"'Scuse me! Coming through! Not interested in what you're selling!" Ares sped along through the path he used to enter the worm and narrowly avoided multiple teeth looking to sink themselves into his flesh. Ares was making off like a bandit, though he technically was a bandit at one point in time so it was somewhat fitting, and had no goal in mind other than to run as far and as fast as his legs could carry him. He got the goods and was looking to get out while the going was good. The frog and the flag aided him in his daring escape, each swatting away a few fangs here and there when they were able to, but there was a seriously large number of teeth chasing after Ares right now. On the way in he methodically stopped at every set of teeth and took them out to prevent this very scenario. Now, however, he had upwards of about forty of them hot on his heels and constantly extending towards his legs to try and impale him. If such a thing were to happen Ares would get dogpiled and dilacerated like a crustacean in a shoal of piranhas.
During his retreat Ares came across a small acid pool back where he accidentally sliced open the worm's insides and he was incredibly grateful for his foresight on this matter. If he kept hacking away carelessly back then he would have flooded the area and needed to swim through a sea of acid but thankfully he had other options to get him through this. He put the frog on his shoulder and had the flag hover directly in front him horizontally. A quick hop, and a small bit of fumbling later, and Ares was riding around on his flying war aura flag, keeping himself steady with pressure locking him in place and nullifying his poor balance. The teeth nearly caught up to him while he was messing around but now he was zooming atop his flag and couldn't be caught no matter how hard the fangs tried. Ares sped through he worm and eventually shot out of its mouth like a rocket. Actually, Ares wouldn't have even known he was outside the worm at all if it weren't for his Omniscience, as the monster's camouflage was way too impressive, but Ares was relieved to not become worm food either way. He activated Voidwalk and left the worm in the dust, leaving it to get lost in its own head and devise methods of beating Ares for good in the upcoming hallways. New attacks, new tools, and new approaches to tackling him were all swirling around inside Wormy's brain as he skulked away and seeped into the walls to go look for prey on the lower Riddlemyd floors. In doing so, Wormy came across a bunch of tiny glass balls hidden within the walls but it had been seeing them a lot lately and figured it wasn't a big deal and just ignored them. It had even eaten a few here and there but they were a bit spicy and he didn't like them so now he just swam around them to head to his destination. As for what those balls were exactly... That would become clear sooner or later...
About half a minute later, Ares met up with a patiently waiting Aejaz and the two of them quickly ducked into the next room where they were guaranteed to be safe from harm unless the worm had a death wish. Tom Tom was the sphinx supreme, annihilator of all worm kind, and would obliterate Wormy if he ever dared rear his head in his regal presence!... And he was also oddly silent right about now. Ares and Aejaz had waltzed on up to him and waited for him to speak, as this appeared to be a riddle room based on the layout of it, but Tom Tom was just returning the two plain stares he was receiving. Not a single quip or meow in sight, his lips were seemingly sealed. "Tom Tom? You there buddy?" Ares tried starting the conversation but apparently Tom Tom was giving him the cold shoulder and silent treatment. "Helloo〜oooo? Anyone home? Has the Tom Tom machine broken? I demand you dispense riddles, riddle dispenser!" Alas, Ares' request fell on deaf and fluffy ears as Tom Tom simply stared at him like he was some kind of idiot. Aejaz also tried to bribe Tom Tom into speaking by offering him some fish but the sphinx adamantly refused to budge and not even a tremble of his lips could be spotted after several minutes of coercing. Ares and Aejaz were left completely in the dark on this one and it was a rather unique riddle because it took the concept of language trickery and logic obfuscation and chucked it all out the window. There was no language involved in this riddle at all! It was being conveyed in a way that Ares hadn't seen before so this one would require some serious thought.
Ares took a deep breath and looked his brother in the eye. "I hate that I'm having to ask you this... But do you have any ideas? Like, I mean, you know, good ones."
"Oh!" Aejaz planted his right fist on his left palm as though he'd had some kind of eureka moment. "Maybe this is like one of those locked rooms that only opens up when one of us dies!"
