Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it''s Ares with a hole in his stomach! Ares, the sprinkler savant, was spraying his blood all over the place, painting the town red as he flew overhead. Although maybe the term ''flew'' was a bit lenient when describing the way in which he was flailing about right now. He''d aimed himself backwards so naturally he had to also turn around in mid-air which, considering the application of force at lift off, or rather launch off, was a pain in the neck. He had to see where he was going so that he could A; keep track of Calla if he caught sight of her and B; stick the landing. Now, landing flush like a cat was a tall ask seeing as how the hole in his stomach was negatively affecting his balance but he was already regenerating his wound so he might actually be able to pull it off! At the moment of impact, Ares had effectively taken the equivalent, give or take, of a shotgun blast at point blank range. In order to gain more distance and speed he didn''t pull his punch so the injury was really severe. Enough to make a normal cultivator bleed out on the floor after crashing and rolling along the cobbled pavements. Less than a second after blowing himself sky high, however, his bloodline had already kicked in and was working its magic. The loose flesh was wriggling about to join up with the other remaining strands while his innards were regaining their original shape and size. It wasn''t much different to watching a rapid timelapse of growing fruit except Ares wasn''t edible! Unless you were a cannibal then maybe but Ares had yet to meet such a person. There actually were some cannibals in this universe as there were one or two arts that allowed a person to eat another''s cultivation, stealing it for themself by chowing down on the desired target. This art was also more effective when the target was still alive so it was a rather gross one. This was one of many arts considered ''taboo'' but less so amongst revenants, some of whom spent years eating each other like an ouroboros. As these revenants only raised their cultivation, and not their actual skills or foundation, they flopped hard in the face of talented cultivators but they did still make a lot of progress and that was undeniable. Anyway, Ares had no intention of ever eating anyone or being eaten by anyone so that was irrelevant!


    The speed Ares had picked up on his flight was pretty ludicrous as he was matching his own top speed with normal enhancement effortlessly. The real benefit here, though, was that he could travel in a straight line above all the buildings which was the main reason he''d done this in the first place. If he threw the silver sphere and then ran towards Calla she could wait out the sphere and run back over to the other half of her little playground after it was done bowing up and before Ares could reach her. Like this, Calla was trapped in this area and all Ares had to do was conduct a small scale search which was made much easier by the fact that he had a bird''s eye view. He was rapidly losing it, yes, but until he lost it entirely he could rule out a number of locations that he''d already checked during his ''flight''. As the floor drew ever and ever closer, the number of positions Calla could be hiding in were so slim that it would only take Ares a single run along the path he''d drawn up in his head and he was guaranteed to find her. She was trapped somewhere in between the silver sphere, Ares, and the boundary of the floor''s limits. She''d escaped too far away from Ares earlier and now the pagoda was interfering with her route for fleeing. Ares felt a little bad for that problem suddenly springing itself on her but, to be fair, that was her own fault for not paying enough attention to her surroundings! Plus, running away was her strategy, yes, but after a while it just became annoying to deal with. Had she kept this up for longer without Ares finding a way of dealing with it in a quick manner he would have just used his annihilation enhancement and gotten this over and done with. He was supposed to be training with her, not playing hide and seek!


    Well at the moment he was busy preparing for his landing, that took all of his brain power right now as it was a tricky task to say the least. Various micro adjustments later he could tell he''d botched it and was going to have to improvise so, when he hit the ground at an awkward angle and twisted his foot, he made sure to leap forward and throw himself towards a grassy patch. He rolled along it, coming to a halt on his back side as he grabbed his bent foot and cracked it back into place, allowing his regeneration to finish the job as he staggered to his feet and took of running. He had limited time to track Calla and catch her as the silver sphere had just crashed into the other part of the city. His clumsy landing had slowed him down but there was still enough time to corner the rat hiding in the nearby alleyways so he kicked off walls and swung from lamp post to lamp post and washing line to washing line with practiced movements. Ares was basically king of the jungle here and didn''t even have to plan out his next step to know it in advance or make it in the moment. As such, he found Calla hiding inside of a shop he was familiar with in under ten seconds flat after having cleared out every other option. Calla pretending to be a mannequin did get a chuckle out of Ares though. Maybe if she wasn''t completely covered in fur and in her werewolf form would it have been more believable... Right now she just looked silly but that was probably her goal anyway. If she was going to get caught she might as well get caught revenant style. Many revenants chose to do something dumb in the final moments of their current life as a form of protest against their death. It wasn''t a rule or anything but it was a mentality that was long since engraved into their dumb dog brains.


