While Ares was about to start fighting for his life down in the arena, there was one particular woman in the spectator area on the top floor who wasn''t sure if she should be praying for her son''s downfall or success. Calla was seriously torn here. Logically she should have supported her son unconditionally, and she would have normally, but she had been cooking up her own devious plan that necessitated Ares losing this fight in order for it to come to fruition so there was a lot at stake here! Technically this put her in a win / win situation regardless of the outcome of the match but it did complicate her feelings on the matter as rooting against her son felt so very wrong... Before the match had started, she''d contacted Julio and fiddled with the runes on the Training Field, with permission from the C.O who were well aware of Calla''s antics, and made a ''minor'' change. Ares had yet to notice it, as he was pre-occupied with the fight of his life, but that strange rune he was unfamiliar with was gone again. That little fang shaped rune he''d come across a few times now was obviously something revenant specific, that much was very apparent considering it was highly relevant to him and the symbolism was rather in your face, he just had no idea what it did!
Maybe if Ares was made aware the rune was going to be gone from this Training Field ahead of time, and knew that Calla was the one responsible for it, would he have finally done some research into the pesky thing and added the fang back to the Training Field himself to avoid his rune doom... Oh well, tough luck for Ares! If he wanted to avoid this strange and unusual fate, that would become a very troubling reality for a short period of time should the proper conditions be met, then he ought to avoid dying in this Training Field at all costs! Appa, Bellona, Enyo, Calla, and even to an extent a certain someone else in the Umbra family, all wanted this to happen. So much so they were willing to lose the match just to see it! Hell even the other matriarchs and their kin were aware of what was going on and weren''t opposed to this potential result as it would be funny at the very least. In short, Ares was literally the only person unaware of what was in store for him while these people were giggling about it behind his back! You would think these people would be cheering him on and supporting Ares, minus Serene of course, but, no, secretly they were rooting for Mako to get the kill! Traitors! Was it at least all for a good cause? Well, it was a weird one, that was for sure...
Regardless of his family''s plans to mess with him, Ares had just begun his one on one combat with the giant golem. He planned on winning this fight anyway so dying was irrelevant! As for the Gigagolem, Ares had miscalculated its total size somewhat. It was still as big as Garmr but it actually had finished growing already. The reason Ares got this wrong was because the lower half of its body was merged with the floor and, instead of walking, it sort of just floated through the neon floor like a rolling wave. It was still gigantic but, at the very least, it wasn''t going to grow to the size of a mountain or anything. Ares had no idea how this would affect the fight exactly but he was still confident in his ability to whoops this thing''s ass!... Not that it had one as only the bust of this thing actually existed but oh well! The point was that this thing was going down and the bigger they are, the harder they fall! This was the last line of defence standing between Ares and Mako so if he could just deal with this he likely wouldn''t be seeing the Proving Grounds again anytime soon. It would be a hard fought win, as the other golems were all gathering around Ares as well and Mako wasn''t going to stop poking and prodding at him too, but this would be the first major step towards victory and so Ares was willing to leap headfirst into the fray. Just because he was willing, however, that didn''t mean he was actually going to! It wasn''t cowardice, he just wanted to feel out the Gigagolem, much like he''d done with the mecha dryad, and learn what kind of tricks this thing had in store for him.
Ares flicked a couple of Shock Beads towards the Gigagolem but it simply opened its mouth and started inhaling deeply. Ares was thankful it didn''t screech again but, as he watched his Beads sink into the neon void, he almost would have preferred it if that was all it had actually done. Ares did try detonating the beads but they''d probably be deconstructed into neon particles by the Gigagolem''s innate ability to digest things. Or at least that was what Ares'' Omniscience was loosely advising him of via the flow and deconstruction of mana within the Gigagolem. Ares had watched through this thing''s stomach, like he had x-ray vision, as his beads turned into mana sparks before fading away entirely. If he wanted to fight this thing, he needed to stay well away from its mouth... But now Ares was curious... How quickly could this thing turn? If it turned slowly then putting it down wasn''t going to be a troublesome task... But if it could swivel on a dime, and hoover up anything directly in front of it without repercussion... What was Ares supposed to do about that? He was going to have to think on the fly here and find a way to overcome this annoying giant but that was fine, Ares had a habit of living in the moment anyway. He''d done a lot of planning for today but that didn''t mean he would fold when he came across unexpected scenarios, he''d never been that type of combatant and cultivator from the very start! Hell he''d even mocked Enyo for it way back when they had their first major spat over killing the people trying to assault Fate in the woods. In some ways, Ares was even more deadly when he didn''t have a plan in his head that limited his actions. None of that meant Ares didn''t have some ideas swirling around, however. Ares'' first order of business, and potentially the only one he might need depending on how well it went, was to cast "Crystallised Void: Tricky Rink!"
