Undercover mode, activate! Ares pulled up on the Zephyr near the neck region and it moulded itself into a sort of hood. Ares had only ever done this before when he activated the Blackout rune way back during the alchemy competition but there was no need to go that far as it would arouse suspicion. As long as the loudmouth scavenger, if he truly was one, couldn't recognise Ares then that would be good enough. A rough description of what he looked like must have been passed around and this loudmouth would have maybe put two and two together already if he wasn't too busy showboating to uninterested civilians stuck with him due to a lack of better options. Also, generally speaking, it was damn hot! Sure Ares was a cultivator, and so the heat was less problematic for him than it was for others, but he didn't want to his head to just keep boiling during their journey twenty-four seven! There was a good deal of shade back in the city but out here you'd be lucky to find even a single shadow under a palm tree. As such, this hood was both convenient for remaining undetected as well as functional for making sure Ares' brain didn't melt...
As for Aejaz...
He was jsut going to have to figure something out afterwards! He still had his Acrimony, the dagger that was an offshoot of the Bane thanks to all the spare materials that had been lying around, and that had the cooling rune on it which should be sufficient. It was a shame Ares didn't still have the Bane, as it would have been a pleasant and soothing tool right about now, but he factored this situation into his decision when leaving it behind and was aware this would happen so couldn't complain. Speaking of the Bane, Ares really wanted to cast Tricky Rink here as it was arguably the best art in his arsenal to easily win this fight. No matter how many steppers there were darting about, they would all struggle immensely on ice. Running too fast was a no go as they'd slip, their feet would freeze, they couldn't use poison magic to coat their weapon without disintegration bursting up from the floor and killing them, and the monsters' unfamiliarity with ice, given the desert environment all around, would make it hard for them to adapt on the fly. It really was good! Too good... Again, Ares didn't want to appear suspicious, as the disintegration magic might have been recognised, so the scythe would have to do! It was a shame because Ares had yet to manually cast Crystalised Void arts ever since he tuned that radio treasure back on the Federation and this would have been the perfect opportunity to do so... Oh well. As an aside, Ares would keep an eye out on the civilians with his pressure and make sure they didn't get assassinated while nobody was looking. He was taking things slow but that didn't mean he was wiling to forfeit an innocent life just for this.
Hm? Ares spotted four different pairs of footprints in the sand crowding around him and realised he was being ambushed... While Aejaz was still clinging to him and reading the damn book from over his shoulder! This guy... Ares quickly spun around to make sure the sword headed for Aejaz' spine, if Ares' guess was correct, missed him entirely. Aejaz was confused as to why Ares started spinning but he understood when Ares shirt was ripped slightly out of seemingly nowhere. The invisible monsters had arrived! Before Aejaz could get off the wild ride, Ares spun again and performed a roundhouse kick to both simultaneously dodge a lunge and blast the attacker backwards. The invisible monster left a trial in the sand as it slid down a dune and out of view... Not that it was in view to begin with! After striking the monster Ares was left wondering what on earth it could be! That thing was bony! It seriously felt like it was just a walking pile of extra sturdy bones so maybe it was a skeleton? There were skeletons in Xasca and they were seen quite commonly in the Riddlemyd... But these lot seemed stronger than any normal skeleton would be, according to the notebook, and that wasn't even factoring in the invisibility...
While Ares contemplated on the matter another two steppers crept up on him from his left and right at the exact same time. With his pressure he was able to discern the orientation of their swings and figure out that one was vertical and one was horizontal, setting up a '+' shaped slash with Ares right in the middle. Ares didn't particularly want to be bothered while he was thinking so he expanded his Zephyr, which also chucked Aejaz off and onto the sand nearby, and smacked the two monsters. It was a hefty attack that made a loud BANGsound and yet the monsters were still very much alive as far as Ares could tell. Ares hadn't felt the Zephyr break or pierce anything on contact so these steppers were decently tough. If Ares had been using his annihilation enhancement then things would be different but ordinary cultivators would no doubt struggle to put even a single one of these monsters down.
