Continuing on with the progress Ares made, Visitation... Had become quite shiny. Like a rare evolved species, he now had a slight sparkle to his ghostly form. He was half gold and half black, the two colours intersected with each other across his body like a yin yang symbol and so he was a spirally looking little fella now. As for how it got to this point, well apparently Visitation took to annihilation and disintegration like a fish to water. Before all that, though, Ares had to learn how to shape annihilation and have a finer degree of control over it. Thankfully levelling up the Backfire Bindings sped this process up considerably. It was almost completely natural for Ares the second he tried it after upgrading the Bindings but there was a slight problem as manipulating annihilation without the Bindings was still quite challenging. For the sake of fuelling Visitation it didn't matter, Ares could just wear the treasure and everything would be dandy. It wasn't ideal to require the treasure for day to day control over his aspect, though, so Ares would also have to keep practicing this in his own time. As for the changes extra manipulation over annihilation brought about, Ares could now, pretty freely, create physical objects with annihilation. The closest he came before was Shock Beads but that was only really him filling an object with mana and it was fragile too, unable to be used as anything other than a portable bomb basically.
Shock Beads were the epitome of Ares' ability to shape annihilation previously and all it resulted in was weak little balls that blew up if looked at funny. Now, though, Ares could create shaped marvels that were solid and tough to crack. When using the Bindings, his shaping became so effective he could even create mini replicas of various iconic landmarks like the Scorched Grounds coliseum in Red Sun, the auction house for nobles Arse visited aboard the Freeride Federation, and even part of the Mutated Mountain. These designs were convoluted and required intricate work to replicate but Ares could manage it just fine. If anything the real issue was his own memory of these places being slightly off or inaccurate and not his ability to recreate his memories down to the last minute detail. Combat wise Ares was liberated. The first thing he tried was to create a massive golden sword that hung precariously in the air, like the sword of Damocles, and could be dropped at a moment's notice as though it were an executioner's blade. Ares could have done this with physical pressure before but this magic would explode when dropped so it was just objectively more powerful. The explosion that would follow was also quite substantial so Ares dismissed the sword instead of bombing the region more than it needed to be. He'd already caused enough devastation to last a life time.
If Ares tried to manipulate annihilation without the Bindings his magic would still take shape but the sides and edges of the magic would flicker, signifying Ares' lack of mastery and weakening the magic to the point it wasn't worth even firing it. This was terrible but it was way better than before wherein Ares could only create golden mists that struggled to take any kind of meaningful shape whatsoever. It took Ares countless hours to shape the explosions from the Shock Beads, for the cultural appreciation day fireworks back at the sect, for a reason, he couldn't do any of this on the fly before and required to be undisturbed and unbothered as he toiled away on it. Now, though, he could do it instantly with the Bindings or perhaps only need a few minutes without them. Plus he could shape objects larger than just Shock Beads, or their resulting explosions, so the difference between then and now was night and day.
But how did he do it?
Annihilation was a manic magic and the mana was unruly, racing about wherever it felt like, rebounding off the floor and bouncing around in the sky, and pushing back against anything hat tugged or pushed it. It was part of its inherent nature that trying to control annihilation was a fruitless endeavour that would leave anyone head scratching and forced to give up. Well the solution was expensive on the mana front, and extremely hard to do, but not actually that complicated. Infinitesimally small explosions! Explosions so small hey could happen directly on front of a person and not be seen! Explosions on the sub atomic level that didn't even affect the wind or register on energy monitoring sensors. See, what Ares learnt is that the annihilation mana only really had one rule to it, a rule that was pretty fast and loose but upheld to some degree, and that rule was that annihilation mana and magic tended to try avoiding itself. If there were two explosions, and they were about to collide with one another, the annihilation mana would veer off and try to steer itself in a direction that was different to the other annihilation explosion opposite it. Surprisingly, the explosions weren't quite as erratic as Ares assumed they were, there was method to their madness and one could accurately predict how they would flow about when knowing this. It was a thought he had for a while but couldn't test or really interact with until his Bindings were improved and permitted him to try something new. That 'something new' being the aforementioned small explosions. by creating an annihilation pressure bubble around the point of generation of an explosion, the range it affected could be limited and brought down to whatever scale Ares wanted. The smaller the bubble, the more the annihilation magic constrained itself in a bid to avoid the bubble because it tried not to touch it. In other words, Ares could control annihilation by using more annihilation to spook it away from escaping. Annihilation pressure could be controlled freely so it would act as a sort of sheepdog to herd regular annihilation magic. if Arse wanted to create that massive annihilation sword from earlier, he would first create an outline with annihilation pressure and then fil it with regular annihilation magic. The edges of the sword would be comprised of countless miniature explosions, naked to the invisible eye, all beating back the annihilation magic attempting to flee randomly.
