That went well... Maybe a little too well... Ares was transported over to a remote hill and was analysing the success of his previous endeavour. He didn't have much time to consider this, as the tribulation was chasing after him like an eager puppy, and so he'd have to finish up that soon so he could safely reach the tenth stage of sensory enhancement, but he roughly understood the implications of his actions. He hadn't intended for things to get that heated, and he certainly wasn't expecting such a flashy tribulation from a mere stage of cultivation, not even a realm, and so now he was going to have to pay the social price. He'd made himself a target. He was now a contender who was willing to barrage everyone indiscriminately so long as it benefitted him; that was the understanding everyone else would have of him going forward which created a good deal of friction. Plus Ares' means were unusual and his general aptitude for cultivation clearly frightening. If the next challenge coming up was also something that pit cultivator against cultivator then his actions had probably him earned the ire and caution of all the remaining challengers. It would be entirely understandable if they ganged up on him to try and force him out of the running for these tryouts as he was now a common enemy.
Sure Marlar's display was also noteworthy but he hadn't taken out thousands of other people doing it! Ares was only originally intending to destroy the lanterns and go up a stage of cultivation peacefully, mass genocide was an unintended... Side effect... One he couldn't take back and would simply have to deal with the consequences of his actions for. If the remaining challengers all deemed him to be a threat, so be it! Bring it on, chumps! Ares was the mass destruction specialist, and there could only be up to a hundred challengers who made it through to the next stage, so he fancied his odds! Sure there were some experts like Marlar and Gram who were risky to deal with, and threw a wrench into things, but Ares was willing and ready to take on all comers if need be! It was too late to apologise so fighting his way out of the hole he dug himself into was the only reasonable path going forward. Besides, a considerable show of force might also be enough to deter the more reasonable people so if they weren't going to respect Ares they could damn well fear him instead!
For now, though, Ares simply retreated further back along the hill so as not to drag any more people into his tribulation. Marlar was currently the only other person on the hill but when the rest of the cultivators eventually arrived, if they showed up right in the middle of another golden tribulation, they might just attack Ares on sight for being a colossal nuisance. The Training Field encompassed the entire courtyard, so it's not like anybody was in danger because of Ares' antics, but it's not like getting killed didn't still hurt. If Ares was being obnoxious and constantly damaging people eventually he would earn a negative reputation that spread beyond these tryouts and that was a no go in his book. His tribulation trick during the lantern trial was perfectly fine, clever even, but continuing to bully people with it afterwards was not going to be acceptable. Even Marlar had been glancing at Ares to see if he would continue being a menace or act responsibly and reasonably take a quick leave now that he was out of the lantern area. After all, it was relatively unknown what kind of personality Ares had and so this was good opportunity to get a rough idea. Of course anyone who used a tribulation as a weapon had to have at least somewhat of a devious streak in them but Ares' willingness to go suffer the remainder of the tribulation by himself in a remote corner was telling. If nothing else, he was considerate to an extent and that was good enough for Marlar. Told spacian may very well have tried to push Ares away from the victor area, off the hill entirely, with water jets if he didn't comply willingly. Of course Ares would have fought back but there was no need for it to begin with and so Ares had made one less enemy and it was a crucial one too. Just because he could handle this fishy shepherd that didn't mean he wanted to if he could avoid it, picking fights with multiple experts at once could very well lead to his downfall if he wasn't careful.
While Ares was getting struck by lightning over and over again, and toughing it out like a real pro with is annihilation pressure, the rest of the cultivators still participating in the lantern trial were once again strutting their stuff. Though Gram only had one lantern left before he could taste the fresh air, and savour the sweet atmosphere, in the victor's resting area, basking in the glow of admiration of his followers on the spectator benches, he was beaten to the punch by the cloaked woman. Her long-charged art was let loose almost incautiously after the black cloud floated away and eased up on the skies around the lanterns, finally permitting everyone else to continue taking the trial at long last. "Sky Ablaze." That was the name of the art the woman fired but it wasn't one Ares have ever heard of so, even if he was within earshot. he wouldn't know what it did. It wasn't a unique art, it just wasn't one that would appear within the confines of the Blade barrier as it was a relatively new addition to the conflagration aspect. It was quite a high level fire pillar art too, devised by a higher domain expert who then shared it on the internet so that his name would be penned down in the history books forever, so not many people in the lower domains should realistically be able to use it due to the complexity of the art... And yet here was the mystery woman, not only chanting it but adding extras to it before firing it. She showed an impressive degree of art modification on the fly as tampering with an art like Sky Ablaze was respectable. Ares really wasn't the only unknown variable here after all!
