The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave was facing a stone golem. However, he wasn’t using true strikes or even a weapon.

He was fighting with his bare hands.

It had been a few days since he had started doing physical training. His arm and foot already looked the same as his other limbs. During these last few days, he had made immense progress. He had also evolved his purifying bone marrow ability, taking a chance and hoping he was right.

And damn, was he right. The ability evolved into pure blood. It not only purged every harmful physical substance out of his blood but also purged harmful qi. He ended up evolving the spirit power because eating monster meat was a tremendous pain in the ass. Whenever he ate monster meat, he had to consciously fight off the harmful qi. So even though absorb let him eat as fast as he wanted, he still had to slow down to expend all the harmful qi. 

That was no longer a problem. The only thing he needed now was something that would let him unhinge his jaw like a snake so he could eat faster.

It was starting to sink in how absurd his ability to round up monster cores was. Most cultivators with spirit powers only took a second power if they got their hands on a good one or if the evolution of their current spirit power was too unpredictable. Without the ability to round up the incredibly jagged and rough cores, Neave would have had to pass an utterly impossible spirit trial. 

Even if he was just talking about absorb and pure blood, that would mean four size boosts from one and an additional two from another spirit power. With jagged cores, such a combination of boosts would have him going up against two abominids armed with countless venomous claws, stingers, and jaws, both large enough to push him out of his spirit realm.

Even then, a four-times-evolved strength boost and a twice-evolved speed boost were more immediately helpful. But this was more useful in the long run. Hopefully.

Since Neave started his training, he had been growing in strength at an utterly remarkable speed. He was already as physically strong as someone at the beginning of the iron path. That might not seem like a lot, but any cultivator that achieved strength like that without a spirit power dedicated specifically to boosting strength would be an absolute prodigy. Merely by realizing that much potential, one could advance to the iron path anyway.

But his strength boost was far from the only thing he had gained. Everything from his toughness to the speed of his physical recovery to the sheer additional endurance he had acquired had increased tremendously. Eating such a vast quantity of monster flesh all the time was a truly incredible tool of progress.

Many of the powers he had gained had been surprisingly helpful, including the steel nervous system. He first assumed that would just toughen his nerves and make them more endurant to attacks. While it did do that, it also allowed for much greater control over his body. Not just that, but his reaction time and the speed at which his brain processed information seemed to have also increased.

Neave knew that his monster flesh eating wasn’t an infinite source of power. Technically, it was, but the quality and quantity of meat you had to keep eating grew exponentially the more power you gained from it. While he jokingly thought of the snake jaw unhinging power, the more time passed, the more he considered looking for something along those lines.

This idea wasn't floating around in his head for no reason. It kept popping up in his mind because he suspected one of his powers could provide him with something similar. Or at least something that could work as a substitute. 

Currently, he resorted to chopping monsters up into tiny pieces and just swallowing those pieces whole, bone and everything. He was even eating some golems just to see what would happen. Surprisingly, it made him a little tougher.

Even if swallowing it hurt like bloody hell.

His match against the stone golem was well over thirty minutes in. It was an almost humanoid stone golem, but its limbs weren’t the same size, and the head was small and featureless. The ability that surprised Neave the most was rubber bones. He didn’t even have to care that it was stone he was punching. If any attack put too much stress on his fingers, they bent a bit and then returned to the same shape. Hell, regardless of whether or not he put 'too much' pressure on his fingers, he felt practically no recoil, even when punching at full force.

Unsurprisingly, Neave couldn’t just bludgeon a bronze-rank threat with his bare fists, even at iron path strength. Well, not quickly, at least. It was already cracked all over its body, and Neave hadn’t been hit even once. He also wasn’t trying to destroy the golem, but he was rather just physically training his body. He treated a dangerous monster made of living stone like a punching bag. After he finished fighting the golem, he was exhausted.

He was not tired from fighting the golem, but instead, he was tired of doing such inefficient physical training. It wasn’t like he had any weights, so sadly, all he could do was free bodyweight exercises and sparring. He could do both for so long that he wasn’t sure he would ever get tired if he kept eating food.

Neave could do a million pushups if he kept eating food while doing them.

