Predictably this was going to be a relatively easy fight compared to others Ares had participated in as of late. Where these three stronger than Sandy? No. The Anubis? No. The Qwaker even? Maybe? Just about. If these three had to fight that monster they'd eventually win out in the end, that was Ares' guess, they seemed just about competent enough to do it after a gruelling battle. That was respectable for ordinary cultivators, though, and the number of people in Xasca who could pull off something like that with at most three people in their group was not a long list. Lilly's group from before wouldn't be able to do it, for instance, and their group was even larger than this trio's. Even still, to Ares at least, they were effectively nothing more than talkative, excluding Bonnie, ants. He wasn't going to make the mistake of underestimating them, as they'd shown him the same courtesy even prior to knowing who he was, but this fight was going to wrap up pretty soon after it started Ares guessed.
Speaking of starting the fight, it seemed like Ronnie was letting out his frustration at having been silenced by Donnie and was the first to launch an attack. More Fireballs!... That was it. Ares was a little disappointed so he wanted to make it clear to this guy that more effort was needed to even begin phasing him. Though there were about ten Fireballs all spawning around Ares in a 360 degree entrapment, he simply activated annihilation enhancement and stood still, refusing to budge even an inch in the face of fiery magic that would force a desperate reaction out of most other cultivators. All ten Fireballs closed in on Ares, covering him head to toe in a bright orange hue and causing his visage to flicker amidst the sweltering heat. His body was eventually swallowed up by the magic but shortly after became visible again when every single Fireball shot out in reverse in random directions and scattered across the desert. Ares had simultaneously deflected every single Fireball striking his body at different points and timings with pressure. Regardless of how much understanding a person had of pressure, so long as they'd at least touched upon the basics, it was immediately understandable how much of a menace Ares was off the back of this one move alone. There were cultivators who'd lived for millions of years who couldn't even deflect two of those fireballs, let alone all ten, without so much as lifting a finger. Donnie was arguably the member of this trio who was most knowledgeable about pressure and he'd dabbled in the stuff for a while now. He'd heard news about the pagoda and even considered chasing it down to give it a go and see how far he could make it. He'd heard that Ares had conquered the unconquerable in Red Sun a while back, though, and this one display of pressure mastery was enough of an indication that Donnie wouldn't have gotten anywhere near to completing the trials as he was currently. If this was the level of pressure manipulation needed to sit on the pagoda throne then Donnie was still an eternity away from even having the right to shine Ares' shoes let alone challenge him to a pressure slinging match. He also realised just how screwed he and his kin were because Ares could swat them all like flies with pressure alone, never mind his magic! He cursed his luck but put up his dukes anyway because if losing was inevitable then he ight as well go out fighting if nothing else!
Tsk
Ares wasn't sure if Bonnie had just cast an art quite literally named 'Tsk' or if she was capable of casting arts without chanting the full name properly but, either way, Donnie was clad in a silver aura as he stepped forward and so it seemed like Bonnie's supportive capabilities hadn't been too hampered by her fall earlier. She was limping around, and couldn't even beat a simple giant scorpion in a fight in her current condition, but casting magic was still in the cards at least so the trio's three vs one tactics were going to be in full swing regardless of her injury. As for what her magic was doing, it seemed like simple enhancement magic. It was a similar effect to what learning pressure enhancement would do for a person but this could be used in combination with pressure enhancement to really send a person's physical capabilities to the moon though, unfortunately, none of the trio could use pressure enhancement so it would just be this magic by itself. Donnie was decently strong now and Ronnie was preparing to cast stronger magic than last time so Ares was going to have to work at least a little to knock these guys out and take their stuff. Ares had already checked their spatial rings with Omniscience, as they weren't strong enough to prevent him from doing so, and it seemed like every treasure they owned was either being wielded right now in combat or was tucked away inside the caravan making it nice and easy for Ares to sort through his spoils of war after he was done here. That caravan was a veritable treasure trove and Ares didn't want to waste much more time wondering what was in it when he could be done with these and simply go check so he cracked his knuckles and stepped forth to have a boxing match with Donnie fair and square... Kinda. He was still stronger than the guy thanks to his annihilation enhancement, and a single well placed punch might just win him the fight i, one fell swoop, but this was as 'fair' as Ares was willing to make it. Plus Donnie had two supporting cultivators on the side lines so that evened things out a bit. Ares was already going easy enough on the guy as is and any more would just be insulting without really changing the inevitable outcome anyway. Still, this was yet another chance for good practice which was Ares' modus operandi when fighting weaker opponents... And sometimes stronger opponents too but the context of the situation mattered! One was out of necessity while the other was to make sure his time wasn't being wasted and this was the latter. Ares had made enough progress with the scythe as of late to try something else and throwing his fists around was something he'd not done in quite some time so he would indulge himself in flesh to flesh violence for a few minutes. Ares probably would have run this trio over with sheer power if it weren't for the fact that Donnie was looking to throw down as well as this was too perfect a situation to not oblige.
