What on earth is he doing in there? Ares was about to transform into Garmr when he noticed his recently acquired soul fidgeting about inside the Blade. 'Garmr', new name still pending, was bounding about and careening through space like an agitated meteor, blasting around in circles and trying to break free. Ares was a little surprised when he first saw the soul, powerful entities usually retained some semblance of their living form when they died, but then again 'Garmr' didn't actually own the Garmr body, he was born into it but it was still ultimately Ares'. Perhaps he was mad being stuck inside some little soul ball and wanted out because of how undignified it was? Ares was about to ignore him, and let him keep fumbling about in the vast abyss of space, but something strange happened and the soul's shape began changing somewhat to resemble a wolf head. It was a seemingly slow process so Ares would have to check back in on 'Garmr' later but he would definitely keep this strange transformation in mind and try to figure out what this silly wolf was attempting to do.
Enough about that, though, it was high time Ares embraced his true nature! This was a process he'd undergone many times before but now it was slightly different as he had to actually learn how to kick off the transformation. Drinking a Canis Stimulant had automatically adjusted his body and activated all sorts of little triggers inside him but, thankfully, Ares paid attention after downing every single one of those beverages and he knew well enough what needed to be done in place of them. There was also a sort of instinct guiding him, so it's not like he would have been screwed without that foreknowledge, but having both made it all that much simpler to accomplish what he was aiming for. In fact, Ares got it right on his first try. Luck of the draw or just an innate biological instinct? Either way Ares felt pretty good about this method and that he would be able to redo it consistently.
Part of the procedure involved pumping blood through specific channels and, now that Ares reached bloodline awakening, it became so much easier to manipulate everything without it feeling thick and sluggish. His golden blood was snappy and responsive, did exactly as he asked without a fuss, and flowed smoothly with nary a bump or hiccup in the works. It was absorbed into his flesh like it was being soaked up by a sponge and, from there, the blood melted down his skin and from its ashes fur sprouted upon the charred remains. Ares' bones, drenched in golden blood, expanded to accommodate the new form's monumental size and, in the blink of an eye, Ares was now Garmr! Being huge felt liberating! His eye sight was capable of peering over treelines in the distance and everyone around him resembled dwarves even if they were human, or any other average height race, in nature. Someone like Dabble might actually look like a road bump in comparison. Ares' transformation speed had been relatively quick, it took about three to four seconds, so the rapid change in perspective was jarring but nothing he couldn't get used to with repeat use. In fact, Ares wanted to make the transformation even faster. One day he swore he would make it instant, even, because the combat utility an instant transformation provided was too incredible not to strive for. Whether he just needed practice, or perhaps even resources and treasures to aid him in doing this, he didn't know but he would pursue this with great interest and firm conviction to succeed. It was yet another thing to add to his to do list but, like everything else dotted down on there, it was highly worth it.
The cultivators who'd been laughing at Ares earlier were all choking on spit as they fled from the premise. It was understandable they thought this big ol' wolf might have a bone to pick with them but Ares couldn't care less. So what if they laughed at him? He laughed at himself sometimes! There was no need to be petty and hunt them down over something so trivial, he was bigger than that... Literally! Ares was massive! Though he was obviously still titchy in comparison to the mountain before him he still felt bigger than it. Not in scale or enormity but in terms of presence. He could easily pick a fight with a mountain and come out on top, he was the unstoppable force that could move the immovable mountain now and actively wielding that power felt damn good. Of course his raw size was also ginormous, a body with these proportions would inevitably take some getting used to almost like he was getting used to driving a monster truck. That, and his physical strength which was so far off the charts the end point was residing somewhere on the moon, would both need an adjustment period.
