"Wow, it's really in there isn't it?" Ares mumbled to himself as he yanked the scythe out of the fallen zombie's skull. The throw had been extraordinary and pierced the zombie's eye before burying right into its brain in one fluid cleave. The zombie was tough in its eighth stage so the ease with which Ares killed it really didn't do it justice. To others it almost looked like a reprieve, as in the eighth stage was a break or a small mercy from the creator, but the truth was that Ares had really outdone himself. Killing the zombie in a single attack beyond the seventh stage was something very few people could realistically accomplish but the only ones who knew that were the people who could tell just how strong the zombie was or Jaffa who'd experienced it personally. For starters, the flesh was so tough that merely swinging a weapon at the zombie would do nothing. Precise cuts, spectacular technique, or aiming for vitals was mandatory to go toe to toe with the ever growing behemoth. If Ares had tried to behead the zombie he might not have been able to cut through the thick neck, his weapon was far too sup par to take the zombie head on, and yet he managed to kill it in one strike. His first strike, no less. This wasn't going to be something he could do again, the zombie would adapt and prevent it, but it couldn't be stressed how much of a miracle it was that such a thing even happened in the first place. The effort Ares put into killing the sixth and seventh forms was somehow larger than what he'd just done to the eighth.
The eighth form, however, was old news. Ares wasn't an expert on the undead, the number he'd come across up until now was minimal and could be counted on one hand, but he could tell the zombie was rapidly becoming quite the standout creation. There was no way this thing could be considered a normal undead just off the back of its intelligence alone, never mind the absurd strength welling up within it as it resurrected yet again. Ares had assumed the strength increase from form to form wouldn't get out of hand but it seemed the ninth and tenth forms weren't going to go down without a proper fight. The zombie was now at least twenty three foot tall and its muscles were bigger than its head... No they were maybe even bigger than Ares' body at this point so comparing it to a head was pointless. Ares reckoned this ninth form could beat to death a hundred of its eighth form predecessors, and then some, without breaking a sweat. Beating this thing with just his scythe was going to be a bit tricky but, then again, that wasn't a problem that had ever caused Ares to hesitate before...
"..." The zombie narrowed its partially stitched eyes at Ares and grumbled to itself something inaudible under its breath. Though it hadn't been active in Sheryashka for long it knew this man standing in front of it was an anomaly. Rather, in its later forms it possessed sentience and some lingering memories from when it was alive so it knew this man was a universal anomaly. It's not that it hadn't seen anyone like this since entering this domain, it hadn't, but it hadn't seen anyone like this ever. The zombie, in life, had been a decently respected bare fist-oriented cultivator. They weren't a mythical being or an ancient expert but could be considered a local legend in their neck of the woods, hidden away in a quiet part of the cosmos. He succumbed to an illness and, on his death bed, had to beg a necromancer to make sure his corpse kept moving to protect his village... The necromancer agreed but the zombie turned out to be quite dumb and belligerent in its earlier forms and went berserk, killing the village off entirely. There was a bounty on the zombie's head afterwards and there were plenty of adventurers, bounty hunters, and peacekeeper / peacekeeper adjacent clans and organisations willing to deal with it. In general, bounties offered good rewards so, actually, there were many such people prowling across the universe in search of rewards and or heroism, be it selfish or a part of their moral compass like the Legions. Anyhow, point being, it didn't take long for strong cultivators to show up and kick the zombie's ass. At least, that was what had happened early on in the fight until the zombie's later forms began to turn the tide. It was starting to look like those attacking the zombie were going to become its chow but, upon reaching the ninth form, the zombie suddenly stopped attacking and begged for death instead. It had reached a point where its intelligence made it privy to the horrors it inflicted on the people he cared about in the village, even going as far as to eat his own parents and torture close friends, and the zombie couldn't handle that despair
There was a great deal of discussion surrounding what to do with this now placated zombie. Some argued it was harmless in the later forms, because it stopped attacking people, and could easily be restrained in its lower forms. In other words, it couldn't constitute an actual threat if someone with decent power looked after it, Others argued there was no guarantee it wouldn't go completely berserk given it was still some manic necromancer's creation. If the necromancer ever returned the zombie would unconditionally follow its master's orders and potentially go on a rampage no matter how sentient it was. In the end, the zombie was handed over to another necromancer of decent renown as it solved various issues. The necromancer drew upon his expertise and installed a safety measure in the zombie to make sure it could be obliterated permanently at a moment's notice so losing control wasn't a major issue. The two then travelled here and there as the necromancer searched for a treasure called the 'Primordial Blade'. The zombie had no idea why the necromancer wanted it but it's not like it had any choice but to follow him anyway and so eventually the two wound up in Sheryashka after hearing the Blade was somewhere nearby. This was true but also wrong as they were off the mark by a few domains. The Blade was actually in the