Chapter 345: Infiltration

The novelty of endless screaming in the music had worn off now. Two whole hours of the stuff left a longing for some piece and quiet in Ares' heavily berated brain. He no longer could even parse what the person was yelling at him through he music. Probably something to do with a broken heart or a cruel world run by uncaring elites who seek to keep you down and out. That was the general gist fo what Ares understood from the music back when he was still able to actually follow along and comprehend it. It didn't help that the fuzziness from the deciphering process kept rearing its head and blending the intelligible vocals with the static-muddied ones. It had gotten to the point where Ares was convinced somebody had buried a multi-lingual banshee in this shack's walls and it was floating around the building to distort the origin of its voice specifically so that it could mess with Ares' electric guitar-addled brain. Thankfully it seemed like this torture session was nearly over and Ares wouldn't have to keep having this one song blared to him on repeat any longer.

Ares twisted the dial once more to decode the fuzzy music but, instead of the music moving on to the next part of the song again once he was done, a soothing quiet overtook the room. It had been so long since Ares heard nothing other than the waves of the ocean outside his window and the occasional chatter of people mugging each other in the nearby alleyways. How wonderful it was! Not for the person getting mugged, perhaps, but Ares valued his own serenity over theirs and so he was thankful for them playing their role in all of this. They didn't exactly have a choice but they were doing a phenomenal job regardless! It was time to put that to the side, though, and finish what he started so Ares grabbed onto the opposite antenna from the one he started with and patiently waited for everything to flow into his palm. It felt like he was getting nibbled but that made sense because this was Crystalised, and therefore sharp, disintegration. If anything, Ares would be incredibly surprised if this mana was somehow gentle. Anyway, it poured into him and and ran around inside his internal pathways in a way that Ares had never tried before. This was the answer to his conundrum of how to manipulate mana into giving him his desired outcome and it was surprisingly simple. It was basically just a mix between casting ice and disintegration aspect arts, which was to be expected, but Ares had assumed that combining the two would be a more complicated affair. It was more of just a do half disintegration and half ice manipulation sort of deal, though, so he wouldn't have had to make any complex calculations about where to guide his mana. It did feel strange doing ice mana manipulation with his disintegration mana but that was something he could get used to over time. The main difference was that ice was easily the most sluggish mana manipulation process of all types Ares had ever used because it required the mana to sit in one spot for a while before moving on in order to get the desired effect. It would be wise for Ares to practice with this type of mana manipulation as prep for when he stole the water pillar enabler and got access to the affiliation in full. It would be easier to do with actual water mana but doing things the harder way first, with disintegration, would mean there were little to no hiccups when it came time to wielding it later as his proficiency would already be far above what it needed to be at to not struggle.

The main point, though, was that the Crystalised series of arts were now learnt, enshrined into Ares' arsenal, and ready for use. There was no noise or feeling to assure Ares that this was the case but his gut instinct told him he could do it and that was a reliable source in its own right. Just to make sure, though, Ares summoned a Crystallised Wall. It worked without a hitch but there were two differences that were readily apparent between this art and the Bane version. This one cost more mana, which Ares already knew would be the case, but it also came out sturdier as a result of this change. It had more mana so the Wall was thicker and tougher to break than it was before. Plus Ares' cultivation actually mattered now, as using an artifact to summon this Wall would just keep it perpetually at the same level of strength overall forever, so that was nice. Maybe Ares could make a house sized Wall one day which was more useful than it sounded. Ares didn't really have a good defensive art that took up physical space and could block things like normal arrows. Not Even Light was great for magic, and Grand Annihilation was a bit of a strange option but could potentially work, but just a simple wall would do good work too! Geordie had proven that earlier with his earth magic as he blocked every tentacle by himself just using nothing other than plain earthen walls. As an aside, though nothingness was what glued together the disintegration and, sometimes, the annihilation magic, hence teh name Crystalised Void, this series of arts came under the disintegration aspect as a whole. Even Detonate, which had more in common with an annihilation aspect art, was under disintegration due to the overwhelming prevalence of the magic. Every single Crystalised art contained disintegration as its primary method of attack so this wasn't too surprising to Ares. Technically speaking these were all combination arts but disintegration was the star of the show and that was the aspect it came under.

