Calla, Ye, and Sadie all took their leave one by one. Calla ended up staying the longest and kept making Ares promise that he would come straight to the Umbra planet when he ascended to Vraizon. Now that the extremely large cat that was Garmr was out of the bag, Calla wanted to pet her big and fluffy child to her heart''s content. Right now she could only do it in the pagoda but she wanted to do it for real. Having the pagoda clone transform and lie around while Calla climbed aboard and pet his head was her idea of a fun time and Ares was just going to have to accept that and agree to her demands. After she left everyone else returned to their bedrooms for the night, after bidding each other adieu, and finally got a chance to relax in private. Ares and Enyo found Bellona slovenly leaning backwards against the headrest and patting her stomach with a greedy smile on her face. "Well someone looks very fulfilled right about now," Enyo remarked.
Bellona shrugged. "I know how to appreciate the finer things in life. Speaking of which, Ares, do you have any popping candy? I''m really fiending for some right now to cap off the perfect day."
Ares nodded and took some out of his spatial ring. He''d foreseen Bellona''s hankering, just as he''d predicted Enyo''s wanting of honeycomb, and made her some a while back in preparation. As he whipped out the popping candy, Bellona rocked side to side with a beaming smile. She was a pretty simple woman to please. Good food and a lazy day at home with the man she loved. It made it easy for Ares to spoil her rotten but it also left him wondering if he could do more for her. If she wanted more, though, she would have asked for it so Ares didn''t worry too much about it. The only thing he could possibly really do was find her a TV or something but that could happen when they went up to Vraizon. Until then she was just going to have to entertain herself the way everyone else around here did! At Ares'' expense!... Ares really needed to find other ways of entertaining these people, even if it was just a chessboard or something... After all, he was going to be in the cultivation room for about a week and a half. Sure they could come knocking here and there but he wasn''t going to be as readily available as he typically was.
Ares hopped in bed and fell asleep pretty quickly while Bellona and Enyo stayed up a little longer, chatting away about whatever took their fancy. Ares was too tired to join them and was able to conk out. despite their conversation in the background, which may have been partially a result of Enyo using her magic on him when he wasn''t paying attention. Either way, he was definitely going to sleep in a bit more than he usually did tonight. He was in no rush to make progress with the pressurising as he had a whopping whole two weeks before he next directly involved himself in a match. Plus, now that his cultivation had risen, so too had his pressure reserves. He assumed that meant he would be able to pressurise his treasures quicker. Ares estimated the Nyxian Prowler and the Stygian zephyr would take about a week and half, if not a few days less, to fully pressurise. Before taking the trailblazers and assessing his reserves he guessed the Stygian Zephyr would have taken that much time by itself so it was a pretty considerable difference. This way he''d have time to spend with his family and that was as good a way as any to unwind before the big match.
Ares might not have been too fussed about the Mako showdown but he knew it was important to win and get whatever rewards were on offer so he was designing an entire gameplan from scratch, taking into account every single possibility he could think of and devising appropriate counter measures. Outwardly he''d been very casual about this but inwardly he was focused and determined to win. He''d even go on to spend the entirety of the next two weeks giving everything he knew about Mako due consideration. Hell Ares was even taking wild guesses at what Mako was capable of but had yet to even show that was simply how invested he was. Ares felt good about his chances, sure, but Mako was still a fundamental at the end of the day. Not showing him respect and half-assing things would lead to an inevitable loss even with all the tools Ares had at his disposal. Was losing the end of the world? No but it might be a bit of a set back in the grand scheme of things so it wasn''t a loss worth sleepwalking towards.
His thoughts on the matter were abruptly cut off at some point as the deep sleep took him into dreamland. There actually were arts out there that allowed a person to keep thinking while they were dreaming, and retain all those thoughts when they woke up, so it was something frequently learnt by strategists who were deployed near the front lines. They could devise strategies long into the night and never take breaks for the sake of winning a war. It was also useful for creative people who just wanted more time to work on their ideas. The wonderful world of technicals was very useful for small things like this and could solve many minor issues and gripes people had with their day to day lives.
Night came and went with Ares waking up to find Enyo draped across him. Evidently she was making sure he couldn''t escape without waking her up. Ares had promised her some fun time so she was damn well ensuring she got it! No wonder his sleep had been so comfortable, Enyo''s soft and smooth flesh was delightful to hold. Ares waited patiently for her to wake up, at which point he delivered on his promises before heading over to the cultivation room. She looked satisfied enough when he left but, knowing her, she was still in the mood so there was a non-zero chance she would go on to pester her sister who was still struggling to get up and off her lazy ass. Much like how Ares sullied and bullied Bellona in the morning it seemed Enyo was going to gleefully do the same. Monkey see, monkey do.
