Chapter 550: What Blows Up, Must Come Down

Ares scurried around setting up runic barriers as far as the eye could see. He wasn't an expert in them but he had seen some of Julio's work back in the sect and could emulate it to some degree thanks to Omniscience. His lack of defensive arts didn't mean he was going to stand around and do nothing while death loomed above. He'd just laid down a seventh barrier when, suddenly, the mountain he was on began to shake once more. He checked around and, sure enough, all the other mountains were shaking too but, unlike last time, Isaz itself was relatively stationary. This phenomenon only affected the mutated mountain. Ares initially thought this was some follow up problem born of the tribulation but what came next proved it wasn't while it also blew his mind.

The mutated mountain disassembled itself.

Every single individual mountain split off from one another and slowly hovered in different directions, sort of like what would happen if you deconstructed an interlocked wooden puzzle in a zero gravity chamber. It seemed as though each mountain had been possessed and were following a predetermined defensive manoeuvre to escape the path of the giant fist hurtling towards them... All but one, anyway, the one Ares was standing on. No matter how it swayed about the fist was locked on to this particular mountain and refused to to let it escape so the mountain just gave up and remained motionless as if accepting its inevitable fate. Ares had no idea what was happening, neither did anybody else on the mountain range or those seeing this from afar, but it did give him a look into the surprisingly hollow underside of some of these mountains that had been previously buried behind other mountains. What he saw only confused, him, however, as there appeared to be an intricate network of half-pipes lining the entire interior of each mountain, at least as far as he could see in the gaps here and there, and what the purpose of that was couldn't possibly be guessed.

It turned out his mutated mountain was not natural in the slightest, and even had an industrial vibe to it with metal lining the inside of each mountain, but that made sense, actually. Dominus probably personally built this entire landmark specifically to hide the Cluster treasure. Stuff like this probably did exist in the wider world, in higher domains, but such an odd anomaly occurring in quiet Sheryashka for no reason at all didn't seem likely. Like the Riddlemyd, it was safe to assume a higher being was involved in the appearance of this strange sight. It was more understandable to say Dominus, a revenant on the verge of becoming a God, brought suitable technology down from the higher domains to craft a series of floating mountains, filled with pipe systems that locked each other in place, and formed a spiral of ascending landmasses... It did beg the question of why, though, but Ares figured he would understand once he actually interacted with this secret later on. Whatever Dominus had been hinting at with regards to the location of the Celestial Cluster treasure earlier, Ares had a gut feeling he would piece everything together when he was in the thick of it. Dominus seemed like the type to do complicated things for very simple reasons so no matter how bizarre this unearthing of the truth behind the mutated mountain was there was likely nothing too insidious or out of the ordinary about its creation that would lead to concerns. If nothing else, Sheryashka was Dominus' home town, he was raised here away from the parents he had a complicated relationship with, so there was no reason to suspect him of planting a massive mountain-shaped superbomb here or anything of the sort. It was just some kind of elaborate rubegoldbergian machine / toy and little else.

...

That didn't matter! Ares had to remind himself, partially by internalising the irrelevance of what he was seeing while also slapping his face cheeks on both sides simultaneously, that he was in the middle of something! Who had time to worry about why a revenant had done something unusual? That was a waste of time if ever there was one and he had to deal with the fist still descending in the background even now. So what if the mountain split apart like a prop in a stage play? The fist wasn't going to stop gunning for Ares and take a minute to appreciate the sight! It didn't care and Ares shouldn't either so he went back to setting up more runic barriers for a while before he felt at least somewhat satisfied... That and he couldn't fit any damn more runes on this mountain because he'd exhausted practically all the flat surfaces across the entire space he had to work with. He did find some Vikings and Throne members stuck on the mountain but Ares either mercy killed them or, if they were stupid enough to pick a drawn out fight with him right now, he just threw them off the mountain and let gravity have a one on one conversation with them. If they had the ability to tell gravity to get lost, such as via flight or wind magic cushioning their descent, then good for them; if they didn't then Ares hoped they'd have a nice trip and that maybe they could take one every fall.

Now that he'd exhausted all the means at his disposal that could be set up in advance, Ares took a more aggressive stance and charged up a Perish Armillary. Throwing one of these bad boys would hopefully, maybe, to some degree, weaken the fist and make his life easier later on when everything came to a head. He had no expectations when it came to destroying this embodiment of smite, Ares was acutely aware he was going to get smacked around a bit no matter what he did, but making sure he didn't get smushed into oblivion was in his best interest and this was the best, and only, way he had of going about it. Ares launched the Perish Armillary and didn't even bother watching what ensued as he got around to setting up another attack to launch. Normally he'd be all over watching the massive gold curtain wrap around the fist in the sky and wage cataclysmic war, he wished he could capture it on camera even, but again time was money and Ares was very nearly broke on that particular currency.

