Upon re-entering the pagoda, Ject raised his arms in preparation to block as he assumed he would be attacked on sight again. To his surprise, Ares didn't get aggressive with him although there was certainly a hint of animosity in the air. It seemed like Ares was going to let him say his piece before killing him again but Ject was fine with that. Leaving this clone with a few parting words, and reminding it that it was stuck in here while Ject was free to roam and causer trouble, was the goal here. Ject was trying to induce anxiety in a clone, that was just how petty he was because, at the end of the day, dying in this pagoda meant nothing to Ject whereas everything that happened outside mattered the world over to this guy. Ject had realised he couldn't kill Ares, just based off their first two interactions, so he was pretty much only sticking around to annoy him. "Hmph, this is more like it. Not acting like a rabid animal and attacking people on sight definitely makes you appear more human than wild mutt and you might be able to pass for a reasonable person if you can keep this up. If it were up to me, I would be putting a leash on you though. You and Candy.

This should be obvious to you but I'm not giving up on that fox, she has to much value to ignore. Her talent with anti-magic might even potentially be greater than mine but I refuse to give up this position as God. I will not let her overtake me and so I'm telling you this now, this goes one of two ways. I either make her mine and steal her affiliation with a treasure or I kill her. There is no happy ending for you or her, you're both just going to have to do as I say. Just because I can't kill you here myself that doesn't mean I'm going to just give up and walk away. I've still got hired experts who've trained extensively with pressure, with the sole intent of beating Veteran, for millions of years. They spent utterly absurd amounts of time behind closed doors coming up with methods to kill him only to emerge and find some brat had done it effortlessly. They aren't pleased with you and the payment I offered was the cherry on the cake to come and deal with you. Even I don't know what they'll have up their sleeves but don't think you can beat them just because you dealt with Armageddon. Different people have different specialties and I refuse to believe you'll beat every single challenger from now until the end of time.

You know what losing entails, don't you? Being a fundamental alone is not enough to guarantee support, you need to win and keep winning. Also, Candy's parents are only held back by your current status. The second some of it disappears, the second I can swoop in and claim that Fox as mine. Everything you've done up until this point were temporary measures designed to stall me but how long do you really think you'll get away with this for? My bet is not long enough. Let me spell it out for you. Even if you keep winning, while you're stuck in here, I'll be coming up with ways to assassinate the fox at bare minimum. If you lose, your consciousness will return to your main body and you'll have to spend years in those stupid lower domains knowing I've run away with your future wife. There is nothing you can do to stop me even if I can't beat you. If I can't have Candy and her affiliation, nobody can, so don't you think you would be better off just giving her to me?"

Ares wanted to kill this guy more than he'd ever wanted to kill just about anyone else. Even the Isasz young master in the restaurant back during the international didn't feel as annoying as this guy. Still, he held back for now because there was a few more things to talk about with him and experiment with. "Not that I really care but I feel I have to ask, what exactly is your problem with me specifically? Coming in here and telling me this is pointless for the most part unless you're strictly trying to rub in what you perceive as a victory. You could argue I've taken Candy away from you, maybe, but I don't think that's why you're really here, is it? You can pretend it is all you want but if you're willing to kill Candy, if things don't go your way, then clearly she isn't worth as much to you as you claim. You can live without her and her affiliation but, truthfully, I'm the one you want really dead. Why?... Is it really because of my destruction magic?" It seemed like Ares hit the nail on the head because Ject... Well, he gave of the vibe that he was grimacing behind his paper thin façade. He wasn't happy about something, that much was evident based on his demeanour, and so Ares just assumed this was really it. He might have cared about Candy to some degree but that was dwarfed entirely by Ares' existence, it seemed.