"Ok, first of all, I said good ideas. Second of all, it better not be that kind of room! You know as well as I do who'd win in a real fight! Though I also think you know full well I would just commit suicide because I'm a revenant so riddle me this, brother, what is the purpose of your suggestion? What manner of pyramid-scheming are you trying to pull here to get your brother killed?! Forget about your body and combat techniques, perhaps I need to train that dopey brain of yours instead!" Ares leapt at Aejaz and gave him a noogie until the idiot's scalp felt like it was burning. Satisfied with his brother's pleading and repentance, Ares eventually went back to contemplating the odd nature of this riddle and he found himself having to start from basics and work his way to the answer piece by piece.
"Alright... What is a riddle?... One big trick question? Sometimes... But it would be more accurate to call it a pursuit of an obvious truth hidden behind unnecessarily complex phrasing and structuring... Phrasing, phrasing... The most common type of riddle is a 'what am I?' type... And the next after that would probably be the 'how is this extremely specific and bizarre situation plausible?' type. This silent treatment riddle can't be the latter of those two types because those riddles are usually longer and the context is extremely important to figuring out the answer. There's no way in this room to understand the context of a long, non-verbally stated, riddle like that without even a single hint so this is probably a 'what am I?' riddle... Tsk" Ares slapped his forehead because the answer was pretty obvious now that he'd gotten this far into it and narrowed down the possibilities. He walked back over to Tom Tom and begrudgingly spoke a single word that, despite being painfully obvious, had eluded him up until now. A word he'd even mentioned a few times to himself in passing already while he was thinking earlier. "The answer is silence."
A silent 'what am I?' riddle! A question that is technically impossible to ask if Tom Tom wanted to be true to the riddle itself so he had to make the trial taker figure it out themselves by piecing the logic together. Heck even now Tom Tom wasn't saying 'correct' like he usually did, he was silently nodding as the pathway to the next room opened up! "Ha, I respect the commitment to the riddle. Good one, kitty." Ares grinded Tom Tom's gears a little by calling him a cat and, though there was visible reaction in which Tom Tom scrunched his snarling face at Ares, he got away with it without having to put up the sphinx' complaints in return.
"Ah, wait, before I go I wanted to ask you something..." Ares stopped walking away and turned back to face Tom Tom once more. "... Though, now that I think about it, you probably aren't going to answer me inside this specific, completely silent room are you? Ok, never mind. I'll ask you in the next room along." Ares didn't know what the resource he plucked from the worm heart was so he was looking for either Tom Tom or Dominus to kindly fill him in. Dominus was still sleeping like a log so Ares preferred not waking him if he could avoid it as he never knew when he might need to swap places with him again and it was better for Dominus to conserve energy in that regard... Though having just called Tom Tom a cat was, in hindsight, not a good idea in that case as he might be a bit more reluctant to spill the beans now... Oh well, knowing him he'd just make Ares do an extra challenge in the next room to get the answer to his question. He wouldn't withhold the information but he would make Ares fight for it, at least. It would be like a bonus reward for clearing a hidden level kinda deal. Of course this meant the chance of getting punished for failing in the next room was higher, because there would be a second challenge in store for him, but Ares wasn't too worried because there was really no punishment he'd seen so far that could be an issue for him.
Regardless, Ares really wanted answers because he resource he stole... It was highly unusual compared to any other he'd ever seen! The closest comparison Ares could think of would be the can-do bamboo because this resource was also a living creature!... Kinda... 'Living' was perhaps a bit of a stretch...
The resource was a glass perfume bottle, that part was simple, but it didn't contain any liquid. Rather, instead of liquid, it held within it, like some sort of zoo display, a tiny ghost! The ghost looked eerily similar to a miniature Appa so it was a rather cute little fella and Ares was very nearly tempted to let it out and give it head pats. This funny ghost reminded him it had been far too long since he last saw his daughter but it was fine because he kept up to date with Appa via the letters he traded back and forth with the Legion sisters. Speaking of, the response to his last letter was taking a while so things must have gotten interesting over on their end. Ares wasn't going to pry! He said he wouldn't and therefore he really wouldn't! He could wait to find out more, he wasn't in any rush...
