The Jester of Apocalypse

Harel stepped forth, fury clear in her expression, “Oh, we should just die now, huh!?”

Marven restrained her, but she just turned around and yelled at him.

Dukean looked severe, “Are the demons on the move again!?”

Hunter and Gabrias were quiet, and while Hunter kept looking at the others, Gabrias looked as if he had lost something important.

Neave looked at them, unsure of what else to say. One thing was clear, though. They weren’t safe here.

He wasn’t safe here, either.

Dukean approached Neave and shook him, demanding answers, while Harel quietly seethed in Marven’s grasp.

Marven looked at Neave and simply nodded.

Taking a deep breath, Neave finally collected himself enough to properly think it through.

This realm was a trap. That was almost certain. His first instinct was to leave as soon as possible, but… Was that really the right choice? Perhaps dying prematurely could allow the manipulator to take hold of the others, one way or another.

The presence of black plasma spirit within the monster cores was frightening. If it spread to all the monsters, that would mean losing their chance to test spirit powers, making training a far riskier endeavor.

Finally, Neave got tired of Dukean’s interrogation, so he grabbed him by the arm and threw him across the room, “Alright, I’m not going to kill you. But, the nature of our stay here will have to change.”

Neave sat down and explained his fears about the black substance within monster cores. It was a patchy explanation at best, as he omitted the part about mind manipulation, so they weren’t exactly clear on why he feared it so much.

But… Well… It wasn’t that hard to understand, either. It was clearly some form of foreign influence and capable of manipulating monsters. Extrapolating that consuming that substance could be bad wasn't too difficult.

After he explained himself, Harel called him a dumbass for rushing to decisions, and the others couldn’t help but agree, including Neave himself.

Although he had agreed to let them stay inside the nightmare realm, he wasn’t calm about it. No… Neave was already making plans on how to absolutely ensure their safety.

Not a single one of them would be touched by the manipulator. No matter what.

***

After their talk about the black substance and the demons, Neave first interrogated Gabrias about his sketches. The man passionately explained everything he was planning, and Neave immediately put everyone to work.

***

For a while, construction projects effectively became the life of the Falken sect members.

Neave had created several tiaras to grant everyone at least some form of telekinesis to speed things up. The reason why he chose tiaras instead of crowns was utterly petty, and he didn’t want to explain himself.

The first thing that was done was extreme reinforcement of the main chamber. Really extreme reinforcement.

To Neave’s surprise, Dukean knew the inscriptions for creating a teleportation platform. It was surprisingly uncomplicated and, luckily, didn’t need any unattainable materials.

Well, technically, the creation of teleportation platforms usually did require a few key, costly ingredients, but Neave had an easy way to circumvent this requirement.

The metal that had to be used needed to be resistant to spacial turbulence. Otherwise, it would be rapidly torn apart.

Conveniently, ordinary hardness could substitute this function perfectly fine. The metal simply needed to be really freakin hard.

It did require some further compensation for the lack of high-rank metal, but Neave’s skill with inscriptions easily solved that problem.

The other reason why they were usually so expensive was the power source. It had to be a rather potent monster core, and it had to be of at least A-grade roundness.

Another easily solved problem.

This allowed them to create a near-perfectly solid metal barrier around the main chamber. And the main chamber no longer had a door. It didn’t have any openings effectively. Usually, it would need at least a tiny hole somewhere so two teleporters could connect, but the openings for roots served that purpose just fine.

Getting into the main chamber without knowing the inscription for the location of the other teleportation platform was damn near impossible.

A similar ordeal was also replicated with the other chambers, making the prospect of something breaking into them far less likely.

With that, they finally began with their serious construction.

***

The tiaras were fantastic for carrying things around but weren’t optimal for shaping objects. So, Neave created rings that could do that as well. Dukean simply used his spirit powers for that.

Gabrias changed his plans for the ball dome and instead made plans for a walled-off circular underground fortress.