A horde of Ares clones could rush down Garmr and they would all be swatted away like flies. Of course this didn't take magic into consideration, that changed things, but.... Well put it this way, if Sheryashka was covered in an anti magic zone tomorrow, Ares, as Garmr, could wipe out all of humanity without suffering a single scratch. Magic was the great equaliser and just about the only advantageous method of standing up to and opposing Garmr whose raw power was unmatchable. He could maybe even throw hands with Margaret or Serene, a matriarch of the Vraizon clans, and do decently enough. There were multiple realms between them but Margaret and Serene weren't particularly great in direct confrontation so the gap might be possible to circumvent with this much pure strength. Beating Garmr required non-standard measures but, at that point, Ares could just turn back into a human freely and use his own non-standard magic to disintegrate any hope of victory. Ares was complete. Though he may learn other arts in the future, and even find new forms capable of accomplishing new things, this was him at his strongest. This was his starting point from which he grew outward. Destruction on one hand, Garmr's physicality on the other. Individually each was a problem that could wipe out galaxies but put together under the same umbrella? It was pretty unfair!
Ares curled and uncurled his wolven fists, scratched the air with his giant nails, let out a few small draconic annihilation breaths to heat up the surroundings which wasn't even needed thanks to his warm fur, flicked the horns on his head to check how sturdy they were and whether they could be used as a ramming / goring tool, bent his knees and gauged how high he could leap in a single go, and strained all his senses for the sake of detection. Regarding the latter experiment, Ares' natural vision in Garmr mode was roughly akin to his vision range in divine sense. Of course he couldn't move his vision about freely, detach it from his body and float it around in a 3d environment, but the absolute range of vision afforded to Ares from first person was meaningful. Also, if anyone was trying to hide within that range, instead of using Echoes combined with divine sense, or Omniscience, Ares oculi just smell them. For better, presumably in some stinky cases for worse, his nose was high powered and very capable of spotting anomalies that would otherwise go unnoticed. Of course he still had access to Omniscience in this form, and that would be very helpful, but he might not even need it if his sense of smell served a similar purpose. On top of that his sensitivity to changes in the wind was amplified greatly and he would notice anyone sneaking around while invisible in a heartbeat. Ares was a walking, living, breathing, sonar pule that was constantly active and ready to locate threats. Unless somebody detonated a toxic warhead directly on top of him his senses would be sufficient to tackle any sort of subterfuge or subtle attempts at nearing him.
Perfect.
Everything was in perfect condition.
Ares was tempted to just start carelessly launching himself in various directions, high speed crashes and collision be damned. The speeds he knew he could reach if he exerted all his current strength were very appealing but Ares chose to start slow to get a proper feel for how to control himself as Garmr. If he was going to take Garmr out for a spin then this mutated mountain was the perfect place for it as he could set up imaginary goal posts on various spots on the mountain and aim for them with large leaps. For his first test drive Ares started off simple and just aimed a jump straight to the top of the first mountain. As long as he understood the rough distance and power needed he would be able to jump to the top of the mountain, move to the next one up, and repeat this process over and over until he climbed the entire mutated mountain in a matter of minutes. Of course he could improve upon this total time by skipping multiple mountains with a single jump and just running up them at full throttle too.
Combining accurate jumps with nimble sprints on all fours and Ares predicted it would be possible, with sufficient Garmr mastery, to scale this mutated mountain in about two minutes tops. It was a daunting record to aim for, and not one Ares would attempt to set because he had more important things to be doing elsewhere, but it was for sure possible. Maybe, now that Ares could fly freely across the ocean, he might revisit Isaz in the future for the sake of Garmr training in his spare time as there weren't many other suitable places to mess around with this form freely. He would worry about that later, though, as it was time for lift off. His first ever jump as Garmr was coming up and it wasn't exactly going to be a light hop on the spot either so he braced himself, focused whole-heartedly on the tip of the first mountain, and kicked of the ground with a sonic boom left in his wake.
Ares blinked as small rocky shards got stuck to his face while he hovered in the middle of the air, temporarily confused as to where he wound up after catapulting himself off the ground. Ares checked over his shoulder as gravity kicked in and he realised he barreled right through the mountaintop, shooting straight through it and sailing clean past his goal. Despite holding back, he'd overshot his destination by a considerable amount and had metaphorical pie on his face in the form of literal mountain shards. Ares shook his fur to clean himself, spun in air, and reached forward with his empty hand to grab the air and lock himself in place by overturning the rules of gravity. Ares seen 'Garmr' do pullups in the middle of the air with no support and copied his form to recapture that ability and take it for himself because it was incredibly handy. This wasn't something he could always do at a whim it's just that the air here was weak and convenient. Like how planets were weaker in lower domains and thus easier to destroy, because of a lower concentration of mana, the same was also true of the folds of reality and air in any given lower domain.
