Ares remained splayed across the soil, staring up into that bottomless black.
He tried to remember the last thing he had experienced.
That flash of absolute gold, and that pillar stretching endlessly above like it wanted to reach Heaven.
But there was something else too.
Just before that pillar fell on top of him, Ares had felt it. A black, ink-like vortex had opened right beneath him, trying to pull him down.
It could not.
Not on its own, at least. Not without the golden pillar added on top. He still remembered—a fraction of a second before gold swallowed his awareness, he hadn't felt anything resembling life-threatening danger.
So... the pillar was not to defeat him, but to push him down, into that inky abyss.
And now... he was here.
A slight rustle broke his line of thought.
Ares snapped his gaze toward the sound and narrowed his eyes.
Platinum armour was the first thing he saw, followed by a curtain of long white hair. Two eyes looked back at him, a color darker than black, with no distinction between sclera and pupil.
Bell Cranel.
He sat on a tree branch, one arm hooked around a smaller offshoot. His legs dangled below.
Abyssal black and crimson red eyes met.
A strong wind blew at that exact moment, making the leaves above Bell ruffle and part.
From below, Ares watched as an eight-spoked wheel slowly became visible above Bell.
No.
It did not exist above Bell. It existed even further up, in the sky.
To Ares, from that angle, it only looked like it hovered just above him.
"God of War... Ares." Bell broke the silence first.
"Mortal... Bell Cranel." Ares replied.
Both moved simultaneously.
Bell dropped from above, landing on the ground. Ares rose in one fluid motion.
They sized each other up in silence.
Then Bell wordlessly turned on his heel, walking in a certain direction.
Ares looked at Bell's back, then at his surroundings, and took a step forward, falling in step behind him after a moment.
The sound of water falling on rocks soon resounded from close by. It didn't take them long to reach it.
A river fell from a great height, creating a colossal wall of cascading water. Its natural accumulation had formed a lake where it touched the ground.
Ares slowed for a moment and looked at that waterfall. A severed arm was floating in the water, looking exactly like someone on vacation.
"Apollo... How did his arm get here?" The God of War uttered under his breath, eyebrow twitching, then continued following.
They passed through more areas, running into orcs, minotaurs—every monster from the first thirty floors of the dungeon. Name it, and it was here.
What made Ares cautious was that every monster here had blood-red eyes, different from their natural color.
"Hahahaha."
A melodious and familiar laugh made Ares turn left.
The sight that greeted him was so bizarre that his legs halted of their own accord.
Freya.
A miniature Freya was riding on the back of a hellhound, laughing like a child who had just gotten a new toy, with none of the decorum or elegance she usually carried.
Ares even felt like this could not be Freya. Since when was that woman so carefree?
He glanced to his side. Bell had come to stand shoulder to shoulder with him at some point, gazing at Freya with calm eyes.
"Brat... What did you do?" Ares asked with genuine confusion, especially after glancing at Freya's eyes.
They were maroon—a blend of violet and red.
"What I did? Nothing. Whatever happened, she did to herself." Bell spoke without a change in expression.
Suddenly, the mini Freya's gaze landed on them. She pinched the hellhound beneath her and rushed over.
"Papa! Papa!" She waved her hand frantically while looking at Bell, eager to reach him.
Ares blinked. Papa?
Has Freya finally lost it? Or am I seeing an illusion from another god's Arcanum? Ares quietly glanced at Bell. His lips twitched. Once. Twice.
When she reached them, Freya didn't wait. She jumped up from the hellhound, landing straight on Bell's shoulder, her mini arms wrapping around his neck to steady herself.
Ares looked at her, and then at Bell.
"This isn't Freya, is it?" He spoke, knowing Freya well enough to conclude that this was not her.
Freya tilted her small head toward Ares, silver hair swaying with the motion.
Bell did not reply. His hand moved up, scooping the mini Freya with a gentle grip and settling her back onto her hellhound.
"Go play. I'll join you later." He brought a single finger up to ruffle her hair.
"Hahaha... Papa, you promise?" Freya asked with a giggle.
Bell nodded.
Ares watched with a complex expression as Freya went away with her hellhound to continue playing.
Silence fell between them.
With a turn of his heel, Bell pressed on in the same direction.
Ares was about to follow when Bell spoke.
"That child... She is barely more than a month old."
"I see." Was all Ares said.
After moving without stop for a while longer, Ares asked.
"So... Where are we?"
Bell finally came to a stop.
Ares halted beside him.
"We are... standing atop my humanity."
Silence.
It took a second for Ares to digest those words. He then followed Bell's gaze to look ahead.
The lush greenery ended just some yards away from them. From there on, every inch of soil was barren and black, covered by an uncountable number of cracks, each radiating abyssal darkness.
Trees beyond that boundary were dead and leafless. The air was suffused with so much ash that breathing would be impossible for a normal human.
It looked like a dead world.
Ares then looked down at the boundary where both worlds met. He watched as a patch of green grass slowly began to turn black, withering slowly yet surely.
That dead world was encroaching over the other.
Bell pivoted and started walking back.
Ares looked at the dead world, then turned his back to it, his legs tensing.
"When I destroyed Hermes' Familia, nearly everything was swallowed by that dead world."
Bell's voice did not fluctuate.