    Ares walked up to the Calla statue and poked her tail, the result of which was having a spread of hairs fired off at him which he deflected perfectly. He''d been expecting the obvious retaliation and handled it without a hitch with caused Calla''s tail to droop in sadness. Calla couldn''t control her tail all the time but that didn''t mean it couldn''t be upset all by its lonesome. Actually, whenever one of its hairs hit someone it would always do a little celebratory dance by wiggling side to side. Ares kicked out the platform underneath Calla, causing her to to jump backwards and land on all fours as she prowled sideways behind another isle. Ares wasn''t falling for the bait so he just chucked a pressure Echo at he shelving unit and toppled it on top of her. Calla kicked it off her head and sent it crashing through the glass window before leaping at Ares with her claws and teeth. Calming himself and analysing the situation, Ares grabbed each of Calla''s paws mid swing and lifted his boot to shut Calla''s jaw from below. He then pushed out with his foot and blasted Calla into the desk at the opposite side of the building.


    Calla bumping into the desk with such force caused the cash register to fall on her head. In turn, she rubbed the sore spot and muttered ''ouchie'' under her breath which just made Ares feel bad for hitting her. His mother could be cute sometimes. She was a fluffy troublemaker, the kind that made you feel guilty when you ruined their fun by pouting with a sad face. As much as Ares wanted to go over and pat her head to make the ouchie go away, he knew this too was a trap and that this was her goal! The sly woman was using familial pity to lure him in and get the killing blow! Was this what it was like for Veteran when he fought against Ares? All these silly tricks to lower his guard and strike when Veteran least expected it? What goes around comes around, after all. Unlike Veteran though, Ares wasn''t having it. He just flicked another pressure imbued Echo at her and watched her slink away with a roll. Ares'' goal here wasn''t to kill her as sending her outside the pagoda was a waste of time, he just wanted to beat her in a close range fight and put her in a situation where she had to admit her loss. Putting her in this position would require a head to head which was where the bulk of her meaningful training would begin and end. Yes close range fights weren''t her specialty, and they didn''t matter to her, but it was also the best way to master controlling pressure as it forced the wielder to multitask in a way that made pressure an extension of the self. So to ensure it happened, Ares stood by the exit to the building and didn''t let Calla run free. If she did he would have to use annihilation enhancement to chase her down again and that wasn''t the point of this. Also, Ares kept an eye out on the walls around the building to make sure Calla didn''t go on a destruction spree and bust through them to get out either. She was a dog in a kennel and Ares wasn''t letting her out because she was a misbehaver!


    Calla had snuck close to Ares by utilising the rows and rows of clothes and was now stalking her prey, ready to leap out and scratch his face off! She had a plan but she was unsure if it was going to work... It all came down to this one moment and she was about to have one of her questions answered about just how powerful Ares really was. She crouched down, bent her knees, and prepared to spring over the clothes rack and leap at Ares. This was it! She was going all in on this bet and if it failed then she would lose on the spot!


    Rattle


    Ares heard the wheeled racks rumble and shift about so he turned his head just in time to catch sight of his mother baring her fangs and leaping at him with her body almost completely horizontal off the floor. In this moment more than any other she truly resembled a fearsome, wild animal and the poison dripping off her teeth and claws gave off an ominous glint in this unlit shop. Ares moved to stop her assault but paused as he saw her jaw shift slightly to make a noise.


    AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


    Ares. Didn''t. Give. A. Crap. Was this some kind of battle cry or was it actually supposed to be that howl mental attack Calla mentioned before? If it was the latter, then Ares being this unfazed by it meant his own revenant form was top tier. Or rather, even an alpha would have been agitated somewhat by the howl but Ares shrugged it off without a care in the world. Calla might as well have made the noise of a different animal instead, like a cat''s mews or a cow''s moo, as at least that might have confused Ares for long enough to gain an advantage. This had just been utterly pointless. Ares raised his foot again, repeating the same defensive manoeuvre as last time, and booted Calla in the jaw. She slid along the floor, pushed past the clothes rack which was flung to the side, and crashed into the wall. Before she could get up, Ares had ran over and placed his foot on her stomach, ending the fight for good.


