"Aha! Found ya!" Ares had travelled for about another half a day before he finally climbed the mountain housing the gash in reality that led outside the barrier. It looked like a wild beast had scratched a two metre long red wound into the air itself and there was an infinite swirling red void on the other side. You could walk around the floating tear but it was like some kind of 4d optical illusion entity that followed you wherever you walked; it was impossible to see the side or back of it no matter the angle or how near or far the viewer was. To some this might have been confusing but to Ares? This was just regular old nothingness shenanigans, nothing unlike what he'd seen countless times already. Void existed everywhere simultaneously so, no matter where you looked at it, it would always produce the same visual result because you were always seeing the exact same thing. This was actually a trick he was experimenting with in his spare time as creating visual hallucinations or oddities was technically possible via such a method and would expand his arsenal of arts in a more technical way. He hadn't gotten anywhere, it was complicated and hard to pull off the way he envisioned it, but Ares was at least aware of this possibility. Seeing this tear first hand was actually rather helpful as he could freely inspect the mechanism behind it.
Under normal circumstances people would dread to go anywhere near this spatial crack. For ordinary cultivators it was either a death trap that cut you in half or a portal to the unknown that dragged you to a place of no return. here was simply no point playing around with this thing as here was nothing to gain. For Ares, though, it was more like a long and boring tunnel rather than anything life threatening or unknown. He was still going to check it thoroughly before hopping in, it wasn't wise to just jump through nothingness like this carelessly as he could theoretically end up in another dimension if he wasn't careful, but seeing as how Kaleido already vouched for this specific tear it couldn't be too bad. Kaleido was strong, enough to locate spatial cracks, but unfamiliar with void, and therefore couldn't fix or control the passageway, so it must have been decently safe to cross as is otherwise he would have had serious trouble arriving here. The likelihood of the passageway going kaput and fizzling out at some point during traversal, spewing Ares in some random place, was slim. Slim wasn't zero percent, however, so Ares would become a nothingness technician and iron out the kinks to make sure there was no chance of the tunnel going haywire before actually passing through it. He was more than capable of stabilising this portal by refuelling its nothingness mana if need be. Also, and this was related to what he was thinking about earlier regarding learning form this broken spatial passageway, this was his first ever time encountering raw, natural nothingness. Technically he did back when he met The Invincible One, the giant unkillable toad that happened to be a walking treasury, but that was just lingering residue. This broken passageway was right in front of him so there were some hidden secrets Ares could uncover if he hung around to play with it for a while.
God only knows where Ares pulled a magnifying glass and detective hat out from but apparently he had such items tucked away in his Primordial Blade this whole time as he was now using both to analyse the nothingness patch. He scoured the outer rim of the scratch, ran his fingers along the crooked and jagged edges, and even gave it a lick for good measure... That last part was completely unnecessary but he A, wanted to know if it tasted funny and B, was curious if it had frozen in this climate and he would wind up like those people who got their tongue stuck on poles in winter. The answer to each of these hypotheses was no and, again, no. After wasting a minute or two on that silly experiment he went back to testing properly and even stuck his head inside the tear briefly to see if he recognised the space inside... Void was pretty indistinguishable for the most part but, again, Ares was the only person in the world who could manage himself in that place comfortably. If anybody else even tried to touch this tear like he had their hand would probably fall off... Visually. Not even physically, it would just roll around on the floor but somehow still be attached and responsive to the person's whims and commands. Nothingness was weird like that but also incredibly frightening for tha very same reason. It was nigh impossible for those not in the know to have a rough idea of what this strange magic was capable of. It was like spinning a wheel and getting a random negative, harsh result every time and only Ares, thanks to his affiliation, was immune. Actually, if he was feeling truly devious, he could expand this tear and slowly, over the course of many years, have it expand to be wide enough to take over the entire region. If he was crazy he could cover the entire domain, even, and nobody could really stop him. Fundamental pillar magic really allowed the champions to do some batshit stunts if they could be bothered too and this was an extension of that. Fortunately Ares was not demented or bored enough to try but it was an option regardless!
"Triangulate the coordinates... Reconfigure the spatial compass... Calculate the mana throughput..." Ares was doing none of these things. He wasn't even sure he knew what any of it meant. Still, about an hour later, he'd come to a few different conclusions by poking around. First, as is, this portal would fade in about two days time. He could increase the duration of the portal if he wanted to but it would take a lot of work for basically no benefit. It's not like Ares wanted to spend a week outside or anything anyway so this was actually perfectly fine and needed no adjusting. It did mean he couldn't afford to go get the Mooongate Mountain first and come back after, though, as there just wasn't enough time for ordering things in that way.
