Chapter 217: Ocular Options

Stare

Aejaz was admittedly a tad creeped out when he finally realised, after an hour of reading his romance book, that his brother was creepily leaning around the corner of the living room and observing him with a narrow gaze. After his brief start, Aejaz chucked the book at Ares who simply caught it and started walking away. Aejaz stole the book back from around the corner and Ares, who already knew that would happen, walked back into the cultivation room and gave up on his current plan. As it turned out, leering at a person really hard was not the relevant solution to his current problem. It was like the pagoda all over again now that Ares had to figure out how to train himself from scratch... And now that he thought about it, the solution to just about every roadblock he encountered back then had one simple work around... Mana! Ares trying to solve a cultivation issue without mana was clearly him barking up the wrong tree. It made sense, mana was the lifeblood of cultivators and was just as important to them as air was to a mortal. Now the only question was how was Ares supposed to utilise mana on himself to enable divine sense. In order to work it all out, Ares realised the best way to look at things was in reverse order. The result could help him determine the method if he worked backwards so he compiled everything he knew about divine sense into a bunch of salient bullet points. He also added a secondary set of bullet points to note anything else relevant to this topic that wasn't directly covered by the first set. The list was as follows.

Set one.

. Divine sense improves eyesight drastically.

. Divine sense enables a cultivator to 'zoom' in or out on things, treating their eyeballs like a pair of binoculars.

. The effectiveness of divine sense typically increased with cultivation but was affected by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, the environment, the quality of a person's senses, treasures and cultivation resources that enhance senses, and latent talent for controlling divine sense.

. Divine sense also enables a cultivator to transition their sight to third person in a limited area around them. If you are one foot away from a boulder, you could use divine sense to look around it, for instance. The range of this scales with everything mentioned in the prior point.

. There are many ways to block divine sense such as treasures, arts, pressure, and expert mana manipulation. Plus, divine sense is easy to detect if you don't go to lengths to hide it.

. The capabilities of divine sense vary from person to person. Some people can see invisible entities with it and others can assess the quality of various goods for example.

. There are many arts that utilise, or enhance, divine sense. Point in case, Ares had talked to Lizzy about integrating Echoes into divine sense a while back to create a sort of pulse locator at long ranges.

Set two.

. The Celestial Prisms would almost definitely skyrocket the potential of Ares' divine sense.

. Being a revenant with draconic blood meant Ares' divine sense, and senses in general, would be phenomenal due to his beastly ancestry. Granted his revenant form was blind but Ares didn't know that right now. Also, thanks to the draconic seed, that issue would be fixed eventually anyway. For now the draconic bloodline would carry its weight.

. Ares' annihilation enhancement would no doubt benefit the divine sense if he activated both at the same time.

. When Ares learnt divine sense Rox would probably also automatically learn it too via osmosis.

. Ares' divine sense likely wouldn't have any kind of passive mutation because it was incredibly rare and, really, it didn't even matter anyway. There was little these mutations could do that the Prisms couldn't so he wasn't fussed about this detail.

And that about summed it up? Unless Ares was forgetting something, this was all the information he had about what came after his acquisition of divine sense. Of course none of this had anything to do with his normal senses which had all improved at least four fold since entering the realm. Ares could have sworn he could taste colours and feel sounds now it was that much of a change, almost like he'd developed synaesthesia. This wasn't any different from what others experienced though so he didn't harp on it. Generally speaking it was a very helpful realm across the board. You could taste subtle poisons, smell deadly gasses, feel changes in the air around you if someone was sneaking up on you, hear even the faintest of footsteps, and see brief shimmers with optical acuity that rivalled a telescope. In or out of combat these were all incredibly useful and made subterfuge that much harder to pull off successfully against such a target. Back when Ares had been assassinating targets for Hans, he'd been told that assassinating someone who was in sensory enhancement was infinitely harder than anyone before that realm. Of course Ares was too young and inexperienced to be hunting such big game at the time but he'd heard countless stories about the matter. Even Aejaz had mentioned it in passing to Ares, confirming the various accounts from people in the field that said as such. Treasures and arts that concealed a person's presence became that much more necessary after the target reached this realm so it was almost like an indirect punch to the gut to all stealthy cultivators. Still, there were other such realms that benefitted some people more than others. Those that never bothered with mental arts or their mental realm, for instance, basically wasted time in mental accumulation. Plus it enabled their opponents to develop their proficiency in a realm they couldn't contest so this was all normal. Bloodline awakening benefitted people with impressive ancestry more too. This was a constant 'problem' throughout the cultivation journey and, really, the trick was to take as much advantage of as many unique realms as possible.

