BOOM

The talisman burst and a small anti-magic flood washed over Ares, soaking him in the stuff... But he'd deflected it! Technically it wasn't his skin covered in anti-magic, but rather the layer of pressure he'd applied to his skin, so he was safe as he could throw the pressure off and remove the anti-magic without failing the trial. Kind of like a raincoat getting wet and then removing that while Ares himself remained dry. It wasn't the cleanest deflect ever, and he certainly needed to work on it, but he'd come out the other side of the first explosions at least! There were still four more waiting in the wings for him but Ares believed he could survive them just barely at his current level. As with before he wanted to see what the next part of the trial looked like. The final stretch... What manner of crazy shenanigans was Candy going to use to pull the wool over Ares' eye with? Well, first things first, Ares had to deflect the talismans and the blobs.

Ares ducked and swept his palms upwards to clear a group of four blobs while kicking out backwards to smack away another group of two. He spun to his left and headbutt another blob into the floor while coating his back in pressure to deflect a talisman's explosion. He raised his head and saw the last three talismans all charging at him together in a line and Ares knew what needed to be done to get past this... He took a deep breath and spread pressure across the entirety of his body a fraction of a second before the talismans blew him up. Maintaining this state for more than even a single second felt impossible and Ares coughed up blood when he stumbled out of the explosions... He'd made it though! Screw his health, right now he needed to pay attention and see what the fox was doing... Not that that was difficult in the slightest. Ares couldn't possibly miss her actions if he tried because Candy was standing directly in front of him with two handguns pressed up against his forehead. She giggled and mouthed the word 'B~ang' before she blasted Ares' brains out... Not!

Candy didn't pull the trigger but she did end the trial in Ares' loss. Anyone else would have been given an express ticket out of the pagoda but why would Candy bother doing that to Ares? To make him waste time? Also, she really didn't want to shoot him anyway. She had limits to her deviousness and a pointless setback like that didn't bring her any joy. So no, Ares was not blasted to smithereens. He was, however, hugged and nuzzled by the fox while he was busy internally trying to figure out what to do here. With Candy's spatial magic and the guns she was going to be a serious problem... Her speed, and the speed of her attacks, were going to multiply now... Plus the lethality of the attacks meant Ares deflect vortex was going to struggle. If he imbued it with annihilation magic that would solve the problem but it clearly wasn't the intended solution otherwise this trial would be literally impossible for anyone other than him.

Also, Ares was realising just how powerful Candy was. The anti-magic blobs, the exploding talismans, and her darting around with her guns all the while setting runic ambushes... She was a one woman army that pestered you from every conceivable angle without pause, tormenting you as you sat in a defensive position unable to launch any attacks because you were too busy dealing with her never-ending onslaught. She was the epitome of 'death by a thousand cuts' and she was mobile to boot. Her nimble dashing combined with her spatial magic and adroit dodging allowed her to maintain an offensive even when she was being attacked. This woman was a genius combatant and would be no weaker than someone like Enyo or Bellona without the pagoda restraining her. Ares wanted all his partners to be strong enough to defend themselves... But it was slowly starting to look like his wives were all going to be prodigious and crazy strong in their own right. He knew Candy was valued for her anti-magic, and that he'd barely even seen half of what she was capable of thanks to the pagoda's restrictions, but she was extraordinarily talented in a wide range of ways and that was obvious at a glance. Her most 'lacking' field of expertise was close range combat but even that was pretty solid thanks to her flexibility and quick reflexes. This fox was not to be trifled with no matter how adorable her cute swooning over him was! Ah, but he couldn't resist patting her and stroking her fluffy tails so she had won in that regard. Candy loved it when Ares played with her tails, it made her feel warm and pleasurable. Not in a sexual way but it was really gratifying nonetheless. Sort of like scratching a really persistent itch or rubbing a bumpy birthmark, it was in that vein of satisfaction. She also liked it when he scratched behind her fluffy ears, causing her to laugh and bury her head in his chest. She was an older lady but appeared really youthful to Ares during moments like these, not that he had a preference either way. Her fun and energetic side, her mature, classy and calm side, both were attractive to him and both personalities were two halves of a whole that formed a complete bombshell of a woman. She was clever, cute, and hot enough to make Enyo drool. Ares was a lucky guy. Then again all three of his wives were fantastic in their own right. Ares was reminded once again to spend more time with Bellona. He was a bit busy thanks to the tournament but either during it or after he would play around with her some more, whenever he had spare time to kill.

