Tisha, deciding to ignore Ares' bold declaration, presented him with two different scrolls. One in each hand, one blue and one red. If Ares didn't know any better he would assume this was a choice between a comfortable illusion and an unpleasant truth. "One of these scrolls is literally harmless. It contains well written verses from a local poet and author-spectacular named 'Egerton'. He's a bit arrogant in his prose but, then again, given his talent, I suppose he deserves to be a bit of a egotist."
"A bit?" Ares knew the culprit personally and it was safe to say his ego was sky high. Granted he didn't act like it but whether his blaze 'I'm always right, you're always wrong' attitude bothered a person was entirely up to the receiver of it. Ares could ignore it but if someone came face to face with a head tilt, baffling poetic invocation, and confident expelling of whatever truth vomit the man believed in they might struggle not to despise him on first meeting. His world view was warped around art too so anyone not quite invested would think him a lunatic and find his self-assurance nauseating. If it weren't for the fact that he wasn't intentionally annoying he would probably be worse than Ares and that was saying something. Fortunately most of his efforts and words were directed towards his art because his tongue could very well spark riots and civil conflicts if left unchecked. Ares was half expecting to wake up to his sect surrounded by pitchforks and torches one day if Egerton ever began spitting venom unrestrainedly at the masses. Again, thankfully, he was a bit of an idiot eccentric but not somebody who picked fights for fun... Unless it was with Edgerton, then it was almost always a competition for some reason.
"Well anyway, one of these scrolls contains bits and bobs of his work. The other contains a deadly poison! Sounds fun right?"
"I'm perhaps not the person to be asking, you won't get the response you're after." Ares chuckled and his eye twitched for two different reasons. Firstly, Tisha was hoping Ares would be fearful. The game she was playing here was that if Ares screwed up learning to Screen Scrolls he would suffer the price of his own ineptitude and roll around on the floor, blue in the face and purple in the liver. Alas, being a revenant made him mostly immune to poisons of most varieties. Unless it was incredibly strong the innate regeneration would filter his blood and cleanse him internally. Plus the Converter was still pumping away and melting foreign substances and toxins so it was doubly hard to poison Ares. Even the strongest, most ravenous and deathly poisons would incapacitate him for a matter of moments at worst. To anyone else the threat of poison, unknown at that, would make them really pay serious attention to the upcoming lesson but Ares? Nope. Also, Ares' last encounter with a 'deadly poison'... Well it was when he sucked the stepper brood mother's poison out of Sandy. How was he supposed to feel anxious or concerned when it was such a pleasant experience last time?! 'Don't threaten me with a good time', much?
"Uh... Ok, hold on..." Tisha but the scrolls away and brought out another two. One still contained poetry, the other... "Haha! Now one of them, instead of poisoning you, will EXPLODE in your face like a... Ah crap..." Realising her mistake, Tisha put the scrolls away again. Even if Ares somehow, some way, couldn't detect the explosive nature of the scrolls with his explosive affiliated mana and magic, he would be basically immune to the 'punishment' anyway and suffer minimal tickling at worst. It would be like trying to drown a fish and Tisha was really starting to get annoyed! This damn cultivator was immune to everything! Maybe he didn't even need Scroll Screening at this rate! "Ok, this time for sure! One scroll is poetry, yadda yadda, the other will impale you with spikes!"
"..." Ares turned his head and didn't say anything. It would hurt but... He'd been through his war aura backlash not too long ago and there was no way this would be worse right? Making this anymore awkward would mean this conversation took forever so Ares just restrained himself from looking Tisha in the eyes and giving the game away. Why he had to be punished anyway was silly and he was pretty sure this woman just wanted to mess with him. Ares' focus could be poor sometimes but if he was genuinely interested in learning he'd take it seriously without the need for threats!