Speaking of ordinary cultivators, the 'scavenger' wasn't doing too hot because he was finally getting all the attention he could ever want and then some. This was perhaps not who he wanted it from but nearly ten 'adoring fans' were making him work hard. The steppers weren't attacking in unison but rather opted to go in one by one, creating a never ending stream of invisible sword strikes that would tire any normal human out in a matter of minutes. The loudmouth could do nothing but block an attack, reposition his arm and sword, and then immediately be forced to do it again over and over. Forget getting tired, at this rate his arm might get sore and stop obeying him long before he had to worry about exhaustion. In roughly a minute his muscles would be on fire! While he was cursing his luck, the Fellahin lady was having a much simpler time of things. She could easily detect the steppers by tuning into the sands' frequencies by partially becoming one with it. Her sandy appendages were her legs so, after removing various bundles of clothing and her boots, she was able to sink everything below the knee into the desert and act like a kind of motion detector / humanoid beacon. From there she summoned a bunch of sand hounds that were about the size of an average Labrador each. They weren't huge, nor were they particularly ferocious, but they were good enough at their job to keep their summoner safe. Even if a few steppers in between the cracks she would whip the steppers with sand to keep them at bay and she sort of resembled a desert kraken. the sand around her was gradually turning into quicksand, making it even harder to approach her by foot, and she had sandy tentacles to whip at foes from afar. She was the kind of cultivator you'd appreciate having as backup because she could watch over the battlefield from a safe distance and support you with remotely controlled minions. Right now she wasn't really co-operating with anyone, though, but if she had chosen to work with the loudmouth then they might have honestly been capable of dealing with these steppers all on their own. Whether it was because she hated the guy, or maybe it was because she just wasn't able to get closer to him when the fighting kicked off, but whatever the reason was she didn't seem intent on moving over in his direction to lend a hand even though it was something she could likely do. She looked anchored to one spot but Ares was willing to bet she could shift the sands her legs had merged into in her current state.
All in all, there were about twenty five or so steppers and that was more than manageable given the tier of cultivator present. That being said, according to the notebook Ares had, spec ops of up to seventy or eighty were very much possible. It was actually strange that such a 'low' amount had shown up, if anything, and so everyone here could thank their lucky stars. Neither of the other two cultivators could handle that many steppers all at once, even working together, and Ares didn't have to get his hands too dirty so it was lucky to run into this smaller group. For the record, the largest spec ops to date is technically unknown. It was estimated to be numbered at roughly five hundred steppers in a single pack but, really... How were you supposed to bloody well count that many?! They were invisible so even having a rough number was impressive! Plus, how many of them started there from the beginning of the fight and how many steppers wandered into the brawl halfway through as reinforcements?! It was seriously not possible to determine how accurate the Numbers given was but it was sure as hell a lot regardless! The fight had been a bloodbath between the small scale stepper army and the Fellahin that was cemented into the history books for all eternity but nothing of that scale had ever happened since. Nobody knows what caused it exactly but, apparently, there was some kind of stepper leader that had fused with another monster, local to Xasca, that was somewhat similar to steppers. Ares didn't know what exactly the other monster was but he would worry about that when he found one, and checked it out in the notebook, because for now it was clobbering time! He hadn't even killed a single monster yet and that was maybe holding back a tad bit too much...
It was scythe time as this bad boy could cut through these monsters no problemo! Ares dashed forward and grabbed the attention of as many steppers as possible that weren't already distracted with chasing down the civilians. Some had been heading to Aejaz but he quickly dipped and went invisible to go hide somewhere until the fighting was done. This meant Ares had about seven or eight, again counting these damn things was hard, of the steppers running circles around him. Their convoluted movement patterns, like that of an intricate square dance, made crisscrossing foot marks in the sand hard to observe as telling which way they were running before they took another step was a massive pain in the neck... Actually, before the steppers closed in on him, Ares had a thought! What about Omniscience? Omniscience had never failed him before so surely it wouldn't fail him now? There was no real reason it shouldn't work so being able to see these things would be extremely helpful for defeating them!... And yet he didn't activate it. Ares was going to use this opportunity to train against invisible foes and he could spy on their corpses later! Training like this was hard to come by, and Ares was a sucker for taking advantages of situations that were unlikely to ever crop up again, so he twirled his scythe to shift the position of the blade and swung horizontally. He felt the weapon connect with something and, though there was a surprising amount of resistance, he was able to cleave through the stepper and whack a second one too. He didn't have enough momentum to kill two in a single swing but he'd killed one stepper already and damaged the second one trying to follow up behind his comrade. This attack strategy, ironically, would have been more effective if the stepper in front wasn't invisible as Ares could see their trails coming towards him in a line! Body blocking someone someone hiding behind you was impossible if you were invisible and didn't actually obstruct vision! Rookie mistake!
