Ares stared down at the tiny ghost and it, perhaps having understood what Tom Tom just said with cruel apathy, stared back up at him with timid and shaky eye sockets.
Meep
Ack
After the tiny ghost made a cute noise Ares nearly had a heart attack and had to steady himself so as not to collapse on the floor due to sweetness overdose. He couldn't possibly kill this thing!
Meep
It was too cute! This was impossible! No manner of legendary resource was worth this! Ares gulped as his guilty eyes kept darting towards the tiny meeper but no matter how strong willed he was he could never possibly bring himself to pushing the perfume nozzle and extracting this thing's essence! How did anyone in the wider world ever go through with such a heartless act?!
Meep
It was crying! A small mental essence tear dripped down its small body! Ares couldn't take this anymore! "Shhhh. There there. It's ok little one. I won't hurt you." Ares' reassurance made the meeper ghost look him directly in the eyes with a hopeful expression and Ares felt all the strength leave his body. He was giving up this powerful resource because his heart was simply not able to go through with this! There was plenty of bloodshed instore for Ares but at least that served a mandatory purpose! This was selfishly cruel! Ares sighed as he took out the Nyxian Prowler and cut into the glass to open it up and free the ghost. He figured it would just run away and find somewhere to hide, as it naturally had a dim presence which is what made them so hard to locate in the wider world, but to his surprise the ghost plopped itself on top of his head and meeped contentedly while doing a small dance.
Meep meep
Pet, get? Is Appa going to have a little sister? Ares wasn't sure what to think of this situation but apparently the meeper wanted to tag along with him which made sense. The meeper was a weak and fragile thing, hunted for what it was capable of providing people stronger than it by forfeiting its life, so it choosing to cling to Ares' thigh was only logical. That and maybe it really appreciated him not pulling the metaphorical trigger and ending its life so it was treating him like a generous benefactor. The meeper looked similar to a shade so maybe they were also similar in that they grew attached to people very quickly and were loyal creatures. Though, that being said, Ares had no idea what this thing even was. He'd taken to calling it a meeper but it's not like that was their official name or anything. He really knew nothing whatsoever so now he had even more questions for Tom Tom that needed answering. Tom Tom seemed somewhat surprised Ares didn't ruthlessly murder the meeper, as he hadn't taken him for a softy based on what he'd seen of him, but then again he didn't know of Ares' preference for cuteness. If Tom Tom knew how fast Ares would have obliterated any uglier ghosts he definitely would not be thinking the way he was about Ares currently!
"Uh... Ok. wasn't expecting this so now I want to know a bit more about this tiny fella. What race is it, do I have to feed it, will it grow, and do I get anything out of this other than a cute friend? I'm not despondent over losing the resource or anything but I'm feeling a bit robbed admittedly. I would have quite liked it so if there's at least a consolation prize I'll be willing to let this matter go with a less heavy heart..."
Meeeeep
The ghost's long, drawn out cry sounded somewhat empathetic, like it was feeling bad for taking away Ares' opportunity. Ares picked it up and used his index finger to give it head pats and stroke the little guy and that made him feel right as rain and chipper as before. Meanwhile Tom Tom was looking flabbergasted because what he was seeing was highly unusual given what little he knew about the creature showing Ares affection right now. "That thing... Well we don't really have a name for it. Some people refer to them as 'others' but that's more of a personal preference as well as something convenient for us all to understand we're referring to the same creatures during conversation. There's nothing official because there's still a lot of research being done on what these 'others' even are. Some people say they're mutated shades, due to the resemblance, and some people think they're alien life forms from other dimensions due to their unique traits that I won't get into just yet..."
"Whoa whoa! Pause! Why not?" Ares felt Tom Tom's choice of words just now was highly suspicious!"
"... Anyway..." Tom Tom was blatantly changing the topic! Ares side eyed the annoying cat but he was the one with answers and it's not like Ares could beat them out of him. Ares would just have to wait and see what he was being so sly about later on and then hope Tom Tom clarified things when the time was right. "What is known about these creatures, however, is that they usually hate humans and most other living races. We capture and 'eat' them, after all, so it's only natural they have a pretty deep fear of us. Hell that one on your palm was in the same boat but he must be happy to be alive, so much so that he's more thankful to you than fearful. You made your choice to save him almost instantly and I'm sure that had an effect on it so now it might be glued to you permanently... Maybe... I don't know... It's complicated...