Ares was highly curious about the result of this. It would either fail, due to Mako''s art preventing it from appearing over the floor, or would be a pivotal changing point that would put Ares in the driver seat for this fight against the golem. If Ares could cover the floor in the Rink, the golem would no longer be able to even so much as move without blowing itself up constantly, plus the ambush pillars would get disintegrated the second they reared their heads from below. None of this even covered the plethora of other benefits it would provide so this particular art would do many good things for Ares if it worked! Ares watched, with baited breath as his Black Ice Bane sank into the neon brick at his feet, and waited patiently. It almost felt like it wasn''t working but, much to Ares'' joy, a small piece of Crystalised Void appeared in the form of a tiny dot before spreading like wildfire. The spread almost seemed quicker than usual, actually, like it was no longer being impeded by solid flooring. This could possibly be the case as it wasn''t surging through the ground but rather the mana flow of Mako''s creation magic.
If the Void was hitching a ride on that then it would be able to spread even quicker as mana wasn''t a solid, more like an esoteric gas if anything. Maybe Mako''s art was backfiring here? The cultivation world had tricky little intricacies like this sometimes and, given that the two combatants here had completely unexplored pillars with millions of unique interactions waiting to be discovered, it was no surprise that something, well, surprising had come a cropper! The expected unexpected! A clash between fundamentals was sure to result in meaningful discoveries like this, nuggets of information that could potentially even change the cultivation world''s perception of the status quo. This was actually an important moment because it meant that magic could flow through mana in highly specific scenarios. There were limitless potential applications of this even at a glance. What if someone who specialised in poison magic could contaminate mana with their magic and automatically poison anyone who tried taking in the mana to cast arts? What about remote communication by sending mental messages through mana channels in the air? Extreme range assassination by exploding mana clusters from a distance? It''s not that people hadn''t theorised such things before, it''s just that such an occurrence had never actually been successfully brought about. Technical specialists and magic scientists alike had studied such a phenomenon for years and failed time and time again to make it a reality and, yet, here were two random kids achieving their life goals without even meaning to. It could be brought up basically every five minutes how revolutionary fundamental pillars were as they were constantly defying the supposed laws of reality and cultivation.
Right now, Ares didn''t much care about that though. His main reason for being satisfied wasn''t the realisation of an earth shattering actualisation of a theory from some science quack a billion light years away. No, he was just happy to have an upper edge against his opponent. The Rink was creeping outwards in a wide circle and overwriting the neon floor... Actually, that wasn''t even true. Ares had assumed it would obliterate Mako''s art but it was more like the icing on a cake. His Rink was a layer above the floor but both were co-existing in a strange ''I destroy you if you try destroying me'' state. If the sneaky pillars tried to rise up, they would sink into a sea of disintegration hiding beneath the ice. If the disintegration tried pushing down into the neon floor it would be turned to neon particles and deconstructed. Maintaining the status quo was exactly what the two magics were doing but that was only beneficial for Ares as his art was on top! Sure the disintegration was too busy fending off the Proving Grounds underneath to be useful but the annihilation magic was free to do as it pleased above ground!
The Rink was now taking up a large enough chunk of space that every single golem was well within its radius. There was a reason this art took up so much state percentage on the Black Ice Bane, it was damn good! Even Mako''s super art, that he''d gained almost exclusively from the benefits of a rare treasure, couldn''t keep up with the Rink. It was technically a combination art that required a powerful artifact and two destruction aspects so its strength wasn''t too much of a shocker. Still, the main point here was that the golems were gigascrewed! Normally, only direct strikes to the Rink would set off the retaliatory explosions but these golems were as heavy as a truck full of gorillas and so their fate was basically sealed already. Every single step they took was like swinging a great hammer at the earth and they were clearly going to pay dearly for their severely bulky girth.
Like this, the golems now found themselves with a dearth of options to traverse this rink and so they could only really either watch Ares do his thing form afar or suffer heavy casualties simply trying to get within a few feet of him. And that was just the smaller golems. The Gigagolem couldn''t even move a single inch anymore! Couldn''t move forward, couldn''t sink into the floor, couldn''t slide backwards, couldn''t turn sideways. The second it moved it would shatter the Rink underneath it and, well, BOOM. It could rely on the golems to cover its flanks while it opened its maw and tried to swallow Ares but turning was definitely no longer in the cards for this fella. Ares also still had to be careful of its humongous arms that could freely swipe at him but, other than that, Ares looked to be in the clear here! What was once a huge issue now looked completely insignificant all due to some brilliant timing on the art. Still, Ares needed to finish this thing off and it looked far more resilient than the smaller golems. He had an idea for dealing with that too but he was going to have to get close to finish this thing off. Plus Ares was going to have to make a small sacrifice here... But it was probably worth it. He''d gotten enough mileage out of the thing he was throwing away already and Ares hadn''t expected it to last throughout the whole match regardless. Long story short, Ares was going to charge down the golem and end this little Proving Ground detour!