Ares ducked under a Fireball from his left, one packing a lot more heat than the ones prior and was actually capable of posing a minor threat, while advancing forward and planting his foot in the sand. He anchored himself to the desert and launched a punch with all his might while Donnie replied in kind and chanted "Mighty Strikes." This was another old art and, given it came under the bare fist aspect, what it did was fairly self-explanatory and didn't really need an introduction. It made the user hit harder... That was it! Simple but effective and worth investing in for just about any martial artist. It could also technically be used to enhance legs as well, which was pretty great for the aspect that focused on that, so it was just an all around good art with no risk but a decent reward. Donnie was at the 5th stage of aspect assimilation, not bloodline awakening because he didn't have a bloodline at all, and was supported by both Mighty Strikes and Bonnie's support pillar magic. He was a force to be reckoned with but Ares didn't back down because he refused to believe it could be a threat to him and, when the two fists collided, he was proven correct as Donnie was sent skidding backwards through the sand with a bruised fist. His hand was black and blue all over and some of the bones in his fist were definitely coming close to breaking.
Donnie was going to have to change his approach so he nodded at Bonnie and she kissed her teeth again, swapping her current supportive magic to another than made Donnie glow red instead of silver this time. Support pillar magic could be stacked on top of one another to have multiple arts running at once but theses specific arts she was casting must have been different... Not that Ares knew because the name of the arts were being obscured by her teeth kissing! Anyway, what this art did was pretty discernible at a glance as every single one of Donnie's movements were faster now. Every crick of his neck, every step he took, and every rise and fall of his chest were sped up as though time was moving at 1.2 times speed give or take. It could be hard to spot if you weren't paying attention but in the middle of combat it was a change that made the opponent wary. This single art would throw off timing in a number of different scenarios so it was tricky for reasons other than just simply making the foe faster. It was a wise choice to use this against Ares as power wasn't the option that was going to see the trio through here so trickery, speed, and deception was the way forward in their eyes. They seemed convinced of this as Bonnie was now directing her 'tsks' at Ronnie instead so it looked like she was done providing Donnie with aid for the time being as there was only so much he could do. If this fight was going to be won it had to be done through magic attacks catching Ares off guard while he was distracted with Donnie and not the reverse. It was a neat little idea these three had, as Ronnie and Donnie could swap roles and threat levels at the drop of a hat depending on the foe and what approach was better off but, when it came right down to it, Ares was Ares and such a thing didn't even register on his danger radar.
What Ares had to do didn't change so he walked towards Donnie and eventually broke out into a light run. Fireballs appeared all around him like rain drops in a thunder storm, and it really hit home that Ronnie was a very capable arts caster when he was going all out with Bonnie's support, but Ares kept running regardless. Fifty Fireballs? Roughly? That was Ares guess after having glanced at his surroundings with divine sense and Omniscience. Plus each of them were packing enough mana and power to blow up a horse-drawn carriage and leave nothing but a burning wreck behind so they commanded respect and acknowledgement unlike the ones Ares deflected before. Ares pressed on and swung his fist to cleave through three incoming Fireballs before ducking under a fourth and subsequently hopping over a fifth. Fiery detonations rocked the sands around him as he jabbed two more Fireballs in quick succession and deflected them off into the distance while finally closing the gap to Donnie and swiftly sidestepping a punch. From here, Ares uppercut Donnie in the jaw and ducked instead of pressing the advantage to avoid yet another Fireball that came blazing past his head. A stream of five or six more Fireballs came barreling towards Ares from multiple different directions but he spun like a top, swatting them away and even blowing away the last two with a spin kick into a flip kick for the extra style points. As he landed, Donnie came charging in with an attempt at a low blow to his stomach but Ares caught the fist, spun Donnie around, and grabbed the back of his head before forcing him to smack face first into a Fireball.
