Back when Candy left the pagoda, she'd done so by overloading herself with mana and exploding on the spot with Cotton. It was an instantaneous death that was so fast it didn't even wake Cotton up and was an elegant solution to keeping the child asleep and not disturbing her rest. Cotton would never even know she 'died' and Candy felt no pain nor did she have to ask Ares to personally kill her. Simple and effective... Especially in comparison to the way Havanah was repeatedly leaving the pagoda. She was getting murdered in cold blood time after time with brutal deaths being the norm as Ares showed this stubborn cat no mercy! She was constantly ramping up her efforts but she would never be ale to brawl and match him when it came to pressurised fisticuffs. She was stronger than Ares initially gave her credit for, and kept upping her game with each attempt, but unless she could keep doing this for the next year or so she relay wasn't going to get anywhere. There was a limit to how far her brute strength could carry her and without sufficient pressure mastery this back and forth was only going to end one way regardless...
"Ok, enough is enough!" Ares figured the best way to run it by Havanah that Ares wasn't even remotely being pushed right now, so this fight could actually move along, was to just go all out and display his annihilation pressure. He cloaked the world in gold and caused it to tremor under the weight of his presence while lazily raising his hand and preparing to click his finger in Havanah's direction. She must have sensed death in her near future and, thanks to her animalistic reflexes, was able to dodge Ares' half-hearted attack just in the nick of time by leaping to the top of a building off to the side. Ares' fingers clicked and a giant crater formed at the end destination of where he he'd been aiming, crushing the street and digging about a third of the way through the planet with nothing but pressure. Ares lightly dangled his hand from side to side and clicked his neck before turning to face Havanah and beginning a punch motion. She'd just seen what happened when he clicked his fingers so a full on punch was going to be a very dangerous attack if she wasn't careful. Thankfully there was enough room in the street below to dodge even if his attack was twice the size of the previous one so Havanah felt confident...
"Annihilation Echo."
And all that confidence Havanah was banking on vanished out of sight and out of mind as soon as the art was cast because the danger levels shot up, compared to even a second ago, exponentially. What was just going to be some annoying punch ended up turning into an art that felt like it could annihilate Havanah's existence a thousand times over. This was the first realisation that Ares was not some slouch she could go easy on to the degree she had been. She was expecting him to fold at some point earlier to the onslaught of fists but was now coming to terms with the fact that he really was a fundamental champion and he had his own uniqueness that allowed him to be just as strong as the others. Havanah guessed that his shtick was combining pressure with his magic and that was really all he was good for... As far as she was concerned, what she was about to witness was 'destruction' in its truest form and she was a little disappointed. Yes she would die here, because she wasn't cheating the runes just yet and couldn't fight back properly, but felt confident that this was a limit she could easily beat. What she didn't know was that Ares had shown far more disastrous magic even back down at sensory enhancement and right now his cultivation was way higher. On that note, Havanah actually felt somewhat insulted by the pagoda's analysis because this version of Ares was two whole realms below her! Twenty stages was apparently the best way to make a fight between these two 'fair' and Havanah did not believe that for even a second! If it were really true then she would mate with Ares here and now! Not that she really understood the intricacies of it, and asking how to mate would be awkward, but at that point she wasn't letting him go ever. Havanah took the Annihilation Echo head on like a champ and acknowledged that, in terms of pressure mastery at least, she was at a major disadvantage and could never win. He'd really reached impressive levels with it and she could tell it was a type of pressure that was drastically different to the standard. It would be a fantastic tool for him going forward but it wasn't a good enough tool on its own! She wanted to prove this to him so it was time to cheat!
Havanah re-entered the pagoda for what was roughly the twelfth time in the last five minutes and made no effort to attack Ares. He was about to ask her if she'd calmed down only for her to bring out her massive sword, bury it into the ground, and crack her knuckles in preparation for the next round. Normally the sword shouldn't have been allowed to be wielded like this but, for some reason, the runes weren't acting up at all or even trying to prevent this. Havanah had reality magic so maybe she was altering functionality of the runes in some way? 'These runes stop weapon usage but, now that I've used my magic, they make weapons stronger instead' was the kind of trick she could probably pull quite easily as reversing reality must have been in her wheelhouse. Ares could reverse time and space so he wouldn't even be remotely shocked she could do something similar. All the fundamental champions were rule breakers in some manner but Havanah, in her own way, specialised in it to a higher degree so Ares' assumption was very correct. That being said, Havanah hadn't improved the capability of her weapon or magic, even though she could have, because she wanted a 'fair fight'.