The second thing Ares learnt was that, once the portal closed, he could slingshot himself back through it so long as the distance between him and the passageway wasn't too great. In other words, he'd automatically be reeled back in if he tethered himself properly so he didn't have to worry about missing his return ticket and getting locked out of Sheryashka. He could get accidentally warped somewhere far away on the other side of the barrier, and then he'd be screwed, but for the most part this was a pretty safe bet that he'd be able to come back with no fuss. If something did go wrong he'd have to spend maybe... A year? A year and a bit? Around that long working day and night just to get back in the barrier with a temporary entrance. Sure this barrier was a result of his own treasure but he didn't set it up and he wasn't strong enough to dismantle it entirely either right now. Only taking a year to get back in, considering everything the Blade was, was actually extremely impressive. Even Gods might take longer than a year to crack this barrier if they wanted to personally enter it instead of sending clones through a backdoor. Ares' affiliation was what really mattered but hopefully it wouldn't come to that and Ares could simply return to Isaz peacefully.
That aside, third, Ares had gained a good deal of information. His gains regarding the nothingness aspect weren't trivial and so there were a variety of things he wanted to explore with the aspect down the line when he had more time. One such piece of knowledge was the connection between nothingness and pressure which, in turn, would maybe lead to developments with the Backfire Bindings and even his learning task of controlling annihilation better. This seemed like an incoherent string of connections but it made sense based on what Ares knew. To shape annihilation, pressure might actually work. To use pressure on magic like that, the Backfire Bindings needed to be upgraded. To upgrade them beyond where they were currently at Ares needed to pressurise the treasure further or try something new to tighten them up. To tighten them, nothingness' unique traits ought to come in handy based on what he was seeing from this tear. It was somewhat roundabout logic to get from one end to another but it was very plausible when taken step by step! Ares would pursue this line of thinking once he returned from this outing for the sake of precisely pouring annihilation mana into Visitation!
Finally, the last thing Ares learnt, was that he'd be safe on the other side of the barrier. He'd peeked across the passageway and checked what was over yonder and it was basically nothing more than plain empty space. This might have sounded fine but Ares wasn't in transition realm yet so it could have been potentially problematic. Thankfully Voidwalk was functional and Ares could breathe in space no worries so it ended up being risk free when he checked. Usually people from lower domains struggled to acclimatise themselves to the vast beyond but Ares was originally born in Vraizon anyway so had a natural resistance to that sort of thing and it really helped. He'd also transformed into Garmr a few times so his lungs had indirectly benefited from that too. His body had been improved by fine grind considerably and that was yet another factor that would contribute to his safety in outer space. Put simply, there were a metric ton of reasons Ares would be fine. Even something like the Extinction Converter helped so it was, quite frankly, too many safety nets to list. It reached a point where Ares' advantages were stacked so sky high he didn't even know which individual one was the cause of his ability to survive outside the current atmosphere.
Maybe annihilation pressure?
Perhaps being a revenant?
Maybe his affiliation for nothingness?!
Who knows?! All that mattered was that Ares felt nothing off during his repeated testing and that meant he was well equipped to take on the outside world. All he had to do now was fiddle with the portal somewhat, set a tether to yoink him back when all was said and done, and then yell 'Geronimo' as he dove in head first. The trip through the spatial avenue would take at two to three hours so it's not even like that part was a hassle. Ares' only real concern was coming across a Venator but not only were the odds extremely low but Ares would have the ability to defend himself anyway. He'd heard about Venators from Dominus but he wasn't convinced he couldn't kill them. If they were related to warped souls then they were functionally somewhat similar to the wyvern soul from back on the federation. If Ares could deal with that he could probably kill a venator too... Which was pretty incredible. There were no known instances of Venators being killed on even footing. Typically it required a God to smite a lowly venator or something roughly equivalent, they were just innately that tough to deal with. Regardless, Ares wasn't bothered at all. Even if push came to shove he could quite literally push and shove the Venator out of his travel portal as he was the master of all things void! It was like trying to highjack a carriage only to realise the farmer was lying in the back under a tarp with a shogun. Venators lived in the void but Ares was the ultimate master of it, this wasn't a fight they could pick!