Ares desummoned the wall and felt content to leave his testing there. He had an overwhelming urge to use Detonate but the house would not survive that art in the slightest and then Ares would have nowhere to sleep because he couldn't control his impulses. If he really wanted to Detonate some Crystalized Void then he could do so at the Firestarter meeting which was going to begin in about an hour and a half. Ares still had plenty of time but he figured he would go early and find a nice hiding spot to oversee whatever it was they were up to. Sure he could just gate crash and beat them all with ease but he figured he might as well let the meeting get underway for a few minutes first. It was a shame Aejaz had already left otherwise Ares would have borrowed the guy's Concealed Serpent to make sure everything went smoothly. As is, Ares was hoping that his Prowler would do a good enough job by its lonesome to keep him out of sight. The Firestarters were mostly weak so the chances of them detecting him were pretty low all things considered. Unless they had someone hyper observant amongst their ranks, with some kind of perception magic, he would remain hidden without a hitch inside an Ebon Nightmare Zone created via his Prowler. From there he could eavesdrop while charging up a pressure attack of some sort that he could then jump out of the shadows with and simultaneously incapacitate everyone across the entire room. This was a solid plan that would maybe net him some extra information while also dealing with the group before they could react. If need be, adjustments could be made on the fly but the general premise sounded promising so Ares left the house and took off to the place he followed that one Firestarter to a while ago, an 'abandoned' warehouse. Well, not officially anyway.

The warehouse being used for the meeting belonged to a now defunct business and had yet to be sold off or repurposed. It wasn't hard to guess that this belonged to one of the Firestarter members who'd been wronged and actually owned this place at some point. Ares was surprised it hadn't been found sooner because you'd think supposedly empty warehouses would be a priority check when dealing with large groups of terrorists hiding nearby but oh well. There might have been some tomfoolery with Jebben marking this warehouse as occupied before he went missing so as not to arouse suspicion. It's not like the information in the paperwork was double and triple checked regularly so such a stunt would buy maybe a couple moths worth of time without anyone coming to knock on these doors and get the lay of the land. It was only when the rent that was owed became overdue for a month or so that anyone would even care about this place. It was also somewhat out the way so patrolling guards might just miss it on their daily route... Or so Ares hoped.

It was entirely possible Ares was making up excuses for people who were just woefully inadequate. There weren't really any strong cultivators in this country, their defences were lacking and essentially forced them to rely exclusively on Hunter's gadgets, and their information gathering skills regarding locating the Firestarters or their members was atrocious. If Ares hadn't just so happened to ride on the Federation on this specific journey it wasn't unreasonable to think this entire country would have been eventually burned to pieces and then sunk to the bottom of the ocean. They were really quite useless on their own which was somewhat of a shock given how much money ran through this place. You'd think they'd invest in defences or hire strong cultivators but nope, they were either stingy or didn't see the need. Hoping people would understand this place's value was one thing but there were people who did not care about Sheryashka at large and were happy for other people to suffer so long as their main target also did. Jebben and the Torchbearer were making that abundantly clear so hopefully these morons could finally make the correct decision to invest in some hired muscle for damn once! If they could afford to spend hundreds of high grades on pens then this much was definitely in the cards!

Ares Voidwalked openly for a while but descended down to the ground and hopped from shadow to shadow about halfway through. He didn't want to get spotted in the area of the warehouse or even en-route to it as that would put everyone on guard needlessly. He did have to keep himself perfectly out of view as he traversed multiple boats, and the security patrolling them, but with his near infinite mana and the Prowler it was all simple enough. Ares barely even had to sneak around, he could just speed himself up with the Converter boost and his annihilation enhancement and then nobody on the Federation would be capable of tracking him as he leapt from dark corner to dark corner in the blink of an eye. There was always at least one conveniently located shadow allowing him to progress unseen so he made it to the warehouse with impressive speed. Now though things were going ot get a bit trickier. This warehouse was more like an aircraft hangar and the area it was located in had a kind of runway out front to boot. Originally, this business rented out magically propelled 'speedboats' for the wealthy to mess around with and, as such, there was a lot of open space where the boats would be dragged out the front of the warehouse and wheeled over to the edge of the Federation. All this to say, there were no shadows here! It was just a massive open location with roughly half a mile's worth of empty, wooden flooring that had not a single speck on it let alone any convenient shadows. Ares couldn't hop around in secret anymore and there were Firestarter lookouts posted everywhere. He was currently hidden off to the side of the gate that served as an entrance but the second he tried to hop it he would be seen from the hangar directly across the way and an alarm would be raised real quick. He could attempt to create his own shadow and have it dart across the floor but there was a good chance the scouts would notice this strange, inexplicable anomaly...

