Chapter 347: No Capsizing With This Captain

With everything wrapped up here, Ares was free to depart and go look around for the other half of the Firestarters and their robot guardian. He did check with the guards to see if there'd been any reports of their location but word hadn't arrived yet... That or something was going on and complicating the Firestarters' plans elsewhere so nothing had really kicked off yet in major areas. Either way, Ares was confident he could find them easily enough given the circumstances. They were either causing havoc or fighting someone preventing them from doing as such and both options would be easy enough to spot from a vantage point up in the clouds. Ares packed Rox into the Blade, gave him some spare honeycomb he had on him as Rox had transformed into Enyo and was signalling that he was feeling a bit hungry, and then finally left the warehouse while the guards cleaned up the Firestarters. They were resilient but their injuries meant they couldn't fight back properly so they were hauled away without causing much of a scene. Their bark was louder than their bite.

Once Ares left the hangar area, he took to the skies and started scouring the different boats in search of any hubbub that would be a dead giveaway. Flames, particularly, would be synonymous with the Firestarters at this point as any kind of entertainment using fire had been temporarily banned while this group was looked into. The Federation didn't want civilians panicking because some fire juggling showman was putting on a display and minding his own business. It also made it easier to track the Firestarters when they did appear because they would be the only ones disregarding this temporary law... Well there might be some others that did but they were given particularly harsh punishments for not abiding by the law during such a crucial time. The rumours about what happened to these few brave souls defying the Federation's orders were enough to mostly quell any further attempts and so there had been little to no fire anywhere as of late. That being said, there were some extreme examples of paranoia regarding perfectly reasonable fires. One shop with a wood oven was reported nearly a hundred times since the Federation left Central Land while a furniture store with a fireplace for sale was suspected of being a Firestarter gathering spot. Supposedly, according to the individual who filed the claim, they stoked the fires in different patterns to convey messages to the group members who would sit in one of the display chairs in front of it. Though nobody truly believed this an extensive search / investigation was carried out just in case and, unsurprisingly, it was all nonsense. People were on edge and, though such laws temporarily banning things were helpful, it only served to put people even more on edge than they already were! There was no real correct way of dealing with this so the Federation just stuck to their guns and kept the law in place even if it meant dealing with a few scaredy cat psychopaths pointing the blame finger at literally everyone.

About five minutes of running around in the sky later, Ares did eventually happen across what seemed to be a showdown between the Firestarters and a rag tag group composed of Onno, Esme, the fake monk, Aejaz, and those two strange guys Ares saw back in Hunter's shop. That group was fighting against the second fire tank and the remaining half of the Firestarters who were being directed by Jebben as he stood in the back barking orders. It seemed like the tanks could also be controlled manually somehow, Lizzy could figure that out, and Jebben was remotely piloting the tank rather skilfully. Of course the same drawbacks that Ares discovered earlier were still present, and no amount of input from a third party was going to fix enough issues the tank had to make this a worthwhile challenge for him, but it was a neat little feature that gave it some extra mileage and could maybe sway a fight it would have otherwise lost. Whether it was making a difference here or not though was impossible to tell because the fight was even for reasons that had nothing to do with that.

Put simply, almost everyone's magic sucked against this tank. What was Aejaz supposed to steal from this robot? It didn't have a magical affiliation, its 'senses' were a result of hardware and it was being controlled by Jebben anyway so it didn't need them, all of its weapons were directly attached to its body and couldn't be stolen so easily, and the core components that would win Aejaz the fight if he stole them away were buried beneath the unbreakable frame and out of view. As it turned out, robots were Aejaz' natural predator and it was clear he wasn't having a great time here. All he could really do was keep stealing everyone else's magic around and trying to use that to even the odds a little. He had a real buffet of affiliations to choose from down there because of the massive crowd that had gathered and, right now, he was using a combination of water and lightning in a bid to try and fry the robot's circuitry. It wasn't working but it wasn't doing nothing either as the machine was absolutely slowing down and getting zapped to a halt for a split second occasionally. Aejaz' best bet would be to try and use Echo directly on the robot but there were two problems with that, namely the robot's reaction speed preventing him from getting close and... The somewhat inconvenient fact that Aejaz needed to steal Echo from someone in order to use it... Why hadn't this clown learnt how to use Echo on his own yet?! Other people had and it wasn't their own damn brother who invented the thing! Lazy! Ares was going to have to bring back the spartan training for this muppet until that art was drilled into him the hard way!