Well, not in that sense anyway. Right now, literally, Ares was in a rush to scurry down the hallway to the next challenge room because Wormy had returned in full force and was looking to digest Ares for real this time. God only knows what manner of weapons it had stored within its gob since last time, and was looking to batter Ares with once he stepped inside the worm again, but Ares didn't want to find out so he and Aejaz fled with Voidwalk and hurried to the next room. No doubt the worm would now try to find a way of getting faster to catch up with them but, for now at least, it was still possible to mostly ignore him. Wormy was persistent but thankfully too slow and bulky to be a real threat as is. Maybe he'd go and scour the Riddlemyd for some kind of tool he could use to speed up his chase but that was his problem as he had a limited time to figure it all out. Time was ticking and as soon as Ares cleared this Riddlemyd his days would be up as Ares' plan would finally come to fruition!
Ares and Aejaz wandered into the next room, after ditching Wormy, and this time Tom Tom was a lot more talkative... Although mainly because he was berating Ares for calling him a 'cat' over and over again as of late... Ares sat there and took the lecture for about thirty minutes straight but finally got a word in edgewise as he attempted to ask about this ghost in a glass he was lugging around. Tom Tom raised an eyebrow as he saw the resource, so it was probably something pretty decent, but shook his head instead of giving Ares the answer he was looking for. "This is a riddle room so let's do things this way. I'll give you a riddle, as per usual, and if you get it right I'll offer you a chance to double down. If you get both riddles right I will tell you what that ghost is and can do for you. If you choose not to partake in the second riddle you can still leave the room and advance but I won't offer you a chance to try again and you'll have to learn about that resource another way."
"And if I want to try the second riddle but get it wrong?"
"Then I'll give you more chances in the future but punish you each time you get it wrong. Basically I'm encouraging you to accept the challenge because win or lose I get to throw more riddles at you. The combat rooms aren't exactly slowing you down so this is the next best bet and I'm going all in on it! You're pretty near to the end of the Riddlemyd now anyway so I've gotta ramp up the difficulty and this is my ploy to block off your progress even if only temporarily."
Ares nodded. "I mean, you haven't exactly slowed me down thus far but who knows, maybe one of these riddles will be a real stumper? Go on then, let's hear it. Hit me ki..." Ares was going to rhyme 'hit me' with 'kitty' but he swerved away from that decision at the last moment lest he get another earful from this touchy sphinx.
Ahem
"There are two people standing at the bottom of a staircase. There are twenty steps and person A climbs half of them while person B follows along at a measured pace and climbs a quarter of them. At this point, however, both people stop and agree to race one another to the top of the staircase but it quickly becomes apparent that person B is much faster. Twice as fast, in fact. My first question to you is this; how many steps does it take for person B to catch up to person A?"
"Well if person B takes two steps every time person A takes one then the answer should be f..." Aejaz tried to spew out his inevitably incorrect guess but Ares heroically dove onto him like he was a live grenade and placed his palm squarely against his brother's mouth. Aejaz' mumbled hmmms and ahhhhs could not be considered a real answer so Tom Tom didn't count it and the riddle was still ongoing. Ares had to explain to Aejaz the mistake he very nearly made by declaring five steps as the answer because it was incorrect.
"Your logic is on point but you misunderstood the question. Person B climbs twice as fast, yes, but they aren't taking two steps at a time. They don't go from step five to step seven in one single step so the answer isn't five. You're right in thinking that person B catches up to person A on step fifteen exactly, that much is true, but it takes person B ten steps to get from step five to fifteen, not five! Person B just climbs every each individual step very fast, they still have to do all of the steps one by one!"
