Ares turned to his team and gave a sheepish smile. Aejaz and Enyo understood that Ares'' annihilation enhancement was undefeatable and would win the match no questions asked but Esme and Li Li were at least somewhat nervous about this whole situation. Ares had made this decision by himself and not consulted the rest of team so he was feeling guilty about it... It''s not like he was the captain either so he''d really overstepped here. If the captain wasn''t his loyalist devotee, and instead some random stranger, his actions today would have been branded as traitorous to the extreme! Still, there was a degree of trust in Ares as he was ever reliable. All Ares could do was assure Esme and Li Li that things were seriously not a problem and that the match was basically already over at this point. Though they nodded along, Ares could tell there was some uncertainty in their expression and the same was true for the spectators. None of them were happy that Ares didn''t take the free win and move on but they were even more displeased with his brazenness in picking this handicapped fight! For no benefit! They considered him to be an egomaniac and were now praying he had the skills to back up the big game he talked.
The Red Sun team, minus Ares, moved the the back of their side of the arena and sat down. Ares said he''d go it alone and they weren''t going to argue with him over it. Meanwhile, on the other side, there was a glimmer of hope in the Isasz team, This match could very well be a life or death match and so a lot was at stake here! If ever they needed to take a match seriously and give it their all then that was now. The scorn from the spectators and the rest of the world would be immense but if they could just live through this they could maybe go into hiding with a disguise, living quiet lives, they could make it out of this mess. The hatred everyone present had for them, especially the supporters of the teams that lost, was suffocating and made it hard to breathe as the atmosphere was not a pleasant one... But they had to ignore it and push on otherwise a far worse outcome than just some simple spectator ire was in store for them. In particular, they had to make sure the iciclops was paying attention. It really was stupid and making it obey was a hard task sometimes... The idea was to feed it food every time it did as was demanded of it. Positive reinforcement. After every match, in which it went berserk, they would feed it lavishly. If the iciclops was lazy, they starved it. Dumb though the monster was, it understood this pattern and roughly knew what was expected of it. Now that it was in the arena again, the second the horn blew and attacks came his way, he would get up and do his job for the sake of a nice meal.
Ares made it to the starting line and looked over at the talisman. He didn''t need or want it as this match was going to be settled in a more violent manner. The other team could throw themselves at the talisman if they so desired, all the determination in the world wouldn''t change their pre-determined fate. Ares could tell their gameplan was to throw the iciclops at him while the cowards hid behind it with the talisman. Considering Ares'' lack of magic this made sense... But it was so incredibly boring... Ares didn''t know how these people could go about calling themselves cultivators without feeling embarrassed immediately after. Where was the excitement? The desire to improve? The will to live and fight?! These lot were cultivation robots, doing exactly as they were supposed to without deviating from the safest course of action. No thrills would ever be felt on their cultivation journey. Or rather their journeys were ending today so their legacy was already written in full. How sad must it be to live a live of cultivation and never once actually enjoy it? So many mortals would kill to be in their position and yet they wasted it so spectacularly... The more Ares thought about the Isasz team the more they annoyed him. They were, like, 90% of everything wrong with the cultivation society as a whole. If they were young masters abusing their status and trying to steal other people''s treasures or women they would have encapsulated every single negative stereotype about cultivators Ares could think of off the top of his head! Looking at them made Ares want to vomit so he would rectify that issue not by looking away but by removing them from his sight.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
As the match started, one of the humans on the Isasz team sprinted toward the talisman, picked it up, and returned back to safety behind the iciclops. Ares just watched on amusedly as he couldn''t for the life of him figure out why the guy was trying so hard. Yes their fate was at stake but Ares literally hadn''t even moved yet. Also, did they really still think they stood a chance? If Ares was giving them this massive a handicap were they really so inept they couldn''t understand why? Whatever, if they needed to see it to believe it then Ares would show them. He took his time approaching the iciclops and wasn''t much fussed about the nervy stares of the spectators who wanted him to hurry up and do whatever it was he was going to do! The timer was ticking! It hadn''t even been five seconds yet, though, so these people were just being paranoid. Ares was singlehandedly making the heart rate of every spectator spike because they all wanted nothing more than for the Isasz team to be punished and Ares was potentially ruining that!
