Chapter 300: Stress Interview

Minutes became hours, hours became days and, soon enough, it was the big day! The sun was shining and everyone was running around getting prepared to attend the wedding. It was mostly a casual affair, so no suits or extremely fancy dresses, and Ares was grateful for that otherwise he would have to go buy a child's suit and that was the last thing he wanted to spend money on! He had plenty of stardust but even owning such a thing would be incredibly embarrassing... It would serve as a constant reminder of this dark time in his life. Instead, he was just wearing one of the other pieces of clothing Calla had stuck on him back when he was being made to try out clothes and have pictures taken of him. One set of clothes in particular, not girl's clothes obviously, made him look like a posh mini fellow and so, despite Ares' objections, Calla had bought it anyway. She would be treating it as a keepsake and taking it back home with her after but it was finding use here and now. It was a white shirt with black knickerbockers and straps. Calla had also went out to get Ares a black bowtie and a small hat to go along with it and, well... She'd been taking pictures for the last hour or so straight... Plus Enyo and Bellona were also joining in and pinching Ares' cheeks or looking him up and down from different angles to take in the full scope of his cuteness. Enyo was drilling these memories into her head with Past-Present Polymerisation and would keep this day in her head forever. Dapper mini Ares! Calla had really outdone herself here and so mini Ares had sort of become the main attraction in the house and everyone had at least something to say about it... Although in Leo and Aejaz' case it was mostly mockery that came from their mouths...

Fortunately for Ares, he was eventually freed from the clutches of the fluffy matriarch when Sadie arrived as she was Ares' mana generator for today. He'd already discussed this with her a while back when she came round looking for something to munch on. Ares was bedridden, AKA poisoned, so he promised to make whatever she wanted, provided it was reasonable, during the wedding instead as long as she supplied him with mana. Ares could have asked someone else but he was somewhat concerned that Enyo, Calla, or Bellona would all pester him in various ways while he was trying to cook. Aejaz would get bored and doze off while Allie was busy making some pills as a gift for Li and Dirk. Ares didn't wanna bother Trixie, who was still getting ready, or Lacy / Appa because he didn't want to make the youngest residents do too much work and knacker them out early as then they'd just get tired during the wedding. There really weren't many options so he just plucked Sadie out of thin air as she was a perfect fit for the task and could be bribed with food and some alcohol Ares had in the cupboard. You weren't supposed to bring alcohol to the wedding, as there was already some there, but Sadie was probably an exception as her gluttony for the stuff transcended things like 'politeness' or 'etiquette'.

Anyhow, the dish Sadie wanted was spring rolls. Vegetable spring rolls, pork spring rolls, chicken spring rolls, shrimp spring rolls. Spring rolls! Any and all! Whatever Ares felt like making. He was actually fine with this as he wanted to get some practice in with pastry and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any to do precisely that. Plus it was a nice little addition he could throw at the wedding without clashing with whatever the caterers were doing. It would stand on its own and not interfere with anything on the set menu. His spring rolls would just sit there on the side, like the snack they were, and entice people to chomp on them, at which point they would realise it was the best dish there and he would win the 'battle' that only he was taking part in. Why Ares felt competitive against the random chefs was anybody's guess but, hey, at least he was putting in a lot of effort as a result? That was something good for everyone else, at least, as they'd get to enjoy some really tasty food... The 'evil' smile on his mini face made him look like a devious little prankster right now but Sadie didn't interrupt his thoughts. She cared more about spring rolls than whatever Ares was planning on achieving via them and so he could work freely, undisturbed by Sadie's curiosity. Food came first!

