Well screw it! Let's see what you've got! Ares was technically referring to himself here, this was his own power he was summoning, but i felt foreign to him given how much stronger than anything in his current arsenal was. This was a strength that could destroy planets, Ares was certain of it. If he threw whatever was coming out into the wild and let it do as it pleased for a month straight this planet would be obliterated and life would remain, there wasn't a shred of doubt about that in his mind. Well, other than the hidden experts but Ares didn't even know about them so he didn't include them. Point being, these soldiers that were about to manifest were no joke. The one he summoned against the mutated stepper in Xasca wasn't a joke either but that was the point, the point Ares had only just realised himself.
...
Soldier
Soldiers
As in, more than one. Forget individual changes, there might not even be any between this war aura soldier and the one he summoned previously. The real issue was that there were more than one waiting in the wings to hop out into reality! Even a small group of four or five could reliably take over the world! Ares had a feeling there were rows and rows of these monstrous things! Worse still, he could feel a presence standing tall the back of them all, like a commander of sorts, and it was radiant enough for Ares to wince a little. The soldiers were made of his own nothingness, he could feel them each waiting in reserve inside the war aura flags above, but that commander in the back seemed to be an amalgamation of all his aspects and was a warrior for the ages. Forget this planet, that thing could conquer this domain by its lonesome if it made the effort! maybe even Vraizon wouldn't be spared... No wonder Ares wasn't given full control over the entirety of the war aura yet! A single flag, potentially three against a tough foe, was already plenty to make him a frightening individual. Throw in all these soldiers, and whatever else this aura had in store for him, and he didn't even need Garmr or his destruction magic to win wars. At this point, each and every single trait of Ares was enough to make him an intergalactic legend and yet he had multiple! Even for a fundamental champion he'd really grown out of whack compared to everyone else. Granted, that was 'the plan', and it was necessary for something Ares and the destruction pillar knew of and were working towards, but for this dimension alone it was blatantly overkill of the highest order. Rather, any of the dimensions within the void couldn't stand up to this even if they banded together.
"Nope. Nuh uh, not happening!" Ares refused to allow all these nutjobs out of their flags! Too many! Completely pointless! His goal here was to sweep aside the core disciples, not take over the world! Ares dismissed a multitude of flags and kept them spread apart as the commander in the back would be summoned if the flags united to form one big entrance to this world. Ares' efforts kept a majority of the troublemakers at bay but the rest funneled into reality with triumphant roars that made the very sky quiver. The flags responsible for their arrival spread out and buried themselves into the floor ahead of Ares. No man's land, a golden king, and his loyal soldiers stood tall behind him reaching out for their weapons. Nearly twenty soldiers had rushed into this world and each of them were large enough to tower over a city so this sight was utterly absurd. Even a single soldier could go toe to toe with Hans' Invisible Ifrit so these twenty ran amok hell would break loose. Luckily they heeded Ares' orders, so there was no risk, but barging into this planet had left the onlookers breathless. Everyone in Red Sun could see this! Anyone who didn't know better, that this was Ares' antics, would think the heavenly emperor had sent a celestial army of demi Gods to enforce his decree. That thought only became more and more believable when every soldier roared in sync and caught a bolt of lightning out of the sky with their bare hands and wielded it with excellence.
