BUBBLE
Again and again the heart was forced to swell and burst. Ares'' insides were basically coated in bright orange lava now, and that was agonising as is, but throw in the sporadic rupturing his heart was going through as well and it was extraordinarily debilitating. Ares looked like a dead fish that was having its nerves electrocuted, causing him to occasionally, suddenly, start flopping about on the floor. The merging process was underway and the pain train had left the station. Despite what he''d hoped, Ares was finding out the hard way that expecting a rare treasure or resource to not hurt was like expecting Aejaz not to steal from a rich person. It just wasn''t ever going to happen and his cultivation journey was going to be fraught with many such painful endeavours. Inside his chest, the Extinction Converter was slowly changing his heart to look more volcanic. The heart was a darker colour and had more of a rocky texture with a few lava-spouting holes in it but the really interesting detail here was that it seemed to slowly be changing colour.
Ares had a feeling his blood would change colour and become gold after he reached aspect assimilation but his heart seemed to be undergoing that process early thanks to the treasure he was merging with. The Converter was an annihilation-affiliated treasure so it was mixing with the destruction pillar mana inside Ares'' body and dyeing the heart gold. Or, more accurately, the treasure was turning gold while it was merging with the heart for the same result. This probably wouldn''t have any discernible effect on Ares going forward but it was a neat little colour change! That, of course, did not alleviate his suffering but it was something to look at and distract himself with. Watching parts of his heart slowly change gradient until it became bright yellow and finally a solid gold was oddly satisfying as it was a smooth process and easy on the eyes. A gold, rocky, lava spewing heart was what this organ was becoming and Ares thought it was aesthetically unique. Plus there was the barrier from Enyo which made it look like it was in a display case... It''s just that the pain it came with was seriously unbearable! Implementing this treasure into his regular bodily functions was hurting more than the Prisms did and Ares had to tear out his own eyes for that!
Ares rolled around on the floor a bit more and eventually began reaching into his chest to scratch his itchy heart. He bled all over his fingers but the rocky carapace forming was unpleasant, far more so than the pain he brought upon himself for scratching the itch, so he felt the need to keep doing it. It was a mixture of pain and pleasure because every time he dragged his nails over his heart, and tore off a part off the gradually forming crust, it was like heaven. HIs fingers were also burning because they occasionally accidentally poked deeper into the heart and were drenched in lava as a punishment. Was it hot in here or was it just Ares? It was like his heart had become a sauna spigot and was constantly turning up the heat travelling through his veins. Ares could be shirtless in Isasz right about now and he would still feel like a million degrees of heat was coursing through him. He brought out the Bane, just barely as moving in this state was a hellish experience laden with sweat and misery, and activated the Cold Caller rune to lower the temperature in his surroundings. A chilly mist spread throughout the room but it evaporated the second it got near his reddening body because his own ambient temperature was enough to not just counteract the rune but also to completely devour its effects.
BUBBLE RUMBLE
Ares whole body was shaking as the volcano made itself at home and settled in. It was going to make Ares'' heart its permanent home so it was reconfiguring the landscape and rearranging the furniture to make itself cosy for the foreseeable future but Ares was the one paying the price here! It was Ares'' internal wiring that was being shifted around to accommodate this rude new guest but he was willing to bend over backward for it if it was going to provide the benefits it had promised him. Though everything happening to him was absolutely horrid, Ares would do it all over again in a heartbeat as he could already feel his magic revving up a notch. Especially his annihilation magic which made sense as that was the mana type that was closely related to this Converter. The process was about three quarters done and yet Ares was already feeling changes in his body regarding his mana regeneration rate which had nearly doubled. The thing hadn''t even settled in properly yet and was already lavishing him with advantages!