Donnie was blasted away with small burns on his face while Ares stuck to his position and fended off the seemingly never ending swarm of Fireballs by weaving in and out of their flight path. Sometimes Ares was able to even redirect the Fireballs by carefully curving his palm around them and this little technique allowed him to force the magic assailing him to turn against itself. Fireballs were crashing into other fireballs and no progress was being made by the trio in overcoming this monster as Ares had yet to get hit by literally anything up until now... At least, that was true up until Ares went to slap another Fireball out of the air but was instead met head on by Donnie who he thought was still lying on the floor behind him in a burning pile. As it turned out, Ronnie was capable of swapping Donnie with his magic at any point in time so any of the Fireballs currently assaulting Ares could become Donnie. This added an interesting enough layer of challenge to the fight that Ares was ok with letting it go on a bit longer. Ares took the Donnie super punch head on and was struck in the chest directly. Ares, much like Donnie earlier, skidded backwards through the desert sand and eventually came to a halt while dusting off his dented chest. Between his annihilation enhancement and Enyo's thin barriers on his flesh he was able to take the hit like a champ even though he was slightly injured as a result. Credit where credit was due, a hit was a hit and they'd managed to take him by surprise while he was devoting his attention elsewhere. In fact, they'd used his own trick against him! Ares had swapped places with the nothingness eagle earlier to launch a surprise attack and they were now doing essentially the same thing with the fire magic. It was clever enough and Ares could see why they were hard to beat and / or chase if they had this much freedom to swap places at their disposal.
All that being said, however, Ares wasn't going to ignore this magic and make life easy so he started using telekinesis to try and screw over this game plan and curb their fun. Whenever Ares detected a highly specific mana stream, connecting Donnie to a Fireball so they could swap places with one another, Ares would use telekinesis on that exact Fireball and sent it flying elsewhere to screw with this combo ad make it irrelevant. This resulted in Donnie ending up in weird places that made no sense and benefitted no one, as the Fireball he swapped with was sent careening off into the distance where he couldn't be helpful, but there was effectively nothing the trio could do about this annoying set back. It was weird that someone even had the tools to beat the Fireball swapping in this manner to begin so there was no way the trio had a back up plan to deal with this situation! For the most part, most people wouldn't be able to follow the mana strands connecting the swap-ee and the magic that quickly or even really see them to begin with without having to sit around and use divine sense. To do it mid combat, and track everything perfectly without missing a beat, just went to show how great Omniscience was. Ronnie even tried to mix things up and fake Ares out by redirecting the flow of mana to multiple Fireballs in a row before finally settling on one but Omniscience wasn't playing around and such a thing would never realistically work against a treasure this powerful. It was a good attempt, considering it was so hastily put together to deal with an unforeseen problem, but there was a limit to what could feasibly be done against someone of Ares' calibre wielding a weapon like the Celestial Prisms.
Donnie gave up on this strategy and went back to throwing himself aimlessly at Ares the good old fashioned way, by running up to him with his own two legs instead of taking the Fireball express, because he was still the bait right now. Perhaps Ronnie could try another kind of magic and who knows? Maybe Ares would have a stroke, freeze up, and get blasted into smithereens by Ronnie's magic or something equally fortuitous along those lines! Unfortunately that was very much not the case as Ares was treating Donnie like a fly and barely even paying him any attention. Donnie was the palate cleanser between rounds of Fireballs and whenever Ares had a two second break from the magic he would reach a single hand over to deal with Donnie by either pushing him away, slapping him across the face, or punching him in a spot that was supposed to be guarded. Ares' fist had a away of coiling around guards and blocks that was incredibly jarring for the defending individual. It almost seemed more prudent to try and strike the incoming fist than block it at this point because of how unpredictable its path was whenever it was aiming to strike Donnie. Of course this was a terrible idea and when Donnie did try it he was immediately punished with an excruciatingly painful punch to the cranium. Ares had really went all out in punishing that dumb decision and his fist came speeding in like a freight train from the side, rocking Donnie's world and flooring him.
Donnie was quite literally punched down into a seated position on the floor and his head was spinning as blood leaked out of his ear. Luckily for him the Fireball onslaught hadn't quite finished yet so Ares was too distracted to deal him a final blow but Donnie was going to find it hard to stand up again now that the his balance was shot to hell after sustaining an injury to his ear. He did try to get up and keep fighting, he really did, but he had it rough not just due to the injury but also due to terrain woes as sand was not a sturdy surface to gain a solid footing on. Especially not near a hill incline. Donnie was temporarily out for the count until he could figure out how to stand again so now it was just Ares, the remaining Fireballs, and whatever other magic Ronnie had in store.