"Correct." Tom Tom nodded but kissed his teeth because he thought he very nearly got the brothers with that last one. It was a pretty simple question but also definitely one that could trip people up if they were too quick on the draw. Person B caught up with person A in the time it took A to take five steps so it was also possible to accidentally answer 'five' when taking into consideration the wrong perspective. Either way, both wrong comprehensions of the question would result in an incorrect answer and it would fool at least some people into failing the riddle. Put simply, person B climbed each step twice as fast, they didn't take two at a time. Plus person A only taking five steps before B caught up with them was irrelevant to the question asked so, though five seemed correct at an initial glance, the correct answer still ten! "Well then, I'm assuming you want the second half of the riddle too?"
"Please." Ares nodded while Aejaz was coming to terms with his definitively wrong answer from before. Usually Aejaz tried to worm his way out of wrong answers with semantics but this time all the stubbornness had been smacked right out of him.
Ahem
"During the race up the stairs, person B stumbles and trips due to how fast they were going. They slide back down to the eighth step while person A makes it to step sixteen unharmed. How many steps would it take person B to catch up to person A this time?"
"Hmmmm." Ares knew the obvious answer right off the bat. Sixteen. To work out the answer to this question all that needed to be done was to double the number of steps between person B and A. The equation was simple, and substituting in these new numbers in favour of the old ones was a cake walk, but that just made Ares all the more concerned he was overlooking a crucial detail that would prove his initial assumption incorrect. These questions had been oddly mathematical for riddles, especially seeing as how Tom Tom avoided maths in his questions like the plague up until now, so Ares was left wondering if this follow up question had secretly turned back into a more standard riddle and was just wearing this mathematical guise as a flesh suit to pretend otherwise.
Ares noticed Aejaz having yet another 'eureka' moment, which was ironically anything but each and every time, so he cut in and interrupted his brother's motor mouth right on cue. "No, Aejaz, the answer is not sixteen..." Though it wasn't easy to notice, Tom Tom's cheek shifted as his mouth curved downwards in disappointment towards the edge of his lip. Evidently Ares was on the right track here and he soon put two and two together after giving it some thought.
"If person A is on step sixteen... And person B is on step eight..." Ares grew confident the more he spoke and his pace of speech picked up quickly as he became more assertive in his answer. "... It will take person B twelvesteps to catch up to Person A because there are only twelve steps remaining on the staircase!" Tom Tom mentioned at the very beginning that the staircase only had twenty steps so there wasn't even room for sixteen steps to be taken if assuming person B was on step eight! It would only take person A four steps to reach the top of the staircase when starting from step sixteen, by which point person B would be at step sixteen themselves, but from there the initial statement of B mowing twice as fast was irrelevant because A was no longer moving. B had taken eight steps from step eight to get to step sixteen and then only needed four more to reach person A. The answer, then, was eight plus four... So twelve. How fast person B moved was actually completely irrelevant for the sake of the second riddle!
Paying attention to the initial question, and using that information for the second question, was the real riddle all along! Tom Tom baited Ares with an easier question one, that leant more towards a simple mathematical understanding, before hitting him with the callback to his initial description that hadn't even been relevant in the first question! Tom Tom had cleverly structured the first riddle by mentioning 'half' and a 'quarter' for person A and B distance respectively because it made use of the total number of steps whereas other phrasings of the question wouldn't. He could have easily said they were on step ten and five respectively but then it would have become clear to Ares that there being twenty steps was irrelevant to the entire question and make it look incredibly suspicious. It would have been a natural conclusion that the twenty steps mattered, just not for that question specifically. From there, Ares would have paid more attention to the seemingly arbitrary twenty steps and seen through riddle two a lot faster as that detail was the ultimate factor. Ares really had to give Tom Tom credit because he'd certainly upped his game on these later riddle rooms just as he said he would. He was even adding in petty little diversions now to hide key information! A win was a win, no matter how much effort Tom Tom put into throwing Ares off the scent of victory however, so Ares had earned the right to be informed about his recent gains. Ares held the perfume bottle up, watched the ghost do a happy dance of some kind and fidget around in its containment, and then asked Tom Tom to divulge whatever he knew.