Time passed and eventually everyone left to go... About thirty feet to the right of their house... Li Li and Dirk already lived in the neighbourhood so it's not like anyone who was invited had particularly far to travel. As an aside, Dirk, Charity, and Li Li had all challenged the inner court test again at some point during the tournament and had all been successful on their second go around... Well they had to have been otherwise they wouldn't have been in the inner court to begin with... Other than Charity as she could just coast by living in Gladius' house. Anyway, their second attempt went considerably better than the first and it wasn't just a result of Ares / Dominus not being there, although that certainly was a part of it. Still, they'd showcased their talents properly this time around, didn't get ahead of themselves, and had visibly improved as cultivators all around. Dirk had taken Dominus' lessons to heart and focused more on supporting Li Li. He was actively swapping between occasional bursts of aggression from sneaky angles and hopping inside Li Li's bloodstream to kickstart her engine.

Li Li had been training due to the tournament and so her improvements were rapid and needed no explanations. She was more measured and far less rash with an overall stronger presence so she was a shoe in to win. Charity didn't train as much but she had a pretty terrible fight the first time around for reasons that weren't really too tied to her strength. She just fought in a wiser way and didn't make any glaring mistakes this time around which was sufficient to pass. Charity had done some training here and there, and improved her cultivation by a decent chunk too, but she was always more interested in being a healer than a fighter and so her efforts were directed to that field instead. Granted, however, her knowledge of the human body did extend to combat too so she had indirectly made herself a better combatant overall by doing this as her ability to pinpoint weak spots had grown significantly. She was now also decently capable of healing herself mid fight which gave her more survivability in drawn out brawls. Charity was both slacking and improving at the same time! It was oddly fitting for someone as lazy as her...

Anyway, now Charity could have stare-downs with Leo whenever he passed by their house and that was always a fun time. 'You're a furball.' 'You're a bitch'. Yadda yadda, same old same old... Although Charity had gotten weirdly very good at deciphering tiger language somehow. Either that or the implication of what Leo's eternally smug and shit eating grin was trying to say was crystal clear to a point it didn't even need a translation anymore. Regardless, the point being that all three flunkies were in the inner court now and so nobody had to go searching for the soon-to-be married couple in the outer ring. That would have been a tad embarrassing and put somewhat of a damper on the whole thing. Then again, they'd probably waited to have the wedding specifically until they reached the inner court to prevent precisely that...

Ares and co arrived and all headed over to the happy couple to give their congratulations etc... Ares left the ever growing group of women who were all swarming around Li Li in her dress and having various girl chats about her big moment. He had a more important task right now, scouting the competition! He wasn't going to pull out the spring rolls just yet, he had to be tactical with his deployment of them! He was going to do some espionage because these weren't ordinary spring rolls, no, they were combat rolls! Ares wanted to get a feel for the dishes that were being brought out and time his unveiling of the spring rolls during down time after the least impressive dish to maximise the impact and clash hard with the chefs!... This was petty but it mattered to him, ok?! He worked hard on these things! Anyway, Ares had separated from everyone he arrived with and was giving a few greetings to the other neighbours here and there as he drifted past them on his search for food. He'd seen a long table with some stuff on it as he entered and that was his goal currently.

Ares did eventually arrive by the table and he loaded up a plate with various samples so as to get a feel for the quality of chef that had been hired for the main menu. Ares ate the samples and was impressed, actually, but only up until he realised exactly who's cooking this was! Li Li and Dirk's clans might not have splurged on the venue but they'd definitely spent some serious stardust in preparation for today because Ares could tell apart Remmy's cooking any day of the week! Actually, this reminded him he would still have to direct Phobos over to Remmy's at some point. Anyway, that was a problem for future Ares, right now present Ares was rapidly aborting his mission! It's not that he couldn't maybe compete with Remmy if he really tried but some hastily invented spring rolls, with no refining whatsoever, stood no chance! his stuff was good but would pale in the face of greatness! His spring rolls would look like fall rolls and give off an depressing, wilted aura even just sitting next to Remmy's stuff on the table so Ares had to alter his plan a bit. He could either wait until all of Remmy's menu had been chewed through and then bring them out afterwards, as some people might be drunk on the venue's alcohol by that point, or he could try and go with the flow as early as possible. He had to either be first or last as directly going head to head with the little Remmy's dishes was a disaster waiting to happen!