But he also wouldn’t get any stronger. Well, maybe if he did a million, he would have some benefit, but it wouldn't be time efficient. These exercises helped a ton at first. And by ‘at first,’ he meant in his first few hours of training. The speed and power of his recovery under the influence of life force, aided by his extreme consumption of monster flesh, rapidly made such training obsolete.

Neave used a true punch, and he utterly obliterated the stone golem. His true strikes had greatly boosted their power now that his baseline strength had increased by so much. Another thing that happened was that his spirit had also gotten more resilient. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it had just gotten tempered by all the abuse? That could be possible.

And now it was finally time to test out his newly acquired power. He wasn’t going to use a weapon, not at first. He went to a nearby cave and then ran inside.

He first saw several stone golems and a couple of abominids here and there. He could sense quite a few of them lining the ceiling, likely bat variations. They could technically fly, but their flight was about as stable as Neave’s mental state.

He ran into the cave and used a true strike punch to obliterate a small stone golem. A slightly larger one with several long limbs approached him and started swinging. Neave easily dodged all of its strikes and dispatched the golem with two solid strikes to the chest. Meanwhile, he was dodging the abominids and crushing those that got too close to him. These were still relatively small, and none were a considerable threat. 

The noise roused the ones lining the ceiling, and as they took flight and assaulted Neave, he simply blew fire in their direction. It didn’t kill them instantly, but it did daze them and make them drop out of the air. Then he proceeded to dispatch them one by one. 

He didn’t see the acid slime approach until it jumped at him. He dodged out of the way. It landed on the other side. Acid slimes were nasty creatures and not something that should be touched directly. So Neave just didn’t touch it directly.

He used the shockwave from a true strike punch to push the slime away, and then he just burned it with his fire breath. While acid slimes and their horrifying evolutions were horrible creatures, if you could keep them at a sufficient distance, they weren't the worst. Well, terror slimes could still squirt acid at you from afar, so maybe one should keep an extra sufficient distance. The further, the better.

From deeper within the cave, Neave spotted a giant centipede coming. These things were no joke, but Neave didn’t even budge. It lunged at him, and he swung his fist down in a karate chop, knocking the centipede’s head into the ground. As it got up, he kicked its head, launching it upwards. Then he jumped and slammed his foot into its midsection, snapping something in the centipede, and it dropped to the ground, dead.

That was when he spotted it. There was another monster coming from deeper within the cave. It looked like a statue brought to life.

A living statue.

“Oh, fucking hell.” 

The highly advanced golem lifted its hand, and rocks near its feet sharpened to a point. The sharp stone spikes launched at incredible speed toward Neave. He could have used a movement technique to get out of their path altogether, but he instead ran towards the statue, dodging the shards he could avoid and parrying or redirecting those he couldn’t. 

None of them managed to hit him, only blowing past him and smashing into the wall behind Neave, whistling and pewing as they ricocheted off the hard cave stone. Once he reached the golem, he delivered a true strike to its stomach, a kick to its head, a spin-kick to its side, then a triple combo punch to its torso. The ground shook, and his spirit faltered, but all his attacks only left relatively shallow cracks in the golem’s body.

But that wasn't bad news. Neave was surprised that he could deal any damage to the golem.

The golem swung at Neave, every punch holding enough weight to crush his body but none fast enough to hit him. The stone around Neave and the golem kept turning to sharp spikes aimed at Neave, but he avoided them and continued landing attacks. He got a nasty cut to his right calf, but he almost instantly sealed it with life force.

After dodging a kick, Neave saw his chance and crouched under the golem. Then he used a true strike to launch it into the air. As it spun around in the air, Neave set up a true strike kick, and the stone golem landed on his foot. He kicked it right back into the air and smashed it into the ceiling, causing several large rocks to fall off and crash to the ground. 

As it dropped back down again, it received another much heavier kick. It flew upwards so quickly that it broke off a massive chunk of the ceiling and bounced onto the ground. It still hadn’t broken into pieces, but the cracks ran deep. The golem twitched a few times and finally stopped moving.

Neave breathed out a sigh of relief. Even he wasn’t entirely confident facing gold-rank monsters. Those shards could have easily cut his body apart, and if any of its strikes had landed, he would have been blown to pieces. It took over a dozen rather heavy true strikes to finish it off.