Ares had just finished unsheathing the Primordial Blade and chanting Black Blossom as this would be his last line of defence. That and, mid swing, he would chant a Grand Annihilation or two and pray it made any sort of difference whatsoever as an added measure. Probably not but Ares was short on options and had to make do as he summoned a couple of Not Even Lights, stationed vertically in a column, to help disperse some of the destruction magic lingering around the fist when it passed by. They were each like floating black hole checkpoints, siphoning away tiny dregs of mana that strayed too far from the fist, so it was making a difference just nothing easily discernable. Ares was fighting for scraps of benefits out here and things were going to be close and come down to the wire. Every single decision and measure he took and made respectively could very well be the difference between lying in the dirt to take a quick nap and recover or lying in the dirt with his eyes shut permanently... Or at least until he revived anyway. It didn't matter how insignificant each individual act of his looked, so long as it made a difference at all he wouldn't complain. Every little mattered.

Speaking of 'every little thing' Ares could use, he'd dragged tiny Ignizz out and was dangling him upside down as he attempted to flee and run away. Ignizz professed with tears in his eyes that he could do nothing here because the contract was only formed recently and he still needed to save up mana for a summon of which he had not yet had time to do sufficiently. Ares was unaware this was even a problem because Astraeus had no such issue and was just outright a better and more powerful God... To the surprise of nobody... Ares sighed, flung Ignizz back inside himself to stop him from suffering a panic attack, and thought long and hard about what else he had in his arsenal... There wasn't much, really. The only other trick he had up his sleeve was handing over control to Dominus and letting him swing the Blade at the moment of truth. Obviously Dominus would swing and then abandon Ares to his fate, instantly handing control back over because he didn't want to be the poor sod getting demolished by the unrelenting fist, but it was sill better than nothing... Like a certain useless lizard was contributing...

Ares looked upwards and saw the fist finally tear through he remainder of the Armillary which was beginning to fade away now that most of the energy fuelling it had dissipated after being ripped through by the overwhelmingly large fist. This was the first time Ares had ever seen Armillary 'lose' and, while it retained its dignity for a considerable period of time and was still a serious threat to anything in the area, it was rather disheartening to see his own personal mini nuke falter for once. He technically stopped it with his own subconscious power, so it was more self praise directed at his tribulation rather than self condemnation for the Armillary that was applicable here, but it felt bad nonetheless! Ares was tempted to throw another Armillary, and stubbornly persist in trying to win that particular fight, but he actually didn't have any mana left for it. Armillary wasn't so expensive he couldn't cast more than one in a row but he'd been using a lot of mana for multiple other purposes and a second Armillary would dry the well entirely. He still had some mana left but he was using it for something else, an art that hadn't gotten a fair shake as of late but was going to have a chance to stretch its legs, flex its muscles once more, and show why Ares kept it around!

Shock Beads!

Ares' mana hadn't just disappeared into thin air at the sight of the horrendous fist above, he'd been funneling it all into the floor of the mountain to bury countless explosives underneath the surface and turn this place into a floating bomb of epic proportions. Doing so was rather tricky, as Ares had only recently found out the mountain was mostly hollow, but he managed it by aiming to drop the Shock Beads in and around the half pipes inside the mountain while locking them down with pressure. Gravity would have naturally dragged the Shock Beads out of the pipes, like a slide at a water park, but Ares' control over pressure was great enough he could individually place gravity-esque lockdowns on a large number of areas at once. This was pretty unthinkable for most and even Veteran would give an impressed whistle and clap if he saw it. Ares' pressure mastery was leaps and bounds above everyone else's and it was a valuable tool that often went unsung despite how much it did for him. It was about as as useful as his Omniscience, even, but in this case he could thank himself for its acquisition as he earned it all himself with hard work!... And his bloodline which also contributed somewhat... Still, this was mostly a result of his endeavours in the pagoda so he could feel proud knowing this was a home-grown talent of his and it was spectacular to watch. Seeing the dull metal inner workings of this mountain become a shining playground of golden slopes, like a fancy gilded bamboo water pipe art installation, was a breathtaking sight... Though perhaps dimmed somewhat by the soul stealing sight of the fist up above which was unquestionably the star attraction right now.