"Your stupid magic shouldn't even exist." Ject spat out his vitriolic remark as he shot an anti-magic bullet from his fingertips. It seemed like this guy came here prepared to cheat in some way, probably by using anti-magic on the runes directly but Ares didn't much care about how he was doing it... But Ject was not necessarily doing this to win. He wanted to, sure as it would make his life easier, but it seemed like he was testing Ares because there was no greater opportunity to do so. Could destruction magic really outclass anti-magic and overcome it? Depending on the answer, Ject was not going to be a happy camper and he might actually ramp up his wariness against Ares, more so than he already had. It would maybe make Candy's life harder, and Ares' supporters were really going to have to keep a close eye on this fool, but Ares unfortunately needed to use his own magic here too. Ject was still a God, even if this was just a clone, so going easy on him and only using annihilation enhancement was likely to fail after a pointlessly long and drawn out fight. More than Anything, Ares could not lose in this pagoda and he unquestionably could not lose to Ject himself, so using magic, just as Ject wanted him to, was the only way forward.

Ject was going to get his answer which was the reason he'd shown up here himself. He wanted to know more than anything else and there was no way for him to really find out other than directly experimenting himself. He could maybe get some second hand rumours but verification, for his own sake, was necessary. If destruction was just better anti-magic... Well Ject wasn't going to be hesitant to declare war against this one person. It would pit aspiring anti--magic cultivators all around the dimension against Ares, and he would be hunted down by them for the duration of his entire cultivation journey, in the hopes of getting into the good graces of Ject himself. Of course Ject could do this anyway, regardless of the results here, but if he was going to get pushback from Ares' backers then he wanted to be doing it for a good cause. If this kid couldn't overcome his magic in head-on confrontation then he honestly might just leave him alone for now. Not Candy, no, he would till try to get her by any means necessary, but going excessively against Ares was out of the cards due to his status as fundamental. The pushback wouldn't be worth it. Also, by the time he actually ascended to the higher domains in such a scenario, Ject was convinced Ares would forget about the fox if he didn't get to her first. Ject was horribly wrong on this account but it didn't really matter because Ares had no intention of letting this guy get his way at all, in any way shape or form.

Ares didn't hesitate to show Ject exactly what he was after and bring out the disintegration to deal with the anti-magic headed his way. This clone of Ares had learnt first hand about the evolved forms of his magic and could wield them relatively freely depending on his cultivation base at the time. Having access to cultivation realms near or at the level of Gods allowed Ares to play around with his own magic and do things real Ares could only dream of for now. He'd learnt something very interesting about disintegration that this idiot Ject was about to learn the hard way. Disintegration was undeniably the most powerful aspect in the universe, it couldn't be contested, but it's real purpose was actually quite unexpected. Ject could learn this the hard way though as, for now, Ares just erased the anti-magic projectile with a small blob of disintegration that hovered in front of him and acted like a sentry. He could do a lot more but Ares had no reason to rush this as Ject could only leave when Ares said so. Until then, he was going to play around with this clone a bit and see what kind of damage he could do.

Dominus had taught Ares that, in some cases, depending on the type of clone, it could relay damage back to the real body. Typically this required the clone to have actually been formed from the real body itself and, even then, it required some very specific arts and circumstances to be able to do this. Real Ares had done this to Terros via Astraeus but clone Ares hadn't known this about clones up until recently when Dominus spilled the beans. Still, he wanted to try because, annoyingly, Ject was right about one thing. This Ares could not escape this pagoda. How much he could help was limited strictly to building an immovable reputation... Or that should have been the case... There might be a little extra something something he could do to this asshole here and now. A few things, actually, as Ares was really hoping this moron would confirm Ares' suspicions about a few things. It necessitated Ject using a specific style of art but Ares was sure that, as a God of the anti-magic pillar, he would know it or something similar enough that could be used for verification. That would be punishment one and punishment two could come after.

Ares expected this to go on for a while with Ject chucking progressively stronger anti-magic at him, as Gods would inevitably have a lot of stamina to facilitate this ramping up style of fight, but it seemed like Ject wanted to turn things up a notch and jumped straight a pretty powerful art that was precisely what Ares had been hoping he would use at some point today. Punishment one was about to rear its head, and the best part? The best part was that Ares didn't have to do literally anything, Ject was just making a massive mistake here all by himself. Ject would learn the hard way the real power of the destruction pillar here today or, more specifically, the real power of disintegration.