Garson domain, three domains above Vraizon. It was around this time the Primordial Blade activated the barrier and shut everyone in, preventing contact with the outside world. Plus there was the matter of the Umbras, and other relevant clans, getting booted out of the Dueuer domain into Vraizon and having the path cut off behind them so they couldn't return. Though the latter event happened considerably later after the first, the necromancer, who'd been searching for a way out of the barrier until then, was blindsided by it and wound up trapped in the lower domains without ever spotting so much as the handle of the Blade. The necromancer's affinity for spatial magic wasn't just poor, it was abysmal. Forget getting through the Blade barrier, they couldn't even get through the spatial passageway to the Dueuer domain to head over to Garson and look for the Blade. At some point they gave up for a while and settled in Vraizon, working on a project that that finally bore results a few weeks back.
This is where this zombie came in. The necromancer hadn't been its original creator, so messing with it took time, but after much probing and experimentation the necromancer was able to adjust the Zombie Matryoshka to its liking. There didn't need to be any major changes, there was only a small handful the necromancer wanted to make for his own goals, but he was able to adjust the zombie such that he could use it to scout with. Much like the Invincible One, the treasury frog sent out by Pei a while back, the zombie was a suitable vessel to shove through the spatial passageway in Vraizon. It had multiple lives so losing one or two to the passageway's tumultuous turbulence wasn't an issue. The problem, though, was that the zombie was an idiot and would jsut wonder around aimlessly after getting through, if it even could, and so the necromancer turned it into a scout. He couldn't control it perfectly, necessarily, but he did make it so that the zombie acted as a camera through which he could see whatever the zombie saw. He could also issue simple orders to it like 'go there', 'attack that person', 'stay here and defend your territory', and so on so forth. The zombie had to be weakened considerably to get it to this point but the necromancer just wanted it to make it to the other side of the broken spatial avenue, find the Blade, and bring it back. He didn't even really care about the Blade much anymore, though a part of him still definitely did, he just wanted to get the hell out of the damn barrier that had kept him trapped all these years! Unfortunately his plan went awry as the zombie didn't die in the spatial avenue but he was teleported randomly back down into Sheryashka. The result was an overwhelming failure but the necromancer didn't give up and began analysing the data from the attempt based on what he saw through the zombie's eyes. Once he was done compiling information he would go pick up the lost zombie and try again so he'd been buried in research for the last few weeks and knew nothing about the outside world. As for the zombie, it was told to just hold its position inside a legacy tomb it was stuck in and kill anyone who bothered it. This is where Jaffa came in as he was part of an expedition to raid the legacy tomb and thought the zombie was a defence mechanism of some kind left behind by the original owner. It really was pure coincidence he came across it.
As for the necromancer, he didn't pay the zombie much attention. He could tell what stage it was at without having to look through its eyes so never bothered to see what was going on when it entered the sixth form. If it went any further he might have been concerned about losing the vessel he was attempting to shove through the passageway but the sixth form was as far as the assailant got and so the necromancer ignored it. He didn't know the zombie had been captured but he probably wouldn't have cared anyway as getting it back off some lower domain twerp would hardly be an issue. As long as the zombie wasn't dead, or struggling against a strong foe in its later forms, the necromancer had more important matters to pay attention too... And yet, now, the zombie was in its eighth form and the necromancer had just watched Ares murder its seventh with one measly scythe throw... Or, rather, the throw had been witnessed form the zombie's perspective so the necromancer knew better than to call it 'measly'. Both the necromancer, and the now intelligent again zombie, had reservations about fighting this freak. If it had been a few weeks ago, back before the necromancer tinkered with the zombie, its cultivation would be unreachable for someone like Ares... But now? It was constrained in various ways and Ares was a very real threat to its safety. The zombie would rather just not fight at all, he'd grown to dislike violence ever since the village incident but had no choice due to its innate nature in its weaker forms, and the necromancer would rather not lose its test anchor he wanted to shove through the avenue again. The situation was awkward, though, because conveying that wasn't exactly easy. The necromancer, like all other strong cultivators hiding away in the lower domains, was doing his best to remain incognito and not reveal himself. Not because he didn't want to cause a fuss with weaker cultivators but because there were other strong cultivators like him who would love to know all about him. There were two types of experts in a situation like this, usually. Those who kept the peace and those who ruined it. The former would prevent the necromancer from doing anything untoward and keep an eye on him twenty four seven from their own secrecy while his own went up in smoke. The latter would try and ambush the necromancer and steal all his resources. No expert would willingly give away their existence in the lower domains because they were all effectively trapped in a battle royale of sorts, hiding in various corners and caves waiting for some other idiot to reveal themselves and make the first, inevitably wrong, move.
