It was time to head back. Ares knew it was going to be another busy day back at the house as it seemed like Rhea was indirectly forcing him to host a get together. If her children were being served Calla's hot chocolate then Rhea figured she would take advantage and get them some of Ares' food to boot. Ares had no say in the matter but he was used to such unreasonable behaviour from Legion women and simply didn't make a fuss over it, instead graciously taking the initiative and kindly offering a place for everyone to come and hang out. He had his own cultivation crap to attend to but taking a break to make some food for everyone wouldn't be the end of the world... Although that was also what he'd said last time when it was his birthday... At this rate he was going to keep taking days off and not make any progress... But things weren't up to him as the timing of his birthday and this match were purely coincidental so he tried not to dwell on it. He'd be free to do as he pleased all day and night from tomorrow onward without interference so biting the bullet for a while today wasn't an issue.

Just because Ares couldn't isolate himself in a cultivation room that didn't mean he couldn't start planning his schedule ahead of time and, by the time he and everyone else returned to his home, he was fairly confident he knew how he wanted to tackle everything. First he was going to pressurise the Celestial Prisms and then, depending on how much time he had, maybe the Nyxian Prowler. The second issue on his list to tackle, and easily the more important of the two, was to raise his cultivation to sensory enhancement. Though the next match wasn't against anyone impressive, Ares wanted to get some practice in with divine sense as well as his enhanced base senses before he went toe to toe with the biggest of foes, Mako. Granted that was still two matches away but more time = more practice, and more practice = more good. Ares didn't know how long that process would take him but he felt confident he could get it all done by the time the next match came around. There was also one other thing he wanted to go and do but that was a quick matter and something he could square away in a few minutes by paying some people in this sect a visit. He would get this mystery task over and done with tomorrow morning, probably, and then hunker down on his other tasks.

Right now though it was cooking time! As people flooded into his house, Ares very promptly realised he did not have nearly enough food so he left to go shopping; not before taking some damn stardust off the freeloaders to pay for it, though, because he was gonna go all out today! It was the largest gathering at his house he'd ever hosted and it was to the point that some people were having to stand in the back garden or even use the cultivation rooms just to fit into the house. The Legions, the Umbras, the matriarchs, drunk Sadie, Gladius and Charity (who was squabbling with Leo), and for some un-Godly reason Trew too had all come a-knockin'. There was no way in hell Ares was making tailored food for everyone so, after he arrived at the sect's grocery store, he just picked up a lot of food stuffs that could be made for groups of people and separated into individual portions buffet style. Ares had a lot of work on his plate! Not that he had enough plates to begin with... This time it wasn't even a result of a certain drunken someone stealing them all, he just outright didn't have enough. Ares begrudgingly purchased some more but not before considering the zero-fucks-given option of plastic plates and cutlery... The temptation was very real but, unfortunately, so was the embarrassment that came with it. Ares was a proud host and nothing would dent said pride more than caving in and going down the plastic route... He just couldn't bring himself to do it! Even if buying more plates only gave Sadie more incentives to regress back to her thieving ways, what with the influx of surplus, Ares knew it had to be done!

After Ares' shopping trip, he returned to find everyone getting along well enough. There were some minor complications with Phobos, Palioxis, and Venus but that had nothing to do with Ares and, even if it did, Ares wanted nothing to do with it! Calla had already distributed the hot chocolates, as she'd promised she would, and that calmed the room right down as everyone sipped on their warm beverage and took a break from their cordial conversations and / or bickering. Ares was handed his own drink and got down to work making various salads, pasta dishes, and some soups. Dessert was just fruit salad but there was a crap ton of it and the variety of fruit was almost mind numbing. If anything, this was where Ares had put the most effort in as he'd filled multiple, separate bowls with fruits ranging from A-Z in the alphabet. Anyone could basically treat it like a pick 'n' mix so it went down a treat simple though it was. After a long and hard fight some fresh fruit would undoubtedly perk everyone up so Ares had hit the nail on the head with hiss choice here. of course Enyo demanded more honeycomb now that her nerves had settled down but that was a separate matter.