The rest of the world would not be happy to find out that Ares had stolen this grand treasure but it was too late to stop him now. Ares could feel the treasure become one with him, forming an inseparable bond and becoming a personal treasure to boot. This wasn''t surprising and Ares had expected this to happen from the start. At worst, he would have had to pressurise the Converter before it became obedient but even that wasn''t a likely requirement due to the nature of the treasure being so firmly aligned with Ares'' own nature. These two were a match made in heaven, after all, so it latching onto him this quickly was unsurprising. Ares did wonder, though, if he would find a disintegration related treasure at some point. He had the Primordial Blade, which was affiliated with nothingness, and now he had this Extinction Converter, which was related to annihilation, so he was only really missing the final piece of the three piece puzzle. Not that he couldn''t potentially find any other such treasures, it''s just that he wanted one of each to complete the set before he started looking for seconds! This was incredibly entitled of him to be making such demands but, hey, he was a fundamental champion! He was allowed to! So what if upwards of ninety nine percent of other cultivators never even touched a treasure of this quality? Ares wanted another one! So what if he literally just got this one? More! Although preferably the next one could do with not hurting him... The Blade ran him through and now this? Actually, it was a worrying trend because he almost didn''t want to know what kind of punishment a disintegration related treasure would be dishing out... That was a deeply concerning thought.... What if he was partially turned to dust just trying to interact with it? Left with half a body as he faded away into the wind... Ares shook his head and figured it was best to just hope such a thing never came to pass. That or his revenant regeneration was heavily beefed up by then, thanks to his improved cultivation, as it might not be so bad in such a case.
WHOOSH
Oh good, I''m on fire now... Despite speaking to himself in his own head, Ares'' words were sluggish to form and his internal voice was quiet and lazy. It was like all the energy in his body was being burned up to serve as fuel for this process and he was being exhausted down the last drop. Also, as was stated, he was currently on fire. Purgatory had wrapped itself around him like a blanket and was melting his skin here and there but there was a much more severe issue happening in an invisible spot at Ares'' core. This fire was eating away, or trying to, at Ares'' soul! This was what the treasure did, after all, and so it trying to smelt Ares'' soul to generate even more fuel was understandable. In fact, Ares looked like a phenomenal source of energy! How powerful would the Converter become after absorbing Ares and his annihilation affinity? It didn''t know but it instinctively tried to do it and find out regardless because it knew the result would be phenomenal. That being said, this idea was doomed from the start and the destruction pillar would never have encouraged Ares to merge with this thing if it destroying his soul was even somewhat doable. Not that it mattered anyway, the soul would regenerate and then Ares would be reborn, but it wasn''t something the Converter could do anyway.
Ares'' soul was so deeply intertwined with the essence of destruction that any attempts to destroy it, in the manner the Converter was going about it, would fail each and every time. Ares'' soul had a direct connection to the pillar of destruction itself so unless the Converter had the power to destroy the entire concept of destruction from the universe itself, which it didn''t because only the pillar itself possessed such power, this was going nowhere and fast. Point in case, any fire that inched even a single centimetre too close to the soul was snuffed out and permanently wiped out, never to be seen again. The fire flickered around the soul in fear but still kept trying to prod away at it nonetheless as it was almost like a starving wolf staring at a lump of juicy meat it wasn''t allowed to touch without being zapped.
This soul-eating fire was the subjugation process that had prevented any other cultivator from ever owning this treasure because it had killed everyone who ever attempted this and devoured their souls. By extension, this thing already had a few souls converted into raw power so Ares would also get those benefits shortly but, right now, Ares was going to be the first ever person to overcome this trail thanks to his immunity. In a way, this treasure could basically only be wielded by Ares much like the Blade thanks to his pillar affiliation. Anyone else, be they God or expert, would just be fully and uncompromisingly erased from the universe and skip hell, heaven, and the void entirely.
Coming across something that could destroy a soul for good was typically unheard of in the lower domains but this was originally a powerful treasure from a higher domain so Ares chancing upon it was a miracle and then some but not entirely unfeasible. Throw in the inability for anyone else to wield it where it originated from, and the destruction pillar being ready and willing to prevent others from ever coming close to owning it, and, honestly, it was just a matter of time until the scene playing out here came to fruition. Ares getting his hands on it sooner than later was obviously a massive benefit due to the way it worked, as the treasure''s efficiency and effectiveness required building up over time, but it was destined to be his one way or another no matter how long it took. This soul devouring process was the last step and all Ares had to do was resist it... So basically he''d already won because he already had immunity to it! Even if he died right this instant he would retain the treasure anyway because it had already ingrained itself deeply enough to be locked in to Ares'' revenant body. Even the pain was starting to fade away so he was home free!