"There's three stages to Scroll Screening. You could technically get by with just the first but it's generally better to go all the way. Step one is discerning rough intent. Danger sensing, basically. You will be able to tell if a Scroll's intent is to harm you or not just by analysing the lingering mana on the scroll. When somebody attacks you, you can instinctually feel the bloodlust and rage right? if you closed your eyes and I went to hit you, you'd know about it. Cultivators who've been in countless fights to the death know this feeling and know it well so the first step is actually not that hard and is somewhat accessible to most people. The problem, though, is that expert scroll makers are aware of this and can imbue their scrolls with negative but not lethal effects, so it won't trigger any kind of natural warning from the reader, or can maybe even bypass it altogether. Assassins learn to sneak up on targets without giving themselves away, they can hide their bloodlust. Scroll makers can learn this too, at which point the first step isn't reliable anymore and you need to come even closer to learning Scroll Screening. The second step is to peek at scroll segments. You can't necessarily read all of the scroll but a rough check will tell you what the primary contents of it are. If a scroll is designed to curse you, you'll se it ahead of time and know to avoid it and stay clear. The issue, though, is that, again, this can be tricked. If a person really wants to curse you, they'll put something useful in the scroll, put it right at the forefront so that's what you see when you peek at it, and then hide a lethal curse somewhere deeper in the scroll like a secret clause. They might even use runes to keep the curse extra hidden and make it impossible to peek at.
This is where Scroll Screening needs to be mastered. Scroll Screening lets you read the entire scroll without ever opening it, guaranteeing its safety... Usually... Sometimes experts in scroll making can try to mess with you, and plant real danger amongst fake information. For instance, 'this scroll contains an art that kills you and your opponent when activated'. You would think it's safe to open the scroll and learn this suicide pact style art but it actually contains the phrase 'this scroll... kills you'. Language pranks like this are what set apart average scroll makers from the legendary ones and they can really get you good if you aren't careful. Creating an instant kill scroll is hard but not impossible so always be wary, even after you learn Scroll Screening. There is no final stage because it's sort of an endless back and forth war between Scroll Screeners and scroll makers, trying to outdo each other. Scroll Makers are on a sort of ever moving treadmill, they have a demand to create new and lethal scrolls to kill people while the Screeners are like detectives who save lives. It's not uncommon for assassination targets to hire Screeners when they 'happen' across mysterious scrolls in secret caves or legacy tombs and then it's like defusing a bomb. Capable Scroll Screeners get paid a lot because it's their experience with countless other scroll traps, having seen plenty in their time, that makes them reliable. If a scroll maker doesn't come up with anything new then a Screener whose been active for thousands of years will have seen it all before. Interestingly, there are rumours that this used to be a professional sport. Two teams of a Screener and scroll maker would go head to head to see who could come up with the most unpredictable scroll and who could solve it the fastest. We don't really do that in Sheryashka anymore so either it's a Vraizon tradition or those history books were wrong I guess..." Or, the more likely third option, it was still a common enough thing just not inside the Blade barrier. In the outside world there were probably still competitions for this sort of thing. Arse wasn't interested but it was interesting to know about at least. "Also, there was this one famous story of a bored rich noble who hired both a Screener and scroll maker in secret and kept pitting them against each other for their own amusement. Eventually, the scroll maker learnt what was happening and sent a secret code to the Screener via his scrolls and the two worked together to con the noble out of all his money. The Screener assured the noble a scroll was perfectly legitimate, and the scroll maker had said as such in advance when he gave it to him earlier, but it contained a powerful curse that they would only remove for a hefty sum that left the noble broke and in tears as he lost everything.
