Poke poke

Ares blinked himself awake and looked over at the culprit who was jamming his finger on his arm, only to find an expectant looking Aejaz with a smile on his face. It didn't take Ares more than a couple of seconds to figure out this guy wanted breakfast before he left to go do... Well, whatever it was he was doing. He'd be stealing, certainly, but Ares had a gut feeling this nincompoop had been up to something else equally as sly and devious but was holding his tongue and not openly talking about it. Whatever, he could do as he pleased, he was a grown man now and Ares didn't have to make sure he wasn't accidentally walking into gang territory like he occasionally used to. Still, who did this guy think he was waking Ares up like this!? Usually it was the other way around and only then was it acceptable! Ares woke Aejaz up because he was oversleeping, him waking Ares up had been completely uncalled for! Yes Ares had slept a lot, maybe even around eighteen or so hours, but that was because of the Converter! He was not being lazy! Then again, whether Aejaz woke him up because he felt like Ares was oversleeping or, more likely, if it was because he was hungry was a shot in the dark...

Oh who was Ares kidding? It was obviously the hungry option! Ares was in a good mood so he made some waffles with maple syrup which got Aejaz' eyes gleaming like a crow's upon spotting something shiny. Aejaz blitzed through the food like it was going to run away from him if he didn't before rubbing his stomach, taking a swig of his orange juice, and waving goodbye to Ares with a giant smile on his face. And just like that, he was out the door and gone for the day like a whirlwind of greed. This guy was very easy to please and a day of good food and thieving wouldn't ever fail to put him in high spirits. Still, Ares was the same. He'd gotten a high quality treasure yesterday and he was still happy about it now so who was he to talk about others being simple in nature?

The Firestarter meeting would be happening later today but there were three things Ares wanted to deal with first, starting with Rox. There wasn't much to say to this silly mimic so he pulled him out of the Blade, chucked him a healing pill, and told him not to throw his life away pointlessly for him. Immortal -> not immortal, it was that simple and the fact that this was not the first time Ares had to clarify this for the people around him was annoying! Besides, Ares was a resourceful person, much more so than Rox, and he would have likely figured out a way to ave himself from the fire breath regardless. He could have maybe used telekinesis to feed himself a Canis Stimulant as he was burning, for instance. Sure he would have come away from the fight with some serious injuries but everyone walking away from that fight alive was better than throwing anybody's life away for no good reason. That wasn't even the final showdown with the krakyrn so taking such measures was just silly. Ares could deal with the krakyrn next time so taking such drastic measures in the first fight was a bad judgement call. Then again, trying to sacrifice himself was wrong from the start so Ares gave Rox a quick reprimand, some of the extra waffles he made for him as a snack, and then put him back in the Blade where he could keep resting and healing.

Rox had some third degree burns and his ears had melted off slightly but he'd live. Also, none of those damaged body parts would affect his mimicry as he could hide it via transforming his appearance anyway. Aside from the lingering pain he was doing just fine. Still, there was no reason for him to keep the scars so the pill would help his innate regeneration remove them in about a week or so. Anyway, that was done now and Ares didn't have to worry about his summons doing anything like that ever again!... It's not like the dumb eagle would have ever even considered such a thing to begin with... Ares was almost tempted to check on the eagle but if the thing was hungry and noticed the empty plates laying around he might actually try to peck Ares to death for not saving him some of the food. Of course Ares would just smack it over the head with the empty plates in return but he wasn't in the mood to brawl right now with that feathered fuck so he moved on and to his second task, checking the Converter's capabilities in greater detail. There were limits to what he could realistically do with it, because causing a scene by blowing up the sky over and over again would draw a lot of attention his way, but he'd already gotten a glimpse of his new power yesterday as well as a feel for the passive boost he got upon devouring a soul. He could take that information and extrapolate / add it to what he was about to find out to have a rough clue of just how amazing this treasure was. The expected answer was obviously that this thing was a 100/10 but it would be nice to have absolute confirmation of that before he started relying on it blindly. If there were any neat tricks it was capable of then it was better to find them now so he could actively use it going forward!

Just as he was about to look deep within himself and analyse his new heart, a knock on the door grabbed his attention. He stood up and opened it, only to find one of the auction employees from yesterday looking around with a nervous expression. "... Hello? What can I do for you?" Ares was obviously not going to be doing these people any favours if they asked because the most likely request would be to help return the enabler to their grimy hands and Ares wasn't ever going to do that. They could cry all they liked, Ares was going to be a bully and take their stuff!