Ares eventually, casually, strolled up to the monstrous member of the other team and bent down to pick up a rock of the floor. The iciclops wasn''t making any aggressive movements as it must not have understood that Ares was an enemy because he was completely unthreatening right now. This alone proved it wasn''t sentient as it didn''t even realise the fight had begun. Even those who weren''t sure beforehand must have been convinced by now.
Tock
Ares lobbed the rock at the iciclop''s eye and it made a satisfying noise when it connected. Iciclops'' eyes weren''t soft and squishy as the monsters had evolved in a way that offered them some protection. It was still their weak spot but it was far, far more tough than you would expect an eye to be. The downside to its ability to resist weaker strikes, however, was that the eye couldn''t turn as quickly. Friction slowed it down and, if the iciclops moved its eye regularly, it could even start to burn a bit, requiring first aid and treatment. The Isasz team had actually been paying a fair few medical bills to keep the big lug from going blind. It wasn''t a problem for wild iciclops as they hibernated most of the time and rarely had to move their eye for anything but the one the Isasz team owned had been in a lot of fights and was in a very different environment. Despite that, it retained its sense of survival and immediately bolted into action the second its eye came under ''attack''. Iciclops were quick to attack anything that came near their precious eye, even if it didn''t hurt, which had led to a few cases of them getting into fights with inanimate objects like tree branches or falling rain drops... As far as dumb monsters went, the iciclops were pretty stupid... But what they lacked in brain power they made up for with their inhuman strength. They were kinda like a less intelligent Golgo. their punches could shatter rocks and sometimes even bundles of metal if they were powerful enough. Judging by the force of the iciclop''s punch headed towards Ares, he estimated even a cultivator at early to mid sensory enhancement would get squashed flat, in a single hit, underneath the gigantic knuckles this brute swung with reckless abandon. Of course someone like Enyo would be an exception but the average cultivator stood no chance which was why the Isasz team had made it this far... But Ares wasn''t an average cultivator, not by a long shot. He wasn''t even in the same tier as someone like Enyo, let alone the iciclops, so the oncoming fist almost looked pitiful to him.
If the crowd were anxious before, their anxiety levels were now likely shooting through the damn roof as Ares'' response to the punch was to lift his pinkie finger! The guy was a maniac! This stupid moron was going to ruin everything in such a ridiculous manner! What on earth was that pinkie finger supposed to do?! Without magic nothing was coming out of it and Ares absolutely didn''t have the physical strength to resist the punch!... This match was doomed... People were already getting annoyed at him and concocting ways to make this detestable dolt pay a price after the match as any and all respect had vanished off the face of the planet. As the fist of the giant came to blows with the pinkie of the little man before it at least half the spectators turned away either in disgust or to avoid watching such a brutal scene. These people felt a small wave of solid gold ripple through their bodies and heard a sound that was like a burst of gushing blood but they couldn''t see what was happening as their heads were still craned in another direction. Maybe Ares tried something foolish and lost miserably? Was he already dead? There was only way to find out...
As they turned their heads back forward, before they could even witness the result of the last exchange, they heard the pained wailing of a monster. It was shrieking like its life depended on it while it rampaged around the arena, stomping back and forth in a panic as it flailed its one remaining arm around at an invisible foe. Its other arm was just gone and a fountain of blood was spurting out of its empty socket. As it was a big monster the amount of blood it was losing was proportionate to its body size and quite excessive. This was the first injury the iciclops had ever suffered of pretty much any kind and it didn''t understand that this was just a simulation so it wasn''t technically real. It was hurting and mentally stressed because it believed its arm was gone for good. From its perspective, it went to crush a puny human before its arm randomly exploded on contact and now the scary human was going to kill it for good. The iciclops wasn''t the only one who didn''t understand what had happened, though, as even the spectators and competitors who were watching couldn''t wrap their heads around this situation. There had been a brief flicker of a golden spectacle at the moment Ares'' finger went up against the iciclops and, before anyone could blink, the iciclops'' arm burst from the shoulder down and became a mass of exploding flesh. Only the matriarchs were somewhat aware of the situation but they honestly couldn''t believe their eyes. They recognised ''pressure'' but whether that could even really be called such a thing anymore was debatable. Ares'' pressure had transcended logic and effectively become something else entirely. The horrifying power Ares packed in that split second led the matriarchs to mistakenly believe the drawback to it was that Ares couldn''t wield it permanently and that it was limited to short bursts... How wrong they were. Ares was only using annihilation enhancement for small periods of time because he wanted to see the looks on the Isasz team when they realised that golden moment was actually a golden eternity if he so willed it. He wanted them to understand its power before understanding its true power. Ares didn''t need to have immaculate timing to wield it the split second he needed it, it was just a switch he could turn on and off at his whim thanks to the Backfire Bindings which made the process instant. It was a switch that, with good reaction speeds, allowed him to overpower and outclass even an iciclops that should have logically been leagues stronger than him physically.