"It's pretty good, this stuff."

Ares heard someone commenting to his left so he looked over and found Mako, of all people, standing around and eating some of the food from the table.

...

...

"Who the hell invited you?"

"I invited myself." Mako spoke casually and didn't even spare Ares a glance as he kept munching on some prosciutto and avocado snacks. This elf had most definitely not been given a letter of invitation and was clearly crashing a wedding here! He must have heard about it from his mother who heard about it through Calla and voila. Technically Calla also shouldn't have been here but she was following mini Ares even to the depths of hell if he tried fleeing in that direction so there was basically no way of ridding her from this event. As for Mako... Well he was probably here to discuss some matters with Ares but was this really the time or place?! This guy seriously couldn't read a room if his life depended on it...

"I see... Still butthurt about the loss?"

"Tsk, maybe if you're clone hadn't been so useless we would be talking about my victory instead..."

"Knew it. You have some nerve complaining about the clone while you were out cold for most of the end of the match. Also, you act like you could have picked someone better for the clone to mimic... Puh〜lease, we both know who you're going to be summoning with that art every single time you use it from now on and there's no point pretending otherwise. You should change the name of the art from 'Ersatz' to 'Ares homage'."

"Oh come off it, that thing was below average and incredibly disappointing! You were already injured to within an inch of your life and it still couldn't kill you."

"Not like you could do any better prior to that. I'll give you credit for not being terrible but you're only slightly above slightly below average overall."

"What the hell does that mean?... Did you just call me average?"

"Well if all the future God of creation can summon is some 'below average' clone then I don't see why I should label you as anything higher than that?" Ares and Mako kept having a spat that went back and forth for a good hour before they finally ran out of redundant and petty insults for one another.

"So, anyway, where's Terros?" Ares' complete one eighty from hurling crass language at Mako to asking him a perfectly reasonable question with no ulterior motives threw the elf for a complete loop. Mako shook his head and recalibrated to keep up with the annoying revenant.

"Resting I would imagine. I haven't seen him since you summoned the God of Gods and had his rocky ass blasted to pieces like a tin can at a shooting range. I'm not even going to ask why you have Astraeus hanging around and waiting at your beck and call. I get that he must be lounging around in the void, and you've come across him there, but I still think it's ridiculous you can just summon that primordial robo god whenever you please. How long is the time period between uses on his contract summon anyway?"

Ares shrugged. "Don't know exactly. It's a fair bit longer than I'd assumed it would be and it's looking like it might take upwards of six to seven months before he can be brought out to play again."

"Really? Most Gods only take two or three months... Though I guess I can understand it what with the power that guy is packing."

"I think he wasn't expecting such a lengthy cooling off period either. Maybe it's due to reality being unable to cope with his presence often or maybe it's because he needs to readjust things back in the void and put all the dimensions he temporarily abandoned back in place properly. He is a busy God after all."

"Most Gods tend to be... Unless their name is Ignizz anyway... Speaking of, Terros will likely go and have a word with that dumb lizard. I don't know when but you can probably safely expect that useless God to turn up sometime soon-ish. Ah, also, Terros might mention the Primordial Blade to everyone. There are a good number of people out there who would try and hunt down such a treasure so if he makes it clear it belongs to the destruction champion, and no one else, then that should reduce the number of people interested in messing with you over it." Neither Ares nor Mako knew this but Ares owning the Primordial Blade was already common knowledge. There were a ton of smart people outside the Blade's barrier and it didn't take them long to piece everything together after learning about some of the finer details of the nothingness aspect. The Blade's aura always felt like warped spatial magic and it disappearing a while back, and creating a barrier around the destruction champion, made a lot of sense so that was one thing Terros wouldn't need to clarify.