Back on topic, learning divine sense backward seemed to be the right call as a lot of information from set one narrowed things down. Essentially, as far as Ares could tell, divine sense was just handing over control of your vision to the mana around you and then controlling that instead. You could shape the mana to be like a binocular or you could expand it to get a third person view. You integrated your vision with mana and turned it into a kind of magic that was separate from your body. Perhaps different types of mana could affect divine sense in various ways? That would align with what Ares wanted to do with Echoes so it was entirely plausible that technical mana mixed with a cultivator's vision would bring such thoughts to fruition. Anyway, this all made sense when looking at some of the other notes such as the effective range of divine sense being tied to cultivation. More cultivation generally meant more mana at one's disposal so this seemed to be a clear cut case no matter which angle Ares viewed it as.

Now the question was how to combine his vision with mana. As vision was a result of intricately woven body parts Ares struggled to find an avenue to accomplish this... He'd already plucked out the nerves in his eyes once and he was going to take a wild guess and assume doing that again wasn't necessary to his current goal, thankfully. The logical conclusion Ares came to was to imbue different body parts with mana and check for a reaction one by one. He would start from the eyeball itself and work backwards through the nerves and up into the brain, hopefully finding what he was looking for before he reached that last point as Ares was not an expert on the brain at all. Sometimes he was convinced he didn't even have one so if things went that far he would probably have to give up, wait for everyone else to return to the sect, and then pester them for answers. Then again, the chances of this were probably low as, no offence meant, but Bellona didn't seem like the kind of person who was an expert in brain stuffs either. She wasn't dumb, not even remotely, but she wasn't really highly intelligent either. Make no mistake, Ares wasn't throwing stones here as he admitted his own knowledge in a lot of matters was lacking but, at the very least, he had read a few books here and there. Bellona... Not quite. Actually, she deserved praise for being as smart as she was considering how allergic she was to the written word. Bellona was far from being the most ignorant person in this house, though, as that title probably belonged to Aejaz if anyone. Not that it said much, really, as everyone was likely above three digit IQ so comparing smarts between everyone was pointless to begin with. Nobody in this house was an idiot apart from maybe occasionally Ares but he did that on purpose so it didn't count!... Or so he told himself.

Ares directed some mana to his eyeball and coated the whites of his eyes in the stuff. He left it there for roughly five minutes but there was no discernible change and Ares could tell this wasn't going to get him anywhere so he let up shortly after. Next was the pupil and it ended up being the same deal as the last. This was going to take a while and Ares might actually wind up doing this until everyone else came home regardless but, seeing as how he had no other options right now, he just kept at it... For an hour before he felt like banging his head against the wall in frustration. The more he dug around the more he realised how complex an eye was and slathering every single part of it in mana individually would be a herculean task. It's not that he didn't have the right idea, it's just that his method of poking around was highly inefficient. The only issue was that if he just swamped everything in mana, and that approach worked. it would be nigh impossible to tell what he'd done correctly the next time he wanted to replicate it. Yes he could use a chunk of mana for divine sense every time if he chose to go about things this way but the sheer loss of mana for no good reason meant Ares was reluctant to solve his problem in such an un-delicate way. Yes he was using pressure a lot more than mana right now but, one day, when his magic was back up to snuff, he didn't want to be acting like a mana spendthrift. The destruction pillar was his bread and butter so actively reducing how often he could use it because his divine sense was chugging it all was stupid. Ares could be an idiot sometimes but only ever for a valid reason, and this did not constitute one, so he kept searching.