Shold and Bort could see Ares'' expressions easing up so they thought that maybe it was safe to approach him and see if he needed any help. He was still burning alive right now! Just because his soul was immune that didn''t mean his ashen coloured, burnt flesh was too. He was looking like a humanoid piece of charcoal! Granted that layer of skin would inevitably shatter and fall off, revealing a brand new, purer body underneath. That was to be expected from a treasure of this rarity but it''s not like Shold or Bort knew that! They were still cultivation amateurs, despite their decently high cultivations compared to most others in Sheryashka, so they were a bit concerned their ticket out of Sheryashka was dying at their feet right now! He was a revenant but it''s not like letting him die was preferable so they reached out to see if they could maybe swat away the fire but that was a terrible mistake to have made. Both of them reached out simultaneously and the flickering fires jumped straight at them both, looking for new souls to destroy!
Thankfully human instinct kicked in and, like a kid touching a hot stove, they retracted their hands immediately upon sensing something was wrong. They saved themselves from permanent, irreversible death but that didn''t mean they were completely out of the woods because the fire had still nicked their fingers and was stinging their souls with fiery zaps here and there. It was a weak bundle of flames that caught onto them and latched onto their cores but it was still going to hurt for a short while! And hurt it did as both businessmen were yelling pain as they tried to put out the finger fire by any means necessary. Throwing water on it, spitting on it, rolling it against a wall or the floor. Nothing worked and the burning sensation of a thousand fire ants biting away at their innards made them deeply regret their earlier decision. Luckily this only lasted for about a minute before the fire disappeared entirely and their souls were safe again. The souls had taken a tiny bit of damage, and been scraped a little, but that would heal in due time and not even affect them going forward. Small injuries like that weren''t going to impact their daily lives in any real way so they probably wouldn''t even know their soul had been damage at all! They must have still been thinking that it was just a real mean fire that had been clinging to them... What they didn''t know couldn''t hurt them. What they did know, however, was that it hurt like nothing else they''d ever come across throughout their entire lives! What was wrong with this fire?! Just what was that volcano exactly? And why was Ares not screaming his lungs out?! He was basically drowning in the fire and yet he still seemed calmer than the two businessmen who only had a few small dots of fire assailing them earlier. They felt embarrassed but tried to console themselves with the idea that something regarding Ares'' fundamental status was helping him ignore the pain. They were half right and half wrong. The soul eating pain was nullified, yes, and that made a huge difference, but the fire was still burning him! It''s just that his familiarity with that little thing called torment enabled him to ignore pain of this level for the most part. It did still hurt though! He was ignoring it but that didn''t mean it wasn''t there!If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"Going once, going twice, and sold!"
Just because Ares was draped in a curtain of fire that didn''t mean the auction wasn''t still marching along without him. It''s not like anyone other than Shold and Bort knew Ares was undergoing this process right now so the others were minding their own business and bidding on the next few items without a care in the world. Not that they could do anything to help, though, so trying to call on aid from these lot was pointless. They''d have no idea how to even go about fixing this burning wreckage that was Ares so derailing the auction was pointless. In fact, Ares seemed to be getting better on his own so, though it was a bit awkward, the two businessmen decided to just ignore and abandon him! They went back to spectating the auction after realising there was nothing they could do about Ares... The overall mood and chattiness had gone down but they were still just enjoying the show while a warm fire nearby kept them toasty! What next, where these two going to roast marshmallows over his body?! Heat up some popcorn, maybe?! The humiliation was almost worse than the burning at this point and Ares felt indignant! If he could get up and move he would have given those two very big, warm hugs right around now as a show of thanks! Alas, move Ares could not... Which might actually be somewhat of a problem now that he thought about it... Wasn''t the floor beneath him made of glass? If the temperature of his body was this high... Wasn''t that glass going to melt and give way?... Oh no... Not that falling down to the ground floor would be a problem for any real reason but that didn''t mean he wanted to! But what could he really do here? Ask those two to move him? As if they were going to try touching him again! Even poking him with a stick wouldn''t work because nothing could really breach this fire enshrouding him without burning until there was nothing left. Was he really just doomed to take the fall? Sure the pain of crashing down a floor was minimal compared to what he weas already going through but at what point would this crap end!?