Ares wished Blo Blo good luck dealing with the ever persistent Enyo and got comfortable in his normal cross-legged sitting positioned and pulled out the Nyxian Prowler. More than anything, with this treasure specifically, Ares really wanted the appearance to change. He didn''t mind the flowy black shadow but he wanted it to be golden and really signify it as being his. It hadn''t become a personal treasure as of yet but it very well might do during this process if he was lucky enough. Pressurising with annihilation mana imbued in it seemed to passively increase the odds of turning a treasure into a personal one. There was nothing definitive that confirmed Ares'' suspicions about this, just purely circumstantial evidence regarding the Celestial Prisms, but he wouldn''t be surprised if it was true as fundamentals had a habit of cheating their way through life. Something small like this was absolutely the kind of benefit they would receive for basically no reason at all other than the fact that their mana was a tier above everyone else''s. Actually, that wasn''t even a fair enough description as it was an understatement if anything. Normal magic was at the bottom, unique aspects were maybe two or three tiers above that, and then fundamentals were upwards of ten tiers above unique aspects. It wasn''t meant to be fair, it was meant to be a solution to a bigger threat. Fundamentals were not going around hassling normal cultivators, that wasn''t the point of their existence. Now granted that didn''t stop normal cultivators from messing with them, at which point the kiddy gloves came off, but for the most part it was expected that the fundamentals would work towards saving the world and that was it. That was their mission in life. What came after? Well Ares knew but the others most likely didn''t as this wasn''t something that had ever happened before. They would all just have to find out on their own later.
Ares gave the Nyxian Prowler a once over before he got down to work and started the same old boring process of chucking pressure into the thing. He did notice the increased rate of absorption... Or rather the increased rate at which he could leak the pressure into it. He was outputting more pressure, it''s not that the Nyxian Prowler could take more. Still, the rate of Ares'' pressure increase compared to the amount he could put into the Prowler wasn''t one to one. If that were the case then anyone at Dominus'' level would be able to pressurise an enabler in a second flat. That wasn''t the case as it was a pretty complex calculation based on your cultivation, the amount of pressure you had, and the quality of the weapon. Long story short, it was a percentage based deal so having more pressure still helped it just wasn''t as much as it could have been if it was calculated in a different way. You almost always had to dedicate a good chunk of time to pressurising a treasure and that would be doubly true for Ares'' annihilation pressure.
An entire day later and Ares hadn''t left the room. Normally he would take some small nap breaks here and there to keep himself topped up on the energy front in case of emergencies but, this time, he''d gone straight through the night without pause. The reason for this was because he could feel a connection forming between him and the Prowler. He wasn''t going to jump to conclusions but he was pretty sure the Prowler was about to become a personal treasure just as he predicted it would. Out of curiosity, Ares did slow down the pressurising at one point but the connection started to fade so Ares knew he had to keep it up until the weapon was satiated with gorging itself on Ares'' pressure. It also ''confirmed'' Ares'' idea about annihilation pressure inclining treasures to become personal. Again, nothing concrete but, at this point, Ares would be willing to bet his life on it!... Although his life was technically not worth particularly much given his immortality but that was beside the point!
Another day passed and, before the Prowler was fully pressurised, it became a personal treasure! Ares was happy to see it for no other reason than that now he felt more safe to lend it out to Aejaz. His stupid brother wouldn''t drop it in a back alley somewhere and lose it forever while he was out on a mission! Well, that was still half possible. He could lose it but then Ares would just return it to his person remotely. Ares was curious to see how it worked, as every personal treasure had a unique method of returning to its owner, so he placed it on the far end of the room and walked a few steps back to his original position. He summoned, or rather resummoned, the Prowler and watched as it sunk into a black shadow in the floor. That same shadow the reappeared on his palm and the knife slowly emerged vertically from his flesh. it hovered slightly until Ares grabbed it out of mid air and then he sat back down.
