Ares walked up to the torch with a valiant stride, stood tall, and... Immediately turned around and asked for help! This idiot had forgotten he had no way of personally lighting this torch because he didn't have a lighter on him nor did he know any fire pillar magic... Unless he was willing to put the Scaled Insulator on and use Furnace Bomb he wasn't going to be able to light this... At most he could summon up a fire inside the kitchen in his Primordial Blade, drag it out, and use telekinesis to drift the fire over towards the correct place but he wasn't even sure if that would be enough. Ares looked at his two cohorts and realised Aejaz was just as useless here as he was, because being able to steal didn't mean anything if the person Aejaz stole from also didn't already have a solution, so it was up to Sandy... There was a technical that summoned a small fire, usually used for camping or doubling as a small light source, but whether she knew it or not was another matter entirely. The desert got pretty cold at night so Ares was hoping she might but, then again, she also wore a crap ton of clothes and maybe didn't have to be so concerned about the temperature... If Sandy also didn't have any suitable magic then Ares would have to leave the Riddlemyd and go search for two sticks to rub together or something similar in the market outside which was a real mood killer! Unfortunately Sandy also shook her head so Ares was left slapping his own forehead...
"Ah! Mmmm, maybe?" Ares' memory served him well and reminded him there was technically one tool he could use that might do the trick but it was a treasure he'd never even used before due to how powerful it was... He might be able to control it somewhat but if it was just going to overflow and be uncontrollable then Ares would be better of using the Scaled Insulator. Ares was, of course, referring to Vengeful Spirt Vargaraad's Lunarflare Lantern. How long had it been since he picked this thing up from Vargaraad's tomb alongside the Nyxian Prowler? Ares had really sped through the cultivation ranks since then so maybe he could just about activate it?... Ares didn't want to even try... If things went wrong, forget the torch, Ares would burn down this entire room with him still inside it! Ares was planning on using it but only some time after he entered the transition realm as it's primary utility was something completely different from what most people would expect of it. Ares would get alot of use out of this treasure in Vraizon but for now he kept it tucked away. But doing so also put him back at square one! Ares wracked his brain for any fire-related treasures he'd come across... And eventually realised there was one that would work without a hitch! As an aside, before finally lighting the torch, Ares swore to pick up a fire source from somewhere because this was insultingly pathetic and he would become a laughingstock, justifiably, in the future if anybody ever found out about this.
Squelch
With a grimace, Ares dug his claw-shaped hand into his own chest and reached deep. He aimed towards his heart with a steady hand and gripped it firmly. His every breath became hollow and all feeling anywhere other than his chest numbed as small pricks stabbed away at his heart. Ares activated the Converter, spun it into overdrive and kicked it up to eleven, while making sure to cup his palm. Magma overflowed from his volcanic heart and burnt his hand partially black as he dragged it out of his chest and scattered the fiery substance held within at the torch with a lazy swipe. The magma was plenty hot enough to easily make the torch catch fire so he really didn't have to aim properly and he just wanted the stuff out of his hand so as not to injure it before this fight. Ares wiped away the magma on his hand, by cleaning It on a nearby wall, before pulling out the Deep Blue and washing his hands down properly. Some magma had gotten stuck under his nails and so removing it was high on Ares list of priorities as it naturally hurt like hell. Once he was done wiping his hand down, Ares turned ot face the torch and area behind it but something strange was happening... Or, rather, nothing was happening at all and that was what was strange.
The torch was sufficiently lit, so it's not like Ares had done anything wrong, it's just that the darkness wasn't receding despite the light source mere inches away from it illuminating the area as it should. There was a strange kind of resistance, almost like the light was hitting an actual object and getting stuck. Ares' Omniscience wasn't picking anything up anything strange but, whereas usually that would be a relief, that just made him all the more worried because the situation was verifiably not normal and there was clearly something afoot. The most logical explanation was, again, that this monster was an adult meeper. If Visitation could avoid the detection of Omniscience then an adult would have no trouble doing the same... But where was it and why was this darkness not fading? Ares figured he would have to investigate personally so he slowly shifted towards the darkness patch and carefully extended a hand towards it. His gut instinct was telling him that something was very wrong here but he wasn't able to place his finger on what so he was looking to literally place his finger on this black spot and learn the hard way what manner of truths he could uncover.