There was nothing left to really do for Ares other than wait and brace for impact. As soon as that fist reached him he'd activate the Pelagic Prison, the Shock Beads, and let Dominus swing the Blade while the runic barriers in the background did their thing. The war aura flags had been grinding away at the fist for a while now and shed some blood here and there with small scratches... Which did help, Ares wasn't going to pretend it didn't, but it wasn't as impressive a result as he'd like given his life was on the line. To be fair, the sheer size of the fist meant there wasn't much the flags could feasibly do. They'd flown directly through the fist, piercing it, a few times but it was akin to leaving a mosquito bite on the hand more than anything of note. The flags had a lot of lethality, even against this unnatural hand phenomenon, but there was just way too much of it to inflict any substantial amount of damage in such a short time period. If given days, maybe even weeks, the flags could slowly erode the fist until it was nothing more than hair-and-fleshless bones but that just wasn't in the cards. They'd done their jobs so Ares recalled them to his position to act as one final hoorah once everything else was said and done. They'd also at least try to save Ares from crashing into the floor at a million miles per hour after he was punched through the rubble of the broken mountain as he'd be too busy dying in agony to save himself really.

Ares had no idea how the mutated mountain was going to function afterwards; this mountain was going to be eradicated alongside him, but perhaps it could reconnect itself freely in a more improv way rather than having any specific designated order. If so that was actually quite impressive, and Ares would have to show Dominus some respect for a clever design that could be rearranged even with missing pieces, but Ares more so wanted to know if the treasure he was here for from the start would still be accessible afterwards. Whatever method of acquisition Dominus had cooked up regarding the Moongate Mountain it was surely tied to the pipe system in some way and Ares couldn't help but feel like it would be misaligned for its true purpose, whatever that was, and might need some fixing later? Dominus seemed pretty confident in it so maybe not but Ares would really rather not survive this only to be told his own tribulation blew away the Celestial Cluster treasure and prevented it from ever being owned ever again. He'd seriously cry! Nobody wanted to see that!... Well Bellona might, she'd find it funny if anything and try to record it for future entertainment whenever she was bored.

Ares' thoughts drifted to Bellona and Enyo right before the fist clouded his view and obscured the world around him. He wondered how they were doing and what they were up to. By now they'd either already returned to Red Sun or were just arriving back so something interesting must have happened between them in the Grecian lands. Also they'd be running into Nibbler and Sandy any time now and that would also be fun in its own way. Ares would get to see all these memories when he returned, Enyo could share them with him, but right now he was getting fisted!... He really couldn't see why anyone was into this... Maybe it was for the best if he didn't give Enyo this particular memory? Better not to give her any ideas, perhaps? Trauma is no laughing matter! "Enyo, Bellona, my beloved wives, I shall see you again soon... Preferably not as a revived child..." Ares still had some 'unpleasant' memories regarding the time he was ferried around in everyone's arms, coddled unrestrainedly, and made to take cute poses all day long for nearly a month on end after the international... Dark times... Though, then again, things were much darker now as Ares wasn't even sure there was any light left under the giant fist. It was hard to even tell how close the damn thing was because he couldn't see it properly. Being attacked by a giant fist was one thing but this had become a case of being attacked by a indistinguishable black blob, the shape and proximity of which was indeterminable. He'd have to rely on the Pelagic Prison he just cast to intercept and alert him to the nearest knuckle's advent. As if on cue, the moment Ares thought as such...

Crack

Though a light tap had already borderline shattered the seemingly invincible Prison, there was more yet to come an this was only the beginning. Ares was alert, in the process of letting Dominus take over, and ready to stare down his inevitable defeat only to rise stronger from the ashes. If even the Pelagic Prison, that could stomach an Armillary and not budge, couldn't stop this fist then there was genuinely no hope of beating it back in the final hour with whatever he had left in the tank. There was just going to have to be untold levels of misery in Ares' future, and pain was a given, so he threw all thoughts of winning out the window for good. He was admittedly guilty of harboring a tiny speck of hope amidst all this, that he might find a way to overcome the fist, but he would only be fooling himself if he still kept trying to accomplish such a thing even now and he had to just accept the loss and what it entailed.

SHATTER

The sound of broken glass informed Are the Prison was broken. It was a prison of water so logically it shouldn't have made that much noise, or that type of noise either, but the collision between the fist and the Prison was so momentous it snapped reality first and foremost. Reality breaking under pressure long before the Prison or the fist did, if anything, went to show how impressive those two respective forces were. Unfortunately the unstoppable force eventually beat the immovable object in this particular case and now it was Ares' turn to get a dose of direct pummeling. He held his ground, allowed Dominus to perform a brilliant swipe of the sword, plain but beautiful and highly technical, while casting a Grand Annihilation... And then all went silent. The roar of the golden explosion, the sound of the Blade clashing against the fist and refusing to bend, the raging snowstorm picking up pace all around due to the gravitational black hole of the collision, and the groaning of creaky bones as the giant fist, for the first time, was temporarily stopped in place. All these sounds persisted for a few seconds before one was determined the sole winner and all else were broken, banished, and scattered to the wind; the winner, of course, being the ever-dominant fist which broke through and pushed onwards, busting through the last resisting forces. The Blade had been forcibly retreated into Ares' body as it couldn't sustain the damage any longer due to Ares' trivial cultivation base, the wind was blasted so severely outward it was carrying snowflakes off to foreign regions, the Golden Annihilation barely stood a chance and only just about managed to tangle up some of the destruction runes coating the fist for a few short seconds, and the mountain shuddered as the fist was now mere inches away from connecting with it. Ares, surrounded by chaos on all sides, yet finding himself in a oddly tranquil and quiet middle untouched by said chaos, had one last trick up his sleeve. He threw his arms up and wide, stuck his tongue out at the fist, and chanted.