In summary, Ares was good to go! Traversing through the void was familiar territory for Ares so he didn't have to waste any time actually learning to let the currents guide him or anything along those lines. He could just hop in and even steer if he felt like speeding up the process. Seeing as how there was nothing left to do here Ares wasted no more time and allowed himself to be sucked into the portal. It felt quite similar to Shifting through the endless Void except that this time he was letting it happen without taking control. The void was basically dragging him along to the preset designation on the other side of the barrier and, in about two and a half hours, the journey would be complete. Ares saw no reason to speed things up so he took this opportunity to take a small break and return to various miscellaneous tasks he wasn't yet done with. There were still treasures to pressurise and he also wanted to practice passive cultivation some more as this was an excellent opportunity to. He was in the middle of a vacuum-esque portal being sucked hundreds of miles away at blinding speeds that were rather disorienting. If he could cultivate here, in this unnatural situation, he could cultivate anywhere! Ares was starting to become a true believer in passive cultivation as cultivating in these ridiculous scenarios wasn't as hard as he imaged it would be before he started. His repeated insistence on troubling himself whenever he cultivated in his spare time was really shining through. It made logical sense to him that the more he practiced the easier it would get not just at the highest level but at the lowest too. Basic cultivation should get so easy and mindless to him he could literally do it in his sleep, that was the end goal of passive cultivation. Regardless, Ares had means of busying himself so taking the reins to move quicker through the void wasn't needed. He still wanted to reach the tenth stage of sensory enhancement at some point too so cultivating a bit would push him in that direction and put him on the boundary.
Unfortunately, time flies. Before Ares knew it, he was spat out of the portal into the pitch black abyss of space. He was so preoccupied in his various 'hobbies' he didn't even realise his trip was coming to an end and so he was taken aback by the vastness all around him. He practically blinked a single time and then immediately came face to face with the exact opposite of what he'd just been through not even a second ago. Ares' affiliation for Void meant he felt comfortable when there was an absence of space but now the environment pulled a complete 180 and left him whiplashed. The space around Ares felt overbearing as it smothered him with unpleasant weight. Space shouldn't really feel like anything but, currently, to Ares, it was muggy. Like hundreds of layers of film clinging to him in a hot desert, that was the best way to describe it. The good news, though, was that it didn't impact his abilities or interfere with movement in any way so he was able to maintain balance in space without tumbling around aimlessly. He would recover from this awkward feeling in due time but thankfully that was all it was, awkward. His physical strength and mana hadn't been sapped so he still felt safe enough and that was a good thing because it seemed like there were a group of cultivators on the horizon headed in his direction.
The incoming group didn't appear to be patrolling the giant Blade barrier right next to Ares, which he was only now actually visualising for the first time since he'd first heard about it, this group was seemingly just trying to get to wherever they were going... But Ares had a gut feeling about the type of people they were based on their arrogant strides and loftier than thou expressions. If it were up to Ares, he'd ignore them. He wasn't accustomed to outside-barrier lingo or attitudes so he'd likely end up offending the very first people he met and the consequences of that were inestimable. At least in Sheryashka when he offended someone the scope of retribution was limited to Vraizon at worst... Out here? It wasn't unheard of for clans and sects in the higher domains to have branches down in the lower domains. If Ares picked a fight with someone who had backing in the realm of the Gods, for instance, it would wind up being more unneeded headaches down the line for him... So that was why this situation was highly problematic. It was very obvious Ares had just been spat out of the barrier and so they were inevitably going to have questions. The group were far away but if Ares could see them clearly, without the need for divine sense or Omniscience, they could almost definitely see him too. At a rough glance they were around mid transition realm cultivators so there was no chance the eyesight of every single member of that group was so faulty they wouldn't have seen Ares' impromptu arrival on the scene. They were going to ask questions and they were going to be arrogant, this much Ares could tell at a glance and he knew that, from personal experience, that was a combination that only ever ended one way...
Rather than wait for them to come to him, Ares activated Voidwalk and headed over to them. He wanted information, such as the name of this domain and his rough location relative to the nearest civilised and inhabitable planet, so it's not like he was going to run away because he would get lost if he tried. If these people were friendly he would be kind, if they were combative he would beat them into submission!
Ares arrived before the group of four and opened his mouth but he was beaten to the punch and the youngest amongst the group spoke up first. There was a young master type individual, a butler of sorts with one gloved hand always placed firmly over his chest, presumably the young man's father, and a stern looking bodyguard with a rough appearance and crossed arms. As for what the young master said...
"You! Did you find the tryouts?!"
".... What?" Ares felt like he wasn't following this conversation right from the get go. Was this some kind of slang from the outside world he wasn't familiar with?"
"Tryouts. Where they in there? I'm not sure how you got in there to check, and I'll give you credit for managing it, but if you don't speak up and tell the truth my hired muscle's going to have a one on one talk with you."
"'In there'? You mean the barrier? And what 'tryouts' are you even referring to anyway?"
"Are you playing dumb? Tsk, whatever. There's a faster way to go about this. Hugo!"
At the young master's call, the guard took two steps forward and gestured at Ares with his chin. "Speak or get beat. you choice."