The moral of that story isn't to play around with potentially dangerous people, although one could gleam such logic if they wanted to, but rather than Scroll screening had another purpose! Communication! During war time, some capable commanders would learn scroll making and create multiple highly deadly scrolls to send not to enemies, but to their own allies. Their codes were confidential so only allies would know how to decipher the hidden meaning in the scroll without getting murdered by it. Rather than sending plain talismans or traditional encoded letters, which could be intercepted without worry, this method was vicious and could punish those who weren't meant to pry. Even with the advent of modern technology this was still a decently common practice as scrolls couldn't be hacked and they also worked as excellent diversions. 'Why go to the hassle of creating a scroll if there was nothing of value on it?' Such thoughts led to overcommitment in retrieving scrolls from scouts and messengers that could very well be completely useless if not outright harmful. Also, this sort of warfare had moved on to the digital age as well. Encrypted messages could contain mental attacks or blow up devices that accessed them. This sort of magical tech warfare was relatively new but it was becoming a more popular choice with each passing day. Expert cultivators who were familiar with this kind of magic, and could handle tech appropriately, were decently rare so their services were expensive. Hacking and imbuing technology with mana wasn't easy, and required a lot of know how, so it wound up being mostly newer generation cultivators who practiced this sort of thing.
The first major incident of its kind was a fire pillar teen who installed a lava bomb addition to an otherwise harmless link. Once clicked it would melt the phone and turn it into a brain melting explosive that wiped out countless members of an invading army. In this way, 'Scroll Screening' had advanced into the digital age and now cybersecurity experts, ethical hackers, and penetration testers were performing similar functions online. It's not like the value of Scroll Screening would disappear, the scroll medium still saw plenty of use and there were countless abandoned scrolls in tombs and caves worth picking up, but the playing field had expanded dramatically and there were plenty of new age problems that required new age solutions. Coincidentally, Ares was learning this through his clone who was chatting with Kya about this very matter. Turns out, she was a bit of a prodigy in that field herself. Amongst other roles, Kya would make for an excellent tech assistant. Ares' harem, as it was, had effectively zero knowledge of such things and would be particular vulnerable from that angle of attack. Blo Blo was the closes anyone came to being 'proficient' and even then hacking was beyond her. Meanwhile Kya was happily showing Ares how she'd worked her way into various powerful organisations backlogs and could check all their transaction histories too... She even knew of multiple rigged elections across the universe and other such unsettling details thanks to sneaking glances at emails she shouldn't have been allowed to see. For such a devious action, she sure looked very cute explaining the details of it with a pure smile on her face. Ares' clone was watching over her shoulder as she tapped away at all sorts of strange screens he couldn't possibly understand. He made an effort to at least grasp the basics but anything beyond that was lost on him. Kya just seemed content to have somebody show interest in her hobbies so whether he understood everything or not was mostly irrelevant.
"Can you tell which one is dangerous?" Getting back on track, Ares had two scrolls thrust upon him and it was his job to use his instincts to guide him to a safe choice. Intent wasn't something he dedicated any time to but had learnt through experience. Obviously his experience was limited compared to people who'd lived longer than him, like Dominus for example, but his wasn't exactly inferior by much. He'd been through his fair share of hard fights and seen plenty compared to an average cultivator of his age. Nobody at his age had fought a giant Scylla, monstrous mecha Anubis, a Riddlemyd sphinx construct, a krakyrn and a wyvern soul, and all sorts of other crap. Ares' list of trials was pretty immense as normal cultivators might have formed a blood feud or two with other cultivators by this point but not really come across too many threatening monsters. Around Red Sun there wasn't much wild life worth fearing, mostly just a bunch of honey sharks, a few orcs, and maybe a sabretooth tiger here or there. You'd have to go further abroad to get into scuffles with stronger creatures so Ares' first hand experience was unlike most other disciples in thew sect. Though he wasn't exactly reverent for danger, and he didn't respect the idea of danger itself what with being a revenant, but he was aware of it and could tell when he was going up against something or someone worth being cautious about. As for the intent behind objects and attacks aimed at Ares, which was subtly different from the intent of the person launching them, he was worse at this and that would impact his Scroll Screening a little. Ares, more often than not, preferred to dodge attacks than take them head on. As Garmr that changed a bit but that was a recent development. Why would Ares' worry about the lurking danger and threat of a sharp projectile when he could just not stand in front of it? Some attacks could curve themselves in mid-air, magic with a consciousness could home in on targets or predict movement for instance, so learning about intent for such attacks was worthwhile. Ares had to do it now anyway as the 'intent' in a scroll was similar. He had a good base set of knowledge on the matter as a whole but had to apply it to something slightly different so he took a while to respond as he stared at the two scrolls.