Nobody stayed too late today and even Sadie responsibly took her leave instead of throwing up in the garden and crashing on the couch. It seemed Tyr wanted to do some training tomorrow, as well as Gladius, Scar, Skyzo, and Pele, so Rhea made sure Sadie didn't go overboard with the alcohol so she could actually, you know, fulfil her duty and do what she was paid to do? It was interesting that some of the Umbras were willing to train under Sadie, mostly because she had a very different style to someone like Aym, but it would likely be a good experience nonetheless. Plus Sadie had been working hard on Dominus' advice so she was becoming a way better instructor. Though her main goal was to teach the Legion how best to survive, she was now finding more and more ways to incorporate some manner of offensive into even the most defensive of strategies that she regularly taught. Maybe if she threw in some pressure enhancement she'd be able to reach the big leagues of Vraizon and throw some weight around. Speaking of the big leagues, the matriarchs were all working on Ares' advice and even occasionally visiting the pagoda again to get some more. They'd all noticed improvements, even if the range of which varied depending on the matriarch, so it was reassuring that Ares' training was working. It bloody better considering they had to put up with the bastard every time they wanted to be taught anything! Sometimes it was actually better to just talk to the real Ares because, although the mockery would technically increase ten fold, it would be more outwardly subtle as he had to fear for his life in reality. He was less inclined to be mouthy when the person in front of him would be more than willing to smack him then and there in said mouthy.

After everyone left, some peace and quiet returned to casa del Ares but it wasn't quite late enough to warrant going to sleep. As it had been a while since he spent time with his daughter, Ares played around with Appa doing whatever it wanted be it piggyback rides, throwing it into the air and catching it, or just chatting aimlessly for a while. As Enyo was going to keep her hands to herself tonight, Ares was able to bring Appa into the bedroom today and thus the first night in which Ares, Enyo, Bellona, and Appa all slept together passed. Appa didn't really get much sleep as it happily floated around from position to position to get more hugs. It was just in a good mood as it was surrounded by family and making the most of that took precedence over resting. It's not like there was anything for it to really do as of late anyway. Anyone who wasn't competing in the tournament just kinda cultivated all day and occasionally trained so Appa staying up late wasn't going to be a concern for it. Although Ares wasn't aware, and he would have very much wished to see this if he were, there was one very sweet moment in which Bellona accidentally sleep-head-butt Appa so it head-butt her back. This cycle kept going for about five minutes until a giggling Appa left Bellona to finally knock, and lean on, Ares' arm instead like she'd been meaning to do from the start. Luckily, however, this memory was caught by Enyo who happened to be awake and would share it with Ares provided he did as she asked. What she would ask of him was pretty obvious, and there was no way he'd say no, it's just that she liked looking for opportunities to wrap Ares around her thumb. She knew he was a sucker for all things cute and that the mere mention of this occurrence would spur him to agree to any trade offer she put forth. That being said, Enyo also knew Ares wanted to spend some time sorting stuff out in the cultivation room so she wouldn't pester him right away, instead waiting until he had free time to pamper her.

Morning breached the curtains and everyone got up in their own time, leaving the room one by one to go about their business whatever it may be. Bellona was likely going to do some cultivation and raise her stage if at all possible while Enyo was going to mess around with her shield and barriers. Enyo even mentioned possibly attending the Sadie training session so Ares and Bellona bid her goodbye. Appa was torn between cultivating or playing with Leo and decided to see what he was up to first before making its own choice. The Aejaz family: Trixie, Allie, Lacy, Leo, and Aejaz himself, were all over on the other side of the house, in the back garden, so Ares left them to their own devices as he entered the soul-draining cultivation room. It very well could be fun in here sometimes but its original purpose was etched into the name of the room and it gave Ares pause whenever he heard it. Cultivation room. The thought of locking yourself in a room to cultivate... Ares wanted to puke. At the very least, even if what he was about to do was dull, it was still more interesting than the arduous chore that was cultivating in confinement. Now did that make the prospect of sitting around, jamming pressure into his Celestial Prisms for potentially days on end more appealing? Hell no but what needed to be done needed to be done... Now the only question was how to do it exactly... After all, the treasures were behind his eyeballs right now! Ares hadn't considered this problem before but he was just now realising he was going to have to, rather forcefully, shove pressure into his eyes... It was going to be like filling a balloon to the brim with air except for the fact that the balloon was a body part and he could feel them bursting with pressure, on the verge of exploding in his head. It might not hurt, provided nothing went abysmally wrong, but it certainly wasn't going to feel nice either and that was basically guaranteed.

Ares closed his right eye and poked the eyelid gently. He tried to push some pressure into his eye in this manner but it was unsuccessful to say the least. There had been zero reaction whatsoever so this was clearly wrong. Ares had tried taking easy way out number one and been completely denied so now it was time for easy way out numero deux! In vain, Ares attempted to direct pressure through him internally so that he could pressurise the Prisms without having to poke his eyeball directly but, a few seconds of meaningless effort later, he'd confirmed that it was very much not possible to accomplish. That only left the method of direct application and, once more, Ares was being a wuss. Could he be blamed for not wanting to shove his finger into the whites of his eyes though? Really? Not even a month ago Ares had never had to do anything too uncomfortable for an increase in overall power but, nowadays, it felt like a disgusting and / or painful process a minute! The annihilation enhancement, the unchaining, and now this? It didn't help that Ares was also on the lookout for an out of this world fine grind blue which would no doubt be agonising to digest whenever he finally got around to that, presumably in Xasca. At least he might have some kind of break during the Freeride journey... Maybe...

