Chapter 478: Making a Mess

This was definitely the correct place, housing the weasels, but to make doubly sure Ares was going to pull off the Rox stunt again. Actually, now that Ares knew of One With The Universe... He was really tempted to learn how to use it. Unrestricted access anywhere to anything via perfect stealth was a very tempting art to pick up. Of course actually learning it was another matter but there was hope yet! If the stepper knew it then there was a chance Sevorus left traces of the original tome somewhere in the Riddlemyd in one of the later labs Ares had yet to locate. It was a powerful art so Sevorus leaving it behind for Ares made a lot of sense given that Ares was supposed to be getting his hands on multiple enablers throughout his journey. It was quite the coincidence he already had a darkness pillar enabler so if this was truly the case then Ares might be on track to learning a top ten art in the near future! It would take him a few weeks of constant study no doubt, as his expertise with the darkness pillar was lacking compared to the destruction pillar, but it was well worth putting everything else aside temporarily and putting in the effort given what he'd seen of the art. If he had such a thing right now he could freely stroll right by everyone and they wouldn't know a damn thing about it. Someone with as much destructive prowess as Ares getting access to a stealthy art like that was... Nightmarish, to say the least. Plus it allowed the user to attack and remain invisible while also making their attacks invisible too, magic or otherwise. Invisible Ares with an invisible war aura flag? Invisible Ares with an invisible Primordial Blade? Invisible Ares with an invisible Armillary?... Ok, maybe that last one might not be possible as the armillary was reality warping to a pretty massive degree... So whether such a thing could remain hidden for long or not was still up in the air. Maybe it would be possible if Ares raised his cultivation to a sufficient degree. The point still stood, though, that if Ares could learn this he might wind up being an assassin on par with Aejaz!... Until Aejaz stole the art as well... Que sera, sera.

Worrying about that was a problem for future Ares, however, as right now he was requesting Rox's services once more while hiding in his shadow with Sandy via the Prowler. Rox was more than happy to work a bit as he felt pretty grateful for being given a romantic love interest who was starting to warm up to him... Although Rox was still using Ares' body.... Ares had tried to get him to stop but it was complicated because Rox treated it like his default appearance nowadays. Sure he had his original mimic form but he'd been in Ares' body for so long now that anything else felt uncomfortable, especially when battling as the change in limb size seriously mattered when it came to unleashing technicals! Also, using that slightly monstrous mimic form when playing around with the succubus was... Questionable. She might maybe like the long tongue but there was no doubt in Rox's mind she'd prefer doing it with something more definably human and Ares was jsut convenient in that regard. As Rox saw his default self as Ares it almost felt like he was being cucked by another man if he used any other appearance at this point so things had kind of just settled in this way.

As an aside, the succubus was now very much aware that Ares was not the person fondling her all the time but she was still looking to cause trouble with him anyway because she was oddly convinced he was a despicable pervert due to their initial encounters. Ares would have complained about this but not only did he not see this mattering for whatever reason but he would be a hypocrite if he did care! He had no business constantly calling Massai a fake monk so the succubus constantly referring to him as a rapist, while undeniably more severe than his own claims, was pretty on par with his own behaviour. What goes around comes around... Whatever, if this succubus wanted to be obnoxious and keep saying such things then she'd have to do it within the confines of the sect wherein nobody but the dumbest of disciples would believe her. She couldn't really harm his reputation as her claims would be widely refuted by those who knew Ares to just about any extent so she'd never make any leeway on that matter regardless of how much she tried as his reputation was cemented already!... Although that being said, it's not like she wouldn't complicate a certain group of people's opinion of Ares in the future as it's not like Ares' childhood friends had seen him in a while so who knows what he was like nowadays... That was yet another problem for future Ares...

Rox was let out of the Primordial Blade and he strutted his stuff, striding towards the blocked room while practically ignoring everyone else's existence. He didn't bother stopping for the guards for even a single second as if dismissing not just their presence but also their entire lives as pointless and not worth interfacing with. He was the king around here so whose permission did he need to enter his own base's various rooms? Nobody's, that who! This was how he was supposed to act, and likely did on a daily basis, so Rox seemingly got away with this Scot free and nobody batted an eye. One guard looked like he was considering it, and about to ask for credentials, but he was elbowed by a veteran guard who didn't want the hassle coming his way. The newbie meant well, and was just doing as he was taught during training, but there was a time and a place and Diggers, when he was like this, was not to be halted under any circumstances unless you were looking for a beating. It wouldn't be the first time Diggers took someone away and used them as a punching bag nor would it be the last so the veteran guard did his junior a favour and saved him from such a fate.

