Ares woke up and wasn't immediately sure where he was. The last thing he remembered was stashing the fine grind in the Primordial Blade and bringing out the Roving Elliot. He handed control over the latter to Sandy and then passed out due to overexertion combined with his Canis Stimulant backlash. He'd been busy as a bee as of late and it was no surprise he needed some rest now that it was all said and done. He glanced outside the nearest window and it appeared to be morning so at least one night had passed, maybe even multiple, but none of that mattered! Now that he was awake, it was high time he got around to his fine grind and amplifier!.. Though he did feel somewhat guilty about leaving Aejaz and Sandy high and dry on the food front so Ares restrained himself somewhat and decided to cook something up first. Hiding the fine grind, back when he pulled it out of the safe, at the speed of light was admittedly a bit rude so this would be a token of apology. It wasn't necessary but Ares wanted to eat something too anyway so why not? A victory feast after the Anubis and Tom Tom battles was only natural!
There wasn't much to say about the feast in question but, while it was being held, a discussion did crop up about when everyone was leaving Xasca now that basically everything was done here. Ares still had some miscellaneous tasks to take care of; namely carving out a chunk of desert, and Sandy's home, to store in his Blade, taking the fine grind and amplifier, visiting Drai for his reward, cultivating up a stage of cultivation... And that was about it? Sure he also waned to keep pressurising his treasures, check in with his pagoda clone, sort out the stepper brood mother, and a few other small tasks here and there but that could all be done on the road to Isasz and during his stay in the region. Ares only planned to stay here in Xasca for another day or two at most and then he was off! Naturally this meant it was time for Aejaz to bugger off back to Red Sun and Sandy, Arla, Lara, and a few other fellahin were going to tag along.
Aejaz had asked around while Ares was out cold and apparently the Federation was setting off in a little over a day's time so they weren't going to be able to stick around until Ares left. Ares was tempted to let Visitation and Old Light go back to Red Sun ahead of him but there was probably no point as they were perfectly safe and content inside the Blade... But perhaps there was someone else who could be sent back instead? Ares didn't feel good about taking away Rox's bed buddy but the succubus was still technically Enyo's lab rat and sending her back now would be a nice surprise for Enyo... Actually, Ares could also send Rox along too. He'd lose a valuable ally but the chances of needing Rox's subterfuge talents in a region as remote as Isasz were low. There was no real reason to separate Rox and the succubus... Ares was stuck between a rock and a hard place so he decided to ask Rox himself and the mimic gave to understand, via his limited speech patterns, that he wanted to stay with Ares and help him just in case. It wasn't likely he would be needed but he was loyal and didn't mind not getting his leg over for a while if it meant being able to lend a hand when family needed it. Truly Rox Redhome! Also, as an aside, Rox did like the little meeper friend Visitation. They were both monsters and part of the family so got along great. Plus Visitation liked it when Rox transformed as he could rest on 'Ares'' head and go to sleep up there in peace inside the Blade even when the real deal wasn't around.
Thus the different groups were organised and the departure dates were set in stone. Sandy was feeling many mixed emotions about everything happening to her but that was understandable. It was the start of a new life, one she'd always wanted to live, but it was also somewhat sad leaving behind elder Bala and her fellow fellahin. Sure some where coming along, Lara and Arla being the key individuals she cared for amongst the clan, but it was still a gut punch knowing the chances of her seeing them again any time soon were extremely low. Plus she was leaving behind the aftermath of the dead hunters which was a sour taste in her mouth she would never be able to quite get rid of because there was nothing that could be done about it. On the flipside, however, she was going to have a new family and she was both excited and anxious to meet them. This 'Enyo' woman in particular was... Interesting, to say the least based on what Arse had mentioned of her...