All it would take is one of these soldiers to throw their bolt at Red Sun and lives would be lost in the thousands. Hell one quick sweep and flick of the wrist and the remaining core disciples would be toast too... They seemed eager to do battle but there was nothing on this planet for them to do battle with! Ares could turn into Garmr and beat them back, probably, but they were on his own damn side! They should have just obeyed him and not come out in the first place! The war aura was really trying to enjoy all its newfound power, as a result of bonding with a fundamental freak, but Ares wasn't having it! No commander! No army! Go home! Ares gave one soldier permission to kill the core disciples but began shooing away the rest of them back into the void. They seemed a little despondent so Ares gave them directions to go play with Xhilihx. Xhilihx was way out of their league but these soldiers couldn't be permanently killed anyway so letting them die glorious deaths and have fun against an unbeatable foe was better than nothing. It was that or entertaining them out here in reality and that was not permitted! Again, from afar, it looked like Ares was mocking people. First he prevented the whole army from descending and now he was sending all but one back? 'I only need but a single soldier to blast away you insignificant specks of dust'. "This man is truly demonic down to his core!" Jaffa cried from the bottom of his heart. He truly believed it! It's not like Ares felt like he was being particularly evil, quite the opposite really. He was trying to be modest here but the aura was the real issue!
Not that any of this mattered, the single void soldier, swirling with war aura and towering above the battlefield as an embodiment of slaughter, was already on the move and crushing the puny disciples with its lightning bolt. Jaffa seemed to find a place to skulk away to in the corner of the Training Field, and used his talismans aplenty to save his life, but everyone else was forcibly removed from the realm of the living. A golden flash was the last thing they saw as the bolt burst on contact with the ground, sending out a wave of electrical annihilation energy that rolled across the land. Any caught in the sea of sparking gold were fried, burnt to a crisp, and had their ashen remains blown up for good measure. None of the disciples even came into contact directly with the bolt of lightning, they simply died before it could even reach them. Anything they tried to resist with met a similar fate so it was quite literally a clean sweep as the soldier eradicated ninety nine percent of all life on this combat zone. Ares remained in his spot, still untouched, and Jaffa was gritting his teeth in the corner, but everyone else was long gone. The soldier seemed to be offended it somehow missed an ant but Ares had enough of these soldiers already and sent him packing! Sure Ares was using the war aura to drill some respect into these core disciples but this was the exact opposite! People weren't going to fear Ares himself, necessarily, but all of his many advantages at this rate. 'Yeah our sect master is strong but is it because of his war aura'? 'Yeah our sect master is strong but is he capable without his fundamental pillar'? All questions Ares hoped to strangle in the crib by taking on his opponents with his raw skill with weapons at some point but that option wasn't available to him anymore because of his silly war aura! Ares knew Jaffa was cooking up something with his talismans and so he was keen to let him. Part of why the void soldier earlier missed him was because Ares sent out Visitation to go obscure Jaffa and help him stay untargeted during the previous fiasco. Were it not for that the fight would already be over!
Come on Jaffa, do me proud! Ares was actually rooting for his opponent in the hopes he could pull a proverbial rabbit out of his hat and wow the crowd. Now that the unruly aura was done making its presence known and checking out its new capabilities, if Jaffa could just do something to 'turn the tide' then Ares could finally show off a bit. He felt it was important for the disciples to know he wasn't just a product of his environment, that he was a blend of both nurture and nature instead of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Of course he was, he wouldn't deny it, but he had his own talents that made him worthy of respect! Ares just didn't want to be in charge of people who only valued him for his magic and aura because such people would be fickle, unreliable to fault, that was inevitable. Anywho, the main point was that the core disciples might not even be satisfied with this if things were left as they are. They may not openly rebel but they might come away with grievances or feel robbed they didn't get a proper fight. To that end, Ares was hoping Jaffa's trick up his sleeve was something potent. It looked about ready to come into being, the black talisman was being covered in the green sludge as the runes melted over it, so Ares waited patiently and didn't intercept Jaffa or make any moves to stop him. Rather, it almost looked like Jaffa was dying anyway. Clearly this talisman took a lot of energy to activate so it must have been a big deal. Jaffa was in the transition realm and, as far as disciples went, incredibly strong. For him to be left in this state was meaningful even if not to someone like Ares. He might actually be on par with people like Dirk with whatever this talisman was so maybe Ares should remember his name after all? Maybe. Maybe... Though, if he was being honest, he'd already forgotten it!
