"Oh, oh, oh, that sounds amazing." Ares exclaimed, "Since that's the case, do I have some awesome ability?"
"Hmm, there are pros and cons." Hecate raised an eyebrow and pondered for a moment, then replied, "The good thing is that when you practice those magic spells with side effects in the future, the side effects will no longer affect you."
"What about the cons?"
"The downside is that no matter what magic you learn, you won't be able to enjoy the benefits that come from attribute compatibility," Hecate continued.
Ares rubbed his head, thought for a moment, and then exclaimed, "So, what this means is that I'm an outsider, I don't get local benefits, and I'm not subject to local jurisdiction?"
Hecate nodded, "That's pretty much what it means."
"So what am I good for?" Ares pointed at the blue cube and asked, "Could it be that as an unregistered individual, I can break through that seemingly incredibly powerful barrier and just go straight in?"
"Of course not." Hecate smiled slightly, put her hands on her hips proudly, and said, "But your teacher once developed a very, very powerful magic that only men like you, who have no origin, can use. Come closer, I will teach you that magic now!"
…
A moment later, within the imaginary space, Hecate looked with satisfaction at an amorphous energy block floating before her.
She praised, "Not bad, not bad, as expected of you. A Main God learns magic quickly."
The amorphous energy block rippled slightly, and then Ares's voice emerged from it, "Teacher, is this what you call a very, very powerful magic? Turning myself into a mass of… magical power?"
"Not magical power, it's an Aether block." Hecate wagged her finger to correct him, "This is a type of hypothetical attribute. It should have been converted into one of the four attributes: earth, wind, water, and fire, but the peculiarity of your origin allows you to cast this magic, allowing you to maintain the form of Aether. Hmm, it seems my conjecture was indeed correct; only someone without an origin like you can…"
"Hmm? Conjecture?" Ares asked suspiciously, "Teacher, you're not experimenting on me, are you?"
"Cough, cough, you're overthinking it. No matter what, I, Hecate, would never experiment on my cute disciple, alright?" Hecate coughed twice, waving her hands repeatedly to cover up, "Besides, this magic of yours is just the beginning. There's a whole string of subsequent ideas that I once imagined but couldn't complete. If you complete them, you might be able to create a very powerful magic."
After placating Ares, Hecate waved her hand and said,
"Alright, go try it now. If you maintain this Aether form, that thing's defense mechanism should not classify you as a sentient individual, and the defense mechanism will no longer block you."
"Then I'll give it a try." Ares hesitated for a moment, then struggled to split his Aether-transformed body in half.
"…" Seeing this, Hecate couldn't help but retort, "Is it really necessary? I definitely confirmed that this device had no offensive capabilities before letting you in."
"Of course it is. Better safe than sorry. When facing the unknown, I must protect myself, and the same goes for you, Teacher."
Ares replied while painstakingly controlling his current "body" as he floated towards the blue cube.
His spirit entered the physical interior of this cube, and then he looked up and saw the infinitely distant barrier that Hecate had spoken of. Ares controlled his body, floated in front of this barrier, and carefully separated a portion of the Aether that his body had transformed into, slowly approaching the barrier.
Unexpectedly, this barrier truly ignored Ares completely, just as Hecate had said, allowing his portion of Aether to float inside. The device seemed to regard him as a mass of energy that could be recycled and utilized.
However, once inside, this part of him lost contact with the outside world. It seemed that the concept of "infinite distance" also caused his mental signals to decay.
Since there was still a part of "himself" outside, he wouldn't truly die. Ares continued to go deeper. After crossing this barrier, he "found" himself in a pure white space, and at the center of this space was a small blue light, wrapped in a faint membrane of light.
Although that light membrane looked fragile, in reality, it should be the so-called "Eight-Dimensional Spiritual Particle Barrier" that Hecate was utterly helpless against.
Ares continued to control his Aether-state body, came before this halo, and then carefully extended his "hand" towards it.
He, in his Aether state, encountered no obstruction. In fact, a suction force emanated from within the halo, pulling him in abruptly.
…
Hecate, waiting outside, began to extend her spiritual sense to carefully observe the movements of Ares's portion after seeing him enter.
Although she was the one who let Ares in, she didn't fully intend to exploit Ares. After all, Ares was her magic disciple, and furthermore, Ares, who only wanted to live a peaceful life, was quite likable to her, given her own laid-back personality.
However, after Ares's Aether block crossed that conceptual barrier of infinite distance, Hecate's spiritual sense could no longer penetrate. She waited for a while, then began to grow anxious outside, but since a part of Ares remained outside, she had to maintain her teacher's dignity in front of him, so she could only turn her back to him, feigning calmness.
"Could he really have been eaten?" The Moon Goddess, with her hands clasped behind her back, looked at the cube in the sky and muttered to herself in a low voice.
However, just as she became impatient and wanted to try forcibly breaking through that conceptual barrier of infinite distance to see what was happening inside, she heard a soft "hum" sound in her ear.
Subsequently, a dispassionate voice spoke in the language of the Greek Pantheon:
"Command confirmed, object to be parsed detected, commencing parsing."
"Object parsing in progress, please wait."
Accompanying this voice, Hecate saw lines of light slowly descending from the blue cube, beginning to scan the starship cube.
"Did it succeed?" Seeing this, Hecate breathed a slight sigh of relief.
At this moment, the portion of Aether that Ares had transformed into also floated out of the cube. The two Aether blocks merged into one, and then slowly transformed back into the War God's original form. Seeing him emerge, Hecate quickly composed her expression, feigned confidence, and nodded to Ares, "How was it? Disciple, I didn't lie to you, did I?"
"It was alright." Ares nodded distractedly, not paying attention to Hecate's current appearance.
Through the mental reintegration, he also had the memories of what had just happened. When he, transformed into Aether, was sucked into the core of that cube, he hadn't had time to change back and contact the core as a sentient being to obtain the device's operational permission. Then, he saw that within the Aether block that his body had transformed into, the black crystal suddenly jumped out on its own. This thing spontaneously reverted from the Aether's material state to its solid form, and then Ares didn't know what operation it performed there, but anyway, this thing hacked into the cube's core, helping him obtain the highest operational permission for this cube.
And after obtaining the highest operational permission for this cube, Ares also understood its true identity: it was a similar alien observation device to the "mooncell," the main stage where the "Holy Grail War" took place in a parallel world.
Ares didn't know if this thing was placed in Tartarus in his current parallel world, or if there was another one on the Moon in this world. In any case, Ares had now become the highest authorized user of this device.
However, this thing is not as versatile as the machine that constructed the Holy Grail War. That machine was built to observe Earth and human history, evolving to that extent after many years of development. But in the current era, human civilization has just begun, and this machine only retains some observation records from the First and Second Divine Ages.
But it was originally a device of the same level as the yusei Ark, and it was more than enough to parse a damaged core of a starship.
"How long will this thing take to parse?" Hecate asked, watching the light rays continuously scanning the core.
"I don't know, but it definitely won't be something that can be completed in a day or two." Ares shook his head, "Let's go back and wait and see."