"When Goddess Astraea chose to stand by me—even against Ouranos—the green world pushed back, reclaiming a large portion of encroached land."
The ground beneath them began to shake slightly. Ares stopped dead in his tracks just as their surroundings opened into a large clearing devoid of foliage.
"When I started to spend more time with Goddess Hestia, a waterfall came into existence. The one you passed earlier."
Bell stopped some distance away, his back still turned to Ares.
"When I started to ruffle Haruhime's ears, a calm wind began to blow throughout this forest."
Ares began rolling his shoulders.
"You wanted to harm them."
His voice did not rise. The trembling did.
"You wanted to harm my humanity."
He looked back with a single, abyssal black eye.
"You will... die."
There was no rage. No cruelty. No wrath.
It was not even a declaration.
It was a fact. Simple. Unchangeable.
"Is that so..." Ares took a step forward.
Arcanum awakened—without limits, without restrictions.
Reality groaned. Cracks spread across the black sky. Fissures started to appear everywhere, leaking abyssal darkness.
A phantom sea of weapons appeared above Ares, solidifying with each passing moment, forcefully overwriting the black sky.
"Wherever this is... It is not the lower world. I can unseal my Arcanum here without holding anything back."
A labrys slowly solidified in Ares' left hand, a war hammer looming in his right.
He had barely taken another step when—
Clunk
Ares looked into the sky above.
Between his solidifying sea of weapons and the black sky, a wheel floated—its spokes having just turned.
The God of War watched with trembling eyes as his tide of weapons slowly receded like an ocean swallowed by a larger one.
Bell turned toward him finally.
Ares tightened his hold on the fading weapons in his grip.
Bell took a step forward.
Miles east, the hand that had been enjoying a bath jerked up as water parted from beneath it. Slowly, a single head became visible, then another. Two long, serpentine heads rose from within the waterfall, followed by a gigantic body.
Amphisbaena.
The hand stood atop one of its heads, fingers gripping blue scales.
Amphisbaena started to move, and everything trembled in its wake.
Miles west, a mini Freya was playing on top of a hellhound when she and the hellhound came to a sudden halt.
Both snapped their gazes toward the same source.
"Doggy! Go!"
Freya pinched the hellhound beneath her.
With a savage roar, every hair started to fall off that hellhound, turning it bald. Slowly, even its skin began to flake away, leaving behind only a skeleton.
Those bones started to break, meld, and mould into something new, their color turning black. A draconic skull with two horns came first, its spine stretching longer, ending in a bony tail. Its limb bones thinned.
Juggernaut.
The mini Freya stood on top of its head. Silver light covered her form and increased in intensity and size.
When that light was gone, a fully grown Freya stood where a mini one used to be. She tapped on Juggernaut's head like an eager girl.
"Move!"
Juggernaut started to move, sonic booms trailing in its wake.
Bell took another step forward.
Ares bent into a stance.
A sun rose in the eastern sky without warning. Kilometers upon kilometers were set alight, and with it came a heat so intense that even the sky started to melt. Drops of black fell below like scorching rain.
Beneath that rain, Amphisbaena and an arm clutching its head were racing toward them.
Ares' face stiffened.
"Apollo's Arcanum!?"
He didn't have a moment to breathe before the sky to their west shattered like glass. Fragments fell from above in an unending deluge of black glass.
A reflective road of glass soon overrode the black sky, mirroring the green forest below.
Light and shadow merged across that glass as an inverted, moving image became visible upon it.
A silver-haired woman rode on a pure white war horse, a spear in one hand and a longsword in the other. She charged through millions of soldiers alone, cutting them down like a reaper, cleaving a path through them.
Freya and Juggernaut raced right beneath that glass road, closing in on them.
A spear coalesced in Freya's left hand. A sword materialised in her right.
Armour, eerily similar to the woman projected above them, took shape over her.
"Papa! I'm coming!"
Ares crushed his molars so hard that cracks rang out.
"Freya's Arcanum too!?"
Ares looked left, then right, every muscle in his body tensing in preparation.
The God of War snapped his gaze back at a sudden sound.
Something was falling from above, right behind him.
A white silhouette was descending. It had no eyes. Just wings for eyes. A grin was spread across its face, more pronounced than before. More maniacal than before. Like it was finally allowed to let go and fight without holding back.
He snapped his gaze back to Bell. Half his face was gone; the other half was soon to follow. Blood-red eyes looked at him from every direction nearby.
Ares looked at everyone.
Apollo. Amphisbaena.
Freya. Juggernaut.
Divine General Mahoraga.
Bell Cranel.
Finally, Ares looked at the sky.
An Eight-Spoked Wheel floated above, spokes trembling.
And that...
Wheel.
Clunk
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Ares if so fucked... even I feel for him.
Note: For anyone who can't connect the dots, they are inside Bell right now. The same place he caged Freya's soul and Apollo's arm and every other soul. You can even refer to this place as his own soul or inner world.
...
And its done. With this, the second volume - Rise, comes to an end.
I have got you all with a sneak peak for the third volume.
It's called. - Volume 3 - Culling Game.
You all know where its going to go just from those two words alone. Though it will be more like a battle royale, not culling everyone.
It's gonna have so many people, those dead, those rarely used, those outside of Orario. It'll be hella fun. A whole fricking Culling Game in Orario.
...Hahaha.