Ares activated the ''unknown'' technique again and vanished on the spot, reappearing in front of the iciclops again. By the time everyone''s eyes had caught up with his golden blur, the iciclops had already lost its other arm while Ares was standing before it with a nonchalant attitude as if he was watching a wild animal die like a squealing pig. It was as though he was turning into a God for a split second every time that golden wave was released. The insanity of whatever it was he was doing was driving the spectators mad with curiosity because this wasn''t magic! He''d intentionally snuffed out his own magic with the dampening rune so it was something else entirely. Something a few people were starting to cotton on to. Those who had challenged the Ares clone were starting to recognise the rough feeling of this pressure. They''d never seen this golden version, and some hadn''t even seen the regular enhancement, but everyone who could tell what was happening here was realising the pagoda Ares was actually still hiding it''s true strength. They had believed the challenge was impossible and they weren''t even at the halfway mark of beating the clone yet... The regular pagoda goers were playing Ares'' earlier words on repeat, the ones that asserted that everyone was still underestimating the fundamental champions... He really wasn''t kidding. This calibre of cultivator was like something straight out of an urban myth. It felt like reality had just given up trying to ''balance'' or ''equalise'' the potential for cultivators when it came to the fundamental champions. Granted Ares seemed to be slightly more bat shit crazy than Mako but, at that point, you were basically comparing an atom bomb to a hydrogen bomb while everyone else in the world was an I.E.D at best...
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Ares walked up to the staggering and crying iciclops as he swung his fist in an uppercut motion. he wasn''t tall enough to hit the face of the monster but its gut was well within reach. Another golden flash illuminated the coliseum as Ares'' fist blasted the iciclops into flesh confetti and a firework of blood while golden ripples tore through the air up and out of the coliseum grounds. His punch packed the power of multiple Grand Annihilations at minimum and the iciclops didn''t stand a chance. It was tough but not that resilient. Ares had felt bad for the creature because it didn''t understand what was even happening to it. It wasn''t the monster''s decision to cheat or get involved here and the poor thing belonged out in the wild... Where it could kill countless other cultivators... Ok, maybe Ares shouldn''t pity it but the monster had undoubtedly lived a rough life, likely being kidnapped as a baby and raised as a tool so, weirdly enough, on that he could relate. Nature was brutal and iciclops were cruel but that didn''t mean toying with it unnecessarily was to Ares'' tastes. Out in the wild he would just kill it and not torture it slowly so he did the same here and just put the thing out of its misery. It revived on the platform to the side and tilted its head in confusion, looking down at its replenished limbs. It scratched its head, then its stomach, then its ass, and now it was content to just to sit around and mind its own business again. The thing literally just died but it couldn''t care less now that things had returned to normal. Hell it might have even forgotten about what happened to it already for Chris''s sake! Unless Ares reared his head in front of the beast again it would just sit there without a care in the world! This thing was as sentient as a rock... Actually, that was an insult to Terros! Whatever, at least it was out of the fight and Ares didn''t have to bully the damn thing anymore. Whether it was let free to return to the wild or put down after this match wasn''t Ares'' concern and he wasn''t fussed either way.