As for Ares, this was more than good enough. He didn't need to be alone in the farm or anything, as whether there were more people inside the room or not didn't matter to him, he just wanted to get past and have a visual on the farm; that would be good enough. Nobody was enabling the weasels to flee before Ares could cast an Armillary and though it was somewhat excessive Ares refused to leave any trace of them. Plus there were a lot of people in this base so anyone Ares killed would feed him mana via Grim Cessation, this was just the best way to go about it. The one concern here was what would happen if Ares accidentally caught tool up in the blast. This was a legitimate worry but Ares was banking on his anti-friendly fire mutation to actually work here and protect tool otherwise Ares would blow himself up. He'd been unsure about whether it could apply to an art as massive as Armillary but it might be about time he found out. That or maybe Ares would get lucky and tool wasn't around here. Either way, Ares wasn't giving up this chance to blow up the farm so he pressed onwards!... Or Rox did, anyway, and he simply waited in his shadow with Sandy.

Not that they had to wait long as the three of them arrived inside a mock barn right after entering the blocked off room. This barn was surprisingly tall and wide, and there was no yard outside the barndoors, just a bunch of metal walls that reminded everyone working here they were deep underground and not actually on a farm, but other than that it really did resemble the real deal down to even the most minute details. Ares almost thought he was transported via spatial magic to some random peaceful farmland on a different continent. The various wooden fences had been painted a bright red and there were a few hay bales here and there too. This might have seemed arbitrary, childish, and weird considering the half dead, life-support weasels were being reared here but there was a valid reason for this! Happiness! No really, it mattered. Mana existed in relevant locations. Fire pillar mana near a volcano, water pillar mana near the sea, etc... Sure there was a lot of suffering pillar mana, thanks to the weasels very morbid existence, but the calming bright barn raised the morale of the weasels, and the people working here, so the suffering mana wasn't so potent it became too toxic to work in. Hazmat suits were entirely necessary but they would work!

It used to be a lot worse down here in the barn, and even the hazmat suits would melt under the suffering pillar mana due to the negligent toxicology aspect mixed in, but this one change made things bearable so Brainiac was once more proven correct in his theories as he was the one responsible for the fix. It did result in this odd visual cluster of contrary vibes. It was an oxymoron in every way possible because the rampant miasma of death trickling over the kind of walls you'd see painted in a children's nursery book was ever at odds with any normal person's standard sensibilities. As an aside, the walls had not maintained perfect childlike wonder as the people working here must have gotten bored in their spare time and drawn phallic imagery on the walls to mess with one another, pranking their friends working in different parts of the farm. Brainiac would not have stood for this were he still here and capable of chiding them... Or alive for that matter. These pranks might seem harmless but they could maybe even revert the effect of these barn changes to begin with and lower the mood. Sure this was a friendly prank but if it ever became abusive bullying to any lone individuals being picked on, as a hazing sort of deal, then the negative emotions would contribute to the return of the overwhelming suffering pillar mana. These idiots needed to be corralled constantly by somebody with above room temperature IQ otherwise they'd jeopardise the entire operation! Brainiac was rolling in his grave!... Actually, he kinda literally was. His brain was tumbling through space right this very minute and that definitely counted as rolling!

"Genuflection Mandate." Ares hopped out of Rox's shadow and put him back in the Blade after a job well done. Rox could go back into hiding where he could then be used as a surprise combat tool in the heat of the moment to confuse enemies in the fog of war. Ares didn't think he'd need Rox for such a purpose today but if he did then having him out of sight, and out of his opponent's mind, was for the best to launch ambushes with. Meanwhile, outside the Blade, Ares was starting to charge up an Armillary much to the horror of the farmers here. Ares hadn't seen the weasels yet but he knew they were being fed in a room in the back because he overheard the farmers mention it in passing so he was good to go! He could have thrown up a Quietus to make sure this went unnoticed... But honestly, with the amount of mana he was pouring out, and the powerful aura the art was emitting, anyone with a pulse in this base would feel something was off regardless of whether they could hear it or not. Every single expert in this base knew hell was about to come pay this realm a visit even if they didn't know why or where specifically. Armillary was not an art that could be cast silently! Which was Ares was so fascinated with One With The Universe because then maybe that statement wouldn't be entirely true... Dropping invisible nukes did sound so incredibly enticing but, for now, Ares was standing proud and going loud!

