Chapter 454: Take a Breather, Kid, I Got This

The Grand Annihilation finally settled down and Ares squinted his eyes, scanning the immediate area for any changes or shimmers that would allow him to spot the stepper. This situation was beyond Ares' expectations as Omniscience had never failed him before against something like this and he couldn't really fathom why it wasn't working at such a crucial juncture.

One With The Universe... Dominus muttered the name of this art and Ares paid him attention to have a better understanding of what was going as he seemed to recognise the magic at play. Probably one of the top ten greatest combination arts ever created and has a real legacy surrounding it. Not everyone or anyone can learn this magic and there's a good reason why. For starters, it's extremely rare and you need to have a scroll to pass it down with or be taught it directly by someone who knows it. Nobody has ever replicated it off sight and theory alone because it's just too deep of an art to even try. My guess is that, upon seeing the stepper gain an aura, Sevorus gifted it with a copy of the art that it could use if it ever found a competent shadow partner and trained it up to be worthy. A reward for living up to its full potential and enlightening Sevorus. He's like that a lot. A benevolent creator who abandons failed projects and furthers along the evolution of those he deems worthy. He'd be over the damn moon if he could see this... He probably has plans to return here at some point and check up on this monster but the hope is that you kill it here and now and he never gets a chance to make this thing even more absurd than it already is.

SQUELCH SPLASH

Ares eyes widened as a hand shot through his chest and sprayed blood everywhere. He'd been on guard for potential movements or shifts in the nearby air but was taken by surprise regardless. Right at the every last moment his sixth sense kicked in and he twisted his body to avoid the strike as best he could but all it did was prevent the attack from being outright lethal and running straight through his heart. A penchant for battle and a serious talent for it to had honed Ares' sense of timing and he was roughly familiar with the stepper's personality which was how he managed to 'dodge' in time. In other words, a pure, educated guess. The stepper gave Ares a few seconds to come to terms with what he was facing before launching a deadly attack right out the gate to make him understand the depth of despair he would be experiencing at the hands of this art. Ares had intuited the incoming invisible strike, based on all the variables regarding the stepper's methodology up until this point, and his body moved on it own after various calculations flashed before his eyes about potential outcomes... But could he do such an otherworldly feat of analysis again? There were limits to the predictions he could make in a row, especially given how difficult each individual one was as he had nothing but his own limited knowledge to base his actions off of. For instance, the stepper was now going to back off, observe Ares' reactions, and contemplate what went wrong for a few seconds before trying again. It would realise Ares didn't actually 'see' the attack coming and that he got 'lucky' before repeating the exact same strike in the exact same way. Ares could see ahead a little, and understand at least this much before it even happened, but there was a blank mist in the future he couldn't possibly prophesise beyond no matter how talented he was. There was a limit and he needed to figure out what this art was before it cost him his life. He nudged Dominus and silently pushed him to keep explaining. He didn't need a history lesson about the origins of this art right now. It looked to be a combination of a technical and the shadow aspect but that didn't really narrow things down. It was a powerful art and Ares needed specifics to know what he was working with and come up with a solution.

There's not really much to say. Sorry. It's just ridiculously powerful. Ares grit his teeth in response. How screwed was he if these irksome statements was the best response Dominus, of all people, could muster? The name really says it all. One With The Universe... The reason your Omniscience isn't working is because it can only detect something that shouldn't be there when its 'wrong'. 'Abnormalities with reality', essentially, would be the category 'invisibility' should fall under for the sake of your Omniscience as it does operate in slightly different ways for slightly different tasks. Spotting a person in a crowd, for instance, would be considered 'searching'. It doesn't really matter, nor does it change much, but understanding how the art works is key to understanding why it isn't working now. Invisibility is an affront to reality and the very nature of visibility so Omniscience can absolutely overcome it, because it is 'wrong', but One With The Universe isn't invisibility so you're barking up the wrong tree.

One With The Universe moulds the body until it literally become a part of... Well, the universe obviously. The stepper has fully integrated with the world around you so it's not that you can't see it, you can, it's just everywhere right now. It is the air around you that you breathe. It is the light and the darkness that give and take vision. Wherever it walks, it become one with the appropriate nearby element to blend in with reality. In a sense, you can consider it an 'omni elemental' that merges with anything and everything to become a universal chameleon. The purpose of this art is to erase existence fully. No aura, no killing intent, no visibility, no sound, no breaths, no traces. Nothing. Anything that can be sued to locate an invisible person will not work on this art ever. You can't detect the change in the air around you because there is no change. The stepper moving around is natural, it is the very movement of the wind itself, and you can't possibly sense it as an abnormality anymore. When it strikes at you, that's akin to the universe itself striking you. Sorry, but there's nothing I can say to help you here. Your Omniscience is working perfectly fine, you can 'see' the universe-integrated stepper very clearly right now, and I would know because I've been in this exact scenario before. Even I could only really barely deal with this art at the best of times, even with the Celestial Prisms in my possession, because of how much of a nuisance it is. If you swap out I can delay things, and give you time to think, but if this thing's mana reserves last longer than the amount of time it takes you to come up with a solution... You might just die here. I certainly can't kill it when it's like this, as your cultivation base is just too low for me to work with, but I can stall it, and maybe beat it up a little, if nothing else.