Ares had spent a few seconds mindlessly looking at the iciclops, contemplating whether this thing had any use to him or not. If yes he would shove it in the Primordial Blade like Rox but, realistically, this monster was worthless. It wasn''t a creature with any kind of mutation or unique evolution meaning it couldn''t compare to Rox. It was a monster Ares had never seen before but that was as far as his interest in it went and he couldn''t think of a reason to keep it as a pet. Unfortunately for the Isasz team, and fortunately for Ares, they mistook his pondering pause as a sign of weakness. Mob character 1 opened his gob and yelled to the others on his team in a frantic and desperate voice... "That golden attack must take a toll on him! He probably has limited uses which is why he''s not attacking anymore! It might have a cooldown or something we can exploit! Attack him all at the same time and overwhelm him! He still doesn''t have his magic and he can''t fight us all without it!"
Uh, yes I can? Ares was gobsmacked these idiots still didn''t understand the situation! Seriously? Ares didn''t even need pressure to beat these lot but that wasn''t the point... They thought him getting lost in his own thoughts was a good sign?! That was him disregarding them as ''opponents'' as in ''I can sit here and ignore you and still win''! How did they come to such a warped conclusion?! Were they not paying attention to this match thus far at all or were they desperately disregarding everything prior to give themselves false hope? Were they blind maybe?! And the worst part was that some of the spectators in the crowd had believed their gibberish! At least the stronger cultivators weren''t fooled by such an idiotic claim but Ares was struggling to come to terms with these people. They were such cultivation flunkies they couldn''t even begin to understand how outmatched they were... Well whatever. There was a silver lining in this situation; or, rather, thanks to Ares'' annihilation enhancement, it was more along the lines of a golden lining... Now was the perfect time to showcase his form in full! Mob character 1 had delivered the perfect red flag speech and now was the time for Ares to capitalise off it and have his moment in the spotlight! Not that there wasn''t already a huge spotlight on him anyway...
Ares activated the golden form once more but, this time, after appearing right in front of mob character 1, it didn''t fade away... Ares was hovering, in front of the guy who''d spoken earlier, with his legs crossed in a seated position. He was leaning his elbow on his leg and his head on his upturned palm with a bored look on his face. "I think there''s been a misunderstanding here..." Ares dropped the clarification to end all clarifications on this guy''s head with a merciless, blunt, declaration. "... This is pressure enhancement. I can stay in this form for multiple days straight without any drawbacks..." The coliseum was dyed in Ares'' colour by now and everyone in this place was sporting a golden complexion. His heavy aura and restraining splendour invaded everyone''s privacy, becoming intimately shackled with anyone who was in Ares'' general radius. If you could see him, you could feel the weight of thousands of golden bars on your back and, if you were near him, all of your senses were practically on fire thanks to the golden overload. Even the barrier of the Training Field became a hazy gold and couldn''t prevent the leakage of Ares'' pressure. His horrifying words that this state was available to him at any given time for days on end was like a punch to the gut. And not an ordinary punch either, it was more like the one that had blown up the iciclops who, understandably, was shitting itself right now. That golden sensation prickling away at his skin reminded it of the man that killed him once already and it was getting stressed again just being in the vicinity of him.
Mob character 1 had frozen on the spot and almost looked like a golden statue. Ares had petrified him to the point he couldn''t even think anymore. His mind was a golden void and all his thoughts were buried beneath the regal swamp burning his brain. Aside from his twitching mouth he might as well have been classified as brain dead right about now. He was being hit by the full force of Ares'' annihilation pressure at point blank and his body had terminated all functions. Even his breathing was slowing to a crawl and would stop sooner or later. Ares was killing this man passively by existing next to him. This wasn''t a cultivator Vs a cultivator anymore, it was David Vs the collective might of a billion goliaths. And there would be no overturning the outcome here either as the guy was going into cardiac arrest. His body was dying and failing him. His organs were shutting off one by one and causing all manner of system errors in his biological functions. It took a few seconds but, sure enough, the guy collapsed on the spot, dying a pitiful and entirely forgettable death. Ares had unintentionally killed a few ants on the floor but mob character 1 hadn''t put up any more of a fight than them so he was effectively at their level as far as Ares saw it.