"Oh, nonono, sorry. I'm not here to trouble you with anything, it's just that we all came to an agreement that we owed you after yesterday." The employee was waving his hands frantically as he tried to correct the misunderstanding. "Though the host doesn't seem to like you much, he isn't in charge and you helped us out a great deal by keeping the damage to the building minimal. We store a lot of items in that building even if they aren't being sold at the next auction that comes up so, had that monster gone on any more of a rampage than it already did, we would have started losing goods left and right. As thanks for preventing that, our boss said he wanted to give you the comprehender for free. You've already paid for it so he sent me here to give you 420 high grades back instead... I'm not exactly the strongest cultivator so if I looked dodgy earlier it's just because I was worried about getting mugged and losing the money..."

The guy scratched his head with a pathetic smile but Ares wasn't going to give him trouble over that. If anything, he'd done a good job braving the poorer locals who would be more than willing to jump him and steal everything he had on him. Though Ares was happy with this house, it wasn't in the greatest neighbourhood ever. Still, he was too strong for those people to tackle so they just ignored him and this house. As for this guy... He could have easily just walked through if he didn't look so suspicious! Act like you belong, man! If he had gotten mugged it almost definitely would have been because of the way he was prancing about like there were invisible needles on the floor. Not that it would have mattered, Ares would have gone and hunted down his stolen high grades if that wound up happening anyway so it was fine. There was no way in hell Ares was willing to just let go of that much stardust as it was going to double his current wealth! Granted it was actually just putting him right back to where he was before the auction but getting a free comprehender was a pleasant surprise that he hadn't been expecting in the slightest! Three cheers for this guy's boss! Ares still wasn't going to give them back the enabler when he stole it from the krakyrn! As if to make that abundantly clear, Ares didn't even bring it up and just politely thanked the employee and waved goodbye as he closed the door on him. He didn't slam it or anything but he did make it very obvious the conversation was over with this action so the employee, who looked like he was about to bring up the issue, had been thoroughly denied.

Knock knock

Nope! Ares wasn't answering it! That guy could stand out there, in this unkind neighbourhood, all day if he wanted to! Though he might actually get mugged if he did... Not Ares' problem! He was too busy inspecting his version 2.0 heart, now with added features! First thing first, mana regeneration. It had been doubled yesterday and that was still just while things were getting set up. Now, if Ares was seeing things correctly, his mana regeneration was give or take five times faster than before but there were also periodic bursts wherein a large chunk of mana was restored. These were inconsistent, and typically had a minimum time between each of about five minutes, but they each restored enough mana for a Grand Annihilation basically on their own. Throw in the mana regeneration, that would scale up with Ares cultivation', and Ares had no reason to ever run out of mana. Grim Cessation, which restored mana on killing an opponent, on top of this meant Ares could go completely wild in any and every situation without fear of running dry. Against multiple foes Grim Cessation would keep him afloat whereas the Converter did more against a single opponent.

All around just incredibly promising stuff Ares was seeing here inside that bubbling heart of his. His divine sense did get slathered in bits of lava every now and then because of how close it was but the stuff didn't hurt anymore as it dared not bite the hand that feeds. Ares was its master so it was being gentle and not burning him anymore, thankfully, otherwise Ares would have had boiling lava spurted at him every few seconds and that would get old very quickly! As is, only foreign entities and ambient temperature would get burned away by the volcano heart which was fantastic news as it meant Ares had another layer of defence. If somebody reached into his chest and tried to grab his heart they'd be in for a blazing surprise. Also, although Ares' revenant regeneration made him somewhat immune to poisons to begin with, anything corrosive or venomous that slipped through the cracks would get melted away as well. A good example would be a poisonous bug capable of traversing his insides. The poison would be fast acting once applied but the bug itself would not be removed by his regeneration so it could, prior to the addition of the Converter, skedaddle over to his heart and inject the poison point blank without being stopped. This was one way Ares could die to poison before that had become nullified now as there wasn't a bug in this domain capable of getting anywhere near the blistering heat of his heart. Also, even if it could, the poison would just be evaporated! And, of course, everything said here also applied to cold temperatures. Ares had his Scaled Insulator for external protection but now he had internal protection if ever it was needed. You could combine the cooking pillar with the ice aspect, for instance, and hide a chill bomb inside some food that froze over the victim's insides once eaten. Now, though, Ares was immune to such trickery! This was pretty niche but having it was better than not having it. He would come across thousands of cultivators in the years to come and arbitrarily deciding such a thing was irrelevant now, before it even had a chance to potentially prove itself useful, was silly. Who knows what he'd go up against in the future? Better safe than sorry and this benefit was always going to be there regardless so Ares had no reason to complain about its relatively small list of use cases.

