"Tom... Tom?" A name so good it had to be said twice? Yulo didn't quite understand what Ares was up to but, then again, Ares operated at his own pace most of the time anyway.
"Well, he'll be less of a guardian and more of an alarm system I guess. You can think of him as a friend I made in Xasca. It's complicated but we're indirectly tied to one another through his master so I spared his clone's life and brought back its core to plant in the sect."
"I see. But if he's an 'alarm' wouldn't it be better to have him stay somewhere else? Surely it would be better to detect intruders near the outer edges of the sect than by the time they reach all the way down here?"
"You're not wrong but don't worry, Tom Tom has some omnipresent talents. I'm just putting the core down here to keep it safe, and because this is quite a central location making it easier for Tom Tom to branch out from, most of his sphinx heads will sprout up around the rest of the sect while the main one remains safe down here."
"I don't really get it..." As someone who hadn't seen innumerable Tom Tom heads inside the Riddlemyd Ares' words were sounding foreign to Yulo but. "... But I have a rough idea what you're doing. Still, it would have been nice to have an actual treasury guardian. Rud's clone is fine and all but most sects tend to have a special ace up their sleeve for a role like this and it feels like we've been left out of the cool kids' club. Though it's not like I have any right to complain; I stayed within these walls all the time so unless such a thing fell from the sky, right into my lap, it was never going to happen anyway."
"Exactly." Ares clicked his finger and pointed at Yulo as he hit the nail on the head. "But I've already found a few neat little toys during my trip. I could technically put a guardian here... I'm torn. I have a Scylla heart, you see, and I was originally thinking of building a moat near one of the sect's entrances / exits to house it. Now though, I feel compelled to grow the Scylla in the lake outside this cave."
"A Scylla? That's quite the legendary monster... Though now that I think about it, I do remember hearing news about trouble on the Federation that you resolved. Aren't Scylla's quite large? Will it even fit out there?" Yulo's understanding of Scyllas wasn't wrong but he was underestimating how massive the Scylla Ares battled was, that one was anomalous compared to an average Scylla.
"Yeah and that's why I'm struggling to choose between the lake and building a moat. On the one hand, this place will really need to be more secure in the future. I plan on bringing back rare treasures and resources aplenty so this vault will be quite stocked by the time I'm done with it. It will need proper security then but the Scylla will eventually outgrow the lake and I'll need to either move it or expand the area... On the other hand, I saw a northern gate earlier back when I was on the hill. I could demolish that wall and build a suitably large moat there for the Scylla, and it could help defend against invasions if it ever became necessary in the future, but then the treasury lacks firepower to defend itself. Damn, I've only been a sect master for less than an hour and I'm already met with a hard choice..."
"Ok, don't rub it in." It's not like Yulo had, at any point, ever needed to allocate a mythic monster so he grumbled at Ares who was unintentionally boasting.
"You might not even have to choose." A globule of blood formed on Ares' right shoulder and Dominus' voice echoed out of it. "Aside from water being the Scylla's natural habitat, it gains some special abilities so long as it remains submerged. It will need to relearn these abilities in due time but, when it does, this issue will resolve itself."
Yulo was too distracted by the sudden appearance of talking blood so Ares asked in his stead. "How so?"
Though Ares asked Dominus, Ignizz and his sparkler tail hopped out of Ares' body and set up shop on his free shoulder while responding with his chest puffed out. "Teleportation! Osmosis!"
"Oh wow." Dominus' voice was tinged with mockery and faux respect. "Look at the small dumb lizard using big words. I'm surprised you even know what Osmosis means. Though, then again, with how often stupid thoughts manage to leak out of your brain you're probably an expert."
"Ok, that's enough of your little lover's quarrel." Ares pushed his thumb down on the blood globule from above, pushing Dominus back inside his body to separate the bickering duo. Tilting his head towards the miniature fire God, Ares encouraged him to keep speaking. "You were saying?" Ares figured it wouldn't be often Ignizz would be able to contribute when it came to any matter besides dragons so this was a rarity. Plus he seemed to be pretty knowledgeable, maybe even more so than Dominus given how excited he was to talk about it.