As for the function of the art 'Sky Ablaze', the mystery woman had effectively summoned a portable sun. The art gathered fire mana into a burning sphere and then let it rocket high into the sky where it floated regally as if a sun God's avatar had descended upon the mortal plane. Once it was up there, various heat rays emitting from its core would congeal and form whip like burning tentacles, using the sun as a body through which they were controlled, that could burn everything they touched and reduce the target to ashes. The tentacles would mostly function on instinct so they were somewhat mindless and lacked in finesse, mostly just striking at anything nearby so this art was somewhat infamous for friendly fire if used carelessly. Usually, that is, as this time the mystery woman's addition to the art was a sort of homing / lock on function. She could deliberately designate targets that the tentacles would endlessly strike so long as the targets remained within their range. She could also freely update the target list remotely so long as she was still alive and breathing so it was a change that might not have seemed like much but it made an unruly art obedient and infinitely more functional in a wider variety of situations. It was a fantastic change and make it as fast as she had revealed some of her true potential as a powerful mage. Maybe she was decent in physical combat too but this was evidently someone who'd dedicated a large portion of their life to studying and altering magic in labs before field testing it personally, gradually refining even the most basic of arts over and over again until she understood them better than even their own creators. She was an experimenter, basically, and that was a fairly niche but respected profession. If an art someone devised just wasn't cutting it, and needed to be jazzed up a tad, then seeking aid from experts like this woman was costly but ultimately potentially life saving. Ares knew someone similar, Lizzy, and her input on Echo had done serious wonders that paved the way for it becoming the versatile art it is today. Lower mana costs, faster casting, chanting, and mana manipulation, improved power, variations, and adaptations. People who were good at this sort of stuff were highly valuable and knowing at least one was considered common sense in the wider cultivation society. It wasn't even unheard of for these experimenters to be hired personally by stronger cultivators and then effectively become personal assistants. In some cases, these assistants were more famous than the person they worked for as they were capable of truly elevating a person's worth. Ares had no need for such a person by his side; he basically did that work personally and nobody could help with his destruction magic anyway due to how foreign it was. He also had Lizzy if he ever needed technical assistance and Dominus for the weapon's pillar.
Getting back on track, the summoned sun was large. There were about twenty tentacles branching off it at the woman's current level but that was still plenty enough to go on a lantern burning spree and secure herself a ticket to he next stage of the tryouts with relative ease. She could have easily blasted away double the targets in the same time span, and even destroyed hundreds every few seconds at a consistent rate, but this was enough for now and she didn't have to go overboard. It was already enough to display her mastery over art adaptation and Sky Ablaze itself was fairly indicative of her strength as a cultivator. Even if a person at bloodline awakening could use such a challenging art summoning twenty tentacles was rather absurd. At most, ten would be the expected amount but she more than doubled it and, at that point, whether it was because she adapted it excellently or she was just an outright magic genius didn't really matter. She'd shown off more than enough to let people know, without room for doubt, she was a talented cultivator and would inevitably become a big name in the future so long as she wasn't found dead in a ditch somewhere due to her own overconfidence. That was probably her goal, to dissuade others from attacking her, a potential cultivator superstar akin to other big names, going forward so as not to have to worry about third parties constantly picking fights. She wanted to join the Brotherhood, not get involved in optionless brawls with people that were much weaker than her during these trials. Marlar ignored the other cultivators out of kindness, this woman refused to interact with them because she just didn't care and didn't want to. Now that she'd unveiled partial fractions of her prowess she'd likely be left alone. In that sense, she was way more successful than Ares... He attacked others and only really unveiled his talent at pissing people off...
That aside, after the mystery woman, Gram was quick to finish what he started by piercing the tenth lantern with wrinkles in his brow and shame etched in his resentful gaze. He wasted no effort on anything fanciful and simply shot out a plain Wind Blade from his sword to seal the deal and get this event over and done with. The Wind Blade was strikingly powerful, and could honestly be confused for a much stronger art if one didn't pay enough attention, but it was still just a basic sword aspect art at the end of the day and nobody was going to be wowed by such a thing. It had been fired out in resignation and anger as Gram was now more interested in moving over to the hill and questioning the lunatic Ares for interrupting his swagger and pzazz in order to claw back his reputation. Gram had a bone to pick and Ares had offended him deeply, right down to his pride filled core. The only way to redeem himself was to defeat Ares soundly and leave no room for discussion. There was still an angle for Gram to take in that he was going easy on the competition earlier and had basically been ambushed by the evil Ares looking to take advantage of his generosity and put him down in public. 'Heroically defeating the insidious cur in head on confrontation for the sake of my honor' was the headline and Gram's fingers were already itching to type out his social media post after he was done duelling this rude wretch. Unfortunately for him and his ego Ares was currently busy with his tribulation and so scolding him, and declaring his intent of rivalry henceforth, as a true nobleman should, with a white glove, would have to wait.