Can we talk more about this later? There's something else you should see first before we continue and I think you'll understand when you see it. There's one more secret in this Riddlemyd and it's related to this talk. You'll come across it soon, you can't avoid it, so it's really not wise for me to spoil everything right now. Also I believe a fair bit in fate and I think yours has taken an interesting turn so I'll let it play out without interfering... Perhaps I've already said too much... Whatever, it's not my problem. What I will say, though, is that meeping creature can bestow its power to you temporarily anyway as long as it's by your side. Of course you need to have him around when you want him to help you, so it's nowhere near as convenient as just absorbing it, but it's not like you've gained nothing..." In fact it might be the opposite, you might have gained something far greater depending on how things in that room goes... Inwardly, Tom Tom couldn't help but be somewhat jealous at this turn of events because it was not something he could have ever predicted. Not him nor Sevorus who was responsible for this whole meeper mess to begin with...
Meep
As far as Ares could tell, that last meep was just one of satisfaction so he paid it no mind... Though, now that he thought about it, the meeper couldn't really communicate properly. Normally Ares' bloodline would help him out here and translate but it seemed like the meeper was a baby and no amount of bloodlines were going to accurately translate infant gibberish. Still, there was discernable intent behind the meeps so it's not like the baby was unaware of its surroundings or just floating about on instinct. Whatever this race was it was probably highly intelligent if even the babies were this aware. "Ok then... Not sure what to say about this mess or how to proceed but I guess I'll just see how things play out. As for you, little meeper, how about I give you a name then? If you're going to be tagging along then it's only fair you get a name just like everyone else does."
Meep!
The meeper bobbed its head side to side and Ares was reminded of Appa's cuteness. Ares would never have guessed that ghosts, in general, were this adorable but he was finding out about their sweetness first hand each and every time he came across them. Honestly this was maybe even a bad thing because he might try and be friendly to the next undead he came across and pay dearly for it! Ghosts were typically not all this nice! "A prank name like Garuda would just be mean so I won't do that... How about..."
Ahem
"If I may interject here..." Tom Tom had something to say apparently so Ares let him say his piece. "Uh, I'm not sure how to say this in a way that doesn't give away a lot... And I think you'd need to be blind not to understand where I'm coming from when you eventually reach the secret I mentioned earlier... But put it this way; those ghosts get... Big... And they look... Quite different when they're older... Look, I'm just saying this so you don't name it something silly like little whitey. It won't make sense in a few years! If you're gonna name it, name it properly! Give it a badass name or something, it will make sense down the line!"
Ares smiled wryly because he had indeed been thinking along the lines Tom Tom just mentioned. This was actually useful information but now Ares was curious as to what Tom Tom was hinting at here... He was skirting around this topic quite a bit so Ares was really interested in the sort of secrets this meeper held. "I see. Then a more fitting name for you shall be... PhanTom-Tom! In honor of this dumb sphinx!" Ares cackled evilly at his silly joke but Tom Tom and the meeper were not amused.
Meep!
That last meep roughly translated to 'take this seriously!' and so Ares calmed his fit of laughter and wracked his brains for a name he wouldn't regret. "A badass name?" He looked down at the meeper and couldn't really comprehend why on earth such a name was necessary but he didn't doubt Tom Tom's sincerity on this matter. Still, Ares wasn't even sure what a 'badass' name meant exactly; he wasn't great at this sort of thing! Nonetheless, if the meeper was going to be a companion going forward then Ares would do it justice! As much as he could anyway...