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Sigh

Ares looked at his pointer finger as his finger looked him dead in the eye. Might as well get it over and done with...

....

....

Jab

"SON OF A..." Ares immediately, instinctively, retracted his finger and nearly bit the thing in frustration. This sucked! And how long was he going to have to do this for again? Days?! There was no way Ares was going to have time to do the Nyxian Prowler after this. Not a damn chance. He was struggling to even get off the ground with the Prisms so how long it would take him to finish them was indeterminable. Rather than sit around and poke himself to insanity in a dull room, Ares decided to walk around the sect and do it! If he had to suffer, everyone else had to watch him suffer and cringe at the sight! That and Ares wanted to go to this mystery place as well and, now that he had some spare time, there was no reason not to. Ares got up, left, creeped out everyone in the sect he passed, and eventually got around to badgering some farmers to get what he wanted. A few trades later he was in possession of what he'd been after from the get go... Though he was still having difficulties with the whole 'poke your eye' thing. Ares had formed a crowd of curious onlookers that followed the eye-jabbing mad-man as they were all curious as to what he was trying to accomplish here. Some people even attempted it themselves and regretted their foolishness deeply. The crowd realised this wasn't some new cultivation craze, and that Ares wasn't setting some new trend or anything, he was just being weird. There was a fifty fifty chance with this guy whether copying his actions would catapult you to unrivalled success or make you look stupid for literally negative gain. This eye-poking thing seemed to be the latter so they all left him to it and went back about their own business.

Ares returned to the solitary confinement room, AKA the cultivation room, and kept at it. He was tempted to go check the arts library and see if they any technicals that were capable of numbing pain temporarily as this eye situation was getting out of hand. Fortunately, when all hope looked lost, Ares decided to try something he thought wouldn't work in the slightest. He used annihilation enhancement on his eyes, but not his fingers, and gave it another shot. Ares was aware he wouldn't feel any pain doing this but he was expecting to be unable to pressurise the Celestial Prisms because he couldn't shove the pressure past the enhancement to reach the treasures. As it turned out, this assumption was false and it worked perfectly fine... Which meant everything prior 'till now could have been avoided had he simply experimented for a bit longer before clinging to the stupidest option available to him. All of that eye poking had been for naught... Well at least he ended up finding a new method to escape his predicament in the end, that was for the best. Having to run enhancement 24/7 while he did this would also be good practice for using it for longer periods of time. He wasn't lying back during the match against the Isasz cheaters when he said he could run this for a long ass time, it's just that he'd never done it as of yet. The span of a few days may have sounded like a lot now but, when his cultivation increased, the usefulness of such a duration would be put to the test during multi-year trials. It was better to start working on his ability to keep it operating for chunk of time now while he had a reason to so, at the very least, he wouldn't just be sitting here dealing with the Prisms this entire time. This process would be a bit more involved and give him something to do which was nice.

Time passed and Ares scarcely took any breaks over the course of the next four days. He'd been somewhat blindsided by the amount of time dealing with the Prisms took but they were a pretty incredible treasure so it made sense. Plus, as Ares knew he would before, he found out whether or not they were a personal treasure. In short, yes they were. When did this happen exactly? Ares had no idea, it could have been the moment he picked them up for all he knew. It could have also been a result of pressurising them but there was no real way to tell. The only benefit of this was being able to shove more pressure inside it and Ares didn't quite know what effect that would have other than making his eyes much more resilient. Maybe he could stare at the sun now or keep his eyes open underwater. Not that he couldn't do that latter thing anyway but at lower depths, closer to the seabed, he could resist the pressure near the ocean floor perhaps. Ares also tried shining a light in his eye but he was perfectly fine to stare right into the thing without any repercussions so it seemed he would be much harder to blind overall. Of course any powerful arts would override this but, for the most part, he'd be unfettered by minor inconveniences. Ares also performed one last test and, sure enough, he found out that he could see clearly in the dark. Yes he could use Omniscience to fix that problem anyway but then his fiery eyes would give away his position. Having the means to see through darkness without giving away his location was pretty valuable and he wasn't going to complain about it. It was an easier method of attaining such an ability than by eating millions of carrots anyway. Though Ares was done testing, he was pretty sure his eyes could also see further and the clarity of his vision had improved significantly. He would keep an eye out, pun intended, as he was walking about outside the sect to double check if it was true or not but he was fairly convinced of it just based on how crystal clear everything was now compared to before.