Keugh
Jaffa sunk to his knees and vomited black blood as the talisman sucked it all up in a vortex. The talisman formed a dark green core in the sky and wrapped around it, sealing it within its embrace like a precious jewel. From there, all of Jaffa's talismans, every single one on his body, were ripped off and floated into the sky to surround the core. They were held in place around the core in the shape of something humanoid and a dark green flesh began filling in the empty spaces.
Zombie? That was what it looked like to Ares, at least. Or maybe a cross between a zombie and a jiāngshī was a more accurate assessment. Either way, it didn't look like a powerhouse or anything so Ares was more than just a little confused. By the time it was fully formed Ares came to the conclusion that it was tougher than any normal undead, by a large margin, but nothing out of the ordinary... It's movements were fluid, like that of a living being, and could maybe contend with a strong cultivator in a head on fight... But so what? Ares reckoned even Jaffa was stronger than his own creation so why go to all that effort just for this thing? None of the talismans on it were anything special either, just a bunch of passive benefits like increased strength and resilience... Ares didn't get it! He didn't get it at all but he wasn't going to be careless either because he didn't believe for even a single second this thing was as simple as it looked. Unless Jaffa was actually secretly useless there was no reason for things to be this easy. Ares opened up his storage and out dropped the Protection Racket neatly into his palm. For the first time this fight, albeit voluntarily, Ares moved. He wasn't swift, there was no concerted effort to move fast, and calmly walked over to the fledgling zombie with a measured gaze. He was being entirely serious and refusing to let his guard down so it all felt anticlimactic to him when the zombie lunged, he lowered his head to avoid the strike, and then placed the barrel of his weapon against the zombie's skull.
BANG
The Racket could easily blast a transition realm cultivator's head off so the zombie stood no chance. It's body fell over backwards onto the floor and that was the end of that, leaving Ares stunned stupid... "Oi!" Ares kicked the corpse, almost angry at the turn out, but held back from launching an upset tirade at Jaffa when he saw the corpse move. Though it was unnecessary, Ares hopped a step or two back to give the zombie room.to do its thing. It was an undead with a core so it reviving wasn't exactly too surprising. Hell Ares made sure not to damage the core specifically because he was curious to check for precisely this self resurrection trait... But something seemed off. The zombie's head regenerated but its body seemed to be larger than last time? Unless Ares' eyes were deceiving him this thing had gotten bigger and it seemed stronger. Not enough to give Ares pause but enough to be noticeable by anyone paying attention for it. The zombie stumbled to its feat and leapt at Ares again, this time maybe about twice as fast? Though its stats had improved the exact same scenario played out as last time and the Protection Racket was pressed firmly against its skull in the blink of an eye. Ares was far stronger than this thing so a mere increase in physical means was something he could still scoff at... For now. How many times could this thing regenerate? Would it get stronger every time? Could it even be defeated normally or did the core have to be destroyed? Ares' Omniscience wasn't giving him any answers presumably because he'd have to see this monster's core to understand what he was up against exactly. Little did Ares know this was a creation of an expert hiding in Sheryashka so it was going to be far more problematic than he was bargaining for. Jaffa found this thing abandoned in a legacy tomb and was extraordinarily lucky to even walk away with his life intact. Even he couldn't deal with this thing and had to seal it away in hefty talismans, only bringing it out against foes he couldn't personally handle. Even then he avoided using it because if it went out of control he would be pretty helpless to stop it.
"Hey, Jaffa cake, what's up with this thing?" Ares, having finally remembered Jaffa's name, pointed at the reviving zombie while looking at the slumped core disciple. The latter struggled to speak but the words he got out of his mouth were enough for Ares to understand.
"Zombie Matryoshka... Ten lives... Each stronger than the last... Can't be killed until all ten lives have been beaten... Never seen anything beyond the sixth..."
