A few other things of note happened while Candy was visiting Ares in the pagoda that could be summarised as follows... They had a decently long talk about the lost child, the one that didn't make it when Candy was giving birth. Naturally it was a difficult conversation, and a hard pill to swallow, but there was potential to fix it. Now that Ares knew about souls and where they were stored... Well he could maybe try and get that particular soul back one day. That was his main focus and Candy really appreciated it as she'd never expected she would maybe have a chance to see that child ever again. It weighed on her mind a lot but Ares swearing he would do everything he could to retrieve it was a soothing thought even if the process would take a long, long time. This talk was a bit of a downer so the two of them moved on quickly once it was done with as dwelling on such a topic wasn't good for anyone's mental well being. Rather than stress about that, they got to chatting about Candy's runic experiments as of late! She was still an incredibly talented rune maker, her skills hadn't diminished after not being used for so long while she was depressed and lying around in her bed doing nothing, and had been testing out some of the more harmless ones on Cotton...
Ares was flabbergasted!
Even her own child wasn't safe!... Actually, Ares very quickly realised he wasn't safe either as she insisted on trying the more unstable runes on him while she was here... She seemed to be having a lot of fun but Ares was seeing stars and not metaphorically. There was a hallucinogenic rune in the ones given to him at some point and he was spiralling through countless galaxies in his mind until he wiped it all away with some disintegration. Ares didn't mind being Candy's guinea pig for a while as she was having a blast toying with him. The miserable topics had all been covered in sufficient detail and Cotton was off pretending to think about the multiple wives thing while actually devoting most of her attention to watching the happy duo play around with each other. She would have walked back over but she was very well aware that Ares would chase after her until he got to sit her down on his lap so he could give her a proper explanation. Maybe it would be interesting or maybe he'd just come up with some dumb pun again and so Cotton chose not to risk it. She enjoyed the head pats but unfortunately Ares enjoyed doing it so it was also a reward for him and his bad, womanizing behaviour! Cotton refused to reinforce this so she kept her distance and kept tabs on her parents in not so sneaky-a fashion. Credit where credit was due; for a seven year old she'd made a real good go of it, hiding inside a building and peering through a crack in a doorway beyond a window. She'd put some serious thought into not getting caught it's just that doing such a thing against a cultivator as powerful as Ares or Candy was never going to work... It was cute though so neither Ares or Candy called her out on it!
Ares and Candy continued to talk about a few things here and there regarding the state of the world outside the pagoda. Ares learnt that his real self had been making great headway on improving as a cultivator which just made him want to bask in his real glory a little too. He wanted the converter, at the very least, but there was nothing he could do about it... Or so he thought. Candy asked if there was any way the pagoda clone could transfer a message to the real one, physical in form or a mental message didn't much matter, so Ares gave it some thought. He couldn't come up with anything intentionally but, ironically, after giving up, he found a potential solution when trying to figure out where to store Candy's letter until he found a way to hand it over! Clone Ares knew where the Primordial Blade dimension was, co-ordinate wise, and could maybe bust into it if he really gave it a good college try. At that point, instead of just storing the letter in the dimension, why not try to contact Ares through it instead? The pagoda wouldn't let him leave this place, and he would be anchored here permanently, but maybe sending things through a portal to the Blade was possible.
Other than a physical letter from Candy, which she was in the midst of writing right now, the clone had nothing to send to his real self as getting a hold of objects outside the pagoda, while trapped within the pagoda, was a nightmare. Maybe it was possible for Transmit to send some stuff through? Ares had to figure out how to get the portal up and running first and there was a none-zero chance that anything with a physical form couldn't fit through it anyway... It might honestly just have to be mental messages for now at least. Maybe such a form of communication would 'update' the pagoda as well and give this clone everything the real Ares had? It was a strange thought but Candy, who'd made a lot of the runes here and gotten up close and personal with some of the others as well, seemed to be insistent it likely would. The simulator for Ares' consciousness clone mainly worked on a memory-based principle and gave him what he knew of, excluding implanted or false memories, so updating his memory via contact with real Ares would almost definitely do the trick. It was like the real Ares was a USB containing all the needed data for a software update and his information just needed to be plugged into the clone for it to take place. The real issue here was opening the portal in the right spot and hoping real Ares would find it. It would be his job to spot this anomalous portal in his pocket dimension and open it further on his end... How long that would take was anyone's guess and who knows what he was up to right about now? Still, getting the ball rolling on that front was for the best as giving pagoda Ares more power via real Ares was never a bad thing. It drastically increased the admittedly already high chances of Ares beating cheaters whenever they showed up. Just because he felt confident he could regardless that didn't mean he wouldn't appreciate more tools to solidify his chances even further.