It seemed these things were co-ordinated and capable but not particularly smart. They probably just defaulted to the same tactics over and over again because it was usually effective but, against a foe like Ares who could actually consistently fend them off, they were going to have to do a lot better. Ares watched a single stepper's pathing through the sand intently and, when he felt confident he figured out the route with no room for error, he chucked the scythe, sending it spinning until it domed the invisible monster and cracked its bony head open. Strangely there was no liquid yet again so these things clearly didn't possess any internal fluid like blood or water, unless that was also invisible, which just gave even more credence to Ares' skeleton theory. With a flick of his writs, Ares sent out a Zephyr wing to latch onto the scythe handle and drag it back through the sand, tripping one of the monsters as he raked the blade over their feet mid sprint. Ares caught the scythe and took a few steps to behead the monster lying flat on the floor before burying the scythe in the sand behind him and blocking a sword swing from his blind spot. The weapon must have clanged off his scythe because Ares couldn't feel any followup attacks in the movement of the wind which probably meant the steppers weren't physically the strongest foes ever. If Ares could overpower one with his arm literally over his shoulder and behind his back then that was a sign these guys were not going to the gym often enough! Couldn't even an overpower an adept who's strength was hamstrung! They relied excessively on their invisibility, numbers, and speed but that wasn't going to cut it against Ares, no sir!
Five more steppers ran over, as some of the excess dealing with the loudmouth figured Ares here was the bigger threat, and he was being circled once more. This time it was more aggressive though as the circle was closing in around him quite rapidly and not giving him time to pick off any of the steppers one by one. Sand was kicked up into Ares face and he was admittedly not expecting this. Based on everything that happened thus far he didn't think they would be smart enough to actively use the environment to try and blind their foe. Still, it was a simple enough matter to deal with so Ares committed to a powerful slash in as wide an arc as he could manage. He cleaved two steppers before running out of momentum and leaving himself wide open but he quickly transitioned to a crouching stance and activated another rune on his Zephyr to save himself from the three incoming swords. "Hunker". It had been a while since Ares last used this, against the mecha dryad, but it was still incredibly helpful against multiple attackers all swinging at once. The feathery dome surrounding him would take all the hits and, though he still felt some pain, it was drastically reduced and there would be no blood loss or severe injuries. Plus he could take this time out to wipe the sand out of his eyes so it was all rather convenient. Sure Ares could have wiped these guys out all at once with any number of the tools in his arsenal but he figured showing some leeway in his abilities, and having to resort to defensive measures, would be enough to outweigh the fact that he was winning his fight over here soundly. He was dealing with as many steppers as everyone else now but still coming out on top and killing his opponents relatively easily so going on the defensive like this actually mattered optics wise. It wouldn't stop anyone with a keen eye from noticing his general domination of these monsters but there was only so much he could do to actively restrain himself! Maybe Ares needed to practice being worseat combat here and there if ever he needed to blend in with his surroundings more...