Ares placed his hand on the back of the scroll and emptied his mind... Actually, it was already empty but saying as such made Ares feel like an idiot so he pretended otherwise. After about a minute of unfiltered focus, Ares detected a hint of sharpness coming from his left hand. It was barely perceptible, like being pricked by a millimetre long needle for a split second, but it was definitely there and so Ares felt confident in his choice. He took the right scroll, opened it up, and was greeted by the following message. "In earnest we rise so that in earnest we may kick others down." A very Egerton style message and one that was fairly indicative of the general tone he was trying to set in whatever broader piece this belonged to. Anyway, the main point was that Ares had not been pierced by spikes so his fist go at basic level Screening was a success. He didn't use magic or anything but it was good to know that, if need be, he could do this whenever and wherever so long as he had his wits about him. It wasn' foolproof but it was better than nothing.
"Alright, practice with some more of these basic scrolls for a while until you can pick correctly in under ten seconds. It's nit a particularly high bench mark, anyone decently trained in Screening can do this sort of thing instantly, but that level of refinement of this skill is mostly unnecessary." Ares did as was told and played around with a pile of scrolls until he got good at safely choosing the right option. He didn't fail a single time but he wasn't rushing or anything so had no reason to. The rate at which he improved was notable but, again, his prior experience was the driving factor enabling his growth anyway and it was pretty expected he could do this. "Alright, that should be sufficient." Ares had just displayed a series of rough Screenings that took about six to eight seconds each so he was on track within a matter of minutes. He was on track to finish as soon as he said he would earlier but now was when the real challenge begun because it was an entirely new skillset that had to be developed. "You can think of what comes next as an upgrade to divine sense, sort of like X-ray vision. Partial X-ray vision, anyway, and it only really works for materials like this. You can't use this trick to peer through walls or anything but you can see through thin materials or anything that works as parchment. Scroll Screeners sometimes get jobs as scouts who spy on hand overs of letters as they can read the contents of the folded information without needing to actually touch it. It's a bit of a niche use but not one that should be overlooked as it has value all the same. Anyway, activate your divine sense and look at these two new scrolls. Once you start, try to mix intent discernment with divine sense to visualise what you were feeling earlier. When you were touching the scrolls, you should have noticed a sharp sensation right? This time you won't feel it, because you aren't touching the scroll, but you should see a small spike if you looked hard enough at the right spot on the right scroll. You'll be able to see parts of the scroll's written verbiage but you need to find a spot or segment that reveals the nature of the scroll in its entirety. Experience is the only real way to get used to guessing accurately where the important information is, based on sentence structure and the point of the scroll, so don't feel disheartened if it takes a bit of rummaging around to notice it on your first try."