The talks between Ares and Candy lasted about a full day before she was notified via a rune she was carrying that it would be time to leave soon. The private investigator was about to go and interview Ares in another instance of the pagoda so, as soon as he was done, Candy's time here would be up and she'd have to take Cotton back home for now. Cotton did look particularly tired and was rubbing her eyes as she sat slumped against her mother. She'd eventually come back when she got knackered out from stalking Ares and Candy all the time but Ares didn't pester her. Watching her nod off was very satisfying as her tiny bobbing head and sleepy eyes brought Ares immense joy and he didn't want her to run off again. She would be stubborn and sleep somewhere far away from Ares if he bothered her so he just let the sleeping fox be. She wasn't really a cultivator yet, even though she'd trained with mana, because Sevorus had apparently asked to keep her from cultivating for a few more months while he checked... Something? It was impossible to ask him because he apparently never bothered answering. It was supposedly just routine check ups so Candy was fine with letting it happen for a little while longer. Anyway, point being, it was long past Cotton's bed time so her current state was understandable.
Before Candy left, Ares did ask her if he should just kill the investigator and not even entertain his questions, to which Candy gave a wink and a nod, so his fate was sealed because there was no way she was ever not giving Ares permission. The investigator was annoying and watched every one of Cotton and Candy's moves like a hawk the entire damn trip. Him getting some comeuppance, after spending all that time in the queue, and wasting his own time was the perfect punishment! Unfortunately this did mean Candy's time in the pagoda was cut maybe an hour or so short, as the investigator would have no reason to stick around any further, but that was ok. She would haggle for more return trips to keep Ares updated and see him again. The two kissed each other on the cheek, leaving the lips for when they met for real, and then Ares bid her goodbye while stroking Cotton's hair. She mumbled contentedly in her sleep and that was enough motivation to get pagoda Ares through the next ten thousand years if need be! Cute daughters were like rocket fuel and he'd just had a heavy dose injected straight into his veins!
Candy waved goodbye and took Cotton along with her, leaving Ares all by his lonesome for a few seconds before this version of the clone disappeared completely. This was how it went whenever anyone wasn't around and they all, excluding one, simply vanished. His one remaining clone would just take a seat on the grass under the sun or moonlight and listen to Dominus' countless stories and chat with him about random crap. What else was he supposed to do? Think about how much he missed his family? He took it like a champ but that didn't mean this wasn't already kinda sucking. As soon as he got through to the real Ares, he was going to complain! Anyway, he wouldn't be alone for long. He'd just gotten rid of the investigator but there were a group of three that had just shown up outside who would further spice things up. Naturally this was Oliver, Sanity, and Havanah and Ares would be very interested in meeting them! Especially that Havanah... Candy mentioned something about her calling him her mate for whatever reason and that had lit up hundreds of alarm bells in his brain. According to Yulo's prophecy, the next wife's key word, or whatever it was called, was 'mate'. Was he seriously going to fall in love with another fundamental champion? Was that even allowed? If they had offspring together what on earth would it turn into?! Would the baby float? Would it be directly born a God? Anyway, Ares tried not to get too far ahead of himself because there was no guarantee this was the case. This could all just be some big misunderstanding because he'd never even met this person! Although he had met her father and he tried encouraging the whole mate thing... Maybe she was just pretending to go along with his wishes? Maybe she was just using Ares as a distraction to get rid of other admirers? Though Ares didn't know it, the latter was perhaps the most accurate guess although that didn't mean she wasn't partially serious. As far as Havanah was concerned, she just wanted to pass down strong genes and so the most appropriate mate was the strongest one, end of story. If Ares lived up to that expectation then he would damn well do and anything else about him was mostly irrelevant to her. She wasn't even coming here with the intent of asking him any questions. He would be tested in a different manner.