Ares' control over annihilation pressure without the Bindings was not up to snuff and, thus, there was always some leakage, points at which the annihilation mana would spill out of small gaps, hence why the Bindings were so important right now. Still, this was a problem that could be fixed eventually and, from there, Ares could maybe experiment with easier ways of shaping annihilation magic. He was content with this for now but he'd rather his magic just obeyed him normally instead of having to jump through multiple hoops like this. Perhaps there was a resource out there that enhanced one's control over their own magic or something, Ares would keep his eyes out for sure. He was also interested in attempting to do the reverse of what he'd learnt here over the course of the last day. He utilised the innate trait of the annihilation magic, in that it constantly tried to separate itself... But what if he forced annihilation to combine with itself? Thanks to the improved Bindings he already knew how to fold things in on themselves... So what if he did that with annihilation? What would the result look like? He was curious but opted not to mess with that thought right now because he could guess the sort of wide spread destruction that would come of it. This was probably a deep rabbit hole not worth diving into right now. He didn't need it, it would be excessive power relative to the amount of time it took to even learn about it, and it was probably better saved for when he got stuck at the at the boundary between cultivation realms and needed to discover more about his pillar and aspects. Ares already had a nuclear deterrent in his arsenal, he didn't need to possess more than one for now as it just wasn't helpful. It was worth keeping in the back of his mind, though.
So then, back to Visitation. Thanks to Ares' new method of control, funneling annihilation into the meeper was actually pretty uninteresting. Old Light warned about being too fast or too aggressive with the funneling but it wound up being quite smooth. Visitation really was special and could handle surprising amounts of mana at once. Of course Ares still held back and didn't go overboard but even Old Light was taken aback by how much mana Visitation wanted. He was a greedy ghost! There really wasn't any sort of complication with the amount which was honestly a miracle to behold. Ares' reluctance to have his mana siphoned away, a natural bodily response, was overcome by the fact that the annihilation mana didn't want to come back to him at all anyway because of his new trick. By placing annihilation pressure behind the annihilation as he funnelled it into Visitation, it didn't even try to return to him and his body felt disconnected from it entirely, as if he'd let the mana go and abandoned it completely. An unintended side effect of what he'd enveloped but a positive one nonetheless as this could potentially be beneficial in the future if ever he needed to willingly part with mana for whatever reason. This was good to know and a good ability to have even if it wouldn't crop up or be relevant all that much.
As for Visitation feeling woozy due to over-absorption, it seemed like no amount of mana intake could phase the cheerful meeping friend. He took it like a champ which was very impressive because Ares' method of controlling annihilation should have been at least somewhat uncomfortable. Yes Ares could funnel annihilation now but that required those small explosions mentioned earlier to surround the annihilation funnel and keep it in line. In other words, Visitation's insides should have been tickled relentlessly by tiny pops but he only seemed to giggle hearty meeps in response. He was a tough apparition even as a wee baby!
From there, Ares had to guide the annihilation mana once more around Visitation's body but... He sort of didn't have to. Old Light didn't really have much of an explanation for this either other than Visitation being weird. Visitation was probably some kind of mutated light elemental so his insides were all jumbled in a way that was hard to grasp. The annihilation that Ares funneled inside him was dragged to, and kept swirling around, Visitation's core and Ares could move it away from the core no matter how hard he tried, it was permanently stuck there and part of the scenery. What was once a colourless black hole inside Visitation now bore tinges of gold where Ares' annihilation mana resided pretty comfortably without a fuss. As soon as the amount of mana reached a certain point, Visitation developed a golden spiral pattern across his body that mimicked what was seen inside him, giving him a healthy complexion and glow. Afterwards, the same process repeated with disintegration mana and, apparently, this was just normal. Not normal as in common for all elementals but normal as in this was just how Visitation, specifically, worked. What sort of changes this would lead to when he grew up one day were impossible to guess but Old Light's prediction about Visitation being a generational talent were becoming more and more true by the second. There was good chance Visitation developed in a way that was unlike any other light elemental out there and Ares was excited to see it. That would come in due time so, for now, he just had to keep occasionally funneling mana into the meeper and wait for results. A good indication Visitation could do with being topped up was that his gold and black glow would dim, blink, and then eventually fade. He was sort of like a oil blinker in a car which made Ares laugh as he saw it for the fist time. Visitation even became a bit droopy, and his meeps drawled, like he was running out of battery. Very adorable.