Ares thought long and hard about how to overcome this and his thoughts kept drifting back to the Adaptive Shot eagle. He could imbue it with nothingness and then swap places with it once it flew into their territory but a pure red eagle made of magic was a bit suspicious. If it was normal coloured, and high up enough, it might be ignored but being red was a dead give away that something was wrong and it needed closer inspection... Ares was tempted to dismiss the idea and maybe try to find another angle but he was hesitant to do so because he had no idea what any other side of this building looked like. If he walked all the way around only to either not find an entrance, or a more heavily guarded one, then he would just be wasting time and that wasn't ideal. The longer he took to get in, the harder it would become as more people would have shown up. Ares didn't know the talents of every Firestarter but if one had good eyesight then it would be for the best to get into position before they arrived so as not to risk getting seen by them as he was sneaking around. The Prowler was great but, unfortunately, Ares was not! Hiding like an assassin was really not his strong suit and he kind of wished Aejaz was here instead as he'd get in problemo.

In the end, Ares did come up with a solution but it was still somewhat risky. Instead of using a nothingness eagle he would use a disintegration based one instead, as that would look slightly more natural, and then hide in the shadow that appeared underneath it. It meant Ares would actually be entering the premise with his real body so if anything went wrong the ensuing mess would not be pretty, and he'd likely waste his shot of catching all the Firestarters that would be showing up, so he had to really do this properly. He had no backup plan so his best option here was to make this as likely to succeed as possible. He thought it over for a while before coming up with an extra layer to the strategy, to boost its chances, and felt like that was good enough to get the job sone so, with that new addition to the plan in mind, he pulled out the Biome Eagle and fired a quick Adaptive Shot low to he ground. The eagle came out with a resplendent pose only for Ares to hush it before it could unleash it's cries and stoke fear in all who opposed it! The bird, who'd just had all its mojo stolen, stared at Ares with a narrow glare because it didn't appreciate being muzzled like this but it got he gist of the situation pretty quick, and followed along without a fuss, as it realised now was not the time to be playing around with petty personal grudges.

Over by the hangar, two lookouts were stationed in front of a large entrance and were just sort of meandering about, not really doing anything specific as they assumed falsely that nobody would show up here. They'd been guarding this place for about a month now and only other Firestarters had ever really reared their heads so they were feeling pretty tired of just bird watching day in day out. It had gotten to the point where they were playing games with one another to pass the time including I spy and betting on which species of bird would be next to come flying over the hangar. Of course the obvious answer was 'seagull', as not all of them were the bomber kind and they were rather common as a whole, but there was occasionally variance and, really, they were just looking for any way to pass the time. They tried chatting to one another but had basically nothing in common and so it just became half-hearted guy chat, the kind that didn't really give any elaborate response other than 'yeah' or 'nah'. They knew each other's name, why they were working for the Firestarters, and a small bit about their preference in women, that was it. They'd talked most extensively about which of their comrades they thought was the hottest but that really as far as conversation went with these two. 

One of the two guards pointed to the sky with a small frown and kissed his teeth. "Eagle, not a seagull." The adaptive shot had entered the territory and was casually sailing towards the hanger while trying not to act suspicious by flying too rapidly. Ares was in the shadow it was casting on the floor and praying these two doofuses wouldn't spot him or notice anything off about the bird. As if on queue, as soon as he though that, the other guard squinted at the eagle and spoke to his partner.

"Yeoh, I win the bet... But is it me or is that eagle kinda odd?"

"How so?" The first guard squinted as well but his eye sight wasn't nearly as good. He'd need his glasses in order to really catch a proper glimpse.

"It's just a really dark eagle compared to most. Maybe I'm not seeing it right but I think it's pitch black all over which is pretty wild."

"Maybe it was born with a mutation? Or maybe an affiliation for the darkness pillar or something? That happens every now and then, right?"

The guard nodded in response. "Yeah but it's still strange right? Why don't I..." Before the guard could say something along the lines of 'shoot it down just in case', his attention was diverted elsewhere. "Tsk, it's that guy again...." The guard nodded forward and his companion glanced over towards the gate to the area. There was a sailor guard there that frequently patrolled the warehouses around here and these two had to constantly keep sending him on his way. The guy really liked to chat and the more questions he asked the more complicated the invented lie these two came up with had to get to accommodate his nosiness. They were starting to get real sick of him but if they just killed te guy it would complicate things immensely as the death would be looked into and potentially lead the Federation right to their doorstep. They'd been ordered to just leave him be but that didn't mean they enjoyed seeing his ugly mug whenever it cropped up looking for a chat to pass the time! It always meant a conversation was in store when he showed up and it was always a long one at that. "Well, we didn't agree on what the loser of the bird bet had to do, did we?"