"Hey cutie, wanna practice dealing with the exploding talismans? The method for dealing with them is quite similar to what you're going to have to learn on the last floor so you should get used to it now. Doing so ought to save you some time in the long run." Candy extended a helping hand to Ares which he readily and gratefully accepted. He could see the wisdom in her words as dealing with the talismans required a full body deflect. The last floor was about coating your entire body in pressure... Maybe? Ares didn't know the specifics but, if he could figure it out before making it to the floor, then he would have footing to stand on and a base level of competency to build up from. This was clearly the last thing he was going to have to learn and it wouldn't be easy. Just his brief attempt at full body pressure usage, regardless of whether it was the right method or not, had been exhausting and impossible to keep running for an extended period of time. Ares agreed with Candy's opinion and proposition so he prepared himself to take on the talismans in a controlled environment.

Constant explosions rang out on the fourth floor, echoing throughout the empty room as Ares was repeatedly blown up time and time again. His clothes were tattered in places but he was doing alright at least. There were occasional breaks for him to digest everything he was learning but progress had been somewhat slow. Like on the previous floors, he was still in the 'experimenting while I dig around and look for the correct method' stage. None of his ideas up until now had helped him maintain full-body pressure for longer than two seconds at most. This was an improvement, certainly, but keeping it up and running for even an hour straight should be possible for a beginner if they'd grasped the concept properly... Or so Dominus told Ares. He may have had high standards but that didn't necessarily make him wrong. The general sentiment Dominus was trying to convey was that two seconds really wasn't gonna cut it and Ares couldn't deny that... But Dominus did tell him something interesting. A full body deflect, and imbuing yourself with pressure to enhance yourself, were two entirely different techniques. What Ares was doing to deflect the talismans was actually correct and he could pass that stage of the trial properly now whenever he wanted to... It's just that the last ten seconds would require him to learn the enhancement version too anyway so he was equally as stuck as he was prior. it would be wiser for him to use the talismans to practice both techniques rather than skip to the next phase already. As for the difference between deflecting and enhancing; Ares had yet to figure it out, however... Dominus clarifying that there was a difference helped Ares see things from a different perspective. It reinvigorated him to come up with more whacky ideas to see what stuck and, during his last go-about with Candy, he came to a realisation. Deflects actively pushed the pressure outside the body, to form a layer on it, so maybe enhancement merged it with his body instead? Inside, merged, outside. Those were the three different places pressure could exist in relation to Ares and the only one he had yet to really mess around with was the second option. How Ares was going to bury pressure into his organs, muscles, and flesh he didn't know but that seemed like as good a place as any to start looking for answers.

Now the only question was 'how?' How was he supposed to merge pressure with his body... Maybe if Ares had any kind of buff magic at his disposal he would have a rough idea, due to the nature of what was being asked being similar, but this was rough! The closest he had was running annihilation mana through his body but that was still an inside matter and not something that seeped into his very being. For now, Ares decided to see if he could at least do the merging in one specific spot. He could work out the rest of his body after he actually had an idea of how to do it in the first place. As he'd done a lot of pressure work with his hands he figured it would be best to start there. Plus, as an aside, enhancing his hands and legs first were his best options in terms of getting the most value due to the amount of different uses these parts had in combat. Even if he only learnt, for now, how to use enhancement on these body parts it would till be an infinitely better use of his time than enhancing his head or something.