Last but not least, of the major characters popping up on the victor's hill, Alice stepped out and onto the grass with a cheery attitude after being teleported here right after Gram. She grinned and winked at the three cultivators already present but was promptly ignored by all but Marlar who gave a solemn and calm nod before facing away again. Alice felt somewhat depressed, these were not her kind of people! Where was the enthusiasm? The liveliness? Literally even a single word from any of these people!? Bah! At least Ares was communicative even if he was ignoring her too as of late. Rather, he was ignoring her because she was being troublesome and darting around like a rabbit on crack cocaine and he'd probably speak with her if she stopped pretending to be Alice.
Anyway, as for how Alice destroyed her lanterns... Nobody really knew. She'd done it discreetly when nobody was looking but the truth of the matter was that she used string and small throwables to accomplish her goal. The string was razor sharp and could be whipped around at range to slice through targets while shuriken, throwing daggers, and other such projectiles were launched with sleight of hand that was dextrous to the utmost extreme. All of this happened in under a second or two as everyone else focussed on developing their own winning strategies. She could have been the fist person through to the next round but figured drawing that much attention to herself was a poor idea and so waited for the other big names to leave their respective marks on the competition first. Technically everyone who mattered was already aware of her rough identity, so hiding it was pointless, but it was more of a habit ingrained into her soul after countless years of wet work. Blending in and never openly displaying her cards, that was the sort of person she was hence her subtle assassination of the lanterns. The original Alice, though? Not so much. In fact, Alice's family had already caught on to the fact that there was something off about this fake. Alice was never the kind of woman to be this talented and getting through this stage in the top five was jarring enough to warrant closer inspection. The jig was up but this fake Alice enjoyed the jig too much to quit halfway through. It seemed she would keep up pretences, fruitless endeavour though it was, right up until the very end. She might not even transform back until the tryouts were finished and everybody had left the planet. Maybe she enjoyed mimicking the kind of person Alice was as it was in line with her usual playful personality. Either way, she was moving onto the next round with no room for doubt and the only problem she'd face in her foreseeable future was explaining where the real Alice was to her family as they would have plenty of questions about that matter. Still, it was easy enough to talk to them in a quiet place, off to the side, at some point so it was only a small issue.
Crapshoot.
That was the best way to describe the rest of the lantern event now that all the highly talented people were gone. Ares, whether he knew it or not, had acted as a great equaliser, resting the field of play and putting everyone other than Marlar and Gram, who already had lanterns on their tally prior to Ares' plan, at the starting line once more. Sure the mystery woman and Alice sped through the trial from that reset point but everyone else? They were starting to launch their own arts, which was great for them and all, but therein lay the problem; it was all happening all at once. The sky became a rainbow of unidentifiable magic with all sorts of unique arts colliding in ways that were impossible to predict. Strange monsters were summoned, optical illusions were aplenty, and elements unified into colorful shapes that were tough to comprehend. None of this lasted long, however, as another round magic that was the polar opposite would inevitably soon come crashing in and suddenly the strong flying monsters were polymorphed into fluffy sheep that crashed through the sky, optical illusions were shattered and replaced with hellish, burning reality, and colours became dull and monotone everywhere anyone looked. It was impossible to tell what even the most basic magic, stuff like Fireball, would do or become in this mana-ridden clusterfuck. A Fireball could very easily become a ball of ice in the blink of an eye or maybe it would just straight up evaporate, it really was a toss up. One simply had to throw magic out into the wind and pray, pray as hard as humanly possible it snuck through the crowded sky unharmed and hit its target.
As was predicted, many of the people still here at this point were only able to get one or two lanterns due to their own lacking skill but even doing so was enough to cost other people their own opportunities the longer this went on for. It would soon start to reach a point where getting ten lanterns was mathematically impossible for a lot of people and that wasn't the half of it either. As the number of lanterns shrank, the severity of the hostility of the competition for those remaining grew fierce. It was almost impossible for anyone to actually hit the last lanterns with how much crap was being thrown at them and suddenly everyone realised Ares had actually done them a massive favour. It was this bad with a few hundred cultivators left... If Ares hadn't mowed down the thousands of excess earlier this would be a never-ending nightmare! It was already bad enough that some cultivators were looking to start thinning out the opposition so, if anything, Ares hadn't killed enough!