"To end with..."
The host was just bringing out the final auction item but Ares felt like he''d been slapped in the face by the indirect answer to his question! What was up with that timing anyway? It was like the universe was telling him ''be good and keep burning for another minute or two and then you''ll be free''. Ares wanted to be free now!
"... We will be auctioning a type of item that is primarily sought out by expert cultivators... I know I know!..." The host had to interrupt the complaints that were already rearing their head from amongst the gathered crowd. The host had predicted a long time ago this would happen due to the nature of the item. "... I get it, really I do. You fellows aren''t typically interested in cultivator-oriented items. I promise you I get it. Normally I would factor that into the show-running equation and change the line-up accordingly, placing the item as a lower priority product and having it come out earlier in he show. And yet it''s still the final item for reasons I''m sure you''ll come to understand when I show it to you. Given everything the Federation is, what this treasure is, and what it can do, I''m sure the bidding for this treasure will be the fiercest we''ve seen tonight! More so than even the volcano." This assurance seemingly calmed the businessmen down but it didn''t completely ease their concerns. Cultivator treasures really weren''t a hot topic for these lot and they would have rather had almost anything else. Unless the treasure was specialised in defence, and something that could help them keep their lives safe in dangerous scenarios, they would be more inclined to just get the treasure for cheap and then sell it on to people who actually wanted it. It wasn''t uncommon for these lot to buy treasures at auctions and then send them to other auctions to try and make money off them. There was negative interest in most cultivator favoured treasures so this thing was going to have to blow some serious socks off in order to spark something primal within these bidders and drive them into a monetary feeding frenzy as the host had claimed it would. More bidding than the volcano? That thing sold for 2,000,000! Even then the bidding only stopped due to backroom deals so the price of this last item was going to be astronomical!
A small table with wheels was rolled onto the sage and a silver dish with a cloche covering it sat atop the table. Whatever the treasure was, it was underneath that cloche and soon to be revealed to all. Funnily enough, based on Ares'' rough estimations, it looked like he was also about to be revealed to everyone in his current state too as the glass was close to giving way and dropping his body off into the room! That would surely shake up the mood in here! Anyway, the host said one final thing about the treasure before placing his hand on the cloche teasingly. "This treasure is one that will enable it''s owner to do things they could previously only dream of!" With his introduction out the way, the host lifted up the cloche and allowed the treasure to be displayed to all interested parties.
Ares, from the odd angle he was lying in on the floor, could just barely see the thing and all he was able to figure out from a quick glance was that it was a necklace of some kind. What it did wasn''t really detectable at a glance so he was just about to use his Omniscience when the guard who''d been manning the front door early came rushing into the venue and stole everyone''s attention. He was going on about some kind of attack on the Federation but Ares couldn''t quite catch everything from here and the rustling fire assaulting his ears was making it impossible to really hone in on any distant sounds. Instead of worrying about something he couldn''t alter or stop even if he wanted to, defending the Federation was impossible when he couldn''t even defend himself right now, Ares instead went back to looking at the treasure. He activated Omniscience and his eyes rolled over to catch a glimpse of the treasure and reveal its hidden secrets but...