Another hour later and Ares was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling wondering where he went wrong in life. He rolled side to side while letting out a noise that was similar in nature to a moody cat, a sort of 'nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh' noise to be precise. Evidently this room was going to be the death of Ares' sanity. Why was this room never pleasant? Why did nothing good ever come of it? Ares, unbeknownst to him at this moment in time, had a literal prison inside his body and yet this felt more like a jail cell than anything in there! Ares stopped rolling and sat up with a deep sigh. He'd given himself a five minute break and now it was time to dig right back into the mess and search for the needle in the haystack. Or he was about to anyway when salvation came in the form of a whisper from Dominus who'd apparently gotten so fed up watching Ares stumble around that he felt it necessary to intervene. He couldn't talk much or often so for him to throw away his occasional comment here must have meant it was truly agonising watching this spectacle unfold as a bystander.

Ares had almost completely forgotten about Dominus, as he hadn't sprung up recently, so this was a good reminder he existed and was surprisingly helpful when he wanted to be. His well of knowledge about the cultivation world was unfathomably deep seeing as how he was old, close to Godhood, and well travelled. If Ares wanted a cheat sheet to a cultivation quiz then Dominus was his guy and there were very few people in the world as learnt as he. Granted most of his knowledge came from experience and notebooks, so he wasn't particularly erudite when it came to history or the inner workings of things, but his smarts were invaluable in their own right. He might not know when a rare medicine was first discovered but, unlike most other people, he would know about every single facet of it including its effects, consumption method, and potential risks. He was like a living encyclopaedia and he wasn't necessarily lacking in information about history either as he could very well have heard stories from locals about various places and the changes that had occurred there. All this to say that Ares had no complaints with the guy he had trapped inside him. If Ares could pick anyone in the world there was no one more fitting to be a guide of sorts for Ares than Dominus. A shared bloodline, the weapon mastery to fill Ares' gaps, the supreme vastness of knowledge. Ares couldn't have asked for a better parasite as it didn't even come attached with a cost of any kind.

As for the words of advice quietly whispered into Ares' soul, Dominus recommended layering the mana over the Celestial Prisms as that was precisely where it was needed. The nerves functioned as a sort of a circuit and the mana was supposed to form a new route, leading the vision out of the body via the top of the head if you wanted a third person view. If you wanted to zoom in then enhancing the nerves with mana was the correct way to go about it. To start with, and keep things relatively simple, Ares gave the zoom feature a go first as it would far less disorienting. He layered some mana, attribute-less as he didn't want to potentially complicate things just yet, over the nerves and then compressed everything, almost like he was squeezing his vision. It was akin to narrowing your eyes and squinting but the range of depth, and how much more mileage you got out of it, was considerable.

Ares' eyeballs had turned into scopes and he could see things in a whole new light. It was possible for him to zoom out from his default view as well, giving him a much broader field of view which could maybe be useful in some situations. During a war, for instance, when you needed to keep your head on a swivel lest it gets cut off by some random guy you couldn't see coming. The third person view might be better for such a purpose but fighting from such a perspective would no doubt be nauseating as all hell so this was far more viable. Ares also felt like he was moving faster but that was purely a placebo. Still, he liked it and would no doubt mess around with this aspect of divine sense from time to time. Combining it with the speeds he was capable of moving around at with annihilation enhancement would make him feel like he was breaking the speed of sound with every half-step and, sometimes in a fight, fun factor mattered! A person who was less stressed during a fight had a better chance of maintaining a level head so, provided it didn't make things worse, there wasn't a reason not to use it here and there. In a weird way, zooming out his field of view almost felt more immersive. It was a strange thought that Ares couldn't quite explain or put his finger on the pulse of but he truly believed it. Not that he was the only one, a lot of cultivators also agreed with the sentiment. Some completely disagreed, however, and thought the opposite was true. That zooming out was inferior to zooming in. It was a matter of personal preference so, although debate on the subject was plentiful, there was no such thing as a 'better opinion' regarding this usage of divine sense. Also the main point was that Ares could zoom in to things ridiculously far away. It wasn't even something he could test within the walls of the sect because his vision could extend beyond the horizon. Whether this was normal, or had something to do with the Celestial Prisms, Ares wasn't sure but he could hazard a guess.