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Up next was a test regarding the absorption of souls. Any soul would do so, on the way back to the house from the auction yesterday, Ares had stopped off briefly near the closest edge of the Federation and wrangled up a bundle of fish. They were currently floating around inside a large bubble of water drifting through space in his Primordial Blade and were experiencing something no other fish in this domain ever had, that was for sure! They were pretty unintelligent creatures, though, so the only thing they cared about was whether there was food nearby and not the wonders of the galaxy around them... Ares wasn't particularly knowledgeable about fish breeds so he simply decided to refer to these lot as Aejaz fish! The reason why was self-explanatory! Eagle fish was also an acceptable answer! Anyway, it didn't matter what they were called as Ares was about to be mean and kill them. Cruel? Perhaps. Useful? Very! The Converter could absorb souls from literally any living creature but Ares had a feeling that the weaker the creature was, the less impactful its soul was going to be when brought into the fold. Unfortunately Ares had yet to absorb the soul of anything else, so he had nothing to compare these fish to, but he could take a rough estimate based on how powerful the converter already was as it had absorbed cultivator souls prior to his acquisition of it. It made sense to Ares that the soul of a cultivator in the higher domains was worth more than some random fish, so he wasn't going to be particularly surprised by the lacklustre results, but it was worth checking anyway. After all, if it somehow wasn't the case, he could go around massacring sea life for a few weeks and become an unstoppable nuclear bomber just like that! It was a pipe dream, and Ares knew better, but he was also a man of science (when it suited him, much like his sage persona that he hadn't used in a while) and wanted definitive answers!

Ares dragged a fish out of the Blade and held it upside down in the air. To put it out of its misery quickly, he activated annihilation enhancement and flicked the thing's head to blow its brains out. He'd carefully applied the force such that there wasn't a mess and you couldn't even tell by looking at the fish why it died but it was definitely very dead. If you could x-ray this thing there would be fish brain everywhere inside that mushy head. Not pleasant but what was pleasant was the feeling of its soul entering Ares' body and kickstarting the Converter. He could feel the boost activating and, right off the bat, he learnt that the boost was consistent no matter what kind of soul he absorbed. The magic improvement that came after might not be great but the raw energy any soul provided was enough to put Ares back in that same state he was in yesterday and that was fantastic news. He could absolutely keep a bunch of wild animals in his Blade, just random critters like insects even, and kill them whenever he wanted to drastically increase his power on demand. As soon as he killed one of the animals, he just had to will the Converter to drag it into him and from there it was all automatic. It was basically instant and required very little thought to actually use so it wasn't a distracting process either.

Though this Converter mainly benefitted his magic, Ares had gained a seriously powerful physical enhancement tool to combine with his pressure. Garmr would likely be able to use this too so that was just another thing to add to the already expansive list of reasons why Garmr was going to be punching holes in mountains as soon as Ares could transform into him. None of that was what Ares was really testing here though so, although he was glad to learn all this, he was more interested in the final result, his increased magical output. It seemed like the soul conversion process took roughly ten seconds so, as soon as the duration of the physical boost ran out, he would get the magic benefit at the exact same time. Of course if the boost was extended by devouring another soul then the magic enhancement would happen regardless at the same ten second mark so Ares didn't have to wait for the physical boost go away or anything. A small detail but a positive thing nonetheless.

The physical boost ended and Ares felt his energy levels and overall power decrease considerably, leaving him feeling lost and empty. The boost was a sizable increase in combat capability so it wasn't surprising that it felt like he'd been drastically weakened losing it and this was not a pleasant experience. Going forward, Ares would have to be careful not to mistime extending the boost with other small animals otherwise he would gift his opponent an opportunity via his hesitation. It was imperative Ares remembered that, fun though it was, the boost was not his default strength level and it would fade in due time. Playing around with it was a dangerous game if he wasn't careful but that was fine because, objectively, Ares was an expert in his own right and could handle it with relative ease. Plus he'd spend a lot of time practicing with it while he was still stronger than almost everything in this domain so, by the time it was being used against foes that could put up a very real fight, Ares would already have a degree of mastery over it that would prevent him from doing anything foolish or making any mistakes.

