to retreat and she's still ashamed of that fight to this day. Point being, we believe there to be a connection between that monster and these. We've had expert artists draw mock-ups of Juggernaut's descriptions of the monster in the west that gave her trouble and we fully expect the steppers to look similar."

"Ahhh." Ares understood now that they'd come to the same conclusion he had. The alien creature that forced Juggernaut to retreat was the original Sevorus experiment almost definitely. "Then I probably don't even need to share the image because it's exactly what you think it is. I'm almost certain I know why these aliens are here and they ought to all be connected. Still, if you want to be mentally scarred forever then who am I to stop you?" Ares reached out with his fingertip and lightly poked the fellahin... On her bandana. There were, like, ten of them to prevent the wind from funneling around her clothes and blowing her sandy legs away. Ares was wondering if the magic could even get through the damn clothing! Thankfully it did, though, and rather than any kind of disgust the fellahin simply nodded when her suspicions were finally confirmed at long last.

"That's correct, yes. The brood-mother is probably worse overall but these things are near identical. That answers a lot of questions... Though I don't know if this information should be shared to the public... They would absolutely not take this information on the chin. It's not like we fellahin felt comfortable with this information either and some of our clan even quite adventuring altogether... I don't what sick or twisted fun you were getting out of bullying people with this image but can you please not spread it after all? Unless you want to punish someone who deserves it, anyway..." The fellahin glanced in the direction of the loudmouth who just so happened to be walking over! Did she know this guy was a scavenger? Is that why she was here, to protect the caravan from an ambush? This was the kind of thing a fellahin would do for Xascans so her being here might actually not be a coincidence. It also seemed liked she was acknowledging Ares as he was interested in the loudmouth as well. She'd pieced two and two together, regarding why he was hiding his strength, and was subtly hinting as such. Clever! This was Ares' first real conversation with a fellahin, not including that dimwit disciple from the sect, but the more experienced members, at least, seemed to be really on the ball. Professional through and through and so Ares opted to get along with them. He would do as she asked and not spread the image around anymore... Although this loudmouth guy could certainly have it if he asked! Sharing memories was actually not a common thing down in Sheryashka. The chances of anyone spreading the image Ares sent them was low so even if the scavenger wanted to cause pandemonium he likely wouldn't be able to. It seemed like he was simply curious to find out is all.. Although curiosity did kill the cat and he was about to learn the hard way some things were best left well enough alone...

"I..."

"Yeah yeah yeah, here you go." Ares intercepted loudmouth's demands as he could tell the guy wasn't even going to be remotely polite. Much like with Aejaz, Ares shoved the memory into his head regardless of whether he actually wanted it or not. Just because Ares was undercover that didn't mean he had to be polite! Plus any chance of this guy kicking up a fuss about his treatment was immediately thrown out the window as he ran off to go vomit in a dune... Which went incredibly poorly as he tripped over a stepper corpse and threw up directly on that instead, leaving a pile of floating puke resting on the still twitching eyeball which was chucking around bits of his own vomit.... Ares had to look away because that was simply too much... He wasn't the only one as even the fellahin lady and Aejaz were doing everything in their power to pretend that incident never happened. The thought of it was excruciatingly bad... Ares had a feeling the loudmouth was going to finally quieten down for a spell either out of shame or just abject depression. This was the kind of thing that stuck with a person for life.

While the scavenger, all but confirmed thanks to the fellahin's actions, was getting dizzy and stumbling around lightheaded as he tried to make sense of this cruel world, Ares and co started setting up the caravan and getting ready to leave this place as soon as possible. The stepper corpses would either be eaten by wild animals, which was yet another sight nobody wanted to see, or the body parts would be blown away during windier weather and nobody wanted to get smacked in the face by such a corpse... Especially not the one with vomit on it... In short, leaving this place and fleeing far form the scene of this unofficial and un-word-able crime was in everyone's best interests. Some of the civilians did try to ask Ares for the steppers' appearance but he smiled wryly and shook his head for the sake of their own benefit. Honestly, given how warped these aliens were, a mortal might face serious repercussions even merely glimpsing the damn thing. Much to Ares dismay, there was a limit to how many people he could mess with in this regard.