If the necromancer stepped in to protect the zombie he would have all eyes on him within the hour so this had become a very real mess and he was regretting nor picking up the zombie sooner. In his defence, he couldn't have possibly known that a freak like Ares was on the loose... Rather, it was terrible luck the cave the zombie was sent to was discovered so soon after he wound up there. The necromancer had been extremely unlucky in many ways as Jaffa would have also died if he'd been any weaker and the zombie would have remained hidden in that case. A stroke of terrible luck one after another led to this Mexican standoff between Ares, the unwilling zombie, and the troubled necromancer spectating from afar. The zombie's gut instinct told it saying 'whoopie daisy' to Ares, and asking to be let off the hook, wasn't going to work so ultimately the necromancer told it to keep fighting. If it reached the tenth stage the necromancer would intervene personally and send some magic down from Vraizon to aid in the zombie's escape. Funnily enough, though, if the zombie unironically actually said 'whoopsie daisy' after all Ares might have been too dumbfounded to kill it. He was a revenant at the end of the day so something funny like that would maybe cause him to let his guard down and let the zombie live. Alas, it's not like his personality could be gauged through combat alone and the zombie knew nothing about him so a fight it was going to have to be. Maybe if it had seen what happened to the core disciples earlier, and gotten a taste of either the war aura or destruction magic, it would have been begging on its knees or trying to run away.
ROAR
Instead, it indicated the time for violence was now and rushed forward towards Ares to prevent him from pulling off anymore weird trickery with the scythe. The zombie's every step crushed the earth and sent stone shards flying every which way. They all thankfully hit the edge fo the Training Field and stopped deaf in their tracks but the racket the shards made when smacking against the outer walls was grating on the ears. Ares didn't have much time to care about that, though, as he was about to be the recipient of a body destroying punch if he stood still. He jumped about a step back and then hopped to the left straight after. Both movements put him ever so slightly out of range of the attack and it missed him by a hair's width. Ares swung his scythe in a bid to cut off the zombie's wrist but his scythe only managed to leave a long scratch along its flesh instead of ripping it off as planned. The poor farmer's scythe was but a humble tool and no matter how much Ares upgraded it with pressurisation it wasn't up to the task at hand. Nonetheless, Ares stuck with it and slashed the zombie's body with unrelenting determination to overcome this setback. he ducked under wild swings of the zombie's fist, jumped over leg sweeps, and rolled sideways to avoid overhead crushes. With every dodged strike Ares retaliated and piled up a number of small wounds while analysing the zombie's rough power and giving it some extra leeway so as not to be caught off guard by sudden bursts of strength it might be hiding for a surprise attack. Thankfully, although much faster than before, the zombie's speed was still within a manageable margin for Ares and he was able to dodge most attacks without any hiccups. He was forced to block once or twice, as successive attacks from the zombie took up large amounts of space and backed Ares into uncomfortable positions he had to fight out of, but with his annihilation enhancement, and some well timed pressure deflects, Ares came out of it intact. Throw in some Echoes, which he used to occasionally parry the oncoming pain trains off to the side, and Ares was looking pretty untouchable no matter how much the earth around him caved in. The zombie was running wild, it was a devastatingly brutish foe tearing up the planet and causing the very air to tremble after every launched strike, but Ares was darting about between the cracks and gaps in his offensive neatly and calmly as though he was out for a Sunday stroll in the park. After about five minutes of this continued back and forth, the zombie yelled to the sky in a fit of rage after realising its entire body was now a more red than green. All the cuts Ares had dealt it painted the body crimson and there were multiple patches of blood wherein the original flesh couldn't be seen at all. Blood was dripping off the zombie's head and it was looking more like a red mud golem than anything resembling a zombie at this point.