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Ares took off like a bullet out of a gun, heading straight for the Gigagolem while the small ones stumbled about, getting rocked by countless explosions and sent flying around the Rink like battered dolls. To the tune of violent golden subjugation, Ares nimbly weaved his way around the rink, dancing his way past the golems as he neared the giant one that commanded all of his attention. The small golems fell over themselves trying to hit Ares as he swiftly flew by them, punching out as his small frame but missing by wide margins every time and striking nothing but the cold, hard Rink instead. These failures were met with more golden fireworks that Ares could feel blowing him forward from behind his back. Cool guys don''t look at explosions but the coolest guys use them to raise their speed to unfathomable heights by riding their blast waves. Ares became a blur of afterimages every time he was sent blasting forward by his own magic, kindly set off by the careless golems trying, and desperately failing, to halt the manic speedster form approaching the Gigagolem. Just by running to his destination, and dodging with graceful finesse, Ares had destroyed six different golems. More were spawning but for what exactly? To get humiliated by Ares?
It wasn''t even like this golem spawning process was quick as some sacrificial pawns had to be blasted by the Rink on their way up to clear the area for the next set of golems. Just like how the Proving Grounds couldn''t rise up past the rink, the Golems were met with the same blockade, as they arose from within the floor, so they had to just take the loss and blow themselves up to get their brethren that came after them out safely. This took far too long and Ares was basically home-free to deal with the Gigagolem at that point but still he decided to show off a bit. One golem had successfully evaded the Rink via a tiny gap caused by the stumbling around of the previous golems. It was a small hole, not unlike the kind you might find when ice fishing, but the golem had cleverly opted to use this as a safe location and skip the sacrificial requirement to escape the Rink. It thought it was so smart but all it ended up doing was providing Ares with the final, and greatest, burst of mobility he needed to close the distance between himself and the Gigagolem. Ares ran up to the golem head, just about peeking out of the hole, and performed a flying kick similar to that of the one he hit the young master''s guard with back at Remmy''s. The golem head was broken and kicked both backwards and downwards, straight into the floor of the Rink and setting off another explosion. Ares'' momentum had carried him ahead of the origin of the blast but he wasn''t yet far enough away to only get a slight push, no, he was directly in front of this one! Close enough to reach out and touch the golden burst if he so pleased!
BOOOOOOM
The explosion ruffled Ares'' clothes and swept away his hair in every which direction as he was blasted away at the speed of sound. Ares had the friendly fire prevention mutation from Enyo but he could still turn it off and subject himself to his own explosions willingly for whatever reason. He could have kept it off, and the blast would have still pushed him regardless, but he was starting to really get into the thrill of this fight and the prickling sensation of parts of his flesh tearing under the weight of his golden magic was exhilarating. Ares never felt as alive as he did when he was detonating his magic whilst still in the radius of his own arts, it was a sensation that couldn''t be replicated by any other experience he''d ever gone through in his entire life. The roaring whoosh echoing in his ear, the tinge of pain in his back that rewarded him with incredible momentum, the pure gold sea that washed over him. All of it was a breath of fresh air that cleansed his lungs and reinvigorated his already burning spirit. Crushing the constructed skull of the neon golem underfoot and bounding off it into the heart of his explosion was a powerful statement in Ares'' eyes and just made him feel superior. It had been a long, LONG time since this side of Ares came out. The bloodthirsty, manic combatant with a grudge against every living creature that defied him. His bloodline and his berserker nature had been neatly tucked away but, now that he was in the presence of worthy prey, they''d both burst out of their respective cages and were ready to do some hunting for sport.
Magic was capable of developing humanistic tendencies. Ares'' Adaptive Shot, the eagle, was one such example. The Lighter Duo''s jellyfish cowering before dominus was another. And now, the Gigagolem leaning back and almost fleeing from the wildly grinning Ares as he raced through the air without pause was the most recent example. The magic was outclassed by flesh and blood and it knew it. Death was imminent and it could tell that any and every move it made would be quelled, manipulated to the advantage of its attacker, and would ultimately result in its finality. Death had come knocking and if the Gigagolem didn''t willing answer then Ares was going to bust the door down and drag this thing kicking and screaming to the deepest pits of hell. Even the air was giving way for Ares as he transitioned into a slide upon landing. His backside wasn''t touching the floor, however, he was leaning at the perfect angle such that he wouldn''t need to delay his movements and stand up. This was such a minor and trivial improvement to be made over a regular slide that it almost seemed inconsequential, netting him no more than maybe half a second of extra time to use at his leisure, but the fact that he was even doing such a thing in the first place was the kind of thing that silenced onlookers and just made them all appreciate the raw skill on display.