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    Now that the fight was unofficially over, Ares removed his foot and extended a hand to Calla to pick her up off the floor. On the one hand, Ares won without harming Calla too much but, on the other, he didn''t get to push her to her limits which was what she really needed to improve right now. Losing like this was helpful, and it was an experience she wouldn''t get anywhere else, but it wasn''t optimal so Ares, going forward, would make sure to put her in more difficult situations. He was going to lift the unwritten ban on annihilation enhancement and use it to chase her down so she couldn''t pull off a hit and run strategy like this again. She wasn''t trying to ruin her own training it just kinda ended up that way as she got lost in the fight and treated it like a real one. That was fair. Ares had done the exact same thing when initially confronted with Veteran so he had no business calling Calla out for it. Plus she seemed to be having fun and he wasn''t going to be the one to ruin that. They still had plenty of time until the pagoda disappeared from Sheryashka so wasting one or two training sessions at the start wouldn''t be the end of the world if it lead to highly focussed training down the line. Plus she could always go to real Ares after and take up some of his time if she absolutely had to. What was he going to do? Say no to his ''mofu mofu'' mother? Not a chance!


    Now that Calla was up and about it was time for Ares'' training! Though Calla''s training session wasn''t incredibly useful she still would have picked up some insights she could fiddle with after giving Ares advice. While Ares messed around with transforming she could control her pressure enhancement better by utilising what she''d learnt by watching Ares control his during the spar. If she ran out of improvements to make then Ares could temporarily stop his transformation and spar with her again. Although, really, learning to transform shouldn''t take up too much time as, according to what he''d learnt through his brothers and sisters, it wasn''t a complex process... Or it shouldn''t be, anyway. The higher tier a revenant you were the longer getting the transformation down pat would take but even most alpha wolves, rare though they were, wouldn''t take more than a day to at least understand the basics and be in a position were they could start learning to actually transform. Yes the pre-transformation process from human to werewolf would take them a while to complete but knowing what steps needed to be taken to do it was the kind of thing that, when learnt, stayed learnt. Much like swimming or riding a bicycle. Not that really mattered as it was only ever really a one time process that never needed repeating. "Now that our game of cat and mouse is over, let''s turn me into a monster!"


    Calla shook her head furiously. "No! Not a monster! A cute baby! No matter how big or furry you are you will always be a fluffy baby, not an ugly monster!"


    It seemed like Calla was going to remain reluctant to let him in on the secrets of transforming until he agreed with her so gave in and nodded his head. "Alright. I''m sorry, you''re right. Not a monster. Point taken."


    "Good! What you''re about to discover is your true self, treat it with the respect it deserves! Take pride in it. It will do you so so so so so so much good so don''t look down on it!" Calla brought over a chair from behind the front desk of the store, cleared away the scattered objects to create space near the front door, and took a seat. She folded her legs and clapped her hands. "Ok! First up, I want you to get on all fours!"


    ...


    Ares was starting to understand that this was going to be a rather embarrassing process... Well whatever, at least he was doing it here where no one else could ever see him making a fool out of himsel...


    Snap


    "Hahahahahahahaha. You fell for it! Hahahaha. That''s worked on every single one of my babies so far!" Calla revelled in her childish prank and put away the camera with which she''d captured her glorious success for all eternity. The photo she''d taken would inevitably join the others that were just like it in one of her many albums... The fact she''d successfully deceived every other one of her children did make Ares feel a little better about the matter but the outcome was still not a preferable one... On the bright side, maybe the actual process wouldn''t be so embarrassing after all? Praying internally that that was the case, Ares sat on the floor and folded his legs as though he were about to cultivate. This tended to be a position that was relevant often in the cultivation world for myriad reasons so it made sense to him that this would be a good place to start. His assumption was proven correct when Calla gave a thumbs up and nodded so he took a deep breath and waited for her next command... A normal one this time, hopefully. "For reals this time!... Bark!"


    "Mum!"


    "Heh, ok ok. For really reals this time! Close your eyes and let your mind wander."


    "..."


    "Aw, come on, don''t look at me like that. I''m being serious this time, I swear!"


    "..." Ares narrowed his gaze further but ultimately did as was asked of him. With his eyes firmly shut, his mind drifted from recent memory to recent memory. A few of the matches he was fighting in other instances of the pagoda were playing in his head and, eventually, he entered a state that was only barely conscious.


    "Good good..." Calla''s soft voice echoed in his ears. She was using a calm and soothing voice so as not to disturb Ares or bring him out of his current tranquillity. "... I want you to empty your mind of any and all thoughts. A black void should be all you see, one that spirals endlessly downwards. Maybe that spiral is more like a bottomless, square staircase. Maybe it''s a series of circular platforms with holes in the middle. Maybe it''s a triangular elevator shaft with wires descending deeper into the abyss. As long as it''s a black void moving ''downwards'', and you can see it with utmost clarity, like you''re there in the flesh, you''ll know you''re on the right track."