Ares would have been grateful for this small mercy because she was still a fundamental champion at the end of the day and his annihilation pressure could only carry him so far. He'd won against Mako but it was close... And yet Mako didn't have the massive cultivation advantage over Ares that Havanah did so a win would be highly unlikely unless he pulled out all the stops. It wasn't inconceivable that, if she kept cheating, Havanah might eventually win a match if she just kept charging headfirst into the wall that was Ares. Thank to Garmr, and this clone's ability to wield the primordial Blade in a big way, he would win 99% of matches... But it was still only ninety-nine and not one hundred... There was a non-zero chance he was going to have to beg this annoying woman to leave him alone! He had a back-up plan but that didn't mean that was a guaranteed success either and would be a matter of whether he could pull it off in time...This was not something Ares had considered. He was supposed to be on the same side as the fundamental champions! They were the only ones who, when cheating, could realistically beat Ares in a fair fight as the pagoda would not update his cultivation accordingly based on their ability to use magic and weapons, especially not those at the calibre of a fundamental champion. Even a god couldn't beat Ares but these lot absolutely could with a significant cultivation advantage, and that was deeply concerning, but why on earth was this even happening?! Ares still didn't really get this woman just yet so he couldn't possibly answer that question. Even if he asked why she was attacking him so relentlessly he would just be ignored so he had to sick to his old strategy of just knocking some sense into this woman long before this became an issue!
It seemed she wasn't going to use her arts just yet as she was concentrating mana in the air in a strange way that gave to understand as such. She wasn't flowing it through her body in any kind of methodical way and was instead simply lazily directing it so the chances of what came next being an art were impossibly low... She was still slowly ramping up the difficulty even now... Whatever misunderstanding Havanah had about Ares as a cultivator seriously needed to be cleared up because these low expectations were hurtful to Ares' ego! Ares flicked a pressurised Echo at Havanah from range but she didn't even move from her spot, instead opting to raise her hand and direct magic at the projectile. The Echo slowed down to a crawl before disappearing into thin air and Ares was pretty certain it had just been hit by some seriously potent gravity magic. Havanah had created a centre of gravity behind the travelling Echo, to halt it's movement, and then created multiple inversed centres of gravity all around it to crush the magic out of existence. Clever usage of a simple but powerful magic meant she could effectively use a version of telekinesis by lifting things or pushing them around with gravity so, in turn, she could affect projectiles and toy with them as she saw fit. Ares took note of this and decided it was a good idea to not use anymore as that probably wasn't all she could do with them if she bothered to start actually casting arts at some point.
Ares' magic forced his opponents to fight him, for the most part, without relying on magic. His disintegration magic beat everything else and Grim Cessation as a timer that couldn't be ignored and would instantly win him the fight if his opponent got spammy with their magic. That last part hadn't been particularly relevant but Cessation did still exist and would absolutely come in handy down the line. On the other hand, Havanah here seemed to be able to force people to fight her up close and personal by being extremely good against projectile based attacks. Something like an explosive wave would maybe not count, Ares would have to test that, but something like a shock bead would never cut it. Throwing things when around the gravity expert was defint4ely a bad idea and just having miscellaneous objects lying around was also a terrible situation to be in as Ares found out the hard way. he wasn't in a vacuum in space right now, he was in a Red Sun replica. All the buildings in the nearby area shook as Havanah directed her attention towards them instead of Ares for a quick second.
"Don't even think about it." Ares refused to let this happen, as he didn't want multiple hundreds of houses raining down on his head, so he used his own telekinesis, via pressure, to drag as many houses as he could away from her magic before tossing them away into he distance wherein they promptly blew up. Ares detonated a bunch of Shock Beads he'd stashed in the houses, as he removed them from the immediate vicinity, so that they couldn't be used again if the battle happened to trend over in that direction. Havanah either couldn't contest that many houses at once, as she was still busy with her own, or didn't much care if Ares saved himself some trouble so she just let him do as he pleased and fling away some of her ammunition. There were still more than enough houses here to launch a respectable offensive and she could always start uprooting the streets, fountains, benches, lamps, etc... If it wasn't nailed down, it was a viable weapon. In fact, even if it was nailed down, it was still a viable weapon! Gravity magic could dredge up even the most stubbornly buried of objects in due time. What this did prove, however, was that Ares was a decent opponent! He was tougher than the legendary monster she'd hunted a while back, that was for sure, but she still hadn't really gotten invested in the fight yet. She wanted to see his ceiling and then fight around it so she was reluctantly holding herself back. There was nothing more she wanted than to just go wild but, if Ares couldn't hang, he would be left behind in the dust and she would be left wanting more. It was better to temper her expectations and play around with him accordingly to get the most satisfaction!