After the painstaking process of creating the enormous metal wall, which required many trips into caves to gather more materials, the fortress was at least tentatively finished.

Now, it was time to renovate the interior as well.

***

Gone were the unrestrained, wild caves of the old. Now, the inside of the radius of their fortress looked entirely different.

Forty-seven large, relatively naturally shaped chambers filled the inside of the fortress, and leading from one to the other were perfectly tidy, reinforced hallways.

The natural-looking chambers would be turned into natural habitats, where Neave planned to create a safe zone for monsters. He would grow plants there and ensure monsters could grow without being corrupted by the manipulator.

Sadly, these creatures would never become a real threat in combat, but that wasn’t why he restrained them like this. They needed monsters to grow and evolve into a large variety of creatures so they could test different types of spirit powers.

Ironically, as silly as it may seem, tracking those powers down would be much easier once they were outside. Crystal Palace, for example, had an immense variety of monster cores, holding a vast collection of different types of spirit powers. These were gathered over centuries of empire-wide wars against monster populations.

All one needed was enough money and a detailed-enough description of the desired power.

Neave had insanely reliable methods for growing monster cores as he wanted, but there was no way he could compare to that. Nearly anything they could discover here likely already existed in the collection of Crystal Palace. Barring perhaps the unique glass substance.

Still, it would serve its purpose.

Once they were done with this, Neave and Gabrias discussed the necessity of the ‘Divine Tower,’ as Gabrias called it. He claimed that building that tower was imperative, while Neave simply called him a dumbass who was getting carried away.

For now, they only had two more things to do.

The maze outside the fortress and shaping the habitats.

***

The maze was significantly more straightforward to create than any of them had expected. It wasn’t that surprising, however. After all, all they really had to do was shape the caves into relatively straight hallways.

The reason why they needed this maze was simple. Anything that tried reaching their fortress would either have to be powerful enough to break through the exceptionally sturdy walls or wander the hallways to reach the barrier.

The hallways, however, weren’t going to be easy to explore.

Neave had plans of filling them to the brim with countless golems.

With that being done, there was only one thing left to do.

Form the habitats.

***

Harel observed one of the many creeks that flowed through the chambers as she shaped a hole and placed a small sapling inside it.

She was infinitely frustrated with Neave and his rash behavior. However, she had to admit it. Making these habitats had been really fun. And frankly, quite relaxing.

At first, she thought they would be a drab, plain habitat for the monsters, as all the others had been.

To her surprise, Neave went the extra mile to line the ceiling with beautifully textured glass, which reflected the many lights lining the ceiling in a way that made it almost look like some sort of ethereal sky.

And it reminded her of the chamber she practically grew up in.

She felt strange reminiscing about her past. It was bittersweet, to say the least. As she hung in the limbo of drive and desire, she couldn’t claim she had moved on. Perhaps one day, she would find something to carry her onward yet again.

***

Neave had delegated the overwhelming majority of the work to the others. It was mainly set up already; the habitats simply needed to be organized.

After chasing Gabrias away, who still desperately wanted to build the tower, he finally began the next step of his plans. Creating the golems.

Neave already had a solid idea of what to do, and he had puzzled out several fixes for the previously encountered problems. Yet, he knew it still wouldn’t be that easy.

But this was something worth doing either way.

When he returned to reality once again… He would have access to higher-ranked materials. And with that… Well… Golems created with those wouldn’t be nearly as limited as the ones he created now.

As it stood, Neave had four cards to play against the messenger. His allies, mighty weapons, the fusion of spirit powers, and golem creation.

Oh, and the violet avatar power as well, although he still wasn’t entirely certain how useful that would be in the fight.

It was easy to assume that the golems would be another extra weapon in the arsenal, but they were far from ‘merely’ anything. An autonomous, unlimited army of superweapons couldn’t be ignored.

Even by the messenger.

With that in mind, he finally sat before a pile of simple metal and glass.

It was time to perfect these things once and for all.