Am I... Thinking about this in the wrong way? Ares was hesitant to move his hand any more forward, toward the darkness, than he already had because he couldn't ignore his brain, constantly flashing a giant 'WARNING' sign over and over again, no matter how hard he tried. He could be a fool sometimes but being foolish was an entirely different matter! Ares analysed the area before him once more and noticed something he'd missed earlier that actually somewhat mattered. There were no shadows! If the light wasn't passing through the darkness then Ares assumed it to be because the area was some sort of psychical thing, an actual obstacle, but, if that were true, the light would cast a shadow on the wall behind it. There was no such thing, however, and the light simply passed straight through it. It was more like the entire dark patch was completely non-existent in all but visual reality so light could pass through it but never dispel it because it wasn't actually touching anything...
"Shit." Ares leapt backwards from his currents spot the second he pieced two and two together and this action had been just in time to narrowly avoid a large, shadowy claw that swept through his previous position, breaking and batting aside the nearby torch while retreating to within the darkness. Ares hadn't reacted to the claw, he didn't even know it was coming because its presence was basically non-existent, he'd simply understood the situation and was retreating backwards to make distance with a wry smile and twitching eye lids. Though Ares didn't want to believe what he was about to say, he felt like he had to inform Aejaz and Sandy so they could stop standing around and realise the gravitas of the situation looming before them. Ares pointed at the 'patch of darkness' and spoke. "That thing... All of it... As in the entire dark region over there... It's all a giant meeper.." Ares assumed the meeper was hiding within the darkness but, no, the darkness itself was the meeper! That was why the light hadn't dispelled it and, instead, simply passed right through it! As soon as Ares understood this he retreated because he'd been standing way too close to a dangerous monster that was inevitably going to attack him at some point. It had likely been luring him in to investigate before striking at him with the claw when he got too close so Ares' timing on the dodge had been pretty immaculate. Had his realisation been any slower he would have been blocking at the last minute and desperate to avoid a lethal blow because that claw was huge and meant serious business.
Once Ares' words sunk in, Aejaz turned invisible and scrammed somewhere safe while Sandy shifted to her elemental form and rolled away along the floor. The dark area in this room was still considerably large, about the size of a small house, so it was abundantly clear from that alone that this meeper was both big and going to be a real headache. Not only was it hard to keep track of but its attacks came out of seemingly nowhere and whether this monster could even be attacked was up in the air still. If this meeper had the same ability that Visitation did, and showcased against a touchy Aejaz earlier, then all attacks were probably just going to pass right through it. If it couldn't be hit, it couldn't be beat. Ares knew this all too well thanks to his fight against the wyvern soul back on the Federation. This seemed different, though, and he really had no idea how to go about even scratching this thing. At least the nature of souls could be learnt, understood, and worked around but this? Ares' omniscience wasn't doing squat so he was completely in the dark here. How was he supposed to beat an untouchable alien life form, exactly? No wonder Tom Tom said the challenge was simply to survive for five minutes...
But Ares wasn't satisfied! If the 'others', or meepers, could be captured within perfume bottles then something had to work! Plus this adult one had been locked in this room too, right? Something regarding their physiology had to give at some point for such methods of captivity to be functional! Unless it was just the infant meepers that were capturable with actual physical materials... Ares chose not to believe that because otherwise these 'others' would be a catastrophe! They had to be stoppable otherwise they would have annihilated the entire world outside the Blade barrier and nobody could possibly stand up against them. Better yet, Sevorus wouldn't have been able to contain this one the way he had. It wasn't rampaging prior to Ares lighting the torches so it had evidently been chained down in some way by them... Long story short, there was a trick to this that could be exploited and Ares had five minutes to figure it out otherwise he would leave this room none-the-wiser.