"Heh, bet you didn't know this, but water-dragons and Scyllas have some similarities in their biological makeup!"
"Ah, that's why." Ares had been wondering why this twerp would bother taking an interest in anything other than dragons and now the riddle was solved.
"Well, think about it like this. You know how you can Shift through nothingness?"
"Yes."
"Well water dragons and Scylla have a similar innate ability to 'Shift' through water. There are caveats to this ability but it's pretty functional. Infant water dragons and Scylla have to have a connected stream they can flow through but adults can set up a kind of territory. Any water within that territory becomes an anchor they can reappear in near instantly. Put simply, you can build the moat and have the Scylla remain here inside the lake for now. If it ever needs to appear at the moat, after it grows up enough, it can just teleport on over by phasing through the ground. Until then, though, you might want to try and connect this lake to the moat by digging a small passageway for it to traverse. You can close the passageway when the Scylla no longer needs it."
"Huh, that's pretty nifty... I wonder why the Scylla didn't use that ability to dodge the Armillary I threw at it when we were fighting..."
"Again, caveats. Though the water transfer doesn't take too long to channel, immense amounts of mana can disturb it and force a backlash. Your Armillary is jam packed with disruptive energy and there was no way the Scylla could possibly concentrate with that thing flying towards it. Maybe if it was stronger, then perhaps it would have the mental fortitude, but the Scylla probably wasn't that old when you killed it."
"I guess that solves the predicament then. I still have to build the moat though... And a desert pit for the Anubis twins."
"Anubis?" To Yulo, Ares was looking less like a human and more so like a monster dispenser every time he spoke. He wasn't even really surprised at this point anymore but he was starting to wonder what on earth his precious sect was going to look like in a few years. Ares was already planning for an entire other biome!
"Yeah, I promised the Xasca fellahin I would create a mini desert for them and the Anubis guardians I picked up require it too to grow up properly. If I build the moat in the north then that leaves three other entrances to consider... Though I think putting a desert at an entrance might not be a good idea?" Forcing anyone who had business with the sect to trek through scorching sands, or freezing cold depending on the temperature, didn't seem like a great way to make a good first impression. "Well whatever, let me worry about Tom Tom and the moat for now, the latter will probably take up the rest of the day anyhow... Ah but I still need to go visit the sect HQ..."
"I don't mind letting them know you're going to be busy for a while." So long as Ares was dedicating his time to improving the sect, Yulo was certain the leadership over at HQ wouldn't mind delaying his visit... Though Ares' actions might only serve to give them a bigger headache than they already had as now there was going to have be expenses for a Scylla and two Anubis. They grew large and that naturally included their stomachs. Thankfully they'd need to eat less as their cultivation improved but eating less didn't mean eating nothing. Granted the cost of doing business was worth it. Feeding an overgrown Anubis was still cheaper than hiring security guards who would be less strong and do a poorer job anyway.
"Right, thanks. Anyway, getting back on track..." Ares dangled Ignizz by the tail and flung him inside his chest. Ares then resummoned a grouchy Dominus who wasn't happy at his earlier treatment. "Don't look at me like that, with a face full of thunder, if you and Ignizz didn't have to be at each other's throats constantly I wouldn't have to separate you like a teacher telling off naughty children."
"Hmph, it's his fault."
I'm not sure if he's intentionally acting the part or he's really just like this and completely unaware... Ares mused inwardly as displayed a wry smile and kept his thoughts to himself. He knew if he spoke his mind Dominus wouldn't let him hear the end of it. "Of course, of course. That aside, how do I use this thing?" Ares pulled out the yellow crystal ball and spun it atop his finger like a basketball. Arse nearly dropped it by he jerked his hands and cradled it with a silly chuckle as Yulo shot him a sharp glare for playing around with something like looked fragile.
"Tom Tom's core?" Dominus hopped off Ares shoulder and landed on the ball. "Hm, lemme see... Oh, it's actually quite basic. Just shove it into the wall."
"Just shove it into the wall?"
"Just shove it into the wall."
"... Is that it?"
"What? You want me to repeat it a third time?" Dominus snickered at Ares' bewildered face.