Ares reached into his heart and brought out the pressure, allowing it to flow through him and straight to his hand. Now came the tricky part. Ares stared at the pressure inside his hand and tried to will it into his flesh but there was no result other than abject failure. The pressure stubbornly refused to budge an inch like an opinionated dog refusing to return home while out for a walk. No matter how Ares tugged at it, the pressure just kinda looked back at him like he was an idiot for even making such an inconvenient suggestion. Ares sighed and jumped to the conclusion that, in some capacity, this was going to involve mana again... It's seriously always mana with pressure, isn't it?! Ares complained as he sent a clump of mana over to his hand. He didn't use it to convert the pressure into something physical though as he felt that step was going in the wrong direction and served a different purpose... Maybe he could use the mana as a guide to force the pressure into his flesh whether it liked it or not? He tried, and there was some resistance, but eventually the mana did manage to push the pressure along and shove it into Ares' flesh. He could feel the pressure trapped in his hand and he could feel his grip strength increase explosively. Additionally, this wasn't anywhere near as strenuous as a full body deflect so he knew he was on the right course with this method. The pressure wasn't evenly spread out, and it was only inside his hand, but he was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Ares threw a bit more pressure over into his hand to even out the spread and even merged the pressure with some annihilation mana, difficult though it was, giving his hand a golden glow instead of the usual silver one for an enhanced body. Ares felt like he could punch a hole through a meteor and come out unscathed. It was a degree of power he was very unfamiliar with thanks to his adept trait limiting his physical strength. This was a good method to forcibly up his strength for now at least. He wouldn't need it as much when he got his revenant transformation but this was a good substitute for his human form... Actually, his revenant transformation could probably control pressure too, so maybe this trick would also be useful in his wolf form? He would have to try it out at some point down the line.

Whilst keeping the hand enhancement running, Ares tried to enhance his other hand and that was where the problems started... Trying to enhance more than one spot at the same time was the cultivation equivalent of doing calculus and rocket science simultaneously... And that was just an attempt to enhance his other hand too... If he included the entire rest of his body, how on earth was he going to have enough brain power to pull this off?! Ares had felt a sense of relief when he figured out the enhancement process in record time but now he was understanding that that was only half the battle and there was more investigations in store for him yet. Still, he didn't try to figure it out immediately. Right now he wanted to undergo the trial again and see what his new discoveries did for him. Imagining it on paper and testing it out in reality were two entirely different ball games. Also Ares had an appropriate solution for the talismans now that his deflects could last longer so he wanted to put all of his recent work into practice to get used to the feeling of using these techniques in combat. The pressure to perform, associated with doing things on the fly, would always make the techniques harder to pull of to the same degree he could do them during the relatively unimportant training, but that was par the course.

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Thankfully, though, the deflects came along nicely and the talismans could no longer phase him during his current attempt. Ares was now more than capable of doing the first fifty seconds without making a single mistake or even coming close to making one. His growth had been pretty spectacular but he owed Candy for that. If she hadn't held back, and killed him after every failed attempt, the amount of times he would have had to re-enter the pagoda would be in the twenties at least by now. Also, her side training did wonders. He'd made sure to thank her with a kiss before this trial had started... Although she did demand more smooches and wasn't satisfied with just one because she was feeling restless after all the running around getting her excited. Ares obliged because he was more than happy to and she deserved every one. Smooth sailing was the name of the game when Candy aided Ares but, now that the timer had counted down to ten seconds, her devilish side had sprung out and she was putting the hurt on Ares. He managed to block one, singular, miserable, bullet. That was it! That was all he deflected before his lung and toe were pierced straight after! He didn't even last a second! This may have seemed like a bad result but, in the grand scheme of things, this was actually good! He'd found the solution to the bullets so he considered that to be progress gained! Lose the battle but win the war, etc...

This was good information; enhancement didn't just make him stronger but also his physical pressure attacks and deflects too. Using them in conjunction with one another seemed to be pretty solid and a cultivator could very easily forgo mana entirely to become a pressure oriented cultivator if they wanted to for whatever reason. You had ranged attacks, a strong body, and the omnipresent weight of normal pressure could slow opponents down... There really wasn't much it couldn't do. Plus Ares' annihilation / pressure mix made everything all the more effective.