Once that was all settled, Ares prepared himself mentally and physically for the rebirth of his flesh and blood. The fine grind was going to reshape him near enough permanently and so naturally the process was not going to be a simple one. He needed to set aside an appropriate amount of time and space so Sandy and Aejaz made sure to pick a side of the Elliot and stick to it as crossing by Ares while he was swallowing the fine grind might prove risky for everyone involved. Sandy hung around near the back but Aejaz stayed towards the front because he wanted to go through the door later and head back to the palace for a while longer before he was finally forced to leave. He would stay here in the Elliot for a while, until he was certain Ares was fine, and then head off and maybe go do some thieving before enjoying some rest and relaxation. Last but not least, there was Ares. He was seated in a cross legged lotus position and had taken his top and Zephyr off because it was only going to get in the way. Actually, now that he thought about it, he might need to get some new clothes to fit his changed physique afterwards but it would still probably be ok for now. He promised to go clothes shopping with Bellona at some point so this was a convenient time to start thinking about it. The main reason he was taking his top off was for easy access to his chest region if something went wrong with the fine grind and he needed to dig around inside himself to fix things. It shouldn't come to that but there was no real reason not to take appropriate caution and be prepared. Floundering about during a crucial moment would be disastrous and so Ares preferred to avoid that possibility altogether. He had Omniscience and Diagnosis both at the ready and felt sufficiently prepared.
Ares took a few deep breaths, fully aware that what came next was going to hurt. Nothing good in life came easy and that was doubly true in the cultivation world. Still, for what it was worth, Ares was pretty decently experienced when it came to inflicting hell upon himself as he'd put himself through the ringer on multiple occasions previously. He dilly dallied for a few minutes at most before boldly diving into the deep end each and every time so it could have been way worse! Some people in Ares' position would give up, run away from the difficulties, and not bother at all! Ares brought out the vial of fine grind blue and couldn't help but admire it in all its glory... Which also doubled as him procrastinating as long as he could...
"Doooo it! Doooo it!" Sandy's jolly verbal jostling and cheerful cheerleading from the side was cute and all but Ares knew better than to rush headfirst into a rare resource like this! He'd seen things and been through unimaginably intense trials that Sandy couldn't comprehend! If she thought her eighteen month fine grind, and the silver can do bamboo, were bad... She should try learning how to wield 100% annihilation enhancement, replacing her eye nerves with a treasure by digging them out of her skull with her bare hands, being impaled by war aura spikes and bled borderline to death, or turning your heart into a volcano as it burns you alive! Ignorance was truly bliss... But, then again, if ignorance were bliss then surely choosing to remain ignorant of ignorance would be the height of bliss! Ares couldn't deny he was in a better spot now as a cultivator even if it had necessitated becoming intimately familiar and knowledgeable about the devilry of extended suffering.
Ares closed his eyes and revelled in the calmness of his own mind for about a minute. He wanted nothing more than to experience serenity one last time before he threw himself into the deepest pits of agony. "Alright... Here goes..." Ares shook his head and uncorked the vial with a grimace. The self-destruct clock of the fine grind blue officially started ticking again but that didn't matter because it was still early morning and it would take about twenty three, or so, more hours for there to even be a risk of this resource exploding in Ares' face. The temporal vial that stopped time, to prevent the fine grind from aging, was no longer needed, and could even be replaced by the Blade to serve the same purpose if need be, but none of that mattered. Ares was going to swallow this fine grind long before any of that became an issue... Though, admittedly, the peculiar odour had returned and was stifling Ares' willingness to down the resource right this very moment.
The smell was sharp, like someone was pouring grains of sand into Ares' nose directly and they were scraping against his flesh. In fact, Ares was bleeding a little from his nose as a result of him inhaling so it wasn't even entirely an exaggeration! This thing could actually damage a person by being indirectly sniffed... What was going to happen to Ares once he ate it?! Well, if nothing else, he might get some inspiration for how to improve upon Bellona's beloved popping candy as the sensation of this resource ripping across his tongue and grating through his throat would be a real eye opener...
Though downing this resource was a daunting task, and Ares could have sworn at this moment in time that eating the entirety of Xasca would be far less demanding, he tilted his head back, brought the vial to his lips, said a prayer to the future God of destruction, and began pouring the small blue grains into his mouth. A single grain landed on his tongue and, in the brief moment before the rest followed, a single thought flashed through Ares' mind as his eyes twitched in despair. This is going to really fucking suck. That one grain alone felt like he'd been pierced through his tongue by a million poisoned daggers... His tongue was already bleeding and the other... Thousands? Of grains had yet to even make contact. It was a little early in the day to be having nightmares but Ares saw a grim future ahead of him regardless and there was going to be a lot of writhing and screaming in store for him, he reckoned. Ares might not have liked what he was predicting but he was brutally honest with himself and knew there was no point fooling his brain into thinking this would go any other way as it would only result in a harsh awakening to the inevitable truth down the line. This was going to be extremely terrible. The only solace here was that the fine grind was going to be worse than the amplifier! Ares was saving the easy part for last as a sort of detox of pain after his excruciating ordeal so he would be able to see monumental gains for little effort for once! A real rarity in this world and a moment to be treasured! Of course, before that...