"Got it." Unsurprisingly, Ares' Omniscience was still far too good at its job and had already located the symbol of a spike at the top left corner of the right scroll. Rather, its incredible ability went further than just that. Now that Ares knew the method to Screen Scrolls, and knew he had to mix intent discernment into his divine sense... "I can read the whole scroll, actually." He'd learn Scroll Screening in its entirety already. Omniscience was seriously overpowered... Dominus considered it the strongest Celestial Cluster treasure for a reason even if it held little combat application. It was way too useful in way too many different situations. Anything that could be rectified or understood via observation of any kind meant this one treasure solved it basically automatically. Thanks to the nature of the treasure, being constructed from all kinds of experts' corpses, it was only natural there were plenty of talented Scroll Screeners whose eyes were used in the making of this thing. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't be wise to rely on a treasure to do something like this, and Ares should really learn how to do it the normal way, but he was a revenant! There was fundamentally no way for him to lose a personal treasure, it was impossible. Even if the nerves were gauged out, they would just regrow inside his skull over and over again and the removed bundle would become useless. The only exception was when Dominus somehow managed to semi-permanently off himself but Ares had no reason to follow in his footsteps. What remained true was that the only people who could feasibly 'kill' Ares, and 'remove his treasures', were himself and Dominus who was tuck inside him. Arse didn't have to practice without Omniscience because he would never be without Omniscience! It was unnecessary caution. If he didn't have mana to access Omniscience it could be an issue but regular Scroll Screening was an art that took mana too anyway. If anything, Ares' Omniscient version might even take less mana so that was even less of a concern and this was a superior method. Better yet, Ares could also use disintegration to disarm dangerous scrolls or break through defensive runic setups so he was in a better position to be a Scroll Screener than most. As it turned out, his own assumptions about the unceasing power of Omniscience turned out to be entirely correct and, as he'd stated earlier, he'd learnt this art in a matter of minutes. Granted he didn't technically know Scroll Screening but had come up with his own version of it. It wasn't an art, it was just an extension of divine sense combined with Omniscience. He already had plenty of other reasons to use this combination but now he had one more in his back pocket and the weight of Omniscience had increased even further. Ares wasn't overly reliant on it but it was a pretty massive part of his arsenal, subtle though it could be at times.
As for Tisha, she was being consoled by Windsor over in the corner of the room who was stroking the 'fool's' head. Tisha wanted to make Ares suffer a punishment at least once, if nothing else for putting the entire C.O in this unwinnable position and being a brute Tisha couldn't really strategize around due to his immense power that outclassed even the force of the round, but he'd overcome the Scrolls splendidly without a scratch. It was unfair! She spent so long comparatively trying to learn this art but she was still considered fast amongst her peers! This damn revenant wasn't human!
"Well congrats on your new ability kiddo." Hans sighed and puffed on a cigar. "I shouldn't have been surprised at you acquisition speed, after all these years you'd think I'd know better huh?" With a shake of his head, Hans flicked some ash into a nearby tray. "Still, I can't deny your speediness has come in handy. I was worried you wouldn't have time to take on any jobs today but I guess that worry was unfounded. If anything, the amount of jobs you can do has doubled thanks to learning that neat little trick. I was originally going to hassle our new C.O friend here to check over some scrolls left over from the previous administration... But I can hand them over to you now right? With that fancy eye magic of yours it shouldn't be a problem running through them while you deal with the other odd jobs I have lined up for you?" Ares nodded along as he was more than willing to get practice in with Screening. That was probably the more difficult part of what he'd be doing anyway as assassinating people at this current stage of his was easy as can be. He didn't even really have to be subtle about it because he could alert and take on the entirety of Red Sun if he had to, let alone whatever other reinforcements the target had. Hans handed Ares a list of targets, mostly territorial drug dealers, gang leaders, and so on so forth. Some of the targets were important, though, because they were transition realm big shots who weren't supposed to be here or have any influence. They wanted a piece of the pie in the sky that Ares would be offering but were denied by Hans a way into the city. Via some shady connections they'd been teleported in and were causing trouble so Ares was the most suitable person to rid the place of them. Now that Hans was in control of the city he had more resources to locate them but not the means to kill them quickly and efficiently without dragging innocent people into it. Transition realm cultivators were beneath Hans but his magic was hard not to be indiscriminate with at times. Plus he was just too busy with more imperative-to-tackle tasks anyway. This is where Aejaz would have been useful... Ares was going to have really kick his butt up and down the house to ram it into his thick skull that the jobs he was doing weren't just for training, they were important on a larger scale and were for the sake of protecting their home! How was Allie supposed to walk around safely when there was an up-and-coming human trafficking organisation taking root that Aejaz was ignoring?! Ares had never explained to him the full extent of this work, and that was inevitably what led to this overly casual approach, but he wasn't entirely to blame! This shmuck was just too lazy!