Three poisoned swords dug into the Zephyr but it cushioned their blades, nullified the poison, transmitted the pain, and then repelled the attackers. Ares was unveiled from within his black feather cocoon not even a split second later and the sight of him lunging recklessly at the stepper nearest to him was pretty impressive. The speed and aggression with which he came bursting out of his protective shell was ballsy because there was zero fear or hesitation. It was a level of confidence that inspired the civilians to stop running around at least as they were pretty sure now that no harm would befall them. Maybe Aejaz felt inspired too as he was fighting a stepper off to the side and practicing his ability to dodge strikes he couldn't see as well. He was doing better at it than he seemed to think he would but Ares wasn't sure why the moron hadn't been expecting this. He was the dodge master of the century and hitting him with just about any attack, without jumping through multiple hoops to enable it, was outright impossible. HIs innate desire to not sustain damage, combined with his cowardice, made him an untouchable combatant as he'd developed a sixth and even seventh sense for danger. Forget invisibility, this muppet could be blindfolded and still sense a pebble being tossed at him because he'd fret excessively over whether that pebble was secretly an explosive or not. Perhaps he'd spent too much time around Ares and his Shock Bead dodgeball game during training... Still, the fear of God was very much in him and that propelled him to move like a master. Actually that was an understatement because even a master couldn't move like him. Aejaz was seemingly moving before the sword wielded by the stepper was and such erratic, and yet such calculated, movements threw the monster's aim and balance off hard. The monster tripped on its own because it was dancing on two left feet trying to chase this slippery snake and twist its body in the appropriate direction...
Ares dislodged his scythe from the stepper he just brutalised with his aggressive lunge and sighed to himself. He almost felt bad for the Stepper fighting his brother because he was honestly annoying! It might be a better experience for the stepper if Aejaz activated his own invisibility because, at least then, the highly punch-able face would disappear too! Whoosh. Ares twisted his body and the space he was occupying not even a second ago was torn through by a sword swing that came from behind. He retaliated with a swift kick that pushed the monster into one of its own kind, causing them both to tumble, but Ares was too preoccupied with another monster to finish them off so, instead, he wrapped the Zephyr around them and bundled the lovers together so they could have a nice romantic moment together under the sheets. There were no curtains but they were invisible so this was still PG and a reasonably acceptable display!
With a punch, Ares decked another stepper on the chin, although he hurt his hand in the process because their bony bodies were seriously tough, and followed up with a stab of the scythe's butt to the chest. The monster had its head flung back and then subsequently forward, thanks to its gut being blasted, so now its head was conveniently bowed somewhere in front of Ares and he was able to execute the monster summarily by rotating the scythe. The butt was cycled around to the back and the blade came swinging overhead to finish the job. The duo from before were apparently pre-mature so Ares turned around and finished them off too before they could wriggle out of their lover''s nest confinement. At this point there were still a few steppers roaming around and trying to pick off targets but it was all but guaranteed the day was saved and no death would befall anyone present.
The loudmouth was still struggling but he had managed to kill about two members of the large group bothering him whereas the Fellahin lady was racking up what seemed to be her seventh kill of the fight thus far. Ares had the highest kill count but it wasn't by enough to make him appear too suspicious... At least not to the loudmouth anyway as he was maybe too busy to spectate Ares' performance which is what Ares had been banking on. The fellahin lady, on the other hand, had all the time in the world, given her fighting style, and she was very aware something was up with this newcomer! Why was he hiding his face now and not when he arrived? Why was he holding back his strength? Why was he not using magic? So many questions! She wouldn't bother asking, because anyone with that many secrets wouldn't exactly typically be willing to discuss them out in the open, but it was worth keeping an eye on him throughout the journey they were about to embark on. Despite his weak cultivation he could easily take out more steppers than the two fairly strong cultivators without resorting to arts? Something was definitely wrong with this guy no matter how she looked at it!
Aejaz killed his opponent by 'borrowing' Echo and shattering his bony foe with a powerful palm to the chest region. It was a clever decision to use that art as it would no doubt be highly effective against these creatures and their weird biological make-up. The Fellahin lady sicced every one of her twelve or so hounds on the one remaining stepper bothering her so that fight was as good as over. Mr Loudmouth was being rather basic and had cast Sharp on his sword to give him the lethality needed to destroy his foes, netting him another two kills and ending the lighting over on his side of things. Last but not least Ares put the scythe away with one hand while throwing out a simple punch with his other that broke apart the last monster's head. He'd timed it such that the loudmouth didn't get to see him do this as it would be a dead giveaway he was a ridiculously powerful cultivator. Loudmouth had to use Sharp and yet here Ares was with his blunt force fist one-shotting these freaks! Still, there was a slight problem with taking this approach...