Unlike, say, Aejaz'' Concealed Serpent, this return method was incredibly good as it was instantaneous like his Zephyr. It wouldn''t be stuck out of combat scenarios for longer than a split second which was a rather beneficial trait to possess. It also phased through objects and passed by any inconvenient roadblocks that may otherwise hamper it. Unless someone had an ability like Scar, which could outright prevent personal treasures from returning, the knife would just sink into the nearest object and voila! It would come back!... But it wasn''t perfect like the Zephyr. It might have seemed great but there was a pretty major flaw in that empty space was this thing''s arch-nemesis. If Ares chucked the Prowler into the deepest recesses of space what kind of object could it sink into to facilitate returning to him? It would need to drift over towards a star, asteroid, or planet ro something before it could come back the short way. Not a major complication by any means but absolutely something worth remembering. As for any other benefits? Who knows! Things like dedication cultivation and personal treasures could provide all sorts of unknowable advantages and it was really just a matter of finding out through sheer luck and / or long periods of experimentation. Ares was someone more likely to rely on the former as he did not have enough time on his hands to spend weeks toying about with this thing. Any cultivator worth his salt was almost always busy doing something, and that was especially true of Ares, so he would just take things as they came.
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This time, it did not take another day for the next notable change to occur as, a mere few hours after the previous development, the Prowler was officially done being pressurised and, much to Ares contentment, there had been a colour change after all! The knife now had a few small gold streaks running along the handle and the shadowy tip was primarily gold with a thick black outline. Mission very much accomplished! It seemed Ares could make his treasures visually distinct if he so willed it but he wasn''t going to go back and do the other treasures because he really couldn''t be asked to. It wouldn''t take as long as pressurising did but it would still take a day or two for a pointless colour change. Plus he didn''t want literally everything to be golden anyway. Some of his stuff, like the Bindings, he had to wear! Gold was a great colour but man could it be tacky sometimes if you had too much of it... The Stygian Zephyr could have gold streaks running through it when Ares channelled his annihilation mana and that was good enough. Too much more gold and he would look like some kind of pimp king and that was very much not the impression he wanted to give off right now.
That''s not to say gold couldn''t work. It would probably have to at some point due to his apotheosis form as they typically changed a person''s look somewhat and, apparently, gave them unreplaceable clothes during the duration. When apotheosis was permanently achieved that changed things but, until then, entering the apotheosis form was very much like entering his revenant form. It was like becoming an entirely different race and being altogether. A person''s appearance in apotheosis was reflective of the kind of God they would become and so it was usually a grand and overbearing appearance, much like how Astraeus had come across to Ares upon first meeting him. These forms instilled a sense of reverence in anyone not capable of apotheosising and were a culmination of the person''s will, magic, mastery, and personality all in one. Ares apotheosis would be a bit more complicated than most, and not strictly because he was a fundamental, but the one thing he did know is that he was going to be golden. There were no two ways about it really, that was just his fate. As for how he looked? Well nobody ever became uglier after apotheosising so there was that to look forward to at least. Speaking of... Would Enyo get even more beautiful? That was a thought Ares threw to the back of his mind and decided not to worry about right now as that could be a problem for future Ares to figure out. Besides, it''s not like it was guaranteed a person''s facial features would change. People wouldn''t get uglier but that didn''t meant they would have to be better looking. Sometimes it changed body shape or a person''s general bearing so it could really be anything and speculating was pretty pointless right now... Although knowing Enyo she would 100% get prettier and just make Ares'' life even harder, both in terms of the state of his junk as well as the state of every other guy who would want to start duels to the death with Ares. That was just part in parcel with having a beautiful wife in the cultivation world though so no point in crying about it.
Ares put the Prowler back into the Primordial Blade and now it was time to start work on the Zephyr. Ares removed it and felt odd. He wore this basically throughout the entire day, up until he went to sleep, so not having it on was a strange feeling. His back felt strangely cold and, although he truly wasn''t, he felt defenceless right about now. like someone could just waltz up to him and shove a dagger in his spine. The Zephyr was a fantastic weapon with a variety of great tools that also acted as a sort of pseudo armour for his back. He hadn''t used it much as of late, mostly because he was experimenting with other things like the annihilation pressure, the scythe, and Garmr, but it was still one of his greatest weapons. If you ignored the Primordial Blade this was maybe his second best weapon? It obviously wasn''t a more impressive treasure than the Bindings, that was self-explanatory, but the Prowler?