Next up was the bestowal art of the Moongate Mountain... It was a secret! Ares was going to keep the art up his sleeve for a rainy day because it couldn't be used often. Summoning the moon could be done about once a week, so not something constantly available to him but there if he needed it, but the Moorgate's bestowal aspect art was something that wouldn't be usable for over a month after it was deployed which was roughly the same as summoning a God. It was worth it, very worth it, and so it was a secret! The Moongate provided less utility than the Prisms but it was definitely offensively much stronger and Ares would be ready to launch his devastating secret attack whenever was necessary.
Then there were the changes due to bloodline awakening / aspect awakening, none of which were anything standout. Garmr was still the major win here but there were other changes worth mentioning jsut for information bookkeeping and clarity. using mana for just about anything was cheaper, anything relating to magic or bloodlines was enhanced with that primarily affecting annihilation pressure, Ares' draconic presence and aura, his destruction pillar, and his regeneration. His blood turning gold wasn't just aesthetic, it changed the texture and properties somewhat but Ares actually wasn't too sure what this all meant. He knew his blood tasted incredibly good, and he could vary the taste by imbuing it with either disintegration of nothingness, the former for a more savoury flavor profile and the latter for something sweeter, but for more practical uses he was stumped. It might actually be in Ares' best interest to have a talk with Dirk, and the Nick clan in general, to have them analyse his blood. They would obviously know more about it than Ares would so he made a mental note to check in with them at some point and strike up a conversation. Arse had a gut feeling they would be all over him like mosquitos but if all thy wanted was some blood here and there in exchange for information and continued support after he became the sect master then whatever, it was worth it. They were a strong clan with bright prospects and talented youngsters. Plus they were intertwined with the Li clan to so it was a double whammy two for one kinda deal as he would also visit them and show them Garmr. He could maybe even have the Li conduct tests with Garmr's flesh to improve their clan too. Both clans stood to gain massively from Ares' involvement so it seemed they would be deeply intwined with the sect going forward and that was excellent news.
Finally, the only other thing Ares worked on yesterday, linking up with the pagoda clone. This had been a resounding success and now the two were like peas in a pod. They could even freely converse with each other as though they were in the same room. Seamless, like full bar WIFI, no crackling static or hitches whatsoever. Two Ares' sharing the same braincell was perhaps the greatest danger the universe had ever known but for now at least, they were just sharing complaints about the idiots residing within them. Due to updating the clone, there was now a clone Ignizz present inside the pagoda too and so, as if the heavens commanded it, fake Dominus and fake Ignizz kicked off almost immediately. Anyone who didn't know any better would think there was some kind of irreconcilable bad blood between them but they really were just plain old idiots. And if Ares was calling you an idiot, given his expertise on the matter, you were almost definitely an idiot. Anywho, the two Ares were able to connect mentally thanks to the Moongate Mountain acting as a sort of stabiliser between minds. Setting up the initial meeting was the hardest part but, from there, the connection was made and couldn't really be unmade. Memories would constantly transfer so there weren't really any secrets between them unless they specifically withheld information for whatever reason. It's not like either Ares had any reason to despise himself so the two way street had been set up and established with ease. Ares got a first hand view of everything the clone had seen and it was almost as though he lived it himself and met the other fundamental champions personally. They were an interesting group and Havannah specially was feisty and attractive to Ares in a way he wasn't used to. It was no wonder the clone tried to hook real Ares up and leave a good impression! Good wingman! Also, as an aside, there was another encounter with a stranger that left a mark on clone Ares that happened since the last time Ares communicated with the clone back in Xasca. Some manner of bird kin showed up, on behalf of the destruction cult, and... Well the situation was a bit strange. She was definitely not the kind of person Ares would expect to be a member of a cult and so the meeting played out in a rather unexpected way. Ares had the memory of that interaction firmly tucked away and would go over it alter in greater detail because he really needed to sit down and think about it from start to finish. It might have seemed like he was getting overly invested in something otherwise mundane but, actually, there was a very real chance this bird kin was one of his prophesised wives! Why they all seemed to congregate around the pagoda was anyone's guess but at this rate Ares would meet them all via the pagoda long before he ever met them in person! The only ones still up in the air were 'acceptance', 'solace', 'ambivalence', and 'servitude'. If Ares just placed names to titles based on wild guesses then this bird kin would be acceptance and maybe Ayane Ensemble was Servitude? The bird kin had deeply rooted familial issues and was just trying to find somewhere to fit in while Ayane was loyal to a fault to whoever she deemed her master/s and both were causing them respective issues. Assuming these were accurate then only two unknowns remained and Ares hadn't even left Sheryashka yet! Well Lowe domain excursion notwithstanding anyway. Still, a lot of these potential partners lived in higher domains so it's not like Ares would be bombarded by romance the second he escaped the Blade barrier or anything. Patience is a virtue and good things come in time to those who wait.