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Ares dared not open his mouth, and accidentally spill literally any of the most precious resource in existence, but he was reluctant as can be to swallow the stuff. He was genuinely worried his throat would be slit from the inside if allowed the grains resting on his tongue to ravage his oesophagus freely. His tongue was a dry and barren graveyard of weapons, the type of no man's land you would see in the aftermath of a war with flags and swords buried across it amidst an air of death and misery. Each grain was a sharp and discarded tool that buried itself into the ground, his tongue, having served its purpose but thinking they were completely docile was foolish. Each grain had a razor sharp vigor and could be wielded again by any passing warrior and that was the dilemma Ares was facing. The grains were constantly, passively prickling away at his tongue but if he dared move them backwards, towards his throat to swallow them, the pain would kick up again anew as they scraped through his mouth and gums.
Once bitten twice shy and Ares was well aware of the barely-bearable pain he just suffered through putting those grains on his tongue. It faded surprisingly quick but in the moment it was actually happening... Suicide seemed like a better option than putting up with this! And it was just the start too... The grains were stationary now but once their journey started through Ares' body they would keep circulating for hours on end and the pain would not fade at any point until the deed was done. It would also probably get worse than it was currently as certain areas in his body would need to be grinded down and rebuilt thoroughly, and his own regeneration might elongate the process, so this was really the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, thoughts of quitting arose and prodded away at Ares like the devil on his shoulder but there was a single angle on his other shoulder that needed whisper only but one word to spur him into action. 'Family'. Ares knew why he was doing this, and why he couldn't afford not to, and in that moment he swallowed the fine grind with no hesitation like he'd been possessed by said angel. For a brief second Ares displayed incredible will power bordering on insanity, looking like a living being devoid of any irrationality or emotion, but that was just how he operated. He couldn't deny his fear, he simply overcame it with things more important to him and then acted in the window in which he was in full control and could not be swayed come hell or high water. Was he already regretting it now that some semblance of sanity had returned to his overhyped self?...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"
Who knows? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't!... Ok, perhaps the answer was obvious, he was definitely regretting it butit didn't matter! He'd already screwed himself! There was no undoing the deed and that was where Ares real mettle came into play because it was form here on that his resilience would truly be tested. He knew what would happen after his borrowed confidence and temporarily unyielding resolution faded but he always treated that as a problem for future Ares! Future Ares had been betrayed many times by this mind set and, unfortunately, he'd now become current Ares so they were both going through it right now. The result of his own actions was catching up with him as Ares' entire body was being sliced open piece by piece. His throat was like a salmon being filleted by a professional chef and his lungs were rocks in the ocean being eroded over countless years. It was all way worse than Ares expected it to be because the fine grind train barrelling through his body was quicker than he ever imagined it could be. He thought it would be a slow digestion process, in which the fine grind took on each body part one by one, lingering in each respective area and never coming back once the job was done. At least that way he could endure the different patches of pain separately even if it took longer overall. What was happening here, though, was that the fine grind was trying to sand down his whole body all at once! It was flowing through him like water in a pipe system and being flushed everywhere it could possibly wriggle into. It felt like the grains had multiplied and he was invaded by a swarm of angry wasps and bees on a mission to prod him full of holes.
Ares' bare chest was fairly indicative of what was happening to his entire body right now as he was swelling up with hive-esque patches of swollen red skin. Behind each of these bumps, inside his body, were clumps of fine grind that had morphed into small, perfectly round, blue balls and were spinning rapidly to grind away the weak flesh. They were miniature polishing machines with a three hundred and sixty degree area of operation and Ares wasn't able to even move his body any more. All his muscles had been obliterated and / or disabled by the violence of the merciless fine grind and his upper body tipped over forcing him to crash land face first on the floor. There was nothing to be done about this and Ares was too busy screaming internally to care about this minor detail. He would have opened his mouth and grunted in pain but his jaws were also being bombarded by debilitating grains of sand and so his entire red body was unresponsive. It was like going to a car wash but Ares had replaced the car and all the machinery had been replaced by razor blades.