Ares was taking the slow and steady approach not because he had to, he could have ramped up his zombie dismantling speed a bit, but he was genuinely taking Enyo's words into consideration from before. She mentioned his tendency to do unnecessary testing during fights, to push harder than he needed to for no good reason, and put himself in dangerous situations. The zombie was a strong fighter, incredibly so, but Ares had no reason to force a high speed duel to the death with immense stakes even if it would be less interesting the way he was currently going about it. Though this was partially for his own good, learning to curb his combat tempo and pacing every now and then without succumbing to boredom and giving in, it was also because he wanted show Enyo he could do it. That thrill of battle was something he could put aside if he needed to and be responsible. Enyo worried about his safety, even in spite of his revenant immortality, so he wanted her to be at least somewhat assured he would be able to restrain himself when the situation called for it. Death by a thousand cuts was slow and uninteresting but he was nearing the five hundred and second cut on the zombie and there was no point in backing out now... Or, well, rather the zombie wasn't going to survive a thousand cuts anyway. It looked like it was losing energy and stamina and perhaps it was feeling woozy as it occasionally had to stop itself from tumbling sideways and keeling over. Had it been a bog standard zombie maybe this wouldn't have been a problem, it wouldn't have had blood to begin with, but as it was an attempt a proper resurrection of the dead this 'zombie' suffered from very human problems too. Mental attacks would probably work on its as well but the main point was that blood loss wasn't something it could just keep ignoring. It did have some regenerative properties but Ares was outpacing the rate at which the cuts healed by a lot. The zombie's regeneration was infinitely inferior to revenant regeneration so Ares pretended it didn't even exist and kept safely hacking away by utilising his expert movement and the scythe's range advantage.
From afar, once more, Ares' exploits looked pretty unimpressive. There was a bit more action this time but ultimately the zombie was being led around by the nose and killed piece by piece in a way that couldn't be described as interesting no matter how anyone phrased it. Of course those with a certain level of strength knew better, if nothing else the elders cemented Ares' 'untouchable' status in their minds, but even most of the core disciples felt like they'd been robbed of a spectacle. If they paid more attention they might have realised this was its own show and reward, though, because not many people could master the basics of simple back and forth in combat to the same degree Ares had. Dodge, swing, dodge, swing. Block, swing, block, swing. Parry, swing, parry swing. Simple 'you attack then I attack' methodology, tried and true, invented at the dawn of mankind when man first wanted his neighbour dead. Efficient, it left no openings, no gaps, no room for error. Being able to do this, with any weapon, would give the cultivator immediate advantage over anyone trying to do something flashy because there was just less clumsiness in refined movements passed down through countless generations instead of impromptu nonsense. Even Dominus, perhaps the number one king of impromptu nonsense himself, acknowledged the importance of being able to do what Ares was doing. If nothing else, it was a good and reliable fall back that wouldn't get you killed. Ares was overwhelmed in terms of weight class, his speed was only still barely better then the zombie's, but his simple and easily-executable technique combined with practiced footwork was doing the job. Ares didn't need to rely on flashy magic, high speed all thrills daredevilry, flips and spins and weapon swapping every second. He had his trusty scythe and he knew how to swing it. By the time the zombie was kneeling in a pool of its own blood, unable to raise either of its shredded arms, it was already too late to understand how things had gotten to this point. Like watching a cat chase a mouse for an hour straight only to wind up roadkill under the wheels of a car in the middle of a road. It was easily the most impressive thing Ares had shown off today but whether people were at the required level to know that was another matter. The zombie, and more importantly the necromancer, however, did. It was clear that the zombie wasn't going to beat Ares in a fair fight, and that he probably still had tricks left up his sleeve, so the necromancer was simply going to have make his move. Ares had no idea what was in store for him but at least what came next would be a whole new experience for him regardless.