"And don't come back!" Tom Tom was more than happy to shoo away Ares so that he could have some alone time. He was realising now that it was in his best interest to come up with plenty of riddles while Ares gone and stockpile them for whenever the speed demon returned so he could keep up with him. He was deeply embarrassed every single time he had to resort to a pun instead of an actual riddle and so he wasn't going to be getting much sleep tonight in order to prevent such a thing, Tom Tom reckoned. Still, even if only a clone, he was still a respectably strong monster and could easily hack an overnight riddle generation session. Plus, if nothing else, he had entertainment in the form of other adventurers dying in gruesome ways! He'd sit back with some popcorn and spectate others while he wracked his brain for brain teasers.
As for Ares, he left through the hub area but took a moment to pause and check it out again. It looked like the room was about, give or take, a quarter lit up now? It was hard to tell beyond the veil of darkness but that seemed about right. He didn't really grasp the sheer scale of it before but now it was much clearer and he was certain this time of its rough scale. The more Ares unveiled the more he got the feeling that something was definitely lurking back there although whether it was that rumoured hallway / darkness creeping monster or not was another matter entirely. Whatever it was, though, Ares felt like it was strong and warranted caution in dealing with it. It hardly seemed fair that the better he did the more he enabled this thing to be free! Still, it was probably a final challenge of some sort for clearing 99% of the Riddlemyd and was pretty unavoidable if Ares had to take a guess. There was no way Tom Tom didn't know about this and if he wasn't saying anything then it was probably normal.
Ares fully left the Riddlemyd and kissed his teeth when he caught sight of the welcoming party awaiting his return. "Tsk, you guys again? Whatever, I'll do this as many times as it takes! Esoteric Compression!" Ares let loose a blast of heavy pressure to incapacitate the scavengers who'd foolishly returned for round two. Evidently they didn't get the message the first time around, or maybe they finally discovered who Ares was and wanted vengeance on him for capturing their pals yesterday out in the desert, but regardless they were trying to take him head on and failing miserably. They were basically ants to Ares so he swatted them down to the floor, exactly like last time, and pinned them to the ground to shame them in the exact same fashion. If anything this was more fun than killing them and Ares didn't mind regularly turning them into statues of shame for his own amusement. If they didn't understand the gap between them and him after this then they were truly the most stubborn people Ares had ever met! Ares didn't even bother using Quietus to shut them up because he was leaving anyway and didn't have to hear them complaining or making empty threats. If they could use magic to escape sooner then good for them, Ares had other business to attend to and they could flail around here all they wanted!
Ares headed towards the eastern edge of the encampment and stared at the desert, wondering where exactly he should head off to. There wasn't exactly a direct pathway to riches in the east of Xasca but he didn't really want to get lost and have to spend the night in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't the end of the world if he did, he had the Scaled Insulator and could remain warm throughout the freezing night regardless, he'd just rather sleep in that extremely comfy bed back in Oasis! All this to say that Ares figured it was in his best interest to ask around and see if he could garner any information... Although, unfortunately, the only people nearby were currently arguing fiercely with one another over shop prices...Oh well, might as well try! Ares walked over and tapped a burly man, red in the face as a tomato due to all his yelling, and begun querying him before even checking if he was in the mood to talk. If Ares waited for a chance to speak he would be here forever, and he knew it, so seizing this opportunity was the correct call! "Excuse me gentlemen... And whatever it is you are exactly..." Ares didn't quite know how to describe the brute but 'gentleman' was definitely wrong and he felt it needed to be said. "... I'm looking for directions to the east side of the desert where all the swarms of monsters reside. I hear there are some small checkpoints out there and I'm wondering if you could tell me how to find them."
... The brute stared at Ares with one eye raised and the other squinted, both of which were giving of the vibe that he viewed Ares as an idiot. He looked more confused now than he did before when the crafty merchant opposite him was trying to 'fool him' into giving him money so it was apparent to Ares that he'd just asked a silly question. Whether it was because the answer was obvious in some way or another, or because the brute had no intention of answering to begin with and Ares was a fool for even trying, he didn't know! Whatever the truth of the matter was, the brute gave a very simple and easy to understand response. "Fuck off!"
"Yes... But in which direction?" Ares pressed for an answer in a way that threw the brute for a loop. He seemed stunned and unsure how to respond but one of his fellow travel companions spoke up in his stead while his brain restarted.
"You make it real obvious you're not from around here..." The man sighed and shook his head. "Just go east and you can't possibly miss it. There's a giant wall that's been set up along the desert from beyond the Riddlemyd all the way back to Xasca city. Unless you're in the utmost north of Xasca you won't be able to walk by the wall without seeing it no matter how hard you try. It's seriously massive and can even be walked along the top of. Even if you were flying you would still see it clearly from up in the sky. Some people set up businesses there and everything..."
"Seriously?!" Ares was actually quite shocked about this because he'd heard nothing of the sort from anyone or anything else. No book he'd ever read nor anybody aboard the Federation he asked for information about Xasca from ever spoke of this wall. "It can't have been there for too long, surely?"