The draw of both the Prowler and the Zephyr were their versatility but Ares just felt like the Zephyr did more on average. Offensive utility and defensive were packed into one so it was definitely well rounded. Of course Ares could learn defensive arts of the darkness pillar, and that would help, but the Zephyr was more immediately accessible. If Ares was ambushed right now what good would arts he didn''t currently know do for him exactly? In the long run maybe the Prowler would be better, as Ares would have sunk in some serious hours into making it worthwhile, but right now? The Zephyr definitely edged out the Prowler even if only by a small margin. That wasn''t a knock on the Prowler though, it was a commendation of the Zephyr as it was just a plain old treasure. For it to outclass an enabler was an astonishing feat. There were plenty of unassuming treasures out there that would turn into something great the moment you explored their capabilities and this was clearly one of them. Ares was lucky to have been chosen by it way back when. And now? Now it was time to make it even better! There were still some more things Ares wanted to try doing with the Zephyr down the line but those ideas were still in the early phases and had barely even hatched yet. Ares didn''t have the means to go through with some of those ideas so, as of right now, pressurising it was the best option because it could actually be done in the here and now. There were no downsides and it only took a week to do, give or take, so he laid it across his lap and got started.
There were no real milestones during this exhausting progress, as it was a personal treasure to begin with and that was out of the cards, and Ares was already used to his newfound speed of pressurising. Nothing of note happened but Asha and Ye did show up a few more times for some food, as well as the other matriarchs, so Ares took a few small breaks here and there to feed everyone. Other than coming out of his hidey hole for lunch, dinner, sleep, and keeping Enyo''s inner demon at bay, nothing really happened. As for that last part, for no reason in particular, Ares had determined that if Enyo didn''t get laid for more than three days she would unleash hell upon this plane of existence. The rivers would run red, land would broil, miasma would choke the air, and the sky would collapse and shatter into millions of tiny pieces. Besides, Ares wanted to spend time with his wives every now and then anyway so preventing that, for the good of humanity at large, was more like a side quest for him. He should be praised for his sacrifice! And yet the task was a thankless one! How tragic.
Taking one for the team here and there did slow down Ares'' progress so it took him a tad longer to finish than he''d been expecting. Instead of one week it took eight days. So not much more at all but it did raise the question of how on earth Enyo managed to fit a full day of romping across the course of a week. Ares could have sworn it hadn''t been that much time but apparently it had. Even if he subtracted the few hours he spent serving dinner or chatting with Blo Blo it still came up to around twenty hours of up and down, and up and down, and up and down. Well whatever, Ares needed to do it otherwise he may very well be dragged kicking and screaming out of this room, at which point Enyo''s spree would have lasted a lot longer than a single day. It''s not like it was a massive delay or anything as Ares was still on track for everything. The match against Aejaz'' family was later today, as it had been delayed for a while due to poor weather, which meant that, afterwards, he wouldn''t have any pressing matters to attend to other than maybe watching his family get dunked on by the new and improved Mako 2.0.
Ares felt a little sorry for his siblings for having to go up against Mako but, well, there wasn''t much they could realistically do about it. It was basically a foregone conclusion that anyone who went up against a fundamental was inherently screwed from the get go. If anything they were lucky to have gotten this far without coming across one. Plus they could be proud of their run this far as, depending on how you looked at it, they were the real ''winners''. Excluding the fundamentals, because they were basically cheating anyway, the Umbras and the Legions were the big contenders of this event and the match between them had already concluded in an Umbra win. The only other team of note was Aejaz'' family but Ares didn''t see in them the same quality of cultivator as he did with his siblings. Not to mention the fact that they were likely in disarray right now. The silk wearing stabby guy was out of commission, Trixie had switched sides, and Sho was dead now. They were leaderless and cut in half. The team would have to be filled up with rank and file nobodies and the mental strain of going up against the guy that killed their clan leader, who they themselves couldn''t touch even if they tried, was not small. Ares wasn''t even taking part but his corporeal form would be distracting enough as is.
As Ares finished pressurising early in the morning, he still had some time to kill so he started prepping breakfast in the kitchen. As he''d been primarily cooking in the Blade recently it was a nice change of pace to be back in this particular room for once. Aejaz came waltzing in, evidently in a good mood which was probably a result of forgetting what day it was. Aejaz had been lounging and lazing around a lot lately as he hadn''t had much to do in the way of Hans'' missions or Sadie''s training. His freedom as of late had made him sloppy! Well, today''s match was going to fix that inactive mindset and lifestyle right up! "Good morning. We have a match today you know?"
Aejaz froze on the spot and tried to be slick by turning around and walking away without saying so much as a single word. Ares flung his Zephyr at Aejaz and wrapped it around his wrist, dragging the coward with tears in his eyes back into the room. Aejaz couldn''t unravel the pressurised Zephyr so he was at the mercy of Ares here. It looked like Aejaz was going to have to bite the bullet... The bullet his own brother shot at him from point blank range! It had been a while since Aejaz got the tough love treatment and it was safe to say he did not miss it!