'Flamethrower'. That was what Ares heard Ronnie chant while he was busy flicking away the last few Fireballs. Ares had expected something greater but Ronnie seemed like the type of cultivator to focus on one or two weaker spells and really up their level instead of learning a variety of widely usable arts. Ronnie might have been one of the best Fireball and Flamethrower users in Sheryashka but, at the end of the day, lacking in versatility was a huge problem that would come back to bite him in the ass against a stronger opponent like Ares. Sure the repeated flame geysers spawning in random locations and jetting out burning hellfire was actually a rather strong attack, and Ares was currently dodging criss crossing burning lasers from every which direction, but it was still within the limits of what Ares expected from these lot and could deal with without breaking a sweat. The desert was starting to look like a secret base with a laser-guarded room, the kind you would find in a spy thriller in which the infiltrator would have to carefully navigate so as not to set off an alarm, but instead of lasers there were thick and deadly fire beams. Ares was the expert spy in this case, ducking, leaping, and diving his way through the deathly traps with finesse but he wasn't being stretched thin at all and made his way to Ronnie in one piece pretty much unharmed in about ten seconds. He'd taken one punch this entire fight and it had done essentially nothing to him so the win was very obviously going to be his.
Ares figured he only needed one person to be conscious, in order to get answers to his questions, and it was never going to be the teeth kisser or the guy who could never shut his trap so Ares swiftly chopped Ronnie's nerves to knock him out, dashed behind him, and did the same to Bonnie who tried to scratch Ares in the process. She failed and was floored alongside her brother and now the trio had been sedated through force and the fight was over with only Donnie still awake. These guys were strong in their own right but Ares made them look like chumps in comparison to himself, that was jsut how things worked in this cultivation world. Ares rounded up the trio with some spare rope he had lying around in his Primordial Blade and tied them up so they couldn't flee if he left them out in the open while he checked the caravan. That would come after, though, as right now he wanted answers about the scavengers and what they were up to. First came the interrogation, then came the treasures! Ares was admittedly more excited for the latter of the two, as there were bound to be plenty, but he had to be patient and do the unfun part before getting to the goodies. Actually, he could round up the three that were currently being used by the trio to defend themselves... Not that they'd real gotten a chance to use any of them before getting wiped out. Still, they were on their persons currently and Ares wasn't going to say no to free stuff! Most of this would likely end up going to Fate, as she collected treasures like no other and had a use for just about every treasure under the sun, but Ares was hoping he might find some that other people could appreciate as well! In particular, there was a gourd type treasure hanging off Donnie's waist that hadn't been used in this fight and Ares knew a justice-oriented biker who might be happy to have this! If Ares could exchange that gourd treasure with Deimos for a temporary rental of his bike then that was highly worth it! Unless the gourd was actually a really strong treasure then Ares would be happy to conduct a trade with his in law! He could let Blo Blo drive the bike like she always wanted to as well as take the wives out for a ride on it and have a blast cruising under the night sky. Deimos was hard to convince, and had turned Ares down on multiple occasions when it came to the bike, but he would have a difficult time turning down a gourd treasure if it suited him so Ares was already thanking his lucky stars as this haul of treasures was looking to be promising!
First, these three treasures, then the questioning, and finally the caravan of goodies. After that, home, sleep, meeting with the Fellahin the next day, the black market and mutated stepper the day after, and then getting his DNA back from the Riddlemyd. From there only a few miscellaneous tasks remained, like exploring a bit more of the east, clearing out the west of dangerous monsters and scavengers, and finishing up the Riddlemyd... That about summed up all the key points, as far as Ares could remember. It was a long list but time would fly by and he would be done with Xasca after everything on the list was struck off. From there he was planning on heading back home but since when did his plans ever line up with reality? He already had a gut feeling something was happening over in Isasz that he was going to get roped into but he would have to wait and see how that came to be before committing to anything. He wasn't going to go to Isasz unless there was a damn good reason for it!... Well, there was one, and one he would recognise instantly upon entering the west side of Xasca as it would hit him like a truck. It would be a feeling similar to that of when he entered Baja forest and felt something calling out to him... There was more than one Celestial Cluster treasure hidden in Sheryashka and hearing the call of another coming from Isasz was a pretty damn good reason to go and pay it a visit so, unfortunately for Ares, his trip home was going to be delayed a little longer whether he liked it or not. There was no way he could pass up on a treasure if it was at the level of the Prisms, that was just lunacy! Still, he didn't know about this right now and ignorance was bliss! Digging through treasures was also a kind of bliss so he wasted no more time standing around idly and picked up the three treasures before him to give them all a once over and see what he was working with!