Such an unreasonably hard skill to pull off for such minimal gain... And he wasn''t even really showing off. Ares was just in a flow state and his body was effectively automatically performing optimal movements on its own. He was in the zone and his heartbeat was through the roof. It wasn''t a dissimilar feeling to when Dominus took over, like he was watching and spectating from within his own head as a higher being took control. His conscience was light, his presence thin, and his breathing heavily regulated as his skeleton manoeuvred itself in ways Ares wasn''t even really aware it could. He was reaching into the depths of his core and pushing his body further than it had any right to go and every ounce of talent welling within him was pouring out nonstop to display its perfection to the world around him. To an ordinary person, the altered slide was meaningless because of how unfeasible it was to be used in actual combat for little gain. For Ares, right now, the slide was meaningless because it was all just a part of the expected process. It was like breathing. It wasn''t anything special because of how pointless it was, no, it wasn''t anything special because, right now, it was utterly lacking in any kind of complexity for him. If tasked to, in his current state, Ares could pull that slide off maybe even ten times in a row which almost made it underwhelming. Rather than feel any heightened sense of accomplishment, it served no purpose other than extending this flow state and raising that heartbeat even further. Did Ares need the half a second it gave him to play around with? No, not at all. He did it for no reason other than because it was supposed to be hard. The seemingly impossible was a paltry ask of Ares and he wanted the world to know it. His goal with this Gigagolem, and his master afterwards, was just to perform at peak proficiency throughout the entirety of his slaughter so he could maintain the high. This feeling of unfiltered dominance was a drug and the slide was just another hit; potentially a lethal injection if anything went wrong but that just made each and every risk feel so damn good.
Ares dug his Bane into the floor as he slid up the Gigagolem. This monster had a whole host of tricks and abilities but it wasn''t going to get a chance to use literally any of them as Ares had transcended the plane of mortality that was expected of a regular living creature and his prowess was inestimable. Ares felt like he could take on a thousand Gigagolems with room to spare so this singular one cowering before him was like an ant he could bully at his leisure. Ares activated Voidwalk and ran up its stomach while the Gigagolem foolish tried to open its mouth. Nothing the Gigagolem did was ever going to work against the expert cultivator climbing it so, when Ares leapt upwards and kicked its jaw shut with a resounding bang that echoed through the entire coliseum, the result wasn''t unexpected. There was a certain kind of understanding people had when watching someone overperform. It wasn''t strictly awe, it was closer to resignation. Being resigned to the idea that the person in question was simply untouchable right now, and your best bet was to try again later when they''d calmed down, this was a well known feeling amongst cultivators who''d seen such over-achievers countless times before.
While that was great for the spectators, the Gigagolem wasn''t so lucky as he was directly in combat with the freak and was on the receiving end of his string of flawless movements, unable to flee like it wanted to from the bottom of its magical core. Point in case, after slamming the Gigagolem''s jaw shut, Ares kicked its face one more time, stamping on the Gigagolem as he activated an art that was going to really put everything into overdrive. "Crystalised Void: Detonate!" The Rink was about to explode and, honestly, it was impossible to tell what was going to happen next. Impossible for everyone who wasn''t Ares, anyway, as the dopamine and the rush he was feeling almost allowed him to calculate outcomes like a supercomputer. His thought processes were near enough breaking the speed of light and he''d already long since concluded this fight in his head. Or rather, this fight was just the first step in his grand plan and he was already winning future fights against Mako in his brain that had yet to even occur. Step by step, it was all within Ares'' grasp and vision for the future. Everything was on a track with no deviation and Ares'' raw skill was going to ensure that Mako stayed neatly on those rails he''d laid out for him. This series of wild and supposedly ''unpredictable'' explosions were going to bend to Ares'' whim, do precisely as he expected of them, and drive this fight down the avenue he wanted without fail. Ares was really getting into the groove of combat now. His bloodline was pulsing like beating drums orchestrating a rhythm of war and things were going to start kicking off now; the cacophony of the detonating Rink was going to be the real start of this match, as opposed to that timid horn from earlier, and Mako was about to learn the hard way just what kind of unreachable calibre his opponent was truly at.