"No, I got the memo the first time." Ares shook his head and placed the yellow ball up against the open wall. It slid out of his hands and slowly merged with the wall, becoming one with it as the wall moulded itself to become a socket of sorts. The ball, from dead ahead, looked like a buried gem as it began to emit a pretty lustre and showed signs of integrating. Eventually the core settled and morphed, gradually turning from a ball into a distinct and familiar head shape that Ares would recognise anywhere. He'd seen this head nearly a hundred different times after all, and even fought against a massive version of it, so there was no way Tom Tom's visage wasn't ingrained in his mind.
"Well well, look who it is. If it ain't the cat with nine... No, sorry, eightlives!" Dominus couldn't help but poke fun at the deceased and now resurrected Tom Tom clone.
"Oh fuck off." Tom Tom groaned as he emerged from the wall. his appearance was majestic but said majesty was ruined by his crude cursing. "And how many times do I have to tell you I'm not a cat damnit?!"
"You know..." Ares narrowed his eyes at Dominus. "... I'm starting to think you're the issue." 'If everyone hates you, maybe you're the problem'. Ignizz, Tom Tom... The entire rest of the world... "Tom Tom, ignore him."
"You aren't much better!" Tom Tom cried from the bottom of his heart but Ares being Ares, he ignored him.
"Hey look around, I set you up in a place full of shiny things! You're a sphinx, you like guarding treasure right?"
"Shiny things? What am? A damn crow?!" Complaining overtly did little to hide the glint in Tom Tom's eyes. Plus he didn't deny liking his innate sense of duty to protect important things. He was just being a big ol' tsundere because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed thanks to Dominus.
"Well you do have a habit of crowing in people's faces when they get a riddle wrong, right?"
"Heh, I like the pun so I'll overlook the sentence."
"Still the same as ever... So how about it? Can you see the rest of the sect from this place?"
Tom Tom shut his eyes and spread out a network of mana that coursed outward through the ground. "Yeah, no problem. Maybe if the sect grows bigger I might need to have my core be upgraded but for now this is fine. I can handle a bit more than this, even."
"So you can summon multiple heads around the entire sect right?"
"Yeah... Hehehe, I can even see some disciples making out in a secluded alley near the runemancy department. They're getting kinda freaky. Hold on, lemme spook 'em... Hahaha! You should have seen the look on their faces! They didn't manage to solve my riddle though, they just ran away before giving me an answer..."
"I don't know the question but I can guess the answer." Peeping Tom. There were going to be a lot of misunderstandings regarding the unnatural appearance of sphinx heads all over the sect, third wheel perversion in this particular case, but Ares figured it would be funnier to just let the mayhem play out on its own and have people get used to it via exposure. If Ares explained every single change he made then he'd never have any spare time. A riddle obsessed sphinx was a pretty low bar given what the future would wind up holding down the line so it was better to get accustomed to Ares' pandora box style leadership via this incident. "By the way..." Ares explained his conundrum about where to place the Anubis twins and his decision regarding the Scylla. Tom Tom was an organiser at heart, and his experience as a DM was unironically helpful in setting up a defensive fortress, so Ares opted to put his expertise to use. Though unofficial, Tom Tom had a bright future as the sect's dungeon master-esque mastermind. When it came to setting up traps, optimising routes and pathways, hiding the treasury, etc... There was probably nobody better suited to the role than Tom Tom. He enjoyed it too so it was a win win. To Tom Tom this was like a 3d build your own adventure and this was the start of a brand new campaign. Not that he was abandoning 2d, he'd already found a nice empty room no longer in use elsewhere in the sect and was going to harangue disciples into creating a games room out of it... If Ares knew Tom Tom was bullying poor disciples, spawning heads to chase after them and headbutt them over and over until they gave in and followed his orders, he might have a thing or two to say to him. Alas, he didn't, and it was a relatively minor matter anyway, so it went unnoticed. Also, those who Tom Tom targeted would wind up being regulars to his gaming den anyway so it worked out one way or another.