As for everyone else, Onno was probably doing the most of everyone present thanks to his versatile variety cultivation method. He was liberally using his acid magic to chip away at the robot from afar while providing support to Esme who was focussing on the Firestarters. Her wind magic was capable of ruffling feathers in a wide range and so the Firestarters were getting swept up and off their feet by tornadoes on repeat. Throw in some fire magic from Onno and you had a real blaze of glory that these lot had to defend themselves from. Massai was on defence duty and using his lotus art, the same one he used back during the regionals, to block out the more dangerous combination attacks the Firestarters charged up collectively. Then there were the two other individuals who seemed to be casting relatively basic arts like water bullet and flash thunder to target individual Firestarters and take them out of the fight for good. One of them even managed to get close enough to the robot to use Echo on it once, which was surprising because it must have meant these two were in Red Sun at some point recently to get their hands on this art, but didn't do much damage as his mastery with the art was pretty insignificant. They were giving it a good enough go but Ares wasn't much impressed by either of them. They'd pincered the robot but that was only because they'd gotten split up right as Ares arrived and forced to take a stand on either side of it. It definitely wasn't something they'd been aiming for so they'd gotten lucky... And yet they were trying to undo that for some reason? If undoing their good fortune was the best they were capable of then Ares really wanted nothing to do with them as cultivators. Maybe as businessmen, if they really were associates of Onno, then they'd be good to have around but Onno could deal with that and assess their capabilities in that field.

Ares was tempted to go down, join in on the fray, and end things in style but he restrained himself because this was shaping up to be a good challenge for this group. They were beating the Firestarters but struggling hard with the robot so who would come out victorious was up in the air. While Ares watched the scuffle continue, he couldn't help but wonder how this fight had even started anyway. Everyone being here was far too convenient as it was a relatively obscure place they were fighting in and every member of this group being in this specific area right as shit went down seemed a bit too intentional to be ignored. Despite the flashy arts, they weren't close enough to any sort of busy area to be seen so this was a fight to the death here and if they lost they would not be rescued by the guards. Also, why was Onno here? Ares could have sworn this guy said he wasn't going to get involved and didn't want to! Did he change his mind?

Ares had so many questions! Though, now that he thought about it, there was one piece of information he'd been forgetting about that might answer at least some of his questions. Aejaz' shiftiness! He'd been acting coy as of late and disappearing without telling Are where he was going or where he'd been. This shmuck probably wanted to surprise Ares by proudly proclaiming he'd dealt with the other half of the Firestarters by his lonesome. He must have tracked down their other base by scouting and spying on suspicious persons around the Federation and come up with a plan to assail them a tthe same time Ares was dealing with the other half. After discovering their hidey hole he probably caught sight of the fire tank hanging around in the base and decided he needed help taking it out and called upon this group of cultivators to aid him. Why he didn't call Hunter as well Ares didn't know...

Or, Actually, maybe he did. If Aejaz was trying to show off here then bringing along someone stronger than him, who would be able to prepare in advance for the tank and build a gadget to defeat it without breaking a sweat, was counter productive. On the one hand, good for Aejaz for finally taking the initiative to deal with problems on his own and even go so far as to lend a helping hand to Ares but, on the other hand, at least come up with a damn plan yourself! Grinding away at this robot was silly! To be fair, Aejaz probably hadn't been aware that this thing was magic resistant to some degree but, still, what was his plan against a robot to begin with anyway?! He should have known better than anyone else that this thing would be a harsh fight for him in particular... Perhaps he really thought he could just overcome it with force of will? If he had the Prowler, maybe, but he didn't even ask for it earlier... Well, at least he could steal Echo off of one of the two other guys and maybe try and make something happen with that as it was now confirmed they could use it at least.

The fight went on for another five minutes or so and Ares still had no idea what the Aejaz group were intending to do about the tank. They'd dealt with all but Jebben of the Firestarters now but he was guarded closely by the tank and they couldn't access him, not that there was much reason to as the tank could operate without him regardless. It had limited the tank's range of operation, as it needed to defend the liability Jebben, but that meant little when the issue was never cornering it to begin with. Sure its speed was a pain in the neck but its not like they were missing any arts or attacks on it that would have dealt it the final blow anyway. The real issue was its unbreakable sturdiness that they just couldn't beat right now. It did seem like these lot had something planned, but Ares couldn't for the life of him figure out what, and he was interested to see the trick they had up their sleeve. Everyone other than Massai was coming together to cast some kind of art while he protected them, or maybe multiple arts at once, but Ares couldn't quite see what it was they were up to from here as they'd grouped up underneath a small overhanging roof! Curses! Foiled by architecture! Still, once their arts went off Ares would be able to figure out what their gameplan had been all along. Not seeing the mana types with his Omniscience merely delayed the inevitable!