Ares was flabbergasted and did a double take upon hearing Dominus rundown. The hell do you mean even you can barely deal with this art?! Who the hell invented this absurd magic!? Are you really telling me there's no conventional way out of this? Before Ares got a response, he was forced to roll to the side and narrowly avoid the second stepper strike from the shadows. This was his greatest opportunity to think because now the stepper would inevitably hesitate for far longer and slow things down a tad. Ares 'knowing' where the stepper was attacking from should have been an impossibility and yet the miracle he pulled off, dodging death the first time, had just been repeated. Not only did Ares dodge it again but his reaction this time was flawless and he didn't even get hit, meaning his performance was even more convincing and the insinuation was that he could partially 'see' the stepper. Ares was actually just going with the flow, and predicting habits and tendencies accurately, but the stepper couldn't ever know that so it would reign itself in for a while and think things over.

The stepper wasn't in any rush as it felt confident it could keep using this magic for a long enough time. After all, it never used its own mana for anything else anyway. Between the shadow's mostly full reserves, and the stepper's entirely full reserves, there was no reason they couldn't both continue casting this art and supplying it with the necessary mana until Ares was long dead. This was their ultimate trump card to play. Sure the stepper was already usually invisible but this was a step up and superior in every way. Ares' inability to see the monsters now was proof of this. The shadow still had some more mental magic left to prod away at Ares with but the real killing blow would be dealt by the stepper's bony limbs one way or another. It was taking things slow but when it ramped up again, and repeatedly teleported around after Ares while blitzing him with upwards of six or seven limbs in a concealed frenzy, hidden behind reality, that would mark the end of this fight. Ares would have pushed the stepper to its utmost limit by then, and drawn out all of its tools, but it would win in the end because this magic was simply far too powerful for anyone in the lower realm to contend with and shouldn't have been here in the first place.

Who invented it? Hell if I know. I'd like to meet 'em and deck 'em in the face if I could, though. It must be a fun art to use but by God does it suck fighting against it. There's a limit to what you can possibly do when someone uses this and so it's just damn annoying. There shouldn't really be too many people capable of using the art but it's still a pain every time it shows up. And yeah, no, I really can't deal with this properly. I have... Something I can do but, again, I'm just buying time. You're the one who came up with the Training Field nonsense so you're going to have to work your magic again. You don't need to beat the magic, even, you just need to outlast it. You have Grim Cessation so you can kill them both when they run out of mana and that's really looking like it's gonna be your best bet. One With The Universe does take up a lot of mana so try to delay them if you can once I'm done and can't control your body anymore.

Ares kissed his teeth. And how long can you stay out for?

Depends. I'm really going to have to go all out if you're looking for a satisfactory result by the time my stay in control of your body is up. Going so hard will reduce how long I can stay in control, though, and you might be a bit tired afterward...

Whatever... Just do whatever you need to in order to put the stepper in its place for now, I'll figure something out... Ares had no idea what he was going to do once he was in control again, and he wasn't optimistic he would come up with a solution, but maybe seeing Dominus in action would change things and spark an idea of some kind. Plus Ares had to swap over soon as the stepper would start launching attacks again and there was only so much Ares himself could do currently. He shut his eyes, allowed his conscience to sink into the recesses of his mind, and watched as Dominus began piloting his body. His first order of action was to put the scythe away. Sure he could copy some of Ares' mastery but this was too risky of a situation to play around with a weapon he wasn't too familiar with. Though it wasn't his own body at risk here, Dominus dying would set Ares back and that, in turn, meant he would be trapped in here even longer than he was already going to be. Plus he really had it out for this stepper and felt an equally strong sense of disgust and repulsion towards it as Ares did. Playing around and losing wasn't in the cards for a third reason too and this last one was pretty important to Dominus; his pride wouldn't allow it. Losing to some random near-peak transition realm monster in a lower domain...

Dominus would sooner die!