"The Scylla plan is fine. The ground is stable so you can dig a connecting line from the lake outside to the northern exit without collapsing the earth. It might take a year or so for the Scylla to evolve to the point it can use that instant transmission ability, many more to do it without the passageway, but you probably won't need it before then." Being inside the Primordial Blade barrier meant there was a limit to the number of realistic threats Ares, and the sect, would come across. Even still... "I recommend putting the Scylla in the moat, though. It weakens the treasury security but it's more likely to find use over there. If anyone sneaks in I can inform you immediately and then you can come over and deal with the hassle yourself. Having the Scylla at the moat will give a strong impression and dissuade people from taking action against the sect before they even get around to doing it. An invading army is a bigger threat than an thief and the latter is less likely anyway given how developed the sect is and will be. Still, that's just my two cents. You're strong enough to fight an army without the Scylla anyway so who cares?"
Ares shook his head. "No, I think you're right. A lower domain thief even getting to this point seems like a long stretch."
"The moat it is. As for the Anubis twins... That one's a bit complicated. Ideally you would have them be stationary near the southern entrance, the one directly facing the city. Two giant statues that can come to life would be a daunting but mighty show but the issue is the desert requirement... When the Anubis have grown fully they won't need the environment anymore, not really, but it's still preferable for them to remain inside it for their comfort... How about leaving it for later? Set up the desert somewhere inside the sect for the time being and then work out a solution with spatial magic? While the Anubis are in their statue form they're only half sentient so if you create a magic trigger you can have them summon a desert once they awaken fully. I'm not sure if you're at the level where you can do that currently but it is way to solve this issue in the future. While they're statues they won't be bothered by the lack of sand but, when they wake up, they can summon a preferable biome on demand. Also, that Sandy girl, she can do something similar right? I remember her powers skyrocketing back in Xasca and she can summon sand whenever and wherever now can't she? It's not the same as spatial magic but it might also be a workable solution. I'd say worry about the moat and just come up with a temporary plan for the desert dwellers. As your, and Sandy's, cultivation increases you'll naturally find more ways of overcoming this setback. It's not like you have defences for all the other entrances and you're just missing this one anyway right? Having a few gaps in the short term isn't going to be the end of the world, this place doesn't get attacked often does it?"
"Nope. Not even once since I've arrived."
"... Not that you meant it that way but I wouldn't dare attack a place with you in it either..." Tom Tom recalled the haunting experience of being beaten to death by Garmr one-sidedly. "As for where to put the fellahin... There's some space in the outer court that will do nicely. Putting it in the outer court has benefits in that it's accessible to everyone who wants to visit it. You can make a sandy oasis for staycations to ease the disciple's stress and let them chill out."
"You knowing the sect layout better than I do really makes me feel like a failure of a sect master..." Ares couldn't even picture half the locations in this sect and yet Tom Tom, who'd only been here for a few minutes, already had the layout memorised.
"Oh don't worry, you're a failure in more ways than just that." Tom Tom giggled.
"Gee thanks, asshole. Perhaps I should move your core and put at the bottom of the moat?"
"Ack. Please don't, I hate it when my fur gets wet." If Ares recalled correctly, this silly cat didn't like it when his fur got singed either! This dainty little sphinx must have thought himself, and his fur, very precious indeed!
"I accept your apology, now make up for your misdeeds by showing me to the spot you mentioned for the fellahin." Ares was planning on doing the moat first but that was likely going to take far longer than plopping down a desert would. He was going to have move some buildings, sure, but that was still easier than demolishing, carefully, the entire outer wall of Red Sun, digging up the ground, and filling it with water. Thankfully he had the Blade to store and drop off water, disintegration to carve up the land, and annihilation to blow up the wall, so he was a one man work force in that regard, but it was still a time sink he would rather get started on tomorrow when he had a full day available to him. "Hm, I should go get Sandy and the fellahin first to get their opinion." They'd be fine with it, Ares was confident they weren't the sort of people to fuss endlessly over location, location, location, but it was still polite to ask them anyway. Honestly, they'd probably be happy to just finally have a proper residence instead of renting hotels outside the sect as they had been up until now. If anything, Ares was just bringing Sandy along because he wanted to. She was the partner he'd spent the least time with out of them all and he wanted to chat with her some more.