"Yeah yeah, I'll tell you so keep your knickers on and don't get them in a twist either. Ha, that resource of yours...
Ha, it's...
Hahaha.
...
Sorry, it's just...
Hahaha, the name of the resource is really great... Hahaha, the naming organisation in the outer world really outdid themselves with this resource...
It's called 'hereafter-shave'.
Hahahahahaha!
An instant classic that one was! In fact I think the woman that came up with it got a promotion on the spot, if I recall correctly. Well deserved in my opinion and I think basically everyone would agree. As for what it does... Uh, I have a feeling your going to be a bit conflicted about using it..."
Ares raised an eyebrow but didn't speak as his inquisitive gaze said everything he needed to. Namely, 'what the hell is that supposed to mean?' Ares hadn't busted his chops back inside that worm belly just to be told this resource might not even be usable! He would seriously consider going back and blowing Wormy up, future plans be damned!
".... Let me explain what it does first and then I'll get into how to actually use it as that's where the problem lies. Hereafter-shave is a decently rare resource that would probably wind up being sold in the last third of an auction." Not bad! Generally speaking the later an item came out in an auction the more it was worth. That was a consistent rule of thumb and last third items, in the outer world beyond the Blade barrier, in the sort of upper domains Tom Tom was referring to, would be stuff like enablers or extremely rare fine grinds. Was this resource at the same tier as something like the Extinction Converter? No. Was it about as good as the fine grind amplifier Ares had yet to use? Probably, actually! That was what Tom Tom was inferring, at least.
"This resource has the unique affect of dulling your presence. Now for flashy showoffs that might sound like a bad thing but it is controllable so don't worry about that. What it's good for, however, is helping you remain undetected when and if you sneak around or want to remain lowkey amidst a group of cultivators. The effect is pretty significant and arguably better than invisibility in a lot of cases. Most cultivators beyond a certain point will feel you coming before they see you so a resource like this, that permanently makes it easier to stealth around, is pretty fantastic. It also goes well with One With The Universe because that art is learnt in stages. One stage of it makes you invisible, the next nullifies all noise you make, another makes your attacks invisible too, etc... You have to learn them all one by one and one of them is related to masking your presence. Basically this treasure can be seen a slightly weaker but permanent version of one part of One With The Universe. In that sense, it's no joke!"
Tom Tom was right in his assessment but perhaps even more so than he realised. Ares had been thinking about something a lot lately that might be relevant to this discussion because he couldn't get over the fact that he was a living enabler. Why was he concerned about this right now? Well, if he was a treasure then surely that meant he could act like one? Ares could, to some degree, detect people without seeing them too but inanimate objects with no presence or aura? Definitely not. By that same token, if Ares found a way to 'act like a treasure' then he could make his presence all but vanish. He could pass by barriers that prevented humans and other living creatures from passing through because he wasn' ta human, he was a walking treasure! There might be such a method available to him due to the unique genetic makeup of his soul thanks to Dominus and he was really considering exploring that possibility in depth at some point. Throw in this resource to boot and his presence might be 100% hide-able to even the most investigative of cultivators. Of course this resource was neat on its own too, and Ares wouldn't turn his nose up at it, but there was potential here for something greater that great if he combined it with his own natural talents!
HOWEVER!
There was one question that still lingered in Ares' brain that he had to have answered before he would start celebrating. "... So what's the catch? You said there was a problem with using this thing so what is it? Is it going to cost me an arm and a leg to activate it or something?" Ares looked down at the happy ghost and wondered what was so tricky about using it.
"... Well, the resource is the ghost... We don't know much about this mysterious race but they effectively have no presence whatsoever and that' spart of what makes finding them so hard. They're rare for a reason. To use the resource you have to essentially squeeze their essence out of them. That perfume bottle will absorb and grind up that tiny ghost into a spray so... I guess what I'm saying is... You have to personally execute that joyful dancing friend of yours...