"From now, you shall be... Tsk, whatever, if this name sucks you can meep at me and I'll change it until we get it right! From now on, you are 'Visitation'. I have no idea what you are, and what you do, so I'm shooting blind here! And yes, I know random nouns don't make for the best names ever but I'm not great at making badass names, ok?!" Ares was honestly tempted to go look for a dictionary and let the meeper choose its own name but it seemed expectant of Ares and so saying as such without even trying first felt wrong. He wasn't too confident n his own attempt but surprisingly both Tom Tom and the meeper nodded as if he'd done a good job. Only these two could possibly know how accurate the name was so if they were giving it the ok then maybe Ares hadn't done a piss poor job Afterall? He had no idea what they were thinking but, from now on, this meeper was called 'Visitation'.
Ares had called the meeper Visitation because it was a supernatural being and the term 'visitor' was commonly associated with alien life forms which was linked to their unknown background. What he didn't know, however, was that the name was also apt for another reason. Visitations could also be considered a divine punishment and this meeper would grow up to become quite the reckoner. Adult meepers were regarded as ferocious, natural calamities and, like hurricanes for example, were also given noun-esque names like 'Spectre' or 'Whirlwind' so Ares was right on the money with his naming scheme even if only accidentally. Visitation was a harmless little ghost for now but one day it would be the nightmare in people's walls that delivered death and destruction in the dead of night. Its name would spread far and wide but that was a matter for later, right now the thing needed to grow up! Also, there was another matter in store as the meeper might not even stay with Ares for long. At least, that was what Tom Tom thought knowing what he knew. The reason why would be Ares' next major roadblock in the Riddlemyd, and he'd come across it soon, so Tom Tom would watch on with much interest to see how things played out going forward...
Meepy!
Visitation leapt onto Ares' shoulder and happily resided there as though it had found a new and comfy home. It wasn't a freeloader like Aejaz, however, and so it promptly displayed its capabilities by sending its mana through Ares' body and making his visual presence floaty, hazy, and generally really tough to pinpoint. This was just his appearance too so if anybody tried to locate him with eyes closed it would be even harder to track and lock down his existence, Ares had a feeling Visitation would do more for him alive than dead it was just less convenient for Ares this way as it wasn't an on-off switch he had control over. If the essence of this meeper was enough to permanently grant a similar effect then it was no surprise to anyone the living thing would be the real deal and be slightly stronger. Of course taming a meeper, according to Tom Tom, was nigh impossible, and most of them hated living creatures, but Ares was in a unique position to take advantage of his blooming friendship with the meeper. As for the meeper's role in the family... It would probably be something akin to Rox going forward but no doubt Appa would be very happy with this new addition. Supposedly the meeper would outgrow Appa but, until then, it would have a younger brother to play around with merrily. "Ok meeper, I'm gonna have to store you inside my weapon to keep you safe. You're too weak to have out and about like this, especially in a dangerous place like the Riddlemyd, so I'll bring you out again whenever we're not somewhere too risky for you."
Meep
A meep of acceptance was all it took for Ares to have permission and so he placed the meeper in Rox's care inside the Blade. Rox could take some time off humping the succubus to look after this new recruit here and there. Actually, Rox better keep things PG in there with the infant meeper! Either way, now that that problem was taken care of, Ares was free to keep exploring the Riddlemyd. His progress was astounding for the next few hours as he sped along with Aejaz. Wormy pestered him in the hallways but Ares had enough means to escape each and every time so, if anything, Wormy's presence just made Ares run through this place quicker than he'd ever done it before. Sandy also returned at some point and Ares explained what she'd missed. He introduced her to the meeper and it was love at first sight because of how cute the tiny ghost was. Plus the meep sound it made caused Sandy to giggle every time she heard it. For whatever reason she found it hilarious. The meeper could tell Sandy was a friendly person, and got along well with Ares, so it quite liked this new individual as well and sat atop her head for a while too.
Aejaz was the only one left out, regarding interacting with Visitation, but that was because of the glint that appeared in his eyes back when he learnt this ghost was a rare resource! The thief was a greedy man and the meeper wanted to stay far away from him! Of course Aejaz would never do anything to it now but he definitely did have thoughts about finding his own meeper to absorb. Aejaz wasn't cold hearted or anything, he just didn't possess the same weakness for cute things that Ares did. He would snag up a meeper with a perfume bottle and squeeze that thing dry before it could even blink, putting it out of its misery before there was even time to process what was happening. It was a swift and merciful end! The resource was simply too valuable to someone like Aejaz, whose bloodline allowed him to turn invisible on demand, so there was no way he wasn't following through if he actually ever did come across one in the wild!