That was it! That was everything Ares needed to do before leaving the region so, now, he was just kind of sitting about on his rear and consolidating this and that. He was nearly ready to go up a stage of cultivation but didn't bother doing it right now because home was the only thing on his mind. he stood up, stretched, and then headed towards the nearest town because he'd overheard someone mention there was a Transmit there and he wanted to pay it a visit. Ares left a hundred high grade in the igloo, returned it to its rightful owner who rushed back in with glee, and Voidwalked over to the town in question. Ares learnt that the local lord, who looked after this town, would become the Isaz representative for the foreseeable future until a better method of democratically selecting a leader was implemented. The region would lose a lot of standing in the wider world but, hey, it wasn't dead and buried so it could have been way worse. Actually, with the Throne and Nu Kings gone, people were less susceptible to their corruption and brutality respectively. For the up and coming leaders of the region they had it rough, but the average citizen who no longer had to deal with tyrants? They were pretty happy all things considered... Though there was a giant lopsided mountain halfway buried into the ground near their town which was a constant reminder of how their 'saviour' also kinda sorta brutalised the region... Whoops. Though, then again, this was Ares' trademark at this point. If he visited your area and didn't leave part of it tattered then it probably wasn't the real Ares. Anywho, Ares visited the Transmit and sent a few hot meals to the sisters and, presumably, Sandy who was living with them. He made sure to overdo it a bit knowing full well how gluttonous Sandy could be but the one thing he didn't do was send a letter. Though he wanted to let them know he was coming back he figured it would be fun to surprise them instead. Enyo might figure out his goal, as only sending food was a bit suspicious, but Bellona wouldn't look too deep into it and just think Ares was busy. Anyway, once Ares was done, he left the town and headed straight for the ocean. His journey back would take a while but, compared to how long he'd been on vacation, it would pass by in a flash he was sure. Also, though he was unaware of this, he wouldn't be alone. Not only was there a light blue ethereal Dido chasing after him, ready to start messing with him on a regular basis after having watched Garmr dismantle the venator ploy, but there was also a certain sloth-like someone who appeared in the water below Ares and took him by surprise.
"You... Have... Mail" Transmit really did deliver anywhere... Loris Lax, tired eyes extraordinaire, apparently had trouble swimming so he came equipped with a ducky swimming ring and inflatable arm tubes. TO his credit, he was holding the delivery higher above the water than his own head so perhaps this fool was really truly more dedicated to his job than Ares gave him credit for. of course Ares had jumped in fright, as per usual, when this haunting ghost appeared but he quickly regained his bearing and took the delivery so that Loris could leave and go dry himself off. He was currently being nipped on the rear by an undead dolphin so it wasn't surprising to see him leave as soon as the delivery was confirmed. Peppy?, name or moniker still unknown, was going to have a field day laughing at Loris if he had the guts to tell her how the delivery went down. As for Ares, he'd received a ball of light with triple 'x' rated memories from Enyo who received his food care package and responded with this... These were the memories of what happened in the Grecian lands between her and Bellona... Well, between this and the pagoda clone's memories of the bird kin that paid him a visit, Ares would have something to do aside from passive cultivation as he crossed the ocean. It wouldn't be a boring journey at least!