"Mhm, it was only finished recently. The C.O actually took interest in a very specific quarry over in the east and made a deal with Xasca to build a defensive wall, one that would prevent monsters leaking towards the main city, in exchange for full rights and access to that particular quarry. Ordinary folk like us don't know the specifics but it was something the fellahin and Drai decided on collectively. The C.O have plenty of metal pillar cultivators and they were all not being put to use anywhere else so the wall was built at record speeds. You wouldn't know about it, though, because word didn't exactly spread very far. Most people who come to Xasca never even bother to venture out that way, or to the west, so the number of people who go back home after a visit here and spread word of the new wall are few and far between. Plus it really is just primarily for extra safety, and doesn't change much else, so it wasn't news worthy enough to become a hot topic around the rest of the world. Word spreads slowly as is so wasting everyone's time on a relatively minor development like that, while things like the international were underway and those Ares and Mako guys were all the rage, felt somewhat pointless in comparison. If weapons were built atop the wall there might have been hubbub about potential war with a neighbouring country but that was never the goal so nobody cared. Still, it's helpful for anyone looking to pay the east a visit as it means you can't possibly miss the checkpoints anymore and don't need extensive knowledge of the area to get by... Oh and sorry about our big friend here..." The man nodded at the brute. "... He's been having a rough day. His gauntlets broke apart after punching a giant scorpion's shell too hard. It wasn't a scam weapon or anything, just a stroke of bad luck and he's taking out his anger on this poor merchant here who sold us the gauntlets originally." The tiny cloaked merchant was nodding feverously, causing the built up sweat on his head to flick down onto the sands beneath him. He was evidently sacred out of his mind because this brute was mean looking!
"I see. Thanks for the information... Tell you what, as payment, you can have this thing. God knows I don't want it clogging up my free space... Just knowing I have it in my possession is enough to give me the creeps..." Ares took the to sky with Voidwalk, blowing the minds of the cultivators he was just talking to, and then doubled down on shock value by dumping the gaping cobra corpse in front of everyone. There was a very brief panic, because the teeth were still wriggling around a bit, but the scare died down quick when the lack of a head caught on amongst spectators. Ares had already vanished by the time everyone looked up but, if nothing else, the brute looked a lot happier now that a convenient revenue source had almost literally dropped on his head. Gaping cobras were worth a decent amount! Roughly two to the three high grade depending on the state of their corpse! That was more than a lot of people saw around here across the entire span of their time in the Riddlemyd altogether! The brute was far too late to apologise but he waved goodbye at the sunset and muttered 'goodbye tiny friend' with a small smile before boldly picking up the cobra by the teeth and hauling it away over his shoulder.
"Ha, goodbye big guy." Ares was already at least a mile away but his divine sense picked up the whisper on the wind and he responded to no one in particular as he blew a path through the desert. He travelled for a while, roughly thirty minutes, but did eventually spot something on the horizon...
A war?
Well there was definitely a chalk grey wall expanding ever horizontally, to the point Ares couldn't see either end of it, but his attention was caught on a swarm of scarabs assailing one particular point that looked to be a checkpoint. A pretty big one too if the number of people gathered around it were any indication. It looked to be roughly the same size as the Riddlemyd settlement and that was saying something as there were likely multiple checkpoints along this wall. Ares had probably just stumbled across the biggest one of them all accidentally. This all raised some questions in his mind though. Were attacks like the one happening now common and constant? Was it just happening here and nowhere else along the wall or were other places being attacked? Was there something going on down there that attracted the bugs? Well... There was only one way to find out so Ares figured he would prevent the cultivators on the ground from becoming bug food and go lend them a hand. Fortunately large scale engagements like this were where he shone the most and, better yet, nothing here seemed particularly strong. The leader of the scarabs was about the size of a house, which was considerable, but the cultivation base was lacking and Ares felt like he could wipe the floor with this thing in his sleep, never mid the smaller ones. The leader was barely even as strong as the gaping cobra and the only reason Ares took a while to kill that was because he didn't want to touch the damn thing at all! This scarab was easy pickings and, from there, the army would fall like dominoes with a push from Ares' destruction magic. This long drawn out defensive battle the cultivators at the wall were fighting would be ended in one fell swoop and then Ares could get some answers!
Ares took to a higher position in the skies, so that he could creep over the scrab king without it noticing his presence, before taking out his scythe. He would have used a spear, as they were easier to chuck at longer ranges, but he didn't really have any high quality ones and so Ares figured he might as well take this opportunity to practice throwing a scythe instead. This was actually rather difficult! He had to take into account how many spins it would make before it connected with the scarab and dragged it down to the sands below, all the while keeping the wind direction and speed, as well as the movement of the scarab itself, in the back of his mind. Tricky calculations! Thankfully, though, the Celestial Prisms were doing their thing and making Ares' life easier via his Omniscience. The complexities of anything regarding gravity and wind affecting the flight trajectory of his scythe after it was tossed was all already laid bare to Ares and he could course correct with telekinesis even if things deviated by a few centimetres. Long story short, as long as he could predict the scarab's movements, Ares was free to effectively kill it in one shot like a smiting directly from the heavens! The scarab king would never see it coming and neither would any of is loyal followers. They would be marching along and suddenly hear the dying screech of their leader as it crashed out of the sky after a single, lethal, precise shot took it down.