Visitation could seemingly tell what Aejaz was thinking so it never went anywhere near him. He was a creepy uncle! Funnily enough, Aejaz did try to pet it, as a friendly gesture to indicate he meant no harm now that Visitation was under Ares' protection, but Aejaz' hand went right through the meeper. As it turned out, if the meeper didn't' want to be touched it could phase through just about anything and everything. The bottle that held it captive was incredibly special, so it was an exception, but ordinary people could never hope to lay hands on a meeper even if they were surrounded b a sea of them gathering in one spot which was actually quite common. Sure the meepers were hard to find but once you did it was typically a hoard of the ghosts swimming around together and just enjoying life. A treasure trove of meeps!... Guarded by something horrifying, usually a grown up meeper or two... But that was another matter! Anyway the point here was that Aejaz would likely never get to touch the meeper because not even Ares could figure out how this little guy was phasing through things. Ares tried the usual Omniscience approach but it failed this time because, annoyingly, the meeper could phase right through his vision as well! It was almost like the little guy was physically disappearing from this dimension but remaining here visually. This discovery also leant more credibility to the 'alien from another dimension' argument, and was likely why it even existed in the first place, but there was still no guarantee about such a thing. Meepers' resemblance to tiny shades also needed explaining! It was pretty uncanny!
Ares put Visitation back in the Blade and kept on keeping on for the rest of the day and eventually cultivated his way up another stage while resting in a riddle room at night. There was no time limit on the riddle Tom Tom gave out so the group stayed here and treated it like a safe room away from Wormy... Well it was supposed to be a 'safe room' and yet it was anything but because Ares' ascent to 8th stage sensory enhancement was messy and hazardous. Last time his tribulation omen came in the form of a massive sandstorm that chased the Elliot around but there was no such opportunity to kick up sand here in the Riddlemyd. Instead, chaos ensued as the room layouts all began to shift manically as Ares became a hectic gravitational core which everything revolved around. Ares could feel the rooms shifting around him and even the position of the room he was currently in got flung around in circles and wound up upside down by the end of the mess he caused. It was all enough to make him nearly hurl but he cleared his mind and remained steadfast to continue his breakthrough. If he faltered during the chaos he would have been booted unceremoniously back down to the 7th stage and maybe even have suffered a backlash if he wasn't careful.
Thankfully this was a relatively early cultivation stage in the grand scheme of things so Ares wound up being perfectly fine... But the Riddlemyd... If Tom Tom's angry growling was any indication, Ares had made a right mess of the place! Tom Tom would have to spend at least a week rearranging everything and putting things back in their place now. Plus some rooms elsewhere had been damaged or dented and needed repairs. Wormy also probably got the fright of a lifetime but that was mostly irrelevant because its life was going to end soon enough.
As for Ares, now that he made it to the eight stage, he could feel his magical power grow exponentially as well as his control over the war aura and his pressure flourish. For most people individual stages meant little but for a revenant nearing bloodline awakening? Each stage ascended was like drinking the finest ambrosia that soothed the spirit and uplifted the soul, breathing a fiery new life into him. Ares felt power surge through his bones and body and he was looking for an outlet to test things on but, alas, there was none. This was a riddle room after all so Ares quickly cleared it in the hopes that the next room on this floor would be a combat room... But his hopes were dashed! Tom Tom announced that this room was the end of the floor and Ares was basically done with the Riddlemyd now. There was only one floor left and it was laid out in a special way due to the task Ares had to complete on it... But it wasn't actually that simple. According to Tom Tom there was only one way to reach the next and final floor and Ares would have to figure it out himself! In other words, this was the final riddle of the Riddlemyd! After this it would just be a combat room against the Anubis and then finally the Tom Tom showdown which, in turn, would likely attract and involve the C.O... It sounded simple enough but wasn't there still other stuff missing from the timetable?! Ares could have sworn the hub room mystery, with the torches, hadn't yet been solved, he was certain the meeper stuff needed explaining too, and, though there was no guarantee, Ares felt like there was at least one more lab with the One With The Universe tome in it hiding somewhere. That was three separate matters that were currently feeling like a dead end!