That being said, Astraeus being in a contract with Ares was fairly well hidden knowledge that only Coronos and a few other people knew so that would likely grab people's attention. Just when they thought info on Ares had ceased, BAM, there would be more! Also Terros would take this chance to spread info on Mako so everyone was going to have a lot more fundamental news to digest overall. Also, unbeknownst to Ares and Mako, a certain individual named 'Armageddon' was going to come out in support of Mako. Lucky elf! Mako didn't really have anyone outside the barrier in his corner as of yet, as a chance to meet people in the wider world right now (like the pagoda) was rare, so this would be a good start for him. Who was Armageddon and why did he support Mako? Hell if he knew, it was still a good result though! All the fundamental champions would have their own group of protectors and backers, that was unavoidable as many quid pro quo alliances would be formed based on what everyone could do for each other. It's not like these people would be pit against each other in the future or anything, as the fundamentals had no reason to clash with one another, but having more was always a good thing. It meant more protection and more goodies from expert cultivator 'sugar-daddies' who would just chuck rare resources and opportunities at you like they were giving away Halloween candy to trick or treaters.

"... You know what I'm really here to ask you." Mako's tone changed now that the serious matter was finally being brought up. Ares couldn't avoid it forever.

"Yes and no. Why don't you start form the beginning and tell me everything in order so I can answer you properly?"

With a sigh, Mako agreed that was for the best and gave a relatively simple explanation that left out a lot of the fluff, lengthy though it was. "In terms of hidden away locations tailor made for the fundamentals, you have the crimson 'void' and I have a neon 'generator room'. It functions as a sort of limitless source of creation energy that self propagates even without the creation pillar's intervention aside from the original creation of it way back when. Both the creation pillar, and I to an extent, can tap into it and draw out limitless energy to create things from the ever-expanding room. The room is mostly a dark place with a few neon lines that constantly change colour and shape, forming countless colourful objects with every millisecond that passes. Each of those objects created are very much real and is indicative of the sort of power the pillar possesses. Millions of objects in millions of places with millions of variations all at once and all automated without need for a single input from anyone... A factory that churns out infinite possibilities without rest or supervision... Or that was what it was supposed to be.

See, each of those objects the neon lines changed into were supposed to continue existing, thrust out into the infinite room to just passively mind its own business, but, instead, they were being reshaped and replaced by the next object in line to spawn. Almost like the generator room had reached some kind of limit and couldn't expand any further so any new creation overrode the previous one. I understood this as soon as I entered because the pervasive dark of the room felt like someone had turned off the lights in the generator room and broken every bulb. The room should have been an array of neon colours bursting in every direction infinitely, swarming over the universe and even the void. Granted the creation pillar would probably stop it before that happened but the power the generator room should have afforded both me and the pillar should have been more considerable than it currently is, and so I decided to explore it to see what went wrong.

The closer I drew to the origin of the room, and the generator itself, the louder I could hear the voice of the creation pillar whispering in my ear. It started to explain to me in full what this realm was and also what the issue plaguing it currently was. On the way to the centre of the generator room I was directed to take a short detour which is when I came across the Genesis, one of the last bastions of the creation pillar's unchecked power made manifest. See, the creation pillar had always been jealous of the destruction pillar which appeared to possess a greater degree of intelligence and autonomy. The creation pillar was fuelled by base desires and wanted to overcome that, gaining some rationality much like what Astraeus had become over time. Its conclusion? Create a new body, one that was highly efficient, capable of adapting to the creation pillar's magic's versatility, and one that was deadly enough that the creation pillar could even usurp the position of 'strongest fundamental pillar' from destruction. It wanted to overcome its limits but, more specifically, it wanted to overcome the burden that the destruction pillar was to it.