Less mana meant air was more susceptible to tricks like the one Ares was displaying so whether Garmr could grip onto empty space would be a matter of which domain he was in and how strong he was, thanks to his cultivation, relative to the domain average. In the case of Sheryashka, Ares' cultivation was already nearing the peak, he was only two realms away roughly, so he'd be fine. If he went into Vraizon as he was he might struggle to find purchase in the air and create an imaginary ledge. Maybe he could hold on for a few seconds before he was kicked off and forced to interact with gravity but it was still better than nothing. If Ares skipped Vraizon, however, and went straight to the next domain up he might not even be able to get a grip at all. Of course there were variables that could affect this assumption, such as the domain having an unusually low mana quality or quantity for whatever reason, but it was a general rule of thumb worth remembering. The same rule also applied to Voidwalk and if Ares tried to fly around freely in the higher domains he might not have an easy time of it. Luckily Voidwalk wasn't flight, so it was less susceptible to mana interference in this way, but it was, again, worth remembering in case Ares ever found himself stranded in a higher domain for whatever reason. He'd need to test on the fly and figure out what worked and what didn't by himself whenever he entered a new domain.
As for what Ares was up to now, he could easily correct his missed jump and land on the mountaintop but he was more interested in improving his accuracy while he had some time to spare. He wasn't going to spend an entire day doing this but if he could at least consistently his a nearby location, which in this case meant the tip of a mountain from its base, he would be satisfied. Ares didn't think this would take him too long as his last jump was actually angled perfectly, it was just imbued with too much force is all. His sense of direction when aiming was surprisingly pretty great, and he wasn't even using Omniscience to calculate angles, so he figured he would get this down pat and develop a surefire methodology for internalising distances and how best to approach them. Of course Ares couldn't calculate necessary velocity and the output of his muscles on a whim, so he would be more so reliant on gut feelings and impeccable instincts, but he was Garmr right now and such things were a basic part of who he was and the talents he possessed. Ares jungle gym-ed his way back to the mountain base and began a trail and error session in which he utterly demolished the base mountain after an hour or so of attempts. He was like a stray missile gone rogue, constantly blasting into the mountain and ravaging the outermost layer.
If anyone was unaware of what was happening all they would see was a black blur crash into the mountain and create miniature explosions that toppled the landmass over and over again. It looked as though foreign invaders set up an artillery at the base of the mountain and kept striking it to try and knock out the bottom of the mutated mountain to make the whole thing topple. Of course it was now known such a thing was impossible, the mountain would just float and rearrange itself, but it was impressive that damage was even being dealt to the mountain to begin with. People had tried this in the past but were unable to really leave much of a dent. Dominus had used rather sturdy material to create this mountain so typically Sheryashkan weaponry would barely even leave a dent... Garmr's head, though, was an entirely different class of weapon. For starters, his thick skull was perhaps tougher than the entire planet itself. On top of that, the horns were sharp enough that they could rival Ares' war aura flags and perhaps even do better than them in a direct piercing contest. Throw the two together and blasting through this mountain was actually a piece of cake... Not that Ares was trying to in the first place! He was just failing to control his jumps! It was embarrassing to fail this hard for this long but it was only really because of one specific issue...
Ares couldn't reduce his strength beyond a certain point!
As Garmr, he managed to make the jump to the tip of the mountain on demand provided he started from further away. Using this neat trick he could make the jump 100% of the time so he'd actually already pretty much familiarised himself completely with measuring the distance between himself and his goal, applying the right amount of force, and generating the right amount of momentum to get there cleanly. That was perfectly ok and he was no longer struggling with it. The problem, though, is that this still required taking multiple steps back from his starting point... As in he had to be nearly half a mile back to make this work at all. If he stood at the base of the mountain even a light hop turned him into a beam of black light that sped uncontrollably through the air and subsequently the mountain. This was a very real issue he'd stumbled across; he was too damn strong! No wonder 'Garmr' got bored in this body, he couldn't even really weaken himself to other peoples' levels! He was a planet devastating giant who was forced to sit in containment wearing a straight jacket lest he touched anything and accidentally turned it into dust. Ares would be bored too so he understood where 'Garmr' was coming from but right now it was causing other issues entirely separate to that and needed to be addressed... But 'how, exactly?' was the question!