!
"No! Wait a minute... What if they're all connected?!" Ares' mind spun as a solution to the final riddle, and his current conundrum, formulated in his mind... What if the solution to one issue was actually the solution to all three issues as well as the riddle of locating the next floor? Wasn't this riddle actually really simple? "Tom Tom! I would like to leave the Riddlemyd!" This request took Aejaz and Sandy by surprise but they didn't say anything because Ares seemed confident and he had a habit of being right whenever he was this assertive. Tom Tom nodded with a smile but, before he sent Ares and co on their way, he gave them a cryptic warning.
"Your next challenge, before you reach the final floor, is to survive for five minutes." For the first time since entering the Riddlemyd, Tom Tom forced Ares and co through a portal in a way they couldn't possibly avoid. He summoned the portal directly over them while holding them in place with strings of mana, that felt tough as nails, to ensure they were transported whether they liked it or not. There was no escape from whatever it was Tom Tom was planning but it's not like Ares planned on escaping or leaving the Riddlemyd anyway despite what he'd just said! Sure he asked for a way out but there had always been a step between leaving the Riddlemyd floors and actually seeing the light of day outside...
The hub room!
An age old mystery that Ares hadn't solved! This place inevitably would hold the teleporter / portal to the final floor! This solved two of the issues Ares was contemplating but what if it also solved the others as well? Ares found a way up to the last floor, and he was now in the process of learning what was happening in the near fully lit hub room, but he still had to find the final lab and understand the meeper situation... So what if there was a monster on the hub floor related to the meeper? And better yet, what if it was defending the final lab hidden somewhere in this hub room?! It all added up quite nicely and Ares was willing to bet on it!.. But there was a problem he couldn't ignore... If this floor contained a monster related to the meeper... What were the chances Ares was about to come face to face with a fully grown meeper? Ares was seriously considering this as a possibility because his testing earlier, when the hub room was still mostly dark, did clue him in to the existence of something hiding here but he couldn't figure out what... Almost as if its existence was too well hidden for him to detect properly...
This matter likely had a few different layers to it and so Ares was just going to have to learn the hard way what this was all about, exactly. The 'survive for five minutes' challenge was also interesting because he wasn't being asked to kill the meeper... How storing was this thing anyway? Ares couldn't help but think about the tiny ghost and how harmless it was... The thought that it would become an unbeatable monster in the future was just completely incongruent with its friend-shaped body and pocket sized adorableness! Ares didn't believe it! He wanted his new 'child' to be tiny forever!... Wait a minute... Now I just sound like my mother!... Or worse... Like my shota addicted sister... Ares shuddered at the thought but he was still adamant that his children were at their cutest when they were young and small! Growing up sucked... If Visitation was going to become some big ol' spooky ghost then Ares at least wanted to take pictures of it while it was still in its infancy to make sure he captured its tiny-ness for all eternity!... Although hopefully its image wouldn't phase through the camera lens or something, that would be heartbreaking!
Ares shook his head, he was getting distracted from the task at hand. He was inside the hub room alright but there was still a segment of the room covered in darkness. It was truly a massive room, Ares knew that now as the full scale of it was visible for the first ever time as twenty nine of the thirty torches were lit. All he had to do was light the final torch himself, the one placed directly in front of the darkness containing a mighty monster, and he would begin the ending sequence of the Riddlemyd and his journey in Xasca. He was going to be running the big bad boss gauntlet going forward and he needed to make sure he was ready and well prepared. He could, theoretically leave right now if he wanted to, this was still the hub room and the exit was right behind him, but there was no need. He'd gone up a stage of cultivation, he had all manner of pills available, he was pretty much fully healed now, Dominus was awake enough that he could take over if the need arose, Sandy and Aejaz were also in tip top condition... There was simply nothing left to take care of so Ares cracked his knuckles, rolled his neck, and strutted towards the torch. It was go time.