Sandy had locked the door to this farm area with sand so no matter how much anyone banged on it from outside nobody was getting in. Besides, Ares had already combined at least three different Perish wheels so it was basically too late to stop him. He kept adding onto the art, rounding it out and forming the core of the Armillary while perfectly balancing all three mana types. It hummed and buzzed away, terrifying any and all who could hear it. Ares' eyes shot open as he leant forward and chucked the completed Armillary right at the door to the feeding room with an ominous chant that rung through the fellahin base, echoing off the metal walls and resounding clearly in everyone's head. "Perish Armillary!" Though nobody knew what this art was, the air in the base had shifted drastically and acted like a vortex consuming all mana in the immediate area. Scavengers had to fight against this vortex pull and drag themselves towards the opposite end of the base to even attempt to flee but for most of them this act of desperation was entirely futile. Anyone who wasn't at least three quarters of the way to the complete other end of the base when Ares started casting this art were all pretty much doomed.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

The explosion didn't even get to finish sounding off in its entirety because, once more, reality had to cut in and cut off the noise lest the universe warp and cave in on itself any more than it already had. The noise of this Armillary could have kept gong for at least another few minutes, and woken the dead, if left unimpeded but that wasn't permissible for the sake of the universe. If it kept twisting and creaking like that eventually venators might be able to crawl through the shattered space and escape the void which would be a considerable problem. It wasn't common for venators to slip through cracks in reality in the lower domains, and finding reality-breaking attacks capable of enabling such thing was rare, but Ares was getting dangerously close to summoning one accidentally. Thankfully the world was pretty good at preventing this from happening so Ares was free to go wild. Or, more like he already had. He was standing around in a world of pure gold as the explosion had fully surrounded hm and blotted out all his senses. He'd been crushed by a million and one golden bars while drowning in the seas of El Dorado managed by its temporary king, Midas.

Luckily Ares' anti friendly fire really did work here otherwise he would have had a rough time surviving even with his innate resilience to destruction. He might have needed to take a Canis Stimulant if it didn't work. As for Sandy, Ares had thrown her into the Primordial Blade with Rox temporarily to check if his mutation worked or not. Since it did, and he had confirmation now, he brought her back out and she was starry eyed at the amazing nature of Ares' magic. Or at least that was what Ares was given to understand based on the way she stood tall but leant slightly back to crane her neck upwards and take in the sights all around. Her wonderment was evident and it reminded Ares of Bellona who he still really needed to show this art to. The fact she could probably double this absurd magic was thrilling but also horrifying and Ares needed to be extremely careful with when and where he tested such a thing. It would quite literally be a nuclear weapon capable of destroying small countries if Bellona got involved...

At the very least, there was probably no city in Sheryashka, other than those that formed the core of an entire country like Neo Gear, that could withstand a single doubled Armillary. Ares held a lot of power in Sheryashka right now and the more stories of his Armillary spread, the more reputable such stories became. It was slowly becoming less a mythical fairy tile cited by insane lunatics and more so a very real phenomenon that had broader implications for the Sheryashkan power struggle. Just because Ares was leaving at some point that didn't mean he'd already left! He would still be here for some more months to come and who knows what he'd do in that time. It only took a few weeks for a tyrant to ruin a country never mind one with nuclear capabilities. Fortunately he wasn't that kind of person but it was still admittedly worrying even for citizens who claimed to trust him. If nothing else, nobody would dare go to war with Central Land until Ares was gone which, in turn, meant they got to throw their weight around politically until then and some were already starting to. Ares' mere existence was a serious complication gumming up the works and this Armillary, and his relationship with measurement manipulation Bellona, was perfect proof of why. Hell the massive crater all around Ares and Sandy was also perfect proof of why.

As the gold pillar finally faded Sandy was blinded by the emergence of the sun that had been hidden from view for the last five minutes. Sandy raised her hand to block out some of the light as she stared up and out of the hole the base was now located in. "The sun, huh... Surprised you didn't blow that up as well. Maybe I shouldn't be giving you any ideas..." Sandy shook her head side to side and begun climbing out of the ditch by turning into sand and shifting up the wall of the crater. This hole was well and truly massive, extending far into the distance. If Ares had thrown the Armillary form a different angle he might have even completely wiped out the entire scavenger base without missing a spot. Unfortunately the majority of it was behind him at the time of launching the attack so there were still bits of metal sticking out of a part of the crater. It had become a caved in bunker and the people inside were going to have to rely on fellahin survivors to be dragged out.