The destruction pillar had thwarted ever so many countless attempts of the creation pillar to generate a true infinity, unending and filled with all things in the universe everywhere at once. Unfortunately, preventing this was a simple task for the destruction pillar and the creation pillar never did succeed in making its dream come true. It wanted to create a never ending stream of redundant objects and space to feed Xhilihx and keep him at bay eternally but, for some reason, the destruction pillar didn't seem to agree with this approach. This was roughly the time the creation pillar created the Genesis in a bid to transfer its speck of consciousness into a more functional body... But the destruction pillar blasted the consciousness back into the pillar every time it made any effort to leave. The destruction pillar raised a disintegration barrier around the creation pillar that was unbeatable and so the body went to waste and the creation pillar was prevented from doing anything the destruction pillar didn't want it to, forcing the creation pillar to give up permanently. Anyway, that's mostly irrelevant backstory. I was directed to the Genesis and own it now as the two pillars agreed to tackle Xhilihx in a different way, resulting in us fundamental champions. I am very interested in why the destruction pillar didn't want to go down the creation pillar's route but that's a question I can save until later because the explanation isn't quite over yet.

I proceeded through the generator room until I came across... Well, you saw it yourself during our match. That hand thing that was poking out of a black-ish abyss. The dark entangling her was eerily similar to the darkness surrounding the generator room and containing the neon within. This was when the creation pillar taught me about disintegration magic... Somewhat. See there were two forms of disintegration magic present; one of which is the type you use regularly and the other is whatever the hell Astraeus accidentally summons whenever he uses that Vulnus gunshot art. I take it he doesn't realise that he's unintentionally summoning disintegration otherwise he might reconsider using that art. Anyway, at the centre of the generator room was the 'generator' itself, shrouded in disintegration.

Essentially, the destruction pillar was yet again waging war and stifling the creation pillar's potential for infinite expansion by directing a sizable chunk of its own power to holding this room in place and preventing its growth. I don't know what the 'generator' really is, all I know is that the destruction pillar seems to not like it much and has been hassling the creation pillar for a number of millennia at this point such that it's started to raise some questions about the pillar's intentions. Also, even the creation pillar doesn't truly understand what the second type of disintegration actually is and was quite the shock when the destruction pillar unveiled it for the first time. It was a rather well guarded secret. So I guess I have more than one question for you as it's more along the lines of three.

One, what's up with the different types of disintegration?

Two, why is the destruction pillar hampering the creation pillar at every turn and constantly getting involved in business that shouldn't concern it when it lets the other fundamental pillars do whatever they want?

Three, where do you stand in all of this?

I already know that the pillars can rescind our powers if we're deemed uncooperative, so I'm guessing you're on a leash just like I am, but that shouldn't really matter. Our goals should be the same, destroying Xhilihx, so I fail to see why you would have any other mandatory jobs thrust upon you by the destruction pillar other than just focussing on that goal. What does the destruction pillar want from you and what are your, and its, goals exactly? Or can you not even tell me? Because I'm going to be upfront with you, the creation pillar wants answers and I'm also deeply curious myself. All the other fundamental pillars have been confused by destruction's actions for quite some time now but it's always kept to itself so they figured that, through me, maybe they could finally get caught up on what that pillar is planning through you. You can think of this as the other five fundamental pillars trying to get information out of you and your answers will be noted by all of them... So pick your responses carefully, alright?"

Ares scratched his head and closed his eyes as he thought about how best to respond to this impromptu interrogation... And here he thought he was going to get to enjoy Remmy's food all day and have a blast at the wedding without getting dragged into any kind of mess. Turns out this function was both a noun and a verb 'cos Ares had some explaining to do and he was going to spend pretty much the entire time here today talking with this stubborn elf. It was rude to do this today of all days but Mako seemed insistent, likely because he would be leaving for good sometime soon and didn't have any better options. Plus this was about the fate of all existence so it kinda took priority over the wedding. At the very least, this conversation was happening off in the corner where nobody else would get involved or be bothered by their topic of conversation. They didn't have to spoil this happy day for everyone else but this was a talk they did have to have so Ares opened his eyes and took a deep breath. "Ok, let's answer those questions in order... As best I can anyway..."