Parts of Ares body were literally exploding and this phenomenon first occurred at his finger tips. Nails and the flesh underneath them blew up, spurting blood from the tips of his hands before the flesh rapidly regenerated. Ares could tell the regenerated body parts were stronger than before, and his grip strength had improved significantly, but this meant that his entire body, from head to toe, was going to have endure that same exploding process before this hell ended. His fingers were exploding again even now so it was likely this would have to happen multiple times too...
What was going under the hood of Ares' skin was that the rapidly rotating blue balls of fine grind were expanding with each rotation, applying immense pressure until the body part in question could no longer tolerate the unimitated expansion and burst. Ares might as well have buried Shock Beads inside himself and detonated them all as this was roughly equivalent in terms of the end result. Still, the effect of the fine grind was noticeable, even if it had only been a few seconds since this whole mess began, as his fingers grew a fraction larger with each and every regeneration. Ares, if this kept up, would wind up increasing in size, length, height, girth, bulk, etc... By a factor of about 1.1 which didn't sound like a lot but was functionally pretty considerable for a human, especially when remembering his adept trait as most of the benefits were going to Garmr, actually. Not to mention Ares muscles would be far more developed, even if the increase in size wasn't proportionate to his strength gain, so he could tell this was worth it. Worth it a thousand times over, even... Just not pleasant! Not in the slightest! Each explosion resounded in his head and nearly drained his entire conscience and sucked it away from him but the fine grind was unrelenting and never stopped spinning. The worst of it came whenever multiple explosions happened all at once across his body or whenever and organ was struck. There was one particularly mentally devastating incident in which both his lungs and his heart all simultaneously bit the dust and Ares very nearly followed suit. It wasn't a matter of tolerance for pain, he was nearly murdered. Pain was irrelevant, death was absolute and no brain out there could handle infinite pain. Beyond a certain point, how much the injury hurt was irrelevant as the brain couldn't even properly convey it; it would just kill Ares on the spot so as not have to do the calculation and administer the result and that was very nearly his fate in that one moment. It was purely unlucky too as all three organs gave up within a second of one another so it felt like it came crashing down all at once. Ares thanked his lucky stars he didn't lose consciousness, and managed to cling to reality, but his defiance and reluctance to be bested by this resource were null and void because there was one thing he couldn't avoid or prevent no matter how much he wanted to. There was a point at which he was forced to lose consciousness and it was non-negotiable because there was nothing he could do when his head exploded.
SPLAT
"OH SHIT!" Sandy gasped and couldn't believe her eyes. She knew this was mandatory, and Ares' would return to the land of the living in a few seconds when his head and brain regenerated, but the sudden burst of blood all over the Elliot's interior was pretty gratuitous. This place was going to need a serious spring cleaning but Sandy really didn't want to do it because she felt somewhat sick looking at it. It was the most gruesome 'death' she'd ever personally witnessed. Ares' head was a watermelon and somebody had just shot it with a cannonball, that was the best way to describe it from Sandy's perspective. She'd jumped a little in her seat at the shock of it all and realised in that moment that her fine grind was pretty much a kid's toy in comparison. She had a massive migraine when she swallowed her fine grind but its not like thishappened to her! Even when the can-do bamboo was breaking her flesh apart and regenerating it it's not like her whole head was blow apart at once! The bamboo gradually wore down her cheek, then her ears, and then her forehead etc... It never made her head go kaboom completely!
Sandy shivered in her seat but watched on with interest because the change Ares as undergoing, beyond all the exploding, was quite fascinating. The world was a wide place and this was informative of the sorts of things cultivators who explored it went through to improve themselves. Sure this was a relatively unique resource but it's not like body temperers hadn't been through stuff like this too, or sometimes even worse, so Sandy was morbidly curious to see Ares explode more even if it was off-putting. She felt pity! She really did! But this was also very interesting! Plus Ares signed up for this willingly! It wasn't torture if i was self-inflicted! That was the rationale Sandy used to justify inching closer to the show and taking a front row seat with a sparkle in her eyes. If this was going to take a while anyway, she might as well learn from the experience!