Ares Voidwalked out of the crater but even doing so took him nearly a minute of straight climbing upwards. Back when he was down in the crater he was at the lowest point of Sheryashka anyone had probably ever been because he'd annihilated a majority of the floor and kept digging deeper. He could probably find ancient dead monster bones buried under the sands from multiple eras past if he searched hard enough down there and it was sure to attract all manner of archaeologists in the future. Instead of bothering with it, Ares simply returned to the modern day desert layer and met up with Sandy, waiting for the survivors of this incident ot crawl out of their hiding hole like a bunch of cockroaches. In the meantime, Ares looked down into the crater from above to admire his handywork but also to get abetter view of anything he might have missed previously. There was an area hidden behind some fallen rocks in which a bunch of monster corpses were strewn about. Based on the size of these dismembered bodies they were probably tamed western monsters. Diggers had been making use of his Riddlemyd rod to amass a small squadron of powerful western monsters, it seemed, but they were all, or at least mostly, dead now. If Diggers was going to use any more western monsters during the upcoming fight there wouldn't be even half as many as there would have been had Ares not taken such maniacal actions just now.

Cough cough cough

Wheeze

Diggers, unsurprisingly, was the first rescue-ee to be unearthed by a fellahin scavenger. He was thrown out onto the sand with one arm missing and blood trickling out of his mouth as he gulped down copious amounts of saliva after every large breath. He was hunched over on the floor and his arm holding him up was shaking non-stop so he was unable to stand properly. He barely lifted his head up in an attempt to look at the surrounding devastation, and make some sense of what occurred here, but all he saw was Ares sticking his tongue out at him. This was an incredibly confusing sight because it was incomprehensible to Diggers that one person could cause this much mayhem in under a minute when left unattended. He refused to believe it and kept looking around for the true culprit or cause. A passing by Vraizon expert at the peak of cultivation up there? Some ancient treasure from a millennia ago? Maybe the Riddlemyd had finally done something other than hang in the sky and mock those who dared challenge it? He didn't know but every possibility seemed more likely than blaming Ares for this misfortune. While he deliberated over this impossible yet-clearly possible phenomenon the rest of the scavengers were also brought up to the surface one by one. There were also a few western monsters that eventually blasted their way though the sand and crawled out the hard way. It was to be expected they'd' be able to find their own way out as they were all creatures that could dig through sand relatively well. They had to be otherwise they wouldn't have been able to escape the blast after sensing it by hiding within the desert itself.

All in all, Ares counted about a hundred scavengers remaining, four western monsters, and Diggers and a tool who was slumped and lying face down on the hot sand, too lazy to get up properly. The cultivators were mostly around the bloodline awakening realm with a handful in transition. Only one other person here was near the peak of transition so most of the powerhouses likely bit the dust and were nowhere to be seen. That or they were too injured to escape the base and so hadn't been brought out to fight. Ares could ignore them as they would bleed to death once all their potential rescuers were dead and buried. To put it into perspective, Ares had wiped out roughly 98% of this organisation. Maybe a little lower when factoring in Diggers' and tool's relevance, as they accounted for a large part of the organisation themselves, but otherwise it was an accurate assessment. Even if Ares left these people to their own devices now it would take them multiple hundreds of years to get back to this point. They'd inherited a lot of hard work from other desert dwellers they robbed and now it had all gone right down the drain with no replicas of what had been lost in sight. Their numbers were once many, their gear and resources bountiful, and their power commendable. Now all the opposite was true and this statement couldn't be further from the truth. Ares turned to Sandy and asked, "So how do you want to allocate the workload here? Don't even think about taking on tool, I don't want you getting hurt and I have a score to settle with him anyway. You're free to pick on anyone else."

"Damn." Sandy clicked her tongue and her face soured somewhat under her clothes. "Fighting tool is interesting and I was kinda curious to see what it was like getting hit by an eighteen-month fine grind. Ah well, I'll leave him to you. It's probably for the best I don't punch myself in the face so I'll take on the western monsters and the transition realm cultivators. What about Diggers though? If we don't keep an eye on him he'll run away lickety-split and never look back."

Ares nodded and flicked a patch of nothingness at Diggers who was incapable fo dodging in his currents state. It hit square on his forehead and left a runic marking that would be a nightmare to get off in under a day even for someone well versed in runemancy. For diggers... It might take him a whole month at bare minimum, if the stars aligned and luck was on his side, to remove it without aid. If he really did run then Ares could track him down and all would be well. Also, just in case, Ares summoned his war aura flag and directed it to hover around Diggers and not bother with anybody else. Ares was fighting tool here so the power of the flag was actually counterproductive.

With this, the stage had been set and it was time for the scavengers to perish. The weasels were gone, Brainiac was dead, their base and organisation lay in tattered ruins, and soon their remnants would all perish too. They would be nothing more than a whisper of the past riding along hot desert winds in an hour's time and their only remaining legacy would be the crater Ares made of them. Diggers' death was overdue and tool would get his comeuppance for 'beating' Ares previously... Though he was still currently laying about and pretending to be dead or something. It seemed like he really didn't want to work right now... Maybe he'd been asleep before this all happened and refused to wake up... This guy was seriously awkward!