Not that dying really meant much to him... Such a bold statement definitely felt a lot less dramatic given his race... Anyway, after whipping out a sword, Dominus went on the offensive. He maybe had time to stand around and wait a while, increasing the amount of time he could spend in the body by not exerting any effort, but he didn't know when the stepper was going to launch its next attack and so it was better to be proactive. In that regard, he wasn't Ares and couldn't predict his foe's line of thinking to the same degree. He didn't know where on earth Ares picked up a trick like that from but he made no comment on it because, quite frankly, he didn't even understand it. The kid had talents out the wazoo and getting caught up on each individual one would mean getting distracted until the end of time. He was definitely interested but he figured he wouldn't get an answer any time soon, as both he and Ares were a bit busy at the moment, and just ignored it. Right now he was ready to start swinging!

... At air!

This was his plan, attack everything! There was no way he could defend against this art, he was never able to do it even in his past life even with his full cultivation base, treasures, and talents at his disposal. The only real solutions to deal with this art were either A, to outlast it, which is what he recommended to Ares, B; attack everywhere, all the time, without pause and hope to hit the art user square in the dome with a lucky shot, or C; mark the opponent before they managed to cast the art and track the mark. With regards to option B, there was a pretty famous tale of a God getting so fed up with a One With The Universe user that they blew up an entire domain just to kill the annoying rat. in the end, they weren't even sure of they were successful or not... This art really did have a way of provoking and inciting people's rage towards it and even now Dominus could remember why exactly it was people felt that way. It was completely humiliating. You could never aim a strike against these people, you just had to guess over and over again which had absolutely no skill involved and was pure luck.

Dominus, right now, was cutting through the air like he'd taken a chainsaw to tofu. HIs swipes were swift and savage... They just weren't hitting anything. No matter how pointless it looked, however, he would 'succeed' eventually. He was at a massive disadvantage but he was still the next candidate for the weapons pillar God, was stronger than the current one, and was the 1000 weapons exemplar! There was no way he'd ever 'lose' to this stepper, he just couldn't kill it because of this stupid art. His plan was to wield his weapon in every direction simultaneously until he either randomly struck the stepper or blocked one of its attacks, at which point he would hone in on the invisible foe and launch non-stop attacks at it to keep it from relocating or escaping his instinctual tracking. His current swinging may have looked wild and borderline drunken but the truth was that he was impossible to assail thanks to the sway in his movements and the sword ever in motion. The stepper was having a hard time comprehending where on earth Ares picked up this level of swordsmanship in the blink of an eye from because it no longer felt safe attacking him at any angle. 'Ares' wasn't even looking in the correct direction right now, and the stepper could easily creep up behind him, but it knew that if it tried to ambush 'Ares' it would get sliced in two from a sword it couldn't predict. The weapon in Dominus' hand gave off a dangerous vibe that threatened to crane its blade towards the stepper and lunge for its throat in the blink of an eye if it got within a few feet of it.

Put simply, this was a stagnant deadlock. If the stepper didn't go towards him, Dominus would buy time successfully for Ares. If the stepper did go, it would actually be on the defensive despite the invisibility and countless limbs because it understood it couldn't directly contend with the current 'Ares' in the slightest. He was like a machine filled with errors, that was the only way of describing his performance. It was robotic and efficient but slight flaws gave rise to an odd type of perfection because of how humanistic they were. Robust and sharp movements were occasionally split apart and interrupted by soft and graceful elegance that was impossible for a non-living organism to produce. It was an inharmonic blend of nature and machine that had been forcefully crammed together to create something utterly brilliant that should never have existed. Something utterly unapproachable and unbeatable. This wasn't even the tip of the iceberg, though, as Dominus wasn't so passive he would be content with just doing this repeatedly until Ares came up with an idea or his time ran out. He promised Ares he would get 'results'. Even if he never clarified what kind, his intention was to punish this stepper and show it who was boss. There was a food chain here and, while the stepper was unquestionably high up on it, it had no right to flaunt its position before Dominus. The clue was in the name.

The two options listed before, Dominus prancing around aimlessly until time ran out or the stepper attacking him pointlessly, weren't really the only options available though. There was a third option. Put simply, Dominus was going to attack the stepper. How? He couldn't see it so logically that should have been impossible... Logically... And yet his determination was evident when he pulled out another weapon and wielded the Biome Eagle in his right hand with outstanding dexterity. It was unclear what he was doing but, while his sword hand kept up the previous janky and-yet-occasionally beautiful arcs, his hand wielding the gun flared to life and darted wildly around his body, firing off shots in seemingly random directions. He fired around his chest and behind him south west, brought the gun back forward and fired north west, before turning and firing a shot to the east and then bending his arm over his shoulder to fire directly south behind his head. His hand whipped around unceasingly and the shots echoed through the black market as they ricocheted off the ruins of buildings strewn about the place. Halfway through this bullet blitz the sword in his other hand vanished and was replaced by a spear that began a dance of draconic mimicry. It curved like a serpent swimming through the air in search of a worthy opponent, all the while bullets were tearing into stalls and spots on the ground that were previously unmarked by battle.