"How is it possible I've made enemies already?" Flabbergasted was an understatement as Ares seriously couldn't comprehended his ability to anger people wherever he went. At this point he wasn't even sure if all cultivators were like this regardless of the time or place or if he was just an unlucky sod who kept running into the worst of the worst all the damn time! "Hmmm. Don't suppose the name 'Ares' means anything to you?"
"Pfft. Hahaha. What? Are you going to try and claim you know him? Some random guy in the lower domains who just got shat out of a barrier?" The young master found the notion absurd but he was actually wrong for a different reason than what he could ever guess... He clearly assumed Ares was originally someone from outside the barrier who snuck in and got rejected but what these strange 'tryouts' were supposed to be was anybody's guess. Either way, there was definitely nothing of the sort on the other side of the barrier, Ares could promise him that.
"I don't know what you think I found across the barrier but unless you're looking for a polar bear or frosty balls I wouldn't recommend searching any more than this. Not that you, or anyone, can get inside anyway, right? Surely the notion somebody would hold tryouts in an inaccessible location is illogical enough to drop this matter and leave well enough alone? I don't know what 'tryouts' you're talking about but they can't possibly be inside the barrier as then nobody would be able to take them other than the Sheryashkans living inside." Ares assumed his rationale was completely reasonable and impossible to argue against but...
"Are you an idiot?!" ... Apparently not according to this abrasive young master... "Are you still pretending or do you actually not know?! Tsk, whatever. Hugo. Crush."
Hugo didn't much appreciate being spoken to like some dumb brute but, then again, crushing was his forte and he couldn't deny it. The honed muscles weren't for show and hugging enemies between them generally led to a crushing defeat for the victim. Ares didn't react to Hugo flying towards him in any excessive way, he simply lifted up a finger and kept it stationary in front of him to block Hugo's path. This looked suicidal. Somebody not even in bloodline awakening challenging a transition realm cultivator with a single idle finger... There was only one way this was going to end provided the universe and its rules hadn't become lopsided when nobody was looking...
Bang
"Yes yes, all's well that ends well. Honestly, why didn't you just answer the damn questi..." The young master had been smiling to himself and nodding like a pecking chicken but, after opening his eyes, he realised the result was not in line with his expectations. Under normal circumstances, Hugo would have flown straight through the extended finger, cracking and bending it backwards as his bulky arms wrapped around this strange cultivator and squeezed him into submission. What had actually happened was entirely different, however, as Hugo was blasted away, sent spiralling through space like a tossed ragdoll the second he made contact with the outstretched finger. The group of four had no idea what hit Hugo but the answer was simple, it was an Echo!... Not that knowing that would change anything, this was outside the barrier. Echo was not really a known quantity here. It was spreading like wildfire in Sheryashka but, out here? It was an invisible, silent chant-able, powerful art that took up little to no mana. It was hard to detect, stop, or understand at a rough glance. One would need to seriously inspect the mana flow when the art was activated and actively analyse the art in real time to get a good handle on it, none of which were really possible in the blink it took Ares to defeat Hugo.
Ares was about to try and restart the conversation, from a position of power this time, but he noticed the group, including Hugo who'd recovered and flown back to their side, weren't convinced yet. Seemingly, if Ares' understanding of their facial expressions was right, they must not have bought the 'act' Ares put on. There wasn't one, he was dimply that strong, but they were thinking it was a treasure or artifact of some sort that bailed him out. It was the usual, 'your cultivation is too low therefore you couldn't possible have done that' development. Ares wasn't in the mood to deal with this right now, he wanted to explore the outside world and not get hung up on petty squabbles like this, so he cut them off and ended this debacle before it could escalate any further.
"Esoteric Compression."
Like bugs, Ares squashed his opposition and remotely trampled them into fleshy patties. they were still alive but felt immensely crushed and humiliated. Pained groans could be heard escaping their lips and Ares figured hey got the gist of difference in power so he let them go. If nothing else the horrifying amount of pressure should have clued them in to what kind of person they were dealing with. Their deflated bodies stood up and their misplaced bones cracked back into place. The three older men were now wary and hesitant but the young master was still being an imbecile and looking for a fight. Luckily he didn't hold more sway than his father, as Hugo and the butler showed him more deference than they did the young man, so the hostility ought to have settled for good this time irrespective of the young master's idiotic wishes. Ares chuckled lightly and opened his mouth with a cocky smile. "Let's try this again..." The next words that came out of his mouth deepened the frown on the other group's faces and Ares could see beads of sweat start to form. "... Name's Ares. I'm new around here. Normally I would have just asked for directions and left it at that but you've all imposed quite heavily on me so it's time I return the favour. You're gonna be my tour guide for the next two days and if you dare reject me there will be hell to pay. Let's get along, yeah?" Ares was definitely smiling but, to the other cultivators at least, he looked like a devil.