Jaffa must have captured this thing after realising it was only getting stronger the more he killed it. From there, the zombie probably regenerated its earlier lives while in captive and now it was being deployed by Jaffa as a last resort... The zombie was an impressive art but it didn't belong to Jaffa, it was just being carted around by him. If this zombie went out of control, and reached its ninth or tenth form, even Jaffa wouldn't be able to reign it in and seal it anymore. Or, to put it bluntly, if Ares got this thing to its last life and lost his fight against it the entire world would be destroyed because nothing would be able to stop it anymore. Was Ares going to lose to this thing? Absolutely not but it was concerning that magic like this existed. Magic that was a ticking time bomb and had been carelessly abandoned in a random tomb somewhere.
If someone other than Jaffa came across this abomination things might not have ended so calmly. All it would take is one respectably strong group of transition realm cultivators to push this thing to its seventh or eighth life and then die fighting it. It would then roam free and and God only knows how much death it would deal before being subdued. Rather, how strong was its tenth form exactly? The zombie had regrown again but its increase in strength apparently wasn't static. The first increase was considerable as is, nearly doubling all its stats, but it had gotten even more out of this resurrection and was already at the point it could beat most of the core disciples here. Another death and only Jaffa and above could handle it but that was only four of its ten possible forms. Maybe at eight or nine it could even tackle the likes of Aejaz, Bellona, and Sandy. Ten would put it squarely in the top ten strongest beings in Sheryashka at bare minimum, maybe even closer to top five. Even then this was still just a rough assumption, Ares might even still be underestimating it. Why the hell did Jaffa have such a dangerous thing?! Whoever dumped this obnoxious Zombie Matryoshka in the middle of nowhere was asking for a beating! Though, then again, it wasn't unexpected. If anything, compared to what someone like Sevorus had done to Xasca wildlife this was pretty tame. Experts really didn't care much about ordinary cultivators and mortals... It was like a mortal throwing a sweet wrapper on the floor, not caring they were entrapping and suffocating ants underneath the plastic dome. Ares could understand it but he still didn't respect it!
BANG
"Not enough anymore, huh?" Ares' shot pierced the Zombie's head but it only stumbled in place before it began charging at him again. The zombie was about eight feet tall now and, as it was in its fifth form, could probably break a boulder with a light headbutt. Its movements were approaching uncanny valley territory as it was almost more human than some humans were! Its speech was still garbled zombie nonsense but it seemed to be getting closer and closer to learning how to enunciate and vocalise so maybe it was actually becoming a 'living' being through each rebirth. Whoever created this might have been originally trying to pursue resurrection and this was the result of their work. It wasn't a bad idea but it had been abandoned meaning it probably didn't work on the already deceased. This kind of creation had to be done with a living human who was then subsequently turned into a carcass capable of resurrection. This couldn't be done with any old corpse. Still, morally dubious though it was, the regenerative prowess was unquestionably impressive. No matter what Ares did he couldn't put this thing out of its misery whatsoever. Disintegration seemingly couldn't do it and destroying the core only guaranteed the zombie moved onto its next form, nothing more. It was definitely easier to take the zombie's life by aiming for the weaker core but, other than that, it had to be dealt with the hard way. Until all lives were dealt with there was some kind of puppetry magic that was reassembling the deceased zombie and even recreating lost flesh if need be. Maybe if Ares was as strong as the creator he could just disintegrate it for good in the early stages but the cultivation gap was far too vast to accomplish such at thing at his current level. Not that he was complaining, this was perfect actually! He wanted something precisely like this to sharpen his mettle and test his skill against. He could beat this thing without magic or aura, he was sure of it. Maybe Garmr would have to come out during the later stages but seeing how far he could go with his regular scythe until then sounded fun. Ares hadn't expected Jaffa to do be helpful but the sneaky wretch was really hiding a despicable trump card up his sleeves after all! If anything it was impressive his talismans could bind this thing in its sixth form... Maybe he had a talent worth using? Well, for now, Ares had something else to focus on. He could worry about his disciple after!