Ares had once believed he would be 'complete' when he had access to his revenant transformation but now he realised that was a silly expectation seeing as how he hadn't even touched upon the basics of pressure at the time. Simply learning everything this pagoda could teach him put Ares on a pedestal that most cultivators would never reach for as long as they lived and gave him no small benefit. If Ares were to take the inner court trail again, and face off against his various loved ones, friends, and neighbours, he wouldn't even need Dominus anymore to come out on top, that was the stark difference learning about pressure had made. It was significant, it's just that being able to tell how significant was hard without a proper testing method for comparison's sake. Deep down he felt it though, the new power dwelling within him that he could bust loose at any given moment. Having access to such power was always an intoxicating feeling because it made Ares feel like the king of the world. It was all very 'walk softly and carry a big stick' but the feeling of whipping out the stick and taking everyone by surprise every now and then was unrivalled. Aesthetically, Ares was a relatively unassuming individual and yet, when pushed, his magic and pressure turned him into a whole other beast.

Ares sat down and thought everything over. Right now, the only idea that kept popping up in his head was that he shouldn't try and split the enhancement into different parts. Rather he should aim to enhance his whole body as a single entity. Separating his body took far too much brain power and would require him to process at least six different tasks at the same time at the bare minimum; head, body, two legs, and two arms. Ares wasn't the dumbest person ever but there was no way in hell he was smart enough to do this crap either! Ares ran pressure through his entire body and did the same with his mana. Doing this for both was easy enough because that was the regular state of things before he intervened. It was only when he wanted to fire pressure off, or create an art, that either pressure or mana congregated in a single spot as they typically had a natural flow around his body. As for the next step now that both pressure and mana were flowing... Was it really just as simple as pushing the pressure outwards with his mana? For this to be the final step... The final step of a technique few people could ever achieve... It seemed too easy... Ares knew there was going to be some kind of complication in the works waiting for him, he could feel it in his bones that things weren't going to just work out for him without a hitch...

With a push, Ares immediately understood the issue as he felt like he sprained his strained body everywhere all at once. Forcing that much mana into his body at the same time both A; hurt like hell, and B; was hard to do. There was considerable resistance to having pressure forced into his flesh and organs and the pushback cockblocked Ares from achieving his goal. He kept pushing but it was like he was trying to roll a boulder up a hill as every little slip up resulted in more lost ground than he'd even gained in the first place! Even attempting this for a few seconds was tiring and painful and yet he was barely even 1/100th of the way there... Ares was going to be doing this for hours to come at this rate and the worst part? He saw no way out of this mess. This really did feel like the correct way to merge pressure with his body...

Ares sighed and just got down to business. The longer he sat around trying to avoid the inevitable the more time he was wasting pointlessly. If anything he didn't realise how lucky he was. Most people weren't even capable of accomplishing this let alone making progress of any kind. All sorts of factors went into whether or not a person could ever complete this technique including, but not limited to, pillar affiliation (and thus the aspect mana they could use to push the pressure), mana quality, innate talent, pressure quality, bloodline, age, permanent injuries (especially those to a person's meridians or pressure reserves), treasures that affect the shape of a person's body, race, and even diseases. Hell there was one cultivator who was convinced she couldn't learn this technique but, the very next day, her comprehension quintupled and she made shocking progress. Why? Because the weather had been too hot the day prior and she felt uncomfortable when she was pushing the pressure outwards so it refused to work. Some other guy couldn't do it because he was constipated... And he may or may not have defecated himself by trying to push way too hard... It was a finicky technique that required the cultivator to be in perfect condition to even stand a chance of standing on the starting line. Whether you would even be able to learn this technique if you weren't a prodigy was unlikely and most non-geniuses would never get the chance throughout their entire lives.

The one time a treasure capable of aiding in this pressure enhancement process was found, a herb that relaxed the body, one of history's bloodiest wars of all time ensued. There were no teams, alliances, sides, allies or what have you, just pure carnage in no-man's land. A free for all in which hundreds of millions lost their lives. You would think the winner would have cherished his prize and either sold it for big bucks or used it immediately but the guy was a bit of a philanthropist at heart. He donated it to some of the greatest scientists and botanists around, a group of famed alchemists who were experts down to the last. He believed they had it in them to replicate the plant or come up with the conditions to grow more. Everyone involved was partially successful but no one knows to what extent. Their research is classified and, although a few more of the herbs have been found here and there due there work, no one knows what it was they even did in the first place. People didn't care about that, though, as all they needed to know was that the plant was somewhat more commonly available than previously. Of course the word 'common' was used lightly here, these herbs were still as rare as enablers were! Actually, that made a lot of sense too. The herbs were essentially permanent pressure enablers after all.