Ares felt the power of the absorbed soul flow through him and he was somewhat disappointed. He knew the magic increase would be minor but it was barely even noticeable. Ares would have to eradicate every single bit of non-cultivating marine life in this entire ocean to even match the kind of increase he'd get, presumably, from killing a couple transition realm cultivators. Killing wildlife and weak enemies was very clearly not the way to go about improving this thing so Ares put thoughts of going on a murder spree to the back of his mind. Ares could have absolutely roamed the entire world with Voidwalk and killed countless criminals to evolve his magic further but it seemingly wasn't worth the hassle. He'd need to wait until he was around the transition realm to do it as well, as his Voidwalk would take forever to get anywhere as is, but, by that point, he'd be better off just heading up to Vraizon as was planned and killing people there instead. Long story short, grinding monotonously against weaker opposition was mostly pointless. Unless he had literally no other option it was best to avoid this strategy and just do things properly. It was a shame because the Converter granted Ares enough mana to Voidwalk basically for as long as he pleased now. He could absolutely Voidwalk around the world if he wanted to, it would just be slow and there was no reason to. Still, effectively infinite Voidwalk with the Puny Prisoner meant he and his family could very easily go just about anywhere they wanted to whenever they wanted to. The Blade was also an option for carrying people but Ares wouldn't be able to speak to them if they were in that and he still didn't feel comfortable holding too many people in it at once anyway.

To summarise, the Converter was fantastic, better than he thought it would be, but the major catch was that it could not be cheated in any way. Ares could not set up a farm for millions of creatures in his Primordial Blade, speed up time, and generate a never ending supply of magical improvements... Well he could, technically, but it was slower than just doing things the way he already was doing things. He could maybe do it as a background task when he got stronger, and had more control over the Blade, but that was just like trying to drain blood from a stone. Ares wasn't so desperate for power he would resort to killing billions of animals for marginal gain, he had a life to live! He barely even cultivated let alone however long an endeavour like this would take to set up and keep track of daily! The Converter was a powerful tool and it really didn't need to be used in this way so Ares would stick to his guns. There were two major souls coming his way soon anyway in the form of the Scylla, presumably, and the krakyrn, definitely, so that was a way better use of his time and effort overall. Ares felt good knowing he was safer defensively, in his heart region, and packed a bigger punch when he wanted to be aggressive; this was easily his best treasure to date as it was just too perfect for everything he and his combat skillset revolved around. It wasn't any more mythical or legendary than the Blade or the Bindings but this felt almost tailor made for him so it went beyond what those two treasures had offered him this far.

Ares clapped his hands, retracted his divine sense, and moved onto his final order of business before heading out. The comprehender. Understanding what this did was far simpler than the Converter but it would take a bit more time to use overall. Simple but lengthy, essentially, so Ares put it on the table and got down to business. He whipped out the Black Ice Bane, channelled a Crystalised Void art but didn't actually fully go through with using it, and directed the lingering mana inside an antenna of the radio. He kept this up about ten minutes, alternating between chanting different Crystalised arts as that would probably make the process smoother, and then finally sat back and relaxed with his hand on one of the dials. He had to pay attention to the music, which was heavy metal with some screams thrown in here and there, and what it was conveying so he could adjust the dials accordingly. The music started off fuzzy but gradually became clear as he fiddled with the dials, at which point the song would move onto to the next part and become fuzzy again. The clarity that ensued whenever Ares correctly positioned the dials was indicative of the radio having successfully decoded a part of the art he was trying to learn so it would be ready for pickup once the song was finished entirely. The duration of the song would coincide with the difficulty of the art being learnt and various other factors, like the user's comprehension before starting, also affected how easy it was to decipher the fuzzy music and so on, so forth. It was looking like Ares would be successful here and get his Crystalised arts learnt in full without a hitch, it was just going to be a matter of persistence and decoding the music for however long it took. He still had a decent amount of time left before the Firestarter meeting so he felt fine knowing he'd be able to do this without rushing. All his testing was essentially done now, so this had been a productive use of his time, but Ares kind wanted to conduct some field tests before he was fully satisfied. The Firestarters weren't going to put up much of a fight, understandably because Ares was just far too powerful to stand up to, but that didn't mean they couldn't make for useful guinea pigs anyway!