Yes. 

The answer was almost definitely yes.

Ares activated his Omniscience, purely out of curiosity, and he could now see some dust mites on a wall over a mile away so, yes, the answer was definitely yes. Clearly these things had integrated with his nerves, thanks to becoming a personal treasure, to such a degree that it affected his base vision which was then amplified by divine sense. He could combine divine sense and Omniscience for some seriously whacky results it seemed and, while that was worth remembering, it inevitably wouldn't be useful to Ares anytime soon. Seriously, if he flew up into the sky with Voidwalk there was a non-zero chance he could spy another country from here with this ludicrous combination. Plus this wasn't just ordinary vision either, it was still his trusty Omniscience that defied many laws of reality without a care in the world.

Ares had no idea what on earth he was supposed to do with this newfound peeping power but having it was better than not having it? Ares was starting to reach the point where every upgrade he got seemed almost inconsequential because of how absurd it was, somewhat like stack overflow. Eventually something reached a point of being so good it just kind of became overkill. Then again, in the wider world, vision of this magnification wasn't actually all that impressive. Someone like Dominus would have a divine sense that could cover a significant chunk of an entire domain. Now if Ares' divine sense was scaled up then he would clear that range with ease but it was actually helpful in that regard as defending a domain became much easier when you could see it all without a sweat. Rather than having to rely on a relay system with multiple guards across different planets, having one person capable of keeping track of everything was just way easier to manage. Right now though? Yeah right now this was just weird. Maybe Ares could use it to try and spy the remaining members of the Chen clan hiding throughout Red Sun but he didn't really care much about that. Yes he wanted them dead at some point but he wasn't in a rush to do it right now. Plus they would wind up coming to him for revenge regardless of what he did so Ares figured he may as a well kick his feet up and chill while they did all the hard work. Ares, now that he was in sensory enhancement, could raise hell and go toe to toe with Chen Lo if need be. Winning might be incredibly hard but it wasn't out of reach anymore. Also, the longer Ares left it, the closer the gap between his and Chen Lo's cultivation got which would only serve to make his life easier when dealing with the pest. It was the Chen lot that were on a timer here, not Ares. They could do all the running around on Ares' behalf, especially after the garbage they put him through.

Ares deactivated his zoom after accidentally spying two mating stray dogs hiding behind a building, decided not to use it again in that direction, and focussed his attention on the next test instead. Now things were going to get weird. Changing the overall zoom of your vision was one thing but changing its location without moving your own... This was going to be disconcerting and Ares knew it. Luckily for him, he wasn't prone to motion sickness so it might be that much more bearable than it would be otherwise. Back when he went through the teleporter in the pagoda he'd been fine so he was hoping this wouldn't be too bad either. Granted the pagoda teleporter didn't really affect Ares because of his nothingness affiliation but his resilience to being motion sick also mattered even if only a little!

Ares covered his nerves in mana but, instead of compressing them like last time, he forged the mana into a new pathway that headed upwards toward the tip of his cranium. It felt like someone had stuck an active hoover on Ares' brain and his vision was being vacuumed out of his skull. The feeling wasn't pleasurable, per se, but it was quite a neat and tingly sensation that wasn't off-putting. Whatever came after might be hard to stomach but at least things leading up 'till that point were alright. Ares took a few seconds to activate his third person divine sense but that was to be expected as this was his first time doing it. This was the activation process, after which he would be able to spring into divine sense in a matter of milliseconds. Divine sense was a rusty lever in disrepair that could be pulled quicker the more it was used as some of the dust, muck, and grime was grinded away with every position switch.