The centre of the face of these monsters felt disgustingly weird!
They apparently were not bony all over and had soft, fuzzy, fleshy, and furry bits on their face like some kind of stitched up amalgamation. Ares almost didn't wanna look at their corpses with Omniscience anymore because they would surely be ugly as sin! Knowing he put his fist a few inches deep into the skull of one of these things would haunt him at night!... But could he really resist the curiosity welling within him? Nobody else throughout history, as far as records showed, had ever seen these things' true form... Ares would be a pioneer in that regard and if he gave a sufficient description then the Transmit lady could create a diagram that would benefit all of Xasca... Or terrify them more than they already were! It was bad enough the steppers caused paranoia but if they turned out to be some unholy and Lovecraftian creature then wouldn't that just make it worse? Sure people feared the unknown but knowing the truth didn't always make it better... Ares could just not share the info if it was traumatising but he refused to be the only that suffered damnit!... Or maybe he was just overthinking things? Maybe they really were skeletons and that one's face had just been wind-whipped full of random crap? The hide and fur of dead monsters swung around in the midst of a sandstorm until it landed on the stepper's face wasn't an impossibility! Or maybe it was simply the skeleton of a dead animal of some sort but its head had yet to deteriorate? So many possibilities and only one way to find out which one was ultimately correct...
Ares chewed on his lip as he contemplated while everyone else returned to the either the city, to go and hide in fear and try to calm down, or back to the caravan so they could go on the journey as was planned. The latter were made of sterner stuff but it was understandable why some people would refuse to leave Xasca right now. An attack right outside the gate was rare and could be seen as a terrible omen for the journey to come. Of course they could also just be scared and that was also entirely reasonable. For a mortal even a single stepper was instantaneous and unavoidable death so nearly thirty of them showing up would leave quit the impression. Loudmouth and Fellahin lady seemed unperturbed for the most part, though, and were ready to depart. Such an occurrence was rare so the chances of it happening again were lower than a limbo bar a baby just crawled under... Though it was worth remembering that, in that regard, Ares was the limbo champion nineteen years running and there were no such thing as 'low odds' when he was around. Anyway, it was expected that the rest of the journey would be a breeze in comparison to this. If this could be handled without loss of life then the normal stuff that appeared would fold under the combined might of this cultivator trio. The loudmouth did seem interested in Ares now, and wanted to ask him some questions, but Ares was standing in the middle of nowhere and looking at the floor while... Counting to ten over and over again? Or at least he was trying to... His countdown... Or count-up, rather, was halting around the seven, eight, and nine second mark and resetting repeatedly. He was clearly delaying whatever it was he was considering doing and having his own dilemma right now so loudmouth didn't bother him and started making his own preparations for the journey. It was a long enough trip he could ask away later, after all.
As for Ares, he was trying his best to activate Omniscience! He kept faltering though because he had a bad feeling he wasn't going to like what he saw. Sure the krakyrn was bad, and the weasels were unnatural and uncanny, but this was going to actually be disgusting and he knew it! The revulsion in his gut was already tempting him to throw up and he hadn't even seen the damn monsters yet! If the rumours about the monster the Fellahin Juggernaut fought over in the west, that forced her to retreat, were true then aliens did exist in this cursed desert! Who's to say these terrible things weren't also aliens?! If Ares had just punched an alien lifeform in the mouth and coated his hand in its hideous features he would actually be tempted to cut the damn thing off and regrow it like a lizard! He would be without a second hand for weeks, maybe even months, but it would be worth it to cleanse the filth! Eight, nine... Nine and a half.... Ah fuck it! Ten! Omniscience!
BLEUGH
... It didn't need to be stated but, based on his response to whatever it was he was seeing, it appeared the alien theory was correct...
BLEUGHHHHHH
Spot on, even, like finding a needle in a haystack and then hitting a bullseye with it from a hundred feet away levels of accurate... Whatever these things were, they were clearly not pleasant to look at...