"Commandment: Conceptual Nullification: Destruction."

And there it was, Ject's ability to temporarily erase the concept of all magic of a pillar. This effect worked in a large radius around his body, that scaled with how powerful he was which mostly mattered in his main, Godly, body, and simply abolished the existence of the specified magic. The specific magic could not be cast and any magic of that pillar that already existed would vanish on the spot. This was an effect that could last thousands of years at a time and it outright denied entire pillars. In war this was especially helpful and that was doubly true when it was a war between followers of Gods as then an entire army could potentially lose out on the magic they were most familiar with. This art being a commandment meant it was pretty damn strong and tough to remove, cancel out, or just flat out beat head on. Most people just gave up and accepted that the targeted pillar's magic could no longer exist as even other Gods could fall victim to this at times. This single commandment was why this insufferable God had lived this long, really, because he was slippery thanks to it and hard to kill. Losing your most proficient magic would be a massive disadvantage for almost all cultivators, and drastically limit the firepower they could put out, which made escaping from them a simple task. Of course Ject had other tricks up his sleeve too but this art of his was a staple through and through. It's versatility and consistency meant he used this basically every fight... So he wanted to see if destruction could really break as many rules as it was supposed to and just ignore this effect. Could destruction beat the commandment or would the commandment act first and prevent the magic? If it was the former, then Ject was going to have think long and hard about how to kill Ares and capture his soul. That or trap Ares in a sealed space forever. Either way, a threat to Ject's supremacy could not be allowed to continue existing like this. Ject would sooner the world end at Xhilihx's hand than be forced to fade into irrelevancy because of this kid.

...

...

But nothing was happening? On the surface, it basically never looked like anything happened anyway, it was a very stealthy art when Ject wanted it to be. The only way he'd be able to tell if he succeeded or not would be for Ares to try and chant an art and see whether it came out or not... But the brat was teasing him and not saying a damn thing! Was he being obstinate? Did he not want to give Ject any information? Was he afraid his magic would not come out on top here and so didn't want to find out? It could really be anything but Ject had a terrible feeling rise up in his gut based on the slowly forming smug grin on Ares' face...

..

Something was wrong, Ject could tell instinctually. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his head that not only had this commandment not worked but that something terrible had happened here and he wasn't even aware of it. First things first, Ject wanted to check if he could maybe wipe that smile off of Ares' face by casting the art again. If it didn't work the first time around, maybe it would work the second time? A third? A fourth? Maybe Ject had to wear down Ares' resilience first? That would still be an acceptable outcome here as it would be an avenue to beat this punk even if an unpleasant one.

"commandment: conceptual nullification: destruction... What the fuck?!"

Ject could tell the second the words left his lips that something was amiss. All the mana he just tried to channel into the chant was just bubbling away, minding its own business and not going anywhere. The flow of mana was fine but there was no actualisation of the art. In other words, something had gone wrong with the chant specifically... This was the kind of thing that would happen if you manipulated mana but spoke random gibberish. In fact, some people tried to speed up their casting but would frequently end up in this exact situation because their enunciation was off. In tense fights this could very easily happen to inexperienced cultivators and cost them their lives... But Ject had chanted this art perfectly and wasn't even under duress! There had to be something else going on here...

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"commandment: conceptual nullification: destruction. commandment: conceptual nullification: destruction. commandment: conceptual nullification: destruction. commandment: conceptual nullification: destruction."