    Ares envisioned the downward spiral... Or tried to, anyway. This seemed to be the first roadblock on his journey to becoming his true self and so he doubled his efforts!... Actually, doubling his effort when he was trying to empty his mind didn''t make much sense. Surely he should be halving the effort he put in to be more relaxed and have a smoother time of things? Ares unclenched all the muscles in his body and sunk deeper into his state of nirvana and, now, he was starting to see the outlines of his ''spiral''. Calla was saying something but her voice sounded like it was coming from underwater and Ares couldn''t quite parse any of the words leaving her mouth and entering his ears. As Ares'' vision of the spiral became clearer, Calla''s voice faded away until eventually it was gone entirely. Ares had entered his inner world, apparently, and now he was by himself to figure out the next step. In hindsight, he probably should have asked for more information before coming in here but it was too little too late. Now it was time to explore this place and see what it had in store for him.


    For starters, Ares had to stop calling it a ''spiral'', unless squares started counting as spirals anyway. it was a long, downward square... Which actually technically made it a rectangle but now things were just getting pedantic! Anyway, it was a long, archetypal, descending prison sort of layout. A counter clockwise staircase clung to the edges of the downward extending prison with occasional platforms with which to enter the various cells dotting the area. The internal prison paradigm was a tad cliché but, for what it was worth, highly functional and Ares wouldn''t get lost in translation here. His revenant form would very obviously be shackled and it was his duty to let it out. Ares had read enough fiction in his time to see where this was going from a mile off. As for the prison itself, which he was hovering over, it was a rather dank and ephemeral affair. There seemed to be dripping water echoing around him, as though there was some kind of gathering of leaky pipes above him but the sky was nothing but the blank void he''d been in prior so Ares couldn''t fathom where this noise was coming from. It may have very well even been originating from behind the walls if Ares'' hearing wasn''t leading him astray. The metal grate he''d just landed on allowed anyone who peered straight down to see the seemingly ever extending pit in which the pattern of the prison just repeated endlessly. Blackish blue brick provided a weird, dull light that gave this place a bleak and foreboding atmosphere, like something truly horrible was lurking in the deepest depths. A few dangling chains clung to the walls here and there but, other than that, it was plain all around. The most confusing aspect of all this was that some of the cells just flat out seemed unreachable as the stairs weren''t in a position to allow any visitor to this place to access them. The cells were empty so it didn''t particularly matter but was still odd nonetheless.


    After trying his best to stare down into the 30ft wide pit below, and failing completely due to the impossible nature of the task, Ares started walking along the rickety grate until he made it to the start of the metal staircase. Ares tepidly poked it with his feet because although this was all happening inside him the last thing he wanted was the start falling to his death. He had no idea how hard it could potentially be to return to this place, he didn''t know if dying here would negatively affect him, and he didn''t know if it would hurt which was a valid concern considering how much stuff like this tended to, annoyingly enough. Though the steps were loud, and falsely gave to understand they would collapse if stepped on, Ares braved the unknown and started to head downwards. He didn''t know what he was looking for here exactly but as long as he followed the path he was on, he would inevitably come across something, somewhere; that he was sure of. There was no way an elaborate location such as this didn''t house at least a secret or two as, again, going by the varied literature he and Aejaz had skimmed through, a place like this was never anything short of a gold mine for the person it existed inside of!


    Five minutes of carefully checking every new segment of the staircase later, separated by more grates, Ares finally caught sight of the first area in this place that looked to be different from the rest. The platform in front of the door he was looking at was significantly wider and longer than any of the grates he''d come across previously and this one was actually a blank sheet of metal instead. Clearly someone was feeling fancy and decided this would be a good place to throw out this place''s equivalent of a welcome mat. The room had bars, like all the cells throughout the rest of this place, but they were so densely packed together it was impossible to see past them. One of the bars was placed further forward than the others and more closely resembled a vertical handle bar with which to open this impromptu ''door''. More than anything else, though, Ares was interested in the metallic name plate, one that resembled and oversized dog tag, hanging crookedly over the door and tiredly limping to and fro. It had, engraved upon it, in barely legible scratch marks, the name of a certain someone Ares had completely forgotten about... Someone who, now that Ares had risen past bloodline awakening, could very well be a part of the picture in all this. In fact, this wasn''t the first time Ares had seen this fellow''s name engraved above the entrance to a location as it had happened back in Baja too. As for who this person was exactly...


    Dominus.