"Oh fuck you." The first guard rolled his eyes and started heading over to talk the guard as his punishment for losing. Before he left, though, he turned around and asked the other guard a question. "Speaking of birds, where'd that eagle go anyway?"

The guards both looked around but couldn't see neither head nor tail of it. "Dunno, probably flew off the Federation's borders and is out in the ocean somewhere. Shame, I kinda wanted to knock it out of the air and fashion something out of its dark feathers. Could maybe even sell them to some dumb rich asshole after convincing them the bird was some kind of rare creature."

Around the corner from where this loudmouth guard was stationed, Ares was having to hold the eagle back by covering its beak and wrestling with the damn thing because it wanted to go and ruin that guard's day! The eagle had completed its mission so Ares desummoned it quickly before it gave his position away because it was looking to start a fight. As for how he got here safely, Ares had taken Rox out of the Primordial Blade and had him transform into one of the nearby guards. Ares assumed that if anybody had ever actually checked in on this place, it would be somebody posted in the vicinity and his guess seemed accurate enough. When the lookout walked over to talk to Rox, he would give a polite nod and wave from afar and then walk away, pretending to just be passing by and not actually doing a routine check. Rox waited until the lookouts had spotted the eagle to make his move and rattle the gate, distracting them with perfect timing. It had all worked brilliantly and now Ares was behind enemy lines, Rox would transform into some everyday object and sit around on the floor for a while until Ares returned or a fight broke out, and the eagle had its mouth shut long before he could start squawking up a storm all up in everyone's business. Success!

Ares manoeuvred back into the shadows, now that there were plenty to spare, and zipped through the inside of the warehouse while keeping an eye out for a good spot to hole up in. It had to be somewhere that would give him a good vantage point to oversee everything, somewhere close enough to the action that he could hear every last word being spoken, and somewhere out of sight that nobody would spend too much time, if any, looking at... That'll do! Ares started climbing up the side of the building before latching onto a lamp directly above the centre of the room! There was a wide open space just below and it was inevitably where the meeting would take place so, in terms of being where the action was happening, Ares couldn't be in a better position unless he stood amongst the crowd. As for the secrecy of this place, who was going to stare directly at a light?! And even if they could, without blinding themselves like a moron, Ares was still directly above it and hidden inside a shadow above the fitting anyway, so they wouldn't get a good angle of him from down below. All Ares had to do was shut his eyes and use his divine sense to spectate without getting blinded by the light directly in front of him. He didn't even really have to watch the event as just listening was also good enough but he was being nosy here! Also, when it came time to finally drop in, he could do so smack bang in the middle of every single foe here, taking them all out in one fell swoop without the need for any fuss. All in all, a spot Ares was particularly happy with so he fastened himself inside a Ebon Zone, sat down with some snacks in the black abyss, and waited for the show to start outside his hidey hole.

Over the course of the next hour or so, a bunch of people showed up in plain clothes and took seats nearby or stood up in a crowd. Ares figured these people weren't wearing their pure white getups because they weren't actually 'working' right now. They'd probably put it on right after this meeting was done and then go about whatever task was assigned to them. It was quite a stupid decision because, even in the event Ares couldn't fight them all, he could remember their faces! The mask at least should have been worn when attending the secret meetings for conducting terrorist activities, no?! These people really were a hodgepodge, inexperienced bunch that had been thrown together at the last minute but Ares wasn't going to complain if it meant his job was that much easier. He could charge up an Esoteric Compression and drop down below, knocking everybody down with the art in under a second, but he was still patiently waiting to see what they were up to first.

A short while later, when it seemed like very body who was going to show up was accounted for, a somewhat rough around the edges woman took to a raised platform with a mic on it and begun to speak. The fact that Jebben wasn't here must have meant that Ares had failed his fifty fifty and gotten the meeting without him. It was unfortunate but there was nothing he could do about it because he didn't know where the other meeting was taking place anyway. If he did, he would have gone to that one while directing security over here to apprehend this lot. At the end of the day, payback was payback and ruining one entire half of this organisation was sure to send a message to Jebben that Ares was not someone he could taunt with stupid letters without there being consequences! Ares put that thought away for now, though, because the woman had just started talking about something interesting now that she'd gotten her basic greetings and morale-raising speech out of the way and done with.