To many, this series of expertly woven and intricately connected swings looked to accomplish nothing other than put on a good show but only the real experts had an inkling of what was happening here under the hood. He was dominating the entire square! Every attack was placed such that it landed upon a part of the square tha had yet to house the essence of battle. Dominus was attacking every inch of the square, movement by movement and strike by strike he would sully tile by tile with his presence. He was a whirlwind of weaponry seeking out his foe by not leaving a single stone unturned and the stepper was feeling pressured as it was forced to constantly remain on the run from this absolute madman who kept getting infinitely closer and closer to hitting it with a 'stray' attack. All it would take was for a single bullet to connect with even a fraction of a limb and 'Ares' would turn on a dime and charge like a bull upon finding its prey. The stepper felt truly cornered, like escape was only a temporary measure and it would be hunted down eventually, and it was starting to think that just launching am ambush was its only real option. Going to him before he inevitably came to it. Either it attacked or Dominus' dance of death would find it eventually and the result of that would not be pretty.

Dominus tiptoed through the wreckage of stalls and hopped lightly over gathered stones painted with chalk, all the while keeping his eyes closed and his mind semi-focused on the weapons in hand. Seeing the world around him was irrelevant, he didn't need to anymore. He'd marked out this square as a map in his mind and he was no more than a dot that travelled through it from corner to corner. What really mattered was painting this imaginary square in his head with the colour of steel and filling in the blanks until he razed this area to the ground with his expertise and might. Any opposition located within was not a concern as his dance would sweep through them as though they were an infant in a hurricane. He was a ghost, drifting through empty space and gradually encompassing the entire marked area with his aura of mastery. Bringing out his own aura was a tough ask, in a body that wasn't aware of the strain it would cause, but this was precisely what he talked to Ares about earlier and so he'd better not complain afterwards when he was left sore and tired after regaining control. If Ares wanted results, if he wanted the stepper to get bullied a little by good king Dominus, this was necessary. This way, he could sit back and let the expert do his thing and get some lumps in!

As for what his aura of mastery accomplished, in this state the best Dominus could do was leave the frightening essence of weaponry in his wake. The air he passed by became a hazard, sharp and suffocating. It was as though anyone who breathed it in would be cut inside their throat and those who passed by it carelessly would be sliced in two like he'd left behind a razor sharp wire. The stepper couldn't avoid all these lingering traps, nor could it flee endlessly from the pursuit of Dominus, so it would be caught out eventually and then the real playtime would begin. Dominus being able to 'win' in this situation, and only really being held back by Ares' body, just went to show how much of a freak he was. He had too many years of experience to count and, though this was a more difficult ask of him than anything else he'd had to do prior in Ares' body, it was still child's play relative to other things he'd done in his previous life. He'd pushed his own body to the limit of what it could tolerate countless times so this was nothing knew to him. His mind wasn't even fully dedicated to he task, and he was engrossed in memories of the past as he left the body on autopilot while it located the foe for him. If Dominus had been born into Ares' body, and it was him in charge this whole time, this night he would have been able to take on at least ten of these shadow steppers all by his lonesome without magic. He was just an absolute freak of nature in that way. Granted he had all his memories and hard work carry over from the previous life but it was still unthinkable a person in the sensory enhancement realm could be that unnervingly powerful.

Ding

...

...

...

A bullet had just struck the stepper's fleeing leg. Both the stepper and Dominus paused mid action and turned to face one another. Dominus couldn't see the stepper but, right now, he was having a staredown with the monster and it was trying to remain deathly still as though that would help it get through this ordeal in some way. It wouldn't, though, and before it could move again, and admit this defeat in the staring contest, Dominus came rushing towards it land crashed down on it like a ton of bricks. His spear shot out and the stepper was forced to block it with all its might and still it slid backwards through the ground a little. By the time it regained its bearings, and wasn't so dizzy from being struck by what felt like a meteorite, it was being pummelled again and again by the spear that seemed capable of striking it ten times at once. The stepper felt like it didn't have enough limbs to block this one weapon as it attacked faster than the monster could raise a limb to impeded Dominus' will. It was being utterly bullied and had holes poked into it from head to toe as it stumbled backwards until its back was pushed up against a solid wall. The lunges were so powerful, however, that even after they passed through the stepper they made more holes in the wall behind it. It was like a spear firing squad executing a limp body that jittered helplessly and squirmed under the weight of the myriad blows. And yet... This was only the start. Dominus wasn't nearly done with this thing and had some frustration to vent!