Five minutes later and everything was ready for the trip but the caravan wasn't moving just yet. Ares and the fellahin were enough to protect it no problem but that wasn't either of their goals so they were waiting on the scavenger who'd understandably gone back into the city to go take a shower as quickly as was humanly possible. The civilians were side-eyeing these two, because the last thing they wanted was for their 'glorious' leader to return, and so there was hope in their eyes that these two would lead the caravan away from here... But, alas, the two cultivators seemed stubborn and immoveable on that front. And then there was Aejaz who seemed like he was jsut happy to be along for the ride and not out there with the steppers. Of these three cultivators Aejaz seemed the most normal and approachable so conversations were struck up with him instead of the other two. Little did they know Ares and the fellahin lady, who's name was Arla, were having a conversation via mental messages and clearing up their intentions and identities for the sake of clarity and getting along.

As it turned out, they were both after the scavenger's hidden base albeit for different reasons. That alone was enough to all but seal the deal on their partnership from here on out and Ares had found himself a valuable ally in the fellahin for dealing with Xasca's problems at large. He didn't ask why they needed to find the base, and Arla didn't ask him why he was chasing them too. It was jsut good enough that they were on the same page. The fellahin would be happy to have the effectively globally renowned Ares on-side and he was happy to have the best local informants possible so it was win-win and Arla was already setting up meetings between him and the upper brass. She was just a grunt of sorts, and this would likely be the only time they met or interacted going forward, but somebody had to bridge the gap and she was doing so with great efficiency. In the end, they settled on a meeting two days from now in the fellahin's base, out in the east of the desert, and she would make the arrangements when she returned there herself later today. She didn't have the power, necessarily, to demand a meeting for Ares but Juggernaut did and she would be more than willing... even if it was only to lure Ares in for a fight... But still that counted as a meeting! It was a meeting, a greeting, and a beating!

As for the scavenger that was leading this caravan... He could go to the fellahins for now. Ares still wanted to have his own talk with him at some point, as his lie detector would come in real handy if the guy hadn't heard about it and accidentally gave everything away, but keeping him locked up would be a task better suited to the fellahin. The scavengers were likely already targeting the Oasis sect for Brainiac and giving them one more hostage to rescue, and thus one more incentive to launch an attack, wasn't a good idea. Plus Ares' main goal today was the Riddlemyd so he'd have to shove the scavenger into a puny prisoner and take him back so as not to lug a useless lug around with him all the time. It was inconvenient for him and desirable for the fellahin to get their hands on someone like this, thus the plans were set in stone and the trip could continue as normal for now. Ares turned to his brother to see what he was up to only to find him being hit on by two women... Good looks were good looks regardless of where you were, after all. "Hehehehe, I'm sure Allie and Trixie will love this particular memory!"

Ack

To Aejaz' credit, he really was trying to distance himself from these aggressive women but they were annoyingly persistent. He told them he had love in his life already but they refused to budge anyway because they were insistent he could do do with some more. This was deeply troubling for him because what was Aejaz supposed to do in this tight and cramped caravan, exactly? Throw them out? He couldn't be so cold and heartless! Unfortunately this made him look like a push over which was where the damning memory Ares was recording with glee would come in and paint him as the villain! Allie and Trixie were gonna give him a real talking to if Ares really ratted him out! Thus brotherly bickering ensued and the once-quiet caravan became a lot more lively for the next half an hour before the scavenger returned. He seemed to be in a foul mood, which was understandable, but he brought down everyone else's moods in the process so the caravan set off not quite in silence but close to it. Everyone was whispering amongst themselves, namely the people closest to them, which had saved Aejaz' hide form the women opposite him... Not that they wren't giggling and glancing flirtatiously in his direction every now and then still. Aejaz, in response, stared at the ceiling and pretended not to notice which gave Ares a good laugh. Once Ares piped up, though, he was fiercely glared at by the scavenger who was deeply regretting demanding a look at the steppers! He couldn't blame himself, though, so he was blaming Ares instead for 'forcefully' making him see that crap... Even though he was going to ask for it anyway. Total lack of responsibility for his actions! He definitely seemed like he wanted to make Ares pay for this but that was fine because all it meant was that he was even more likely to fall head first into the reverse ambush later!