"Chaos Reigns!"

Ares dug his heel into the ground and out of the mountain shot nearly two hundred pressure boosted Shock Beads into the air. Glowing like beads of tightly-packed brilliance, they each radiated a resplendence unmatched by even the most impeccable jewelry collection in a sultan's treasury. The mountain lit up as snow melted away at the mere presence of this foreign, destructive energy massing all around. From afar this particular mountain became a bright beacon that was hard to look at as light swelled and a dangerous hum fought back against the fist. The mountain was like a bright hornet's nest or a horde of hyper aggressive fireflies. It was a desperation bid but it was also sign of defiance in the last few moments in which Ares had of any kind of consciousness. He allowed the propulsion of the explosions, the raw and seemingly infinite force of the giant fist, and the warm fabric of the war aura flags to all do as they pleased with his body from this point forth as he was immoderately knocked out cold by the combination of all three. He was a ragdoll battered and kicked about unrelentingly by a three-way force dragging him multiple directions at once, none of which he could resist even if he were awake. Still, the most dominant force here was obviously the massive fist which didn't appear to have any intention of vanishing until Ares had suffered the full wrath of its heavenly strike.

The fist pushed forward another few metres, with Ares' body still flattened somewhere on its underside, before pausing in the sky and blasting Ares' relatively small body off towards the ground, turning him into a human sized meteor. His figure was noticed by those watching with their divines sense but he was travelling far too quickly to discover any specific details about him. The general assumption of the spectators was that he was a Throne member who was too slow to evacuate the mountain, got trapped, and suffered the worst fate of everyone up there. An investigation would be launched soon to go check his corpse but for now everyone was still in turmoil regarding how to handle this giant unmoving fist and the now-separated mutated mountain. Their whole world had been upturned in the blink of an eye and everything they thought they knew about this place, their home region, was made irrelevant as a series of incomprehensible events unfolded. Many question arose about who was responsible for all of this but there were no answers because only one person knew and could communicate them, Ares, who was in the exact position he predicted he would be in earlier.

Somewhere, at the base of the mutated mountain, in what appeared to be a UFO crash sight, a long gauged pit was dug into the earth at the end of which lay a tired and basically dead Ares. His state was effectively impossible to communicate because it was fundamentally not a state one could associate with a human being. Limbs were, at best, missing with most having grievously twisted in positions that looked alien. Anyone with a fear of blood would faint on sight because he was basically covered in his own from head to toe like he'd been painted over by an overzealous crimson connoisseur. Hs flesh was caved in, blackened, and bones were broken and turned into literal piles of dust. The only noise coming out of him was belaboured breathing through a thoroughly devastated larynx and he was slowly losing the ability to even inhale oxygen anyway as the scope of his injuries was enough to kill an ordinary person a hundred times over. If anything, being a revenant was just prolonging his own suffering at this point. Was he dead? No. Would he die? He had no idea. If nothing changed about his current predicament, then yes. Either the Frozen Throne would investigate ethe area, find and kill him, or the wounds would pile up and do him in anyway at the current rate. The reason he was unsure about his grim future, though, was because he could feel his body changing in a substantial way and, provided he managed to push his body into bloodline awakening, there was a non-zero chance for his revenant regeneration to be improved massively on the spot and somehow miraculously save him. This wasn't a pipe dream. The tribulation was over, and he was currently not dead, so he had every right to finish the ascent to bloodline awakening and claim it benefits. Improved regeneration might take a while to fix him up but he could absolutely recover form this state if the more severe issues were dealt with quickly. Ares mustered the last of his strength to utilise telekinesis and bury himself under the snow. Right now, being found by the Throne was the most immediate and concerning threat to his life and so this was entirely necessary. He could do little else from this point onwards, though, as the second he covered himself from head to toe, burying himself convincingly, he fell unconscious again and wasn't going to wake up for a long while this time. Ares would either wake up stronger than ever or in the middle of nowhere as a baby, fingers crossed it was the former!