"Our task today is similar to what it was originally supposed to be but there have been some changes due to unforeseen circumstances. Our target is still the 'Deep Blue', it's just that now we have no clue who has it. We are to figure out who's in possession of the treasure and return to Jebben with it in our grasp. Do not screw this up! The Deep Blue is almost completely integral to our current plan and is going to be our escape route off this burning wreck of a country when we're through with it so keep your eyes peeled!"

Deep Blue? Escape ticket?... The Enabler? Ares connected the dots and realised these lot were going to be, originally, attacking the new owner of the enabler to make sure it wound up in their hands. When the Federation was sinking to the bottom of the ocean, they'd commandeer some extra boats and use the water magic to flee the scene safely and without wasting too much time. The enabled water magic would help them avoid detection from dangerous sea creatures like the Scylla while making their travel considerably faster. like this, they wouldn't need multiple water pillar experts and could just pass the enabler around to maintain a constant uptime of those handy arts. Funnily enough, they had no idea that the thing would attract arguably the worst monster of them all, the krakyrn, but it really didn't matter because this foolish goal of theirs was never going to come to fruition. The krakyrn had the enabler now and Ares would have it soon.

The fact that these people still thought it was in the possession of a noble or something was odd, though. If they knew even the name of the treasure then surely they must have had some serious insider information right? Maybe even somebody working directly for the auction lot? Why didn't they know the krakyrn had it? Not knowing the krakyrn was obsessed with the treasure was one thing, that was a private conversation between Hunter, Ares, and Geordie, but the treasure being gone from the Federation currently? There was one of three possibilities as far as Ares could guess regarding why this was the case. One, it was a really low rank employee who overheard the name, and the fact that it was an enabler, and that was all the Firestarters knew as a result. This didn't make sense though because why sneak a mole into the auction before knowing if there was anything worth getting a mole in place for anyway? They must have known about the enabler beforehand, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth the effort, so this sounded way too convenient to be true.

Option two was that the boss of the auction lot was a turncoat but this line of thinking had issues too because the boss should have been informed about the treasure being stolen by the krakyrn. Unless the employees working for him were lying in a bid to try and keep him calm, as in they didn't want to tell him the krakyrn had it as that would complicate things with the client, then this wasn't the correct answer either. It wasn't inconcievable someone like the host from the other day would claim a businessman had stolen it, and they were still investigating them all, but Ares wasn't entirely convinced. Finally the third answer, and the most likely explanation, was that the seller was the insider. They had this treasure in their grasp to begin with but wanted to make some money off it by selling it to someone and then stealing it back before they burnt everything to the ground. The enabler would have gone for multiple millions, enough to let every single one of the members of the Firestarters live comfortable lives forever if it was split after they made their escape. The seller not being informed about the krakyrn as of yet could be because the auction lot were keeping it under wraps, so as not anger him, or it could just be that they haven't had contact with him as of yet. If the auctioneers didn't have his money, and probably didn't know who had the treasure (otherwise they would have reclaimed it already), then there was no reason to go visit them as they'd just lie to placate the seller anyway. The Firestarters figured it would be for the best if they investigated on their own who 'stole the enabler during the madness' on that day... They had no idea nobody had it! Seriously, this lot were pitiful... Better yet, how on earth did they plan on getting that info anyway? They were weak and thoroughly incapable of forcing anyone to admit to theft even if a businessman did have it!

As if to mock Ares internal declaration, however, a surprise entrance was made by some bizarre technological marvel that had no business existing in a place like this. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that this group was funded, or at least supported, by the torchbearer... Support from the technologically advanced Neo Gear Land that came in the form of this massive, armoured, sentient robot. It paled in comparison to Mako's mecha, obviously, but this thing was definitely still a phenomenon unlike anything most Sheryashkans had ever seen in their entire lives. This torchbearer was really going all out, huh? This thing looked way stronger than anything anyone in this country could realistically deal with. It seemed the Firestarters were going big or going home today and they were going to rely on, predicatively, two of these things to do it. One here, one at the other meeting spot... Well, at least Ares could end this Firestarter nonsense today as he'd just have to follow the sounds of carnage to locate the other robot after he was done here. Still, that thing looked like it could put up a decent fight... But, really, all that meant was that it was about to become cannon fodder for Ares' testing. It was time to try out all of his new improvements that he'd fully integrated with over the last day!