Outside the pagoda, standing in front of Kaleido, was Oliver who was spitting questions at him at a rate that was honestly impressive. Then again, his rapid speech proficiency likely had something to do with that one rap competition in hell he took part in, as a last minute entry, as a favour for an angel who couldn't make it... It was better not ask... Though he did come second! His hard work and training paid off big time and his cringey practice in and around the Fundamental Organisation's main headquarters, that everyone he passed by had to hear for at least a week straight, helped him secure an impressive ranking for a first timer! He'd even secretly been keeping up with his practice in the background and was getting unusually good at it for someone who really didn't seem like the type. That was one of the benefits of his whacky adventures, actually, in that he constantly developed strange talents nobody else possessed even a basic understanding of. He was a very well-rounded individual who could give decent opinions, or information, on just about any hobby or general topic under the sun. Conversation with him was interesting for sure. That being said, Kaleido was seriously being peppered to death with questions about Ares and he was getting sick of this twerp! The fundamental organisation and Transmit got along like cats and dogs but Oliver, specifically, ignored the tension and just treated them like co-workers... His ramblings were infamous across both organisations and when he really got going he bloody well never stopped!
"Enough already! Pay the toll and go ask him yourself!" Kaleido interrupted Oliver with a yell which startled him in his tracks. Kaleido raised a valid point as the guy he was asking about was no more than a few feet away! Oliver started absently-mindedly walking towards the entrance but had to pause and double back to hand over the stardust before re-treading the same path. For any normal person there would be humiliation attached with this but that word simply was not in Oliver's vocabulary after the sorts of things he'd done... Anyway, Havanah and Sanity also paid before heading over to the entrance as well. Sanity had given Havanah a quick rundown of how the pagoda worked on the way here and the nyanderthal now roughly understood it. The 'dimwit', as Sanity called her, had mistakenly assumed that the pagoda would need to raise Ares cultivation to be above hers for him to stand a chance but Sanity didn't bother explaining the sheer heights of pressure mastery that existed and what that could do for a person. Havanah had never seen nor heard of the possibilities but Sanity had and knew there was little hope for anyone to beat Ares if the thrashings he was handing out up until now, against people like Armageddon and Ject, were so brutally one sided. The cat was in a for a rude awakening. Havanah was absolutely going to have to cheat the runes to even get a remotely fair fight and she no doubt would as her competitiveness would be soaring after the initial few beat downs. Typically speaking, Havanah 'losing' just meant she was taking it easy on you before she ramped up her aggression until you couldn't keep up any longer. It was a test, basically, to see what level of power you possessed in comparison to her and was quite a thorough evaluation. Despite her wild side she took this slow and steady approach to accurately determine who was worth her time or not. Unless it was a real fight, obviously, then it was no holds-barred as getting to know somebody who was about to be a corpse was naturally pointless.
Pagoda Ares had a lot to work through as two of his clones were meeting someone interesting and important in other instances but he had to focus on the catty person before him. Sanity had intruded on one of his other domains and just flat out stated her name, affiliation, and general detest for pleasantries like she was in some kind of onboarding process for newcomers at a 'friendly' work environment. She was a unique character but Ares would go over his interaction with her at a later date because this particular clone was dealing with someone else. It wasn't Oliver, outthought that guy had his own... Uniqueness that Ares would also have to parse through. In this simulated space it was the 'Havanah' he'd heard so much about standing opposite him. Other than Mako, obviously, this was the one fundamental who he'd heard mentioned a few times either by Candy or interested journalists who kept trying to get some kind of romantic scoop out of him. Rather than ruin whatever it was Havanah was attempting to do, by definitively calling Ares her mate, Ares simply said nothing on the matter to these parasites and refused to answer.... By poking his fist through their skull! Of course the journalists could take that however they pleased, and some wrote stories about how he was lashing out at having his secret affair behind Candy's back discovered, but that was all childish and Ares had no interest in such things... Although if Cotton saw one of those headlines she might go back to complaining about Ares' 'promiscuity' again...