As for what it was like to be in third person when he finally reached that point... Ares had to shut his eyes because it was unbelievably bad. It wasn't the fact that his vision could fly all over the place and disorient him, because Ares could make that happen anyway with Voidwalk, no, the issue was that Ares was still in control of his main body. He now had a second set of controls to work with, one for his body and one for his vision. Swapping between them on the fly was enough to make his brain explode with the complexity of it all. His vision was like a flying drone with a ten page manual and Ares was trying to read said manual while doing backflips atop a pole. Also, Ares' vision wasn't attached to his body anymore so, funny though it was, Ares could turn himself into some kind of senseless zombie that was just being remotely ordered around even though his body had no idea where it was or where it was going. Ares swung his vision around to face a wall to test this and, less than five seconds later, his body had walked into a wall, faceplanting it and falling over. Just because his vision was disconnected that didn't mean he couldn't feel the pain his body felt though as it was all transmitted straight to him... Or rather it wasn't transmitted anywhere because his body was hurt, it's just that his vision was playing catch up? It was all very confusing... Confusing but highly useful. Ares looked back at himself, made the body sit, and then sent the vision outside the room. Some walls could be flown through and others could not. It depended on the thickness of the wall, any barriers that were in place, the cultivation of the user, and the material the wall was made out of it. Any fortified compound worth its salt was impervious to third person divine sense but, seeing as how Ares' house was literally just a plain old home, Ares could fly around through every wall he wanted right now. He could see Aejaz reading in the living room and he could even see everyone else returning from their shopping spree outside. Some of them noticed that there was a divine sense probing around them which alerted them to the fact that Ares was now in sensory enhancement.

Seeing the crowd notice him reminded Ares that divine sense wasn't invisible and that he had to make an effort to mask himself if he wanted to sneak around like that. No doubt the Prisms and their Omniscience would help with this, as well as increase the overall range, but he could experiment with all that at a later date. At the moment his main concern was learning how to control his vision and his body at the same time because it was no small feat... In fact, Ares needed to learn it very quickly because Enyo had just come into the cultivation room and stolen his body! Ares' vision chased Enyo down the hallway as his limp body was dangled over her shoulder. He could only occasionally make it flail a tiny bit but, other than that, he was a damsel in distress right now! Enyo was taking advantage! Why was this the first thing that went through her head when she realised Ares learnt divine sense?! How long had she been planning this?!... Although...

Maybe this would be helpful?

Ares was trying to learn how to remote control his body and it's not like this wasn't a good opportunity... Ares gave up and just let Enyo have his body which wound up being a very unusual experience. Ares could go outside and spectate the street's happening while he felt rapturous pleasure assault a groin he didn't have right now... Ares immediately brought his vision back inside because he felt like a degenerate getting pleasured in public and wanted no part in it! The only other thing of note he did during his experiment was go and find Bellona before giving her a ghost-head-butt. Revenge had been achieved! Not that Bellona even flinched or anything, she literally just brushed him off her shoulder like a speck of dirt. She was probably jealous about the whole Enyo situation and Ares being here, and somehow rubbing it in while Enyo was also rubbing it in, only made it worse. Anyway, now that Ares had gotten at least a little more used to divine sense he had no reason to remain in this ethereal form. He returned to his body and took charge because the sneaky wench Enyo needed to be disciplined. If she assailed Ares every time he left his body then Ares was never going to see the end of this behaviour!... Although really what he was doing to her right now wasn't exactly something she would consider a 'punishment'... Maybe he was just making the situation worse and further encouraging her. Enyo was a hard woman to deal with sometimes...