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Tsk. Ares kissed his teeth as that loud noise had signalled the arrival of a very unwelcome guest. Ares wanted to find out what the lot down there were up to but a pressing matter had just come a knocking and couldn't be ignored. Everyone down below was shaken by the rumbling and turned their heads towards the source. They couldn't see it, as it was both under the water and a short distance from the Federation right now, but they had all turned their heads and stopped doing whatever it was they were doing before! Now Ares really wasn't ever going to find out what their plan was because this took priority and wasting time on this stupid robot was pointless. Ares swooped down while everyone was distracted and knocked Jebben out cold before anyone could even see Ares do it. The robot resumed automated control and immediately spun around to face this new foe but its torso rolled off its legs and crashed into the floor after Ares severed its waist with his scythe. No time for playing games! Ares broke the fuel source and shoved the thing into the Puny Prisoner alongside its now fully powered down comrade from the production line.

"Are you all just going to keep standing around forever and staring at nothing?" Ares called out to the group who'd seemingly forgotten all about the tank that had been a few feet behind them prior to this incoming monster. Ares didn't exactly blame them, because this thing's presence was immense. So heavy that it even dwarfed the krakyrn by a small margin. This was the Scylla's specialty, dread. It always came with a small army of various water dwelling creatures like sirens, regular krakens, and sea drakes alongside the usual horrors of the deep that were too vastly numerous and individually unique to explain one by one. This mass of monsters caused tremors that shook even smaller landmasses and so a non-anchored Federation would naturally befall the same fate. The overwhelming surge of monstrous aura that appeared alongside the Scylla and the shaking of the ground beneath everyone's feet was enough to stoke fear into even decently strong cultivators as their war march drew ever closer. Aejaz, for instance, had been pretty captivated by the aura even though he wasn't fully drawn into that bad mojo. He recovered quickly compared to everyone else but still stood around mindlessly for a while, unsure of what to do about this exactly. Luckily this precursor was sudden but mostly irrelevant as people would be able to recuperate long before the army actually showed up in front of them.

Then there was Ares who felt nothing. This was a type of pressure based 'attack', or more like a morale killer, so Ares was effectively immune to it. He heard the rumbling but didn't feel it deep in his soul like everyone else did. It was little more than a tickle to him so he shrugged it off without having to put any real effort in. He could have also disintegrated the sound with Quietus or even just blown himself up a bit with Grand Annihilation to do the cultivation equivalent of pinching himself. He was fine and could call out to everyone else, though, and that meant they were snapped awake just like that. External aid could also reawaken them and their conscience but Ares could have also just waited another five to ten seconds and they'd revert to normal. The real danger here was what would have happened if Jebben recovered before them and sicced the tank on them while they were distracted. The monster wasn't even here yet! Stop staring at the ocean like a bunch of gawking muppets! Not that their gawking had stopped even after turning around, though, because the tank and Jebben were both gone and it was fairly obvious who was responsible. Aejaz looked a little disappointed, because he must have really wanted to win this fight himself, but that was fine because he would no doubt use this event to better himself as a cultivator. He didn't like training, and shied away from it regularly, but he was capable of putting his nose to the grind when he really wanted to for whatever reason. Being robbed like this would no doubt be a sore spot and he would try and come up with a counter measure for robots now. That was just how he worked. It was how most cultivators worked, actually.

"... Where's that idiot Jebben?" Onno looked around with an agitated expression as it seemed like he really wanted to beat the guy up.

Ares calmed him down and assured him he would get a chance to smack his idiot brother around later. "I put him in the Primordial Blade for now. He won't wake up for some time so let's deal with the Scylla for now, yeah?"

"Fine... What about the tank?"