Ares spent another hour not even trying to jump but rather just sitting around in Garmr form and contemplating the myriad possibilities. He did eventually come up with a potential method but whether it was going to even be possible to make it work was questionable... Though as Garmr most things were possible so perhaps his worries were unfounded. Ares' thoughts had drifted to telekinesis, his utilisation of two different pressure types to cause objects to hover and be moved around through the air according to his demands. He wasn't planning on making use of telekinesis as Garmr to slow himself down, though maybe weighing himself down with elegant pressure control could also work, but his plan stemmed from this idea and did something similar. Telekinesis was pressure pushing against pressure. This stopped one pressure from endlessly pushing the affected object in one direction. What if Garmr used his own strength in the opposite direction he was also currently using his strength to force a slowdown? As in, what if he jumped forward but then immediately threw himself backwards afterwards to cancel some of his forward momentum and reduce his speed?
If Garmr's forward jump was at a hypothetical 10 'power', and he then jumped backwards with a power of '9', he could wind up with a '1' power jump, essentially. He could also use this to reverse direction in mid air, generating negative momentum which was a hilarious thought as it probably broke some law of physics somewhere along the line, but just the initial idea was needed to slow himself down as was necessary to make this jump. Maybe at some point in the future he would learn to control Garmr better, and wouldn't need this trick but, until then, something along these lines was imperative or else he would just go around destroying buildings and landmarks because he was unable to tread lightly. Sure Ares was a basically a wandering calamity™ at this point, he'd left nothing but utter chaos wherever he journeyed, but if he could perhaps tone it down somewhat the locals he passed by would surely appreciate it! It also made his life harder not having full control over his movements so he spent a third hour practicing this conceptual idea until he made it work exactly as he'd planned and envisioned it. There were still some occasional slipups though...
There was one attempt in which Ares failed to make his second jump go backwards so he leapt forward twice in a row instead and shot off into the sky like a rocket. He only landed from this boosted jump nearly a minute later and had to dash all the way back to the starting point. Granted it didn't take him long to return, Garmr was speedy as can be, but it was still a walk of shame he would have rather not had to undergo in the first place. Thankfully this particular method of failing was a one off and so it didn't happen again. Most of his failures were a result of not committing hard enough to the backwards jump and so he primarily failed by overshooting the target. How far he sailed past the mountaintop did keep decreasing with every attempt, though, and he finally got the hang of it after his thousandth or so attempt. All things considered he managed to learn this stunt pretty fast which was great news because he was now ready to climb! Plus he didn't want to stay here any longer as he would no doubt be hassled by locals if he hung around. A few people had already come to investigate rumours of some titan dragon-wolf headbutting the mutated mountain for some unknown reason and Ares was not some kind of public performing monkey!
Though Ares had to waste some time practicing it wound up being pretty important as he now felt much more comfortable undertaking the ascent of the mutated mountain without worrying he would fall off, come crashing back down the floor, and leave multiple craters in the ground with every slip he made. Falling off probably wouldn't even hurt him but it would also waste potentially even more time than just training would. Plus this was a good foundation for the future and he'd been planning on getting used to these new wolven controls from the start anyway. The mutated mountain had been the perfect playground to function as a tutorial zone and so he made great use of it as precisely that. Now all he had to do was put everything he learned together and charge his way up the spiralling mountains until he reached the peak. Ares could feel some adrenaline building because the mad dash that came next would be exhilarating, like an extreme sport, and he was looking forward to it. Unbridled speed was one thing but measured control of it, expert navigation of a tight obstacle course up the mountains as he swerved between trees and pounced up slopes with impressive rapidity, was something else entirely. Ares crouched down, bent his knees, and took a quick but deep breath. It was showtime!