Nope, nope, nope, and nope again. Four tries, four failures. Ject looked at Ares with a ferocity that was made clear thanks to the papers spinning wildly across his body and becoming a sort of talisman twister that enshrouded his form beneath it. Only two yellow, glowing eyes could be seen from within the anti-magic maelstrom but Ares wasn't interested in dealing with this chump any longer, or entertaining him in some grand fight, so he just waved his hand and summoned a disintegration tsunami. It washed over Ject who attempted to use anti-magic to cancel it out but it did effectively nothing and he was left high and dry under the black tide. This was still just a clone at the end of the day and so expecting it to fight against a full powered Ares using his own magic was laughable. Ject was thrown to and fro, back and forth, and half his body melted down into nothing before he was finally coughed up by the abyssal water in a near dead state. With both a snarl and a groan, Ject looked up at Ares and demanded an answer to this madness. "Why?! Why why why?! What the hell did you do damnable bastard?!"

Ares shrugged with a derisive smirk plastered all over his cocky face. "Me? I didn't do anything... No seriously, don't look at me like that, you're the idiot here, not me... Ah but you're going to need an explanation aren't you? Ok, put it this way, what you just tried to do was like burning the sun to ashes with a lighter. Destruction is the essence of all things, well, destruction, obviously, and so trying to destroy it is pointless and impossible. That much you should have figured out already which is why you're here. You didn't want to see it happen before your very eyes but deep down you knew it would come to this. You can't destroy destruction, you can't erase it, you can't nullify it, you can't kill it, you can't erode it, you can't decay it, you can't do shit to it because all of those means come under the umbrella term 'destruction'. The scope of destruction is far vaster than many people will initially give it credit for. As for your art.... Well it's gone. Gone forever, disintegrated and never to return. You tried to erase the very essence of erasure itself and so it bit back, passively, permanently, destroying your art. It's gone. You can't use it, you can't recreate it. You can never use it again. You seemed to resort to it pretty quickly here so I'm guessing it was important to you? Well tough luck pal, it's just gone now and there's no undoing it either inside this pagoda or outside of it."

"... Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE! GIVE ME BACK MY ART!"

Ares shook his head and snorted at the desperate God snivelling at his feet for mercy and forgiveness. "I can't give you back jack shit, it has nothing to do with me and you'd have to take up your gripes with the destruction pillar itself. Besides, it's a little late for that, don't you think? After the shit you've said to me today, did you really think you were going to walk away from this place in one piece? I'm trapped in here, yes, but you seem to have forgotten that, right now, so are you. Until you die, which will be by my hand I assure you, you're stuck with me and I can do as I damn well please. You've already made your petty little threats so it's not like you have anything left to say. I, however, have some things I want to do to you to vent a bit. First though, because I know you won't stop pestering me until I explain this to you in full, my magic is uneatable.

Or, to be precise, disintegration is unbeatable. It is the most powerful aspect in the universe, certainly, but it's real purpose, in laymen's terms, is to be anti-bullshit. No you will not erase my magic. No you will not mess with my conscience or consciousness. No you will not attack my soul. No you will not break through disintegration layers to destroy whatever it protects. No you will not rewrite the rules of reality and circumvent its power. No you will not change disintegration into something else. No no no no no no no. Disintegration is absolute and cannot be beaten by magic or anything resembling it. The second anything divine, magical, psychic, holy, cursed, supernatural, etc... touches it, it dies. If it is not a physical attack, it loses to disintegration and there is simply no way to avoid that. You cannot cheat me out of a fair fight, this aspect will not ever permit it. Time will not freeze where disintegration exists, space cannot be warped where disintegration exists, rules and laws of the universe cannot be changed while protected by disintegration. It is the ultimate offensive aspect but it is also tthe ultimate defensive aspect with both being rolled into one convenient package.

Your anti-magic never stood a chance because nothing stands a chance.

Even if an unfathomable being capable of wiping out all existence appeared suddenly and snapped its fingers, everything coddled within the warmth of disintegration would survive without feeling even a light tap. Disintegration is absolute even in the face of other absolute means and therefore puts it at the pinnacle of all things magical by default. It is never going anywhere no matter what anyone does and so your petty attempt to 'erase' it was doomed to fail from the start. Make no mistake, I could have intervened under certain circumstances regardless. Namely, if I had my apotheosis, and could control destruction in my vicinity freely, I could have actually taken control of your art as it's a form of erasure. I would also be immune to it anyway as it's nothing more than a mere branch of destruction and I can resist it without having to even raise my hand.