She launched the collection of about a hundred houses, as though she were a cat tossing a ball of yarn at a mouse, but now it was Ares' turn to be unphased by the incoming attack. He was more than capable of managing against something like this at his current cultivation which was way above sensory enhancement. In fact, he could deal with all the buildings coming his way with a single art. "Grand Annihilation!" Ares didn't mind casting arts while Havanah was still messing around with plain magic as it ought to kick her rear in gear and get her up to speed when she saw what she was up against.
The Grand Annihilation tore through the descending cluster of brick and mortar and ravaged the city for at least a mile in every direction with Havanah being swamped and overwhelmed somewhere in the golden mist. Ares hadn't just stopped the attack, he'd obliterated it and indirectly launched a counter attack. It wasn't Ares' fault his magic was so strong it accidentally attacked the opponent when that wasn't even its main goal! Ares could pinpoint Havanah's location with his divine sense and Omniscience combo so he dropped an Esoteric Compression on her head while she was still taken aback by the scale of Ares' arts. For an art he didn't look too bothered casting to be as big as this was interesting! Havanah could match this scale but she was at a higher cultivation so it felt like she was falling behind in the scale war and that bugged her. Was her magic only superior to Ares because of the cultivation difference? Throw in the fact that she was caught with her pants down in the golden explosions and pinned to the floor by what felt like gravity magic, even though it was just pressure, and she was actually starting to think that maybe she could freely throw a bit more of her weight around here! How exciting! Maybe her father was right after all. Clever guy. Havanah always knew he had a brain in there somewhere!
Havanah freed herself form the pressure by blasting it away with gravity magic before then turning her attention to the surrounding explosions that were still damaging her even now. She was very capable of taking hits, so it didn't really affect her physical state, but the obscured vision was seriously annoying so she blasted that away and all. She almost bit her tongue and choked on some saliva when she caught sight of Ares hovering in the air above the city and finishing up the charging process of an art that was making Havanah quiver down to her bones. As it turned out, Ares, the real one, and the clone really did think a lot alike. The clone was casting Armillary! The clone hadn't named it, or turned it into a proper art yet, but the thought of combining his Wheels into a single, destructive, chaotic nuke was definitely there. He'd chanted Perish Wheel about ten times in a row and woven them all together while Havanah was fussing around with the pressure attack and the explosions.
The clone had also utilised the same trick, of burying his opponent in explosions so they couldn't detect him casting something outside of it, that the real Ares had done tot he wyvern soul. It was like drowning a person in water and asking them to locate a bubble above water while still below it. It wasn't impossible, and maybe if Havanah was really trying she could have pulled it off, but now she was going to pay a massive price for all the hubris she'd been displaying. Ares was holding the annihilation, disintegration, and nothingness devastation concoction high up above him with a single hand acting like a pedestal for his magical might. He looked down at Havanah and winked before taunting her. "If you live through this, maybe then I'll stop holding back as well?"
As if Havanah's mind wasn't in a state of turmoil as is... Learning there was more this guy could do was heart racing! Someone like Sanity was more annoying to fight than anything and, depending on how Sanity approached their spars, it could wind up being quite boring for Havanah. It became a game of, 'if you can escape the labyrinth in your mind I just trapped you in then congrats, you win.' That wasn't what Havanah was after and neither White nor Black were interested in fighting for no reason. Sanity only ever even did these training matches because she enjoyed taking her stress out on the dumb nyanderthal every now and then... And also because they were good friends, and she was wiling to do her favours, even if she refused to ever admit it. But this? This was something else entirely! This was going to be absolute carnage through and through when they started really going at it! Whatever this attack was that Ares was about to throw at her was about close to the limit of what she herself could do without a treasure at her current cultivation. Throw in the treasure and she could outdo even this but it was still incredibly hard for her... For this guy to be at this strength level despite his cultivation deficit... Havanah, before Ares chucked the art, finally spoke to Ares and threw an ultimatum his way because he was worth pursuing.