"I have a use for it so I'm stealing it. Anyway, I don't know what you lot were up to, or what you're all going to do now, but I'm curious to see what kind of monster this Scylla is up close and personal. Geordie and Hunter will likely be showing up and I'm not gonna slouch on lending aid either. Hopefully we can kill this thing for good but it's going to require a fair bit of effort. You're all welcome to come along but if you couldn't do much against the robot then I think you'd struggle with this thing... Maybe you can fight off the smaller monsters? Aejaz, you can steal my destruction magic now, though, so there's no excuse for you!... Not that there was much of an excuse anyway. I feel like you could have beaten that robot by yourself if need be. It was a bad matchup for you but you are definitely still stronger than it... Anyway, I'm going to go up into the sky and see how things develop from here on out so either find somewhere safe on the other side of the Federation or go and look for Hunter. He'll give you directions and micro manage you all such that your talents are put to excellent use." Ares took control of the conversation and never let go because he didn't have much more time to waste on answering, or even asking, questions. He still wanted to know what their earlier plan was but that could wait until later. Also, Ares figured he might as well ask who the two guys were because it seemed like they were going to keep showing up whenever anything important happened on this damn country.

Ares rose back up into the sky and his breath was snatched away by a rather impressive sight. He whistled to himself in awe at the sheer size of the shadow encroaching upon the Federation from afar and underneath the water. The Scylla was maybe half the size of the Federation in total... Which meant it was fucking massive! This Scylla was not just some random mecha-dryad sized monster, this thing was the very real deal. It had been the king of Sheryashkan waters long before that krakyrn showed up and it was honestly a tie between them currently as to who was the dominant force out in the middle of nowhere. The water pillar might push the krakyrn over the edge now but the Scylla was seriously no slouch. Plus with its loyal army following it around everywhere it was a real task taking this thing out. Most of the Federation's suffering over the years had been at the hands, or rather tentacles, of this thing. It didn't show up every time but, when it did, the loss of life was always tremendous without fail and no amount of measures they took ever really changed that. This thing was dangerous and extremely powerful but, thankfully, there was one single way of keeping it at bay and preventing it from destroying everything... Geordie! Though he didn't get a chance to shine back against the krakyrn, he was about to display the full power he was capable of wielding with his bizarre affiliation. What could an earth pillar mage do in the middle of an ocean? Well, he was about to show those who were unfamiliar with him why he was the damn captain! His voice had been booming through the PA systems or a while now but he'd just received word that all the civilians had been evacuated to the specified locations and now he could act freely. Two more words came through the PA system but they weren't really for anyone's ears other than Geordie's own because he was chanting the name of his first art.

"RUN AGROUND!"

...

Wait what? Ares was no expert in sea-faring but even he could tell something was amiss with the name of that art! Surely the last thing you'd want in a situation like this is for your entire country-sized fleet of naval vessels to Run Aground?! Was Ares losing his mind or was this captain? Better yet, was this guy seriously capable of summoning a large enough rock to...

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Well I'll be damned, apparently he can... As it turned out, Geordie did have it in him to summon a large enough earth platform underneath the entire FEDERATION to lift it up and out of the water. A massive rock, almost like a miniature island, came rising up and out of the water and was raising the Federation up and up into the sky, about 80ft high to be exact. This guy had some serious magic in him! The scale of the magic must have meant that this guy really had one heck of an affiliation as well as some seriously humongous mana reserves! It was a pretty simple art, with the scale being its real defining factor, but upon seeing it Ares understood why it was so useful, it kept the monsters at bay handily. These ocean dwelling freaks couldn't exactly fly so, when confronted with this massive earthen pillar that stood between them and their goal up in the sky, it became impossible for them to assail the country as easily as they would a normal ship. The ground that the Federation was now stuck on was for its own safety and could be lowered later when the threat was dealt with to resume their journey. In hindsight this made a lot of sense. Docks were the safest place for any vessel so having a portable one in Geordie, one that could weather literally any storm and prevent the Federation from getting washed away by tsunamis, was absolutely perfect.

No wonder he was the captain!

His defence for the Federation was truly impeccable and only really the Scylla, with its massive height, could directly attack it at this point. The other monsters would be forced to try and shoot ranged attacks from below or climb the earthen island but that presumably came with its own risks. For starters these monsters would be weaker out of the water, so that was already a massive dissuasion, but Ares hazarded a guess that there were traps on the side of the island for any who dared climb it. It wouldn't be too surprising if a monster climbing up the island was battered in the skull by an earth pillar that came jutting out of the island at Mach ten. This art was essentially Geordie's Base Of Operations, the art hat Bravo used, and was equally as good at creating home turf on the go. His title of captain was deserved just for his ability to use this art alone! But, little did Ares know, as he wasn't familiar with this crazy captain, there was an even greater surprise still in store. An art more impressive than this one and probably the most incredible art Ares had ever seen in his entire life! 

"FREEFIRE FEDERATION!"

Ares had no idea what this art was but he could tell by the insane amount of mana swirling above the entire country that, whatever it was, it was going to be a VERY big deal!