Let me be as clear as a I possibly can, and drill this into your thick skull until it hits home how screwed you are, you can do nothing to me. It's not just that you can't beat me, it's that I'm your worst nightmare. I never doubted even for a second that you would try and make things difficult for me, I already knew that, but let me be blunt with you. Your life is on the clock and that clock is ticking fast. As soon as I hunt you down you are going to die a miserable death because you've already crossed one too many lines to let live. You cannot stop me, you can only hope I run into obstacles and take a little longer in my journey to kill you. You've made a mortal enemy out of me and you've become my first must-kill target. Congratulations but also I give you my sympathies. You will not exist when I'm done with you but that will still be a preferable fate compared to what I'm going to do to you while you still live and breathe. You picked this fight and I'm gong to be the one to end it. Remember that. Ah but, I'm not going to let you forget me so easily anyway. Losing that art was just the start."

Ares knelt down in front of Ject and reached out towards him. Ject tried to swat the hand away and run but Ares' hand refused to budge thanks to the annihilation enhancement massively increasing his strength compared to the half dead Ject clone. "I was thinking about taking my time with this shitty clone of yours but that's pointless. There's only two things I can do that will affect the real you and, the sooner I can make your real body feel real pain, the better. you said you were going to keep being a nuisance in reality? Well I plan on slowing that down a bit and keeping you pre-occupied with another matter entirely, namely your own health. I may be stuck here but I'll give you a present to take back to your real self and see how he likes it. Two presents, actually, courtesy of nothingness."

Ares searched through the clone's mana reservoir with his divine sense and located the origin of it which was the real Ject however many billions of lightyears away. Normally it would be impossible to interact with this, and even if you somehow could then what was possible was limited due to how tiny it was, but that meant nothing to Ares as he had some plans up his sleeve. Astraeus was able to damage Terros' real body due to the nature of spatial magic having infinite effective range, in Astraeus' case anyway, so the damage dealt to the clone was able to be transmitted an infinite distance back to the origin. Plus the blow was sever enough to linger afterwards. In Ares case, his nothingness was about to link the clone's mana source to the real deal's... And from there... Well it was anybody's guess what kind of trick this Ares had up its sleeves...

"Before I send you on your way, Ject, let me just say this. You should have left Candy out of this. You've gotten on my nerves and now you're going to have to pay the price. I've said this before but, granted, I've never said it to you. You can mess with me all you want but go after my family and there'll be hell to pay. You can think it unfair that I'm going to punish you retroactively but that's just the nature of who I am and I'm pretty uncompromising about this sort of stuff. Had you left me and her alone, you could have lived your life in peace doing whatever scummy shit you usually do but you crossed the line in the sand multiple times already. I'm not some guy who frequently gets involved in other people's business and I wouldn't have given a single crap about you if you'd left well enough alone. Hell even if you left Candy alone after finding out about me then I would have still considered letting you off the hook.

Now though?