There were only three opponents left but everyone was painfully aware that the match was already over. It didn''t take a genius to see just how wide the gap was between the combatants was. One of the remaining foes tried to run for some strange reason. It seemed Ares had frazzled this person''s brains as there was no escaping from this Training Field until everyone was dead and/or someone lost the match. Ares wasn''t going to lose so only one fate awaited these people no matter how much they struggled in vain against it. The guy who was running away was halted in place as his body was tilting horizontally. His feet were swept out from underneath him and he was now floating mid air. Ares could use telekinesis on living creatures if they were too weak to resist him... No matter how much the guy struggled inside the pressure enveloping him, he was reeled back towards Ares. Hook, line, and sinker. Ares'' catch of the day was a pathetic small fry. Ares raised his hand and swatted the cultivator, splattering his head like a watermelon. The corpse was dropped to the floor while Ares kept hovering in his seated position, uninspired by the match so far. He looked over to the last two opponents... Correction, last one opponent. Ares had accidentally killed the other one as the force of his slap earlier shot off to the side and blew up a completely different target as well. Ares was on such a different plane of existence to these idiots he was killing people he wasn''t even aiming for. Ares was somehow more surprised by this development than the guy who died and his raised eyebrow was far more insulting than just outright verbally degrading his opponents. On the bright side, it had finally hit home just how screwed the Isasz team actually were. They''d gone into this match starry eyed and full of hope, hope that was currently nowhere to be found. It took them a minute to come to terms with the insurmountable mountain that was Ares but they were finally getting it. Their cheating made no difference at all! Even if they''d gone all in with the rune Ares wouldn''t have even cared... This tournament was beyond them no matter what means they had a their disposal.
As for the last cultivator left, who was trembling in his boots and cowering up against a wall, Ares decided to just chuck some manner of physical pressure at him. Physical pressure wasn''t considered magic so the dampening rune wouldn''t prevent it. It was overkill but, then again, annihilation enhancement was overkill from the start. Ares didn''t even need pressure to win this. He was talented enough with weapons to do in the iciclops the hard way. Anyway, Ares decided to use physical pressure mostly just for the sake of showing off even more than he already was. Might as well drive it home that, in this state, he was unbeatable to effectively everyone in a fair fight. Showcasing the full extent of his personal power here was worth it as his reputation would soar to unprecedented heights after. It would mostly benefit the sect but that was invaluable in its own right considering Ares'' future plans involved it heavily.
The floor of the arena rumbled as it cracked and split into many pieces. Pieces that were hovering around Ares like a swarm of earthen landmines. Directly above Ares'' own head, he spawned a ball of golden, physical pressure that was growing larger by the second. The pieces of the arena Ares dug up were being attracted to the ball like it was some kind of land magnet, creating a rocky ball with golden lights leaking out of the cracks. It kept bulging and throbbing as the pressure in the centre enlarged to dangerous sizes. A few seconds later the attack was reaching critical mass. It wasn''t the limit of how long Ares could charge this attack but it was devastating enough as is to come close to rivalling a Perish Wheel. It took a little longer to form, yes, but it cost basically no mana. Other than the annihilation mana he mixed in to his pressure, Ares didn''t have to dedicate much to this attack at all. If not stopped, Ares could launch Perish Wheel-equivalent explosive meteors at people without an end in sight. He''d just become an alarmingly potent artillery mage with the creation of this attack as there were no meaningful restrictions to prevent him from doing this as many times as he wanted. What was anyone supposed to do about it? Close the distance and attack Ares? With annihilation enhancement raring to go? There was no longer any way of beating Ares if you weren''t just flat out stronger than him. No clever tricks could possibly get you past his nothingness mobility, his disintegration defences, and his annihilation pressure''s sheer power. He had myriad solutions for every conceivable problem and had become a fearful ''all-rounder'' that was so beyond normal he was more like an ''all-specialist''. Throw in weapons'' mastery from Dominus, multiple mythical treasures, and the revenant transformation he didn''t even have yet and he was already a legendary-class existence no matter how you looked at it. The fact he was this overloaded with talent and treasures at the start of his cultivation journey, not even twenty years in, and had accrued this many advantages... It made the older folk feel like they''d wasted their entire lives and had done it all wrong...
As for the match... Ares looked down at the last opponent, directing the annihilation meteor towards him with his gaze, and uttered one word with a dull and plain voice that made his boredom with this farce apparent.
"Goodbye."
As the meteor descended, Ares even gave a half-hearted wave and a wry smile which were the last things the final competitor saw before his vision was blanketed in gold judgement. The meteor rocked the entire coliseum in a way that, up until now in this international, was completely unprecedented...