As much as Ares wished he had something equivalent to those herbs the harsh truth was that he did not. He had an easier road than most thanks to his various advantages so he had no right to complain, really, but he did anyway 'cos screw this step! Nothing in his life had ever taken this long and been this much of a pain in the ass. The only thing that would have come close was cultivating in seclusion but there was a reason Ares avoided doing that at all costs! Boredom!

Dominus felt like reaching out and trying to slap this kid who wasn't aware just how easy he had it. A couple of hours? Even he took a couple hundred years to achieve pressure enhancement... Ares' destruction mana, the fact that his pressure lay in his heart, and his bloodline being perfect in every way all culminated in the perfect storm. To be fair to Ares the pain he was feeling was actually worse than what others would go through because being quicker, ironically, had its disadvantages. For the sake of clarity, if, hypothetically, every 1% of progress did 100 damage to him, then the people who could only make 0.01% of progress in the same time span would only take 1 damage. Normally only some small pricks would be felt here and there but Ares was tearing away at his flesh and even ripping some of his organs. Poking his heart was now the least of his concerns as gashes were being added to it with regularity. Ares could take a decent amount of hurt and not be too fussed but this was absolutely excruciating! He was sweating hard and blood was oozing out of him from every orifice meaning he had to stop often just to keep himself bloody clean! clean of blood! Candy was nice enough to help with this as she used her lab coat to wipe away bits of blood here and there, reducing the amount of times Ares had to stop in his tracks and lose some progress. The longer he went for per go the better. If he had a short attempt it was entirely possible he would regress and be further from the goal, but the same was also true if he didn't make an attempt often as his progress would start fading slowly on its own. Now that he'd started he was in for the long haul and couldn't stop unless he wanted to throw everything away, that was yet another disadvantage he had that others wouldn't. So, really, Ares did have a right to complain, just not because of how long it took! If he complained about the constant agony and the inescapable trial he was being put through then maybe he would garner some actual sympathy! Probably not though, jealousy would curb any pity felt. Ignorance was bliss. Other cultivators would kill to be in Ares' position but they didn't know how miserable it was. Just because Ares had made it this far in a day that didn't mean anyone else would be able to if they were in his shoes. The pressure being locked away in his heart would foil over ninety percent of people right out the gate and the pain he was currently sitting through would take out at least another 8% or so .

With gritted teeth and clenched fists Ares soldiered onwards. Really, truthfully, his biggest concern right now was something else entirely. Was he worried about failing this step and having to redo it? Yes. Was he dreading having to leave Candy knowing they wouldn't meet again for a long while? Yes. But above all of that was a problem more immediate, something that would actually matter today! Something that couldn't be redone... The banquet! Ares needed to complete this stupid step so he could take a peek at the top floor and go home damnit!... Was Ares secretly starting to cook in the Primordial Blade, so he could make it in time for the banquet, making his life at least ten times harder by devoting some of his attention elsewhere?...; Yes... Yes he was... Ares may have genuinely been the first person in the history of the universe to actively, willingly, make learning pressure enhancement harder for himself... Candy was blissfully unaware but Dominus was speechless. In some ways, he'd really underestimated the stupidity of this idiot... He wasn't sure whether he should respect the kid or not because what he was doing was actually really impressive... In fact it may even benefit him, allowing him to activate pressure enhancement without losing as much residual pressure. It was usually impossible to load all 100% of a person's pressure into themself, even the guy on the top floor couldn't do it... But maybe that was because no one had been stupid enough to do what Ares was currently doing and push themself during their enhancement initiation? People were usually grateful they could even do it in the first place and risking failure for no apparent reason meant no one messed with the process... If Ares accidentally discovered something ground-breaking here because he wanted to be efficient and cook dinner during one of the hardest tasks known to cultivators Dominus might actually change his mind about this clown of a host. He'd been mostly indifferent, and slightly positive on occasion, but he was starting to understand that this muppet's idiocy was actually legendary. Ares and his decisions were so painfully dumb they looped back around to being smart!