What everyone was slowly realising was that getting ten lanterns was one option... The other was to just murder until there were only a hundred participants left as then losing would be impossible. If you had the power to kill those who were better at this challenge than you then that was also a valid option and so a mini bloodbath soon formed as more and more people gradually realised this. The cultivators who were still taking part in the challenge were naturally those with less ranged talents than those who passed so guaranteeing their path to the next stage by brawling in a more familiar manner was an agreement that they came to non-verbally but decidedly unanimously. The tryout took a strange turn but not an unexpected one as the rules of this trial were set up to encourage cultivators to be selfish, do whatever they preferred, and do it well.
Progressing through the tryouts if you were powerful enough was actually incredibly easy, the real purpose here was to lower the number of participants while also getting a feel for what they were capable of and how they approached any given problem. What sort of solution did they trend to and were they capable of seeing the bigger picture? Could they think outside the box to guarantee their own success or would they rely on their honed talents? In the case of Ares, he was a bit of a strange one. He both fought outside the box and overwhelmed with sheer power so he'd received a passing grade in Finnian's mind for sure as both options were followed through on to a high degree. Of course the lanterns were still the real test, and even those Finnian was uninspired by could still move along so long as they met that criteria, but it's not like he was an unfeeling robot or anything. He liked judging people too and, so far, this first round had gone to Ares in his book. Sure Finnian wished he could have seen how Ares would have tackled this challenge in a more normal way but this was fun too and unlike anything he'd seen in all the years he'd run this specific trial.
It wasn't the most creative approach ever, mind you. That award went to a spatial magic expert who repositioned all the lanterns around himself, inside the fenced area, on the ground. He then used magic to plant explosive gadgets inside every single lantern simultaneously. Basically, he filled the arena to the brim with lanterns that would detonate the second they were attacked which caused a serious problem for those who wanted to pass as they had to effectively blow themselves up with every swing of a weapon. They were too close to the lanterns so improving their target tally meant hurting and potentially killing themselves. Not only did the spatial magic wielder easily get his own lanterns, he was able to effectively kill off a ton of the competition even when he was no longer in the trial area. His plan lingered long after he left and he took out a whopping ninety five percent of all other competitors. Even that guy didn't become a disciple in the Brotherhood, though, so it just went to show how difficult these tryouts truly were and would inevitably get going forward. The first and second trials were known to just be filters for the third, that was where the real challenge started. The only reason for this early se of trials was to reduce the final number down to around five wherein the most talented challengers could be tested properly, on an individual basis, and it was really possible to get a proper feel for what they could do at their respective peaks.
"Alright, that's everyone!" The now-bloody trial ended eventually and there were seventy-eight total winners who scarped their way to the hill-shaped podium. Finnian was tempted to wait for Ares' tribulation to finish but apparently he was ok as Ares gave him a thumbs up to signify he was still capable of listening to the rules for the next challenge. He was stuck in a golden deluge but he was using his divine sense to abandon his beaten body and spectate Finnian so it was 'fine'. Plus the tribulation would end soon, it was already starting to die out and was on its last legs, so Finnian nodded and clapped his hands to gather everyone's attention. "The second event will start in about twenty minutes so rest up nicely until then and recover however you wish to. As for what the next challenge is... Prepare yourselves for a battle royale. They've become popular as of late, and they're great for thinning down the numbers we have here, so we'll go with that. The battle royale will end when there's only... Let's go with five remaining cultivators. That will be a perfect number for how I want to end these tryouts with the third challenge afterwards.
Five winners.
No more no less.
Ah but, just some friendly advice, ganging up on strong people is highly ill advised. For your own sake, you'll want the last five people standing to be the strongest amongst you. The third trial is both a head to head competition and a team game all at once so you'd be better off having powerful companions than not as your overall performance will reflect better and I'll be more impressed. Still, do whatever you want. The battle royale event will take place inside the fenced area you were just in, the lantern target practice region, so it's not a complicated environment or anything. It's simply a wide open and flat land. There won't be any fighting on the outskirts of a large arena, any subterfuge and assassination attempts to whittle down the competition slowly inside a dense jungle, nor will there be any time for strategizing atop safe cliffs with a high ground view. It's a huge scale brawl from start to finish. It doesn't matter how many people you beat but there's no harm in showing off either. Use the next twenty minutes to figure out how you want to go about surviving and feel free to form groups if you really are that desperate. It's none of my business!"