Ares had the patience of a trained sniper as he held the scythe aloft and waited with his breath held. The scarab king was slowly swaying side to side as it hovered above the wreckage and carnage of its underlings assaulting everything with a pulse. Death and destruction were Ares' forte but the scarab king was giving it a real college try and doing a pretty decent job of it as fires had been started amongst crates and wares left out in the open and the situation was deteriorating rapidly form the human's perspective. Still, in this moment of destructive revelry, as the king sat above the mayhem its legions were responsible for, out of the skies came a piercing blade, rotating tens of times with every meter it descended. The scythe had been thrown and it was brushing past the clouds, audibly cleaving every ounce of reality in its path as it landed perfectly on the scarab's skull and dug deep into its cranium with the bladed tip.
SKKKKKKKKKKKKKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
A ghastly screech from a wounded monster drew the attention of every living thing towards its falling carcass as it crash landed directly on top of the wall and slid along it, tearing up the stone and metal until it grinded to a halt. Its pierced head raised a few inches and glared fiercely at anyone who happened to have watched this lowest moment of its life from up close but that head was soon blasted straight back down into the wall again when a mysterious figure landed from the heavens above directly atop the bottom tip of the scythe. The scarab king's head exploded into bloody pieces and Ares was left standing tall above its corpse with elegance as he raised his arms to the sky and lent his chest partially back. During his dive to catch up with the scythe earlier he'd let loose a hail of Shock Beads that were drifting through the sky and bidding the scarab army a warm welcome to Ares' world by glowing right beside them with boundless energy.
"Chaos Reigns!" Ares let loose his monstrous power and behind his expressive stance atop the king's corpse a cascade of rumbling explosions lit up the battlefield one by one. They were positioned such that they formed a golden red-carpet, a runway of opulence and splendid lights that split down the middle as it lead right towards the conductor of death himself atop his podium. There was no Grand Annihilation here but there was most certainly a grand entrance that bedazzled all and struck fear into the hearts of the bugs masquerading as warriors against the weak. They rapidly understood their place in the hierarchy of life and scattered every which way upon witnessing their brethren's demise but so many lives had already been lost that this was something they'd probably never recover from. Thousands of dead bug carcasses were scattered across the desert, soon to be stepper food or buried underneath the shifting sands when next the winds picked up. Still, the couple hundred scrabs that remained weren't exactly free to live out the rest of their life in hiding because Ares wasn't permitting them to leave without further casualties. He leant backwards off the dead scarab king and dived once more, landing on the floor at the base of the wall as he strolled forwards while summoning the first of many Perish Wheels. He was going to use these fleeing opponents as target practice. If they lived, they could consider themselves lucky. If they died, that was simply their fate. Ares didn't much chare either way because there was one thing he was certain of, he'd instilled a deep enough fear into these things that they would never bother humanity ever again. Once bitten twice shy and, though Ares was an exception, there was no way the bugs could possibly know that he alone was one of the few people in Sheryashka worth fearing to that degree. This was a harsh lesson they'd never forget about messing with civilisation and it wasn't even over yet as the rain of Perish Wheels begun descending upon their hordes one by one.
Perhaps Ares was simply enjoying the ability to set off large explosions again now that he was outside the Riddlemyd, and had the space to, but he truly went all in with the Perish Wheels and racked up an impressive kill count, demolishing upwards of 95-97% of the bugs' forces before he could no longer see any in the immediate vicinity. There were still some on the horizon, and he could chase them down with Voidwalk if he was feeling like a cruel and merciless God, but he didn't care that much and what kind of image would he leave in the minds of everyone here if he went around chasing bugs? He still had his own pride and reputation to think about so letting them scurry away with their tails between their legs was fine. They wouldn't be returning ever again regardless. Ares had other things he wanted to do here and wasting his time killing things that didn't benefit him was silly. Their souls for the Converter barely even budged the needle so there really wasn't anything to gain. Instead, Ares Voidwalked over to the gathered wall-guards, and a few adventurers / fellahin who happened to be nearby, and looked everyone once over. He was walking through the air with his arms neatly folded behind his back so he have off the air of a wise and experienced master but it clashed with his younger look somewhat. It made everyone aware they were talking to a very real prodigy here and that was in Ares favour as he could ask questions unimpeded. Plus the name 'Ares' was well enough known in Xasca now, especially amongst anyone in an official position or those in clans, so he needed no introduction... Well that previous group he asked for directions from didn't know him but that was whatever... The major point was that rumours about Ares were not greatly exaggerated in the slightest and people who saw him do work here today could fully understand how he created that massive desert nuke yesterday and created ripples in cultivation society basically overnight alongside Mako. He was a real monster! Teh scarab army they were struggling to fend off not even a minute ago had been routed thoroughly in the blink of an eye... Truly impressive! Ares ignored their awe, however, and singled out the person with the highest cultivation here and landed in front of them. It was time to get answers because this situation definitely didn't look normal!