Ares let out a sigh and shook his head because there was something more important to focus on!... Those thighs! No, seriously, Enyo would love to bury her face in those... Havanah's legs were truly impressive and such a compliment would extend to her posterior too for sure... Although Ares did feel a bit pervy sizing up a random woman like this so he stopped. It was different when he met Candy because she was openly flaunting stuff that was hard to avoid seeing anyway! This was not a habit of his! Until he got confirmation that this person was actually going to be involved with him in that way he was going to keep his eyes strictly above the neck! And the first thing he was was... A fist hurtling straight towards him! What the hell!?
Smack
"Um, ouch?" Ares took the punch to the nose and recoiled slightly before dusting himself off and looking his abuser straight in the heterochromatic eyes! Or, well, ever so slightly above the sunglasses that were hiding a majority of them anyway. Regardless, he wanted to know why he was being punched when he was trying to be friendly! "Could you consider maybe not doing that?"
Havanah showed a split second of hesitation when she realised her ambush punch had failed to leave a mark but got right back into the very literal swing of things. This was how people in her tribe greeted strong strangers! It was customary and helped with getting to know where each other stood in the hierarchy of the cultivation world! Not that it really mattered as the only change would be in Havanah's interest in the person and little else. She wasn't going to turn anyone weaker than her into a slave or anything after she beat them senseless. A punch was a really good way to connect with someone! No, really... Havanah's fist connected with Ares' confused face once more and now he'd really had it! He didn't want to punch her, in case she really was the next wife, but at this point she had it coming! She was a fundamental champion, not some porcelain doll, she could take a hit or two! Actually, screw being polite, Ares was going to knock her out, have her cool down and repent outside, and then come back in to apologise like a sane human being! Who goes around randomly attacking people like this?!
Havanah tried throwing another punch, this one meatier than the last, but Ares grabbed it and headbutt Havanah's skull, bashing it into pieces while crushing her brain and outright killing her. Who did this crazy person think she was?! Picking a fight with Ares was one thing but picking a fight with Ares in pressure and expecting it to go flawlessly at her level was insanity! She wasn't a beginner, and Golgo must have 'tort her alot', to paraphrase, but to be on this floor of the pagoda? She was nowhere near prepared! This was someone who would need to do the other floors first to put up a real fight. If you swing at the champ, you best not miss... Or hit like a little girl! Ares didn't even have to deflect or use annihilation enhancement, just regular old enhancement at around seventy percent and he could shrug off her hardest punches. Hopefully that taught her a lesson about being disrespectful to someone she'd never me bef...
Smack
"DO YOU MIND?!" This damn woman had snuck in and started hitting him again! She barely even took more than a few seconds to chuck stardust at Kaleido and come barging in here again like she owned the place while searching for another fight! Was there nothing in this woman's brain other than a perpetual thirst and lust for violence? She seemed quite immersed in this so Ares figured the only way to get any, you know, WORDS out of her was to literally beat them out of her and run her ragged until she couldn't see straight anymore! If she was looking for a fight, Ares would give it to her and then some! She seemed to be hitting harder than before, so had clearly been going easy, but Ares had a lot left in the tank to spare as well and he could do this all day if she wanted to tango like this! "Bring it on! Let's see if this cat's got claws or is just a huge pussy!" That seemingly stirred her on and now there really wasn't any hope of this settling down any time soon. Real Ares had just gotten over a big hurdle in the form of the krakyrn but now it was pagoda Ares' turn to have a difficult fight. Unlike the krakyrn, though, this opponent was actually tough. He didn't have to figure out how to whack a soul, so that he could get a decently easy win afterwards, he had to overpower a fundamental champion and that was a hell of an ask. If she started using treasures, weapons, and magic then this would get a bit hectic...