Surviving was also important but Ares, again, had no idea what was in store for him. This giant pitch black, smoky abyss could manifest a shadowy claw to swipe with, that much Ares knew for sure... But what else did it do exactly? Honestly, even just that would be problematic by itself. An unbeatable entity that simply floated at you and clawed you to death while you could do nothing in return was already a difficult opponent so adding any more offensive options into the mix would complicate the matter a lot. Ares' main concern here was Sandy, actually, because she was the slowest person here, so would struggle to run if the need arose, and any sand walls she could muster as defense wouldn't stop the meeper from just passing right through it... This was unfair! One-sided attacking like this was just mean bullying!
Hm? Ares wasn't sure what prompted it, perhaps it was his years of combat experience kicking in, but he felt the need to move. He hopped backwards and the space in front of him was devoured by the meeper's rapid advance. It had woken up now and chosen violence so it was starting to actively pursue the other people in this room with it. It had been trapped for long enough and wanted vengeance on the damnable humans that captured it! What really needed to be addressed, though, was how blindingly fast this thing was! It was bad enough Ares couldn't feel this opponent's moves in the air around him, and he would have to study its patterns and preferences before he could accurately grasp what it was up to at any given point in time, but now he was barely able to follow them with his eyes too! Furthermore the meeper was still just an ominous black splotch and nothing definable so he had no idea where the attacks were even really coming from. The shadowy claw that formed and swiped at him sort of just appeared out of nowhere, like it weas a detached entity from the main body, so that gave Ares no answers either. This was easily the trickiest foe Ares had ever fought and that was mostly because he still didn't know what he was even fighting or how to fight it! When Tom Tom said that grown up meepers were way bigger, and looked very different, he wasn't kidding! He'd seriously undersold the extent of the issue if anything!
Ares activated divine sense and gave up on his standard sight because it was doing nothing but constricting him to a view that wasn't helpful. If the meeper rapidly dashed in front of Ares again then he needed a more remote view of things to keep track of the detached limbs coming at him from out of his visual periphery, up and above him. He was certain there were other attacks in store for him too, and just the claws, but divine sense would give him the most comprehensive view to track everything happening around him. Was it comfortable? Not at all, it was extremely awkward, but this was just the objectively correct way to fight this thing, annoyingly, because of how hard its attacks were to feel coming. He categorically needed to see them so widening his perspective was the only real way of going about this. This approach wound up being correct, too, as the meeper vanished from its current spot and appeared directly behind Ares. He spun his body to face it but, as he did so, the shadowy claw appeared behind him where he had literally just been looking a split second ago. If he'd been using his normal eyesight he would have been ambushed by this thing from whichever direction he didn't face and not have seen it coming at all. This was solid proof that the claw was detached from the main body and didn't have to follow it around but it was also proof that divine sense was really the only way to fight this alien without getting your head scratched off from behind. You'd think an enemy you had to see would be less annoying than an invisible enemy but, in this case, it was the exact opposite due to lack of presence of its attacks. For cultivators this monster was an utter nightmare and they'd much rather fight a shadow stepper than this thing. It was almost as though it was permanently affected by One With The Universe's presence eradicating phenomena and that spelled serious trouble...
One With The Universe?
Ares repeated those words in his head as a thought flashed by his brain alongside a swiping claw that nearly splattered his cranium all over the floor. He ducked out of its path but strands of his hair were caught and eviscerated by the large claw so it had been a pretty close call, nearly costing him his life while he was distracted by other thoughts. Ares wanted to divert more of his brain power to computing the possibility he just came up with but the meeper was really starting to ramp up its attacks now and was even mixing in a few new ones to the fray. For starters, the number of claws had increased exponentially and Ares was being bombarded by about five at any given time. Every time he dodged one, a second, third, and fourth would appear sequentially from his blind spots, sweep towards him, and keep him busy on his toes. One even appeared directly underneath him and tried to clasp shut around him but he Shifted away in the nick of time. As soon as he reappeared in a new location, however, a torrent of pitch black wailing spirits assailed him from behind and attempted to ram into him. Ares dodged these two and watched as they slammed into a wall, phased through it, and made the wall turn a plague-ridden and mouldy colour before it crumbled to the floor. It somewhat reminded Ares of the hydra deer's yellow beam of degradation but, rather than being attached to the deer's eyes, this was a bunch of freely moving spirts with more mobility at their disposal. Ares was going to have to keep an eye out for these because their lethality was no trifling. Then again, everything the meeper was throwing at him thus far was pretty deadly anyway. It seemed to specialise in assassination, essentially, and killing off the opponent with unexpected attacks from out of view that annihilated the target in one fell swoop. The meeper also possessed extremely fast movement and an impossible to damage body...