Whoosh
Thud
Ares felt a brief gust of air from below before he realised he was falling through the floor as it had finally melted enough to have him pass through the expanded hole. He plopped spine first onto the floor with a loud noise that startled everyone who then proceeded to evacuate their seats and run away from the flaming body. People quickly realised it was Ares and, though that calmed them down somewhat, the situation was getting really chaotic now! The guard was trying to usher everyone out of the building because the threat was supposedly heading this way, Ares was on fire and just fell through the roof, and screaming could be heard en-masse outside. Though the situation was deteriorating rapidly, Ares still could do nothing about any of this and instead tried to move his eyes back over to the damn treasure! He''d been cockblocked twice in a row now and he just wanted to see the damn thing even once! The assault on the Federation could be dealt with but he wanted to know if this treasure was worth his attention or not. He could come up with some way to bargain with whoever won it later if it was good enough but if it wasn''t then he wouldn''t have to come back here! It should have only taken him a second or two to fully comprehend what this thing, was and whether he should invest effort into it, and yet his luck was finally catching up with him. A comprehender for cheap? The Extinction Converter neatly nestled in his heart? He had one too many strokes of good fortune as of late and so he was being denied a visual of this damn treasure as payback! Still, reality surely couldn''t conspire against him again right? All he had to do was just glance over one more time and all would be laid bare for real this time? It''s not like the treasure was going to grow a pair of damn legs and run away! Ares weakly tilted his head as best he could and turned his gaze towards the treasure...
CRASHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
... And all he saw was a bundle of ten white and brown, thick tentacles come spiralling through the floor from the ocean below, destroying everything in their path and making the treasure that had been in its direct attack path disappear to God only knows where! Ares assumed it had been smacked off to some random corner of the building but he couldn''t see it no matter how hard he tried to find it with his Omniscience and divine sense. Maybe it fell into the water below? What a disaster!... Well, it was just one problem and, really, the creature attacking the Federation was definitely a more sizeable issue if viewed objectively. Ares still couldn''t move yet, though, so he wasn''t seeing things ''objectively'' because doing so was pointless! Ok, there''s a big monster. So what?! Not like Ares could kill it while immobilised on the floor! Better yet, why was everyone looking towards him as if he could save them all? Were they blind!? Sure he was recovering rapidly, and nearly capable of moving again, but as of this very moment he was just as screwed as everyone else here! Instead of him saving them, they should be saving him! If these lot could just band together and keep him alive for maybe a minute or so then he would be able to get up and return the favour but what were the chances of that? These people were useless!
Thankfully Ares did have a backup strategy for whatever this massive beast was in the form of a little compadre called Rox! A portable companion who could be instantly summoned was perfect for situations like this so he called him out early and sent the confused mimic a mental message to explain things. No, the burning Ares was not the more important detail here, whatever the tentacled monster was needed to be addressed promptly if for no other reason than because it obstructed Ares'' view of that damn treasure! Ares assured Rox that he would be in fit and fighting condition soon and he just needed to hold out for as long as he could... And Rox nodded in response without raising a single fuss. What a wonderful summon! If Ares could use Adaptive Shot right now and show that dumb eagle what real loyalty looked like he would!
While the businessmen either fled through the front door, or cowered in the back of the building, Rox bravely took a few steps forward to stand between Ares and the unknown monster as it rose up from the sea below. This building was well guarded from underwater attacks thanks to layers of tough materials coating the floor... And yet they''d been torn through by a bunch of tentacles... Whatever this thing was, it was going to incredibly powerful and Ares wasn''t even sure he''d be able to kill the thing when he finally got up. Repelling it might be a manageable expectation but murdering this creature here and now? Unlikely... Still, living through this was priority numero uno even if not a requirement. He''d obviously just be reborn and the Converter was already safe so Ares wasn''t deeply concerned. Leaving Aejaz behind wouldn''t be the end of the world either as he''d manage. That being said, however, it''s not like Ares wanted to waste time dying so he was going to damn well take a stand here no matter what the monster was!... A lot of that bravado disappeared pretty quickly though when the gigantic monster''s head and body emerged from the murky depths and the voice of the captain of the Federation could be overheard outside via speakers. Each and every ship had inbuilt PA systems in place for emergencies, so that everyone could be guided to safety and away from danger, but the words Ares was barely hearing through the blazing fire ravaging his ears were not comforting in the slightest.
"I r-peat, if yo@ c$m￡ a(ro^s the mons''?r, DO ;OT ENGA%E IT. *T IS HIGHL< D{NG+ROUS. AGA''N, DO N&T ;IGHT TH@ KRAKYRN!"
...
...
Fuck.
The final boss had shown up prematurely...