There's no going back anymore so make the most out of what remains of your life. The more you try to get back at Candy the worse I'm going to make your end so I would recommend staying as far away from her as possible. You won't but I'll try and encourage you not to anyway for your own sake. I'm a possessive guy and Candy is mine no matter how much you keep trying to tell me otherwise. I'm not fearful of what you'll do while I'm in here because I know there's not much a weak coward like you can actually really do. you have constraints on you already because of my actions and I'm about to make your life a whole lot worse. I'm going to purify your real body's insides with disintegration and have it linger there for as long as I possibly can. This will prevent you from using mana for a while as it will all burn up the second you try and I don't know how long it's going to last. Either way, you aren't going to recover from that for a while as you can't remove the disintegration, even if you are a God, you'll have to patiently wait while it easts away at your insides and boy will that shit hurt. Of course that's just one half of the pain coming your way because I'm also going to bury a bomb inside your body. It's not enough to kill a God, unfortunately, but it will absolutely be enough to leave you in multiple pieces and force you to spend a significant chunk of time recovering. I can't imagine that will be an easy process with the disintegration gnawing away at you, though, So good luck with that. Who knows? You might even be stuck healing for so many years that, by the time you've fully recovered, I'll already be in a position to kill you! You know, if you just hadn't come here, you might have actually posed some kind of meaningful threat to me. Right now? Not so much. Candy doesn't want you and I don't want you anywhere near her. I don't even want you in the same universe so, without further ado, I hope you go die in a ditch somewhere! Goodbye for now, Ject, we'll be seeing each other again at some point but necessarily any time soon. Go lick your wounds in a corner somewhere nobody can see you"

Ares thrust his hand into the origin of the clone's mana source and dropped off two objects that had previously been residing in Ares' body. One was a small golden orb and the other was a weird looking blank photograph of sorts with burn edges. Both of these objects were a direct result of various benefits from cultivation realms real Ares was not at yet but they both served a very clear purpose. The weaponised core was a realm Ares, the real one, was familiar with and was the result of the golden orb which would no doubt be going boom inside Ject's real body very soon. The purpose of the the blank photograph was as stated and would continue funnelling disintegration into Ject's mana pathways and bloodstream for many many years to come. it wasn't the photographs main purpose but this was definitely something it could do.

This did mean that clone Ares wouldn't really be able to use these two things anymore for a good while but it was worth it! He'd been intentionally keeping hold of these two objects to use on anyone who looked like they were going to cause trouble outside the pagoda and Ject was a perfect target in that sense. After shoving the photograph into Ject, the talismans lit up in a bright black storm of fire. There were a few seconds of screeching coming from the talismans, as the clone was presumably suffering in agony, but that ended quickly as the clone was thrust outside the pagoda in death. That didn't mean the screaming stopped, though, as the clone was still burning even outside the pagoda as it rolled around on the ground in a foolish bid to remove the fire by detaching various talismans. It couldn't be done, however, as the source was inside its core and could not be removed because it could not be touched. The photograph was safeguarded by many layers of disintegration and even the real Ject was just going to have to wait for that thing to fade on its own. Speaking of 'fading', the crowd watched on as the Ject clone burnt to a crisp, disappearing from reality entirely leaving nothing but a few smouldering, black ashes. This was the second time a challenger had suffered wounds inside the pagoda and had them reflected back in reality too... This place was not looking to be so safe anymore and people looking to have grievances with Ares needed to keep this in mind. They really couldn't openly shit talk him to his face and had to at least pretend to not have any animosity towards him. They wanted to scout him out? They had to be polite lest they end up like Armageddon or, worse, Ject's clone.

As for Ject himself... Well he vanished for a good while after a massive hypernova was seen erupting in his neck of the woods. Some people did investigate but only found a trail of ashes and a massive splattering of raw essence lining the walls. Something had clearly gone very wrong in Ject's world and he was no doubt injured to a degree that he'd never been injured before. This was like a call to arms and even his own 'followers' were going to be trying to hunt him down and kill the pathetic creature. They wanted his Godhood and other people just hated his guts. Ares was right when he said Ject was going to have to go crawl into a crevice and hide there for years to come. Hell if someone strong enough found him quickly they might even just straight up kill him and rid the world of this nuisance entirely. Wherever he was, he was guaranteed to be suffering regardless as a disintegration fire would keep repeatedly consuming his body endlessly for the foreseeable future and, worse still, he would need to keep regenerating his body and feeding it lest it swallowed his existence whole. Ject had really played with fire on this one and he was getting burnt as a result. To think a mere pagoda clone was capable of doing this with only access to his clone body... Ject might have been down for now but he wasn't out and he'd just made Ares top of his to do list. How this would go in the future was up in the air but, for now at least, this round went to Ares.