Ares was impressed but also in too tricky a spot to really appreciate it! The constant hounding of spirits and claws was enough to force him into continually relocating to avoid various incoming barrages and there was no leeway. The meeper had no obligation to give him breathing room and its not like Ares could force it to stop anyway so it was free to pester him without repercussion. The only solace here was that the shadowy claws could not appear too far away from the main body so Ares at least knew roughly when they'd be coming after him even if he didn't know where from. His divine sense allowed him to dance and weave his way around and through three hundred and sixty degree assaults on his person, and that was great and all, but he wanted to hit this damnable monster and put it in its place! He'd tried chucking his war aura flag at it and that failed. He tried using a Grand Annihilation and that failed. He tried using nothingness to strike at its exact position in the void, because it might be from an alternate dimension after all and so this had a high chance of succeeding, but this method also failed. Everything was failing! His attacks soared clean through the meeper and it wasn't jsut Ares struggling. Aejaz tried using his Sunny Sandy Simulator, the backfire gear he picked up before arriving at the Federation, the one that showed the victim an illusion of a sandy beach while a poisonous snake crept up on them from behind, but the meeper was immune to mental magic as well it seemed! More failure! Sandy's Trampling Oryx stampede across thin air and was bisected by two large claws so failure was practically on clearance sail right about now!
Every single approach against the meeper felt wrong and made absolutely no progress but the worst of it all was that Ares was pretty sure he had an inkling of what was happening here, he just needed time to sort out his thoughts on the matter. One With The Universe was key here, definitely! There was a reason Sevorus brought the tome for it along with him, Ares was sure he had done so now, and there was a reason it was being stored in a lab hidden somewhere in this hub room specifically! If Ares wasn't mistaken... One With The Universe had formed a conscience! Just like, say, Garuda had, and other magic also could under various circumstances, One With The Universe also probably did too! It had sentience and that came in the form of these meepers this was a physical manifestation of the art. Sevorus had made that connection, probably was the first and only person to ever do so, and that was why he abducted Visitation and this adult meeper to experiment with. He was probably messing around with this thought process while he was down here, which is what led to the invisible stepper issue he singlehandedly caused, because the brood mother originally never possessed that invisibility ability, but left to go work on other experiments before coming to a conclusion he felt sufficiently explained everything. He left the experiment behind and Tom Tom turned It into a boss challenge because... Well he was a dopey cat, that was why. Actually, this all made a lot of sense. Sevorus was responsible for the invisible steppers and he was also likely responsible for the fellahin due to them having ancestral ties, presumably, to the Anubis that he's also toyed around with... Maybe even forced them to copulate with a succubus down the line or something...
Honestly, at this point, Sevorus was basically behind every single damn thing in this cursed desert and the sooner Ares left this place the better it would be for his sanity! Still, right now he had a different issue. If meepers were the manifestation of One With The Universe... How was he supposed to beat one, exactly? Or how could he at least capture /restrain it? He wanted to think things through logically but not only did he have that infernal time limit ticking down, thanks to Tom Tom, but he was also being run ragged by the meeper who wasn't giving him any personal space! The meeper's body had split into three parts and each of them were chasing the trio around the room so it's not even like Ares could pawn off the meeper onto his brother or Sandy temporarily as they had their own issues to deal with. This was turning into a headache!... But maybe there was a solution Ares hadn't though of just yet... Sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, Ares would realise that soon enough!