"You! You will be my mate! I won't give you a choice anymore. I can stay here and fight you for years on end if I have to!" Though this sounded like a simple and mostly empty threat, it seemed she understood her 'win condition' to get Ares to buckle and accept her as a 'mate'. She knew full well about the Candy situation, as she'd been briefed on it by Sanity who was keeping tabs on the other fundamentals, so by threatening Ares with her stubbornness he would be forced to relent! If she could beat him even once, he would have to submit lest he get usurped from the position of pagoda master. That wasn't a possibility unless Ares wanted everything he'd worked for to go down the drain so Havanah would just keep cheating to here to her hearts content until she eventually snuck in a win somehow. It didn't matter if it was a close win. It didn't matter if it was a nail biter and she was half-dead by the time it was over. It didn't matter if it took her multiple thousands of attempts. She had all the time in the world right now and was willing to dedicate herself to acquiring her preferred mate.
It was a dirty tactic she was gunning for but Ares actually respected it a little because of everything such a strategy entailed. First, she had to keep getting herself killed in losses to him over and over again basically for an undeterminable amount of time, potentially even a couple of years if she was unlucky, and death was not pleasant. Death here wasn't real but that didn't make the beatings feel any better. Two, she was smart enough to connect all the dots and find a way to corner Ares that he really couldn't do anything about. Unless he got an 'update', and could acquire the Converter real Ares had, he could not guarantee victory every single time. Havanah's win was seemingly an inevitability and Ares could do nothing but agree with her request when it finally became a reality. Finally, and this was the biggest praise he could give her, she was actually capable of following through with it. Ares had the Blade and Garmr and yet there was still a chance for her to win if she kept constantly giving it her all and improving with every try. It was very much like how Ares had worked his way through the pagoda in that her determination and skill were both admirable. Sure she was cheating but who else that challenged this place wasn't? She was still the only person who would maybe be capable of achieving a victory unless the other champions spent all their time trying too.
Long story short, she possessed a level of power that Ares had to respect as even Enyo wasn't able to really threaten Ares in a proper way and she was the greatest prodigy he knew. Granted, Enyo's specialty was unique in that her defences were rock solid... A fight between Enyo and Havanah would be very interesting and could swing either way. She might have a better match up against Havanah than Ares did, honestly... Though it did sort of depend. Fundamental champions always had some kind of bullshit trick up their sleeve so if Havanah was able to rewrite reality such that barriers could be passed through with ease then it would complicate things. still, objectively, Enyo was mostly a good matchup. Enyo couldn't beat Ares because the raw power of what he did was enough to bypass any and all magic. Against a projectile expert, who could endlessly lob things with gravity, a sturdy enough wall from Enyo would just never break. If Havanah enjoyed sparring as much as she did then Enyo would make for the perfect sparring partner as he would effectively be an unkillable dummy that could tank every hit for all of eternity.
As for Ares, regarding the declaration of 'mate' without a forewarning via 'check', he wasn't completely sold on Havanah yet. He'd done nothing but exchange small blows with her so far, and it wasn't love at first sight or anything, but he was ok with entertaining the thought and seeing how things played out here from now on. As such, he didn't inform Havanah that he was making headway on, arguably, the ultimate cheat for this pagoda that he himself could exploit if he wanted to. He didn't know how to manage it quite yet but he might be able to freely change his cultivation to anything its been before during any of the other challenges he'd undergone. The pagoda stored that information for future use and he was getting closer by the day to accessing it by drilling at the rune with his disintegration magic. He would wind up accessing the rune he needed to alter soon and his Omniscience would allow him to manipulate it to his benefit whenever he wanted... If someone else cheated like Havanah did, and was actually a threat, then Ares could just up his cultivation to be like that of a God's and the problem would be solved. He didn't want to ever resort to this, and he would take on all-comers fair and square provided they didn't get the ball rolling on the lack of sportsmanship, but it was a trick he would have up his sleeve for a rainy day. It was something he would be able do long before Havanah snuck a win in and he had no obligation to lose to her... But who cared about that right now? It's not like Ares didn't enjoy a good fight as well so he would throw this faux Armillary, kill her, and then have a real showdown with her at full strength the next time she entered. Chucking around hundreds of houses and blowing up entire cities was really just a warm welcome between these two and the real strengths of fundamental champions, at a respectable cultivation and not merely sensory enhancement, was going to be on full display soon!