Ares had two days left until his match was next up on the chopping block. A few others were taking place currently but they weren't as interesting as the Umbra and Legion slug fest so Ares ignored them and went about his own business, cultivating until he could go up a stage and reach the 8th stage of mental accumulation. Sitting around with his legs crossed got boring after a while so he messed around and tried cultivating in different positions. Leaning diagonally against the wall by resting his head on it, sitting in an 'L' pose in mid air with his back up against one wall and his feet pressed up against the opposite, and even doing a handstand were all cultivation methods Ares gave a go. At one point Enyo even found him using Voidwalk to stick to the ceiling when she came to give him some bubble tea Bellona had made. "One brown sugar bubble tea for the ceiling demon."

Ares chuckled at Enyo's nonsense at dropped down to the floor. Before taking a sip he decided to check in with Enyo and see how things were going outside. "Sorry for not spending much time with you as of late but, you know. How's everything been on your end? I take it you've been back to My Fair Lady? You said you were going shopping that one day and I know you wouldn't leave the sect, go into town, and not pay Bea a visit."

"Can you blame me? Her stock and selection have gotten really impressive since I begged Rhea to invest in the shop. Bea's done a fantastic job and upheld her promise to expand quite nicely. I think she's even gotten some recognition from the international tourists so her name's been spreading far and wide... Speaking of spreading far and wide... You got a minute?" Enyo's hands were getting fidgety and Ares sighed. Ares hadn't taken many breaks but most of them had been to occupy a bored Enyo. That and spending time with Blo Blo in the back garden firing off magic but one of his wives was a lot more needy than the other so the ratio of time spent with one was a lot higher than with the other. Bellona was pretty independent for the most part, however, so that was fine. Now that she'd gotten everything off her chest and out her system Ares felt comfortable leaving her to her own devices more often. She knew he was actually busy right now and not just dicking about with miscellaneous and irrelevant garbage. Actually, it seemed like she was intentionally leaving him be and not being too demanding. Ares appreciated it but she had every right to be a bit more selfish. That would take some time away from Enyo but she'd had more than enough as of late! She could go take a cold shower!

"Ah sorry, maybe later? I know it might not look like it but I'm actually really close to a breakthrough here."

Enyo's eyebrow raised as she was convinced she was being lied to even if her bloodline said otherwise. This fool had been standing on the ceiling not even a minute ago! What kind of breakthrough was he on the verge of exactly? Defying gravity? He'd already accomplished that! Was he going to start doing it without an art? Enyo just shook her head and tutted. "A shame but oh well. Good luck on whatever it was you were doing."

Ares shook his head lightly and figured he might as well explain. "It's just normal cultivation... Somewhat so anyway. I read in a book somewhere that some people practice extreme cultivation wherein they cultivate while doing absurd things like skydiving or bungie jumping. Apparently the more used to cultivating at reckless times you are, the easier it gets. These people could supposedly keep cultivating all day, all night, no matter what they were doing. Imagine that? Cultivating passively all the time! Having a chat? Cultivating. Having a fight? Cultivating. Having a quickie with your sex pest wife? Cultivating!" Ares sprinkled in that last example to keep Enyo at bay. If he could actually accomplish this then the amount of spare time he had would skyrocket so this, to her, was an incredible opportunity. Enyo practically bolted out of the room after wishing him good luck!

...

What Ares failed to mention though was that it was never confirmed if anyone had truly accomplished this or not. It was hard to disprove but it was also equally hard to prove these people weren't just liars. The theory was reasonable, though, as people could cultivate in situations that weren't necessarily ideal, it's just whether or not it could be done without pause was doubtful. Still, there was no particular reason not to try. Ares could cultivate in all the weird positions he tried so maybe, if he kept doing it, something might actually come of it one day! The passive pillar was an open pillar, after all, so ruling it out without giving it a good go was silly when it was of no detriment to his current goals. Speaking of, the breakthrough he mentioned was that he was nearing the 8th stage. He'd probably nail it down by tomorrow, after which he'd take the trailblazers and then work towards divine sense. After that would be the match and then Ares could take things from there. He had no more pressing issues to attend to on his list so he was free to do things in whatever order he wanted. He would definitely deal with pressurising the Prowler first but, after that, he had no idea which personal treasure to start with as they were all predictively going to take, at minimum, a week. If that were true then he'd only have time to pressurise one by the time his match with Mako came around and so he had to pick wisely. Still, he kinda already had an idea which treasure he wanted to pressurise. There weren't many options but the one he had in mind just felt right. The Stygian Zephyr, the treasure that had been with him from the start, was going to be getting a golden touch up!