Neave could fight against gold-rank monsters with relative ease, but only if he was a good fit against them. He didn't yet have a reliable ranged attack, so if he ran into something like a noble lava golem, he would be screwed. For as long as the monster wasn't too fast, too tough, or inherently did too much damage to lower-rank metals or Neave's bare fists, such as in the case of a lava golem, Neave could handle it with relative ease.

Neave was very confident his spirit had gotten tougher somehow. There was no way he could have endured so many true strikes just a week ago. And their power… Neave was utterly baffled by how strong some of the strikes he dished out were. His additional body mass due to the muscle he’d built and his extra strength had increased the potency of his strikes.

It wasn’t surprising that everyone who had seen him execute a true strike panicked. If they had ever witnessed someone at gold rank execute a true strike, they would have seen someone display a monstrous amount of power.

The more Neave fought, the more he realized how potent rubber bones were as a spirit power. He now felt only a tiny part of the backlash he used to feel when fighting bare-handed. His additional toughness contributed to that as well.

Neave dug out the core from the living statue. It was relatively smooth. Not even close to round, but compared to most jagged pieces of spirit he saw daily, it was quite a bit better. And the power was… Somewhat disappointing. It was just stone manipulation, a rather specific variant too. Not even close to the type of power he desired. For now, he leaned into the route of physical enhancements.

His most significant power in combat was his skill. It didn’t make sense to do anything else. The only thing he needed was abilities that would synergize with his swordsmanship. A better body achieved precisely that.

Neave collected the spoils of war and brainstormed ways he could get stronger. He would have to find a more efficient way to train to improve. He would keep training, of course, but he was getting rather greedy for more power, and inefficient, slow training irritated him greatly.

“Oh. Wait. Wait a damn minute.” How had he forgotten! He could generate spirit!

Wait. No, I have to… No, could I?

Could he make a weapon?

Neave was no master blacksmith, and he didn’t have the necessary tools. But he did have a practically infinite amount of spirit.

Any liquid could only acquire a single quasi-spirit. If you tried to melt a second monster core into a liquid that already had one melted into it, it just wouldn’t work. The size of a core mattered with spirit powers. But the only reason it mattered was that it could hold a spirit power with a greater capacity.

Neave could make the monster cores as big as he wanted, but that wouldn’t change anything about the nature of the power. The spirit Neave produced was, for lack of a better way to put it, empty. 

When one acquired a spirit power from a monster core, their spirit effectively 'trimmed the fat' before it absorbed it. That was how receiving only a 'singular' power from a monster core was possible instead of 'Enhanced strength (with a side of venomous claws, freaky eyes, green skin, and permanent hair loss).'

But it sure as hell would matter when making a weapon. The bigger the core, the better the qi conductivity. Since weapons don't already have a spirit, there is nothing to 'trim the fat.' Melting a core into molten iron when making a sword didn’t work the same as taking the spirit power for yourself. 

Rather than grant that power to the weapon, it made it adopt a nature similar to the monster the core had come from. More often than not, this was done with cores from an iron golem or metal slimes.

The power that was then acquired was still singular, sure. But it was achieved not through cleansing all the other spirit, but by solidifying it and effectively granting the weapon the quasi-spirit left behind by the monster.

Neave quickly took out some of the crappier weapons from Kamella's ring. Then he put one of them out in front of him. He blew fire into the sword, trying to melt it. He ran out of fire, but the weapon was just very hot.

“Crap.”

He devoured a ton of the abominids lying around to regain his energy reserves, then he tried again, this time from less distance. The heat hurt his face, but he fixed it with life force and endured. As the iron began melting, Neave concentrated and put a finger close to the melted part. 

A thin tendril of life force seeped out of his finger and into the molten metal. The life force evaporated the moment it touched the sword. Neave sighed. Of course molten metal wouldn’t be conducive to life force. But wait… Neave produced a bit of liquid spirit. He connected the tendril of life force to the spirit. It was draining on his willpower, but if he pushed his life force manipulation, he could maintain the life force tendril connection.

Neave focused on the potential of this experiment. Qi enveloped the floating ball of liquid spirit and the tendril of life force holding it aloft. He moved the spirit to the saggy, molten piece of the sword. The liquid spirit flowed into the molten piece of metal.

Neave flexed with all his might and…

The metal bent.

***

It had been a few days since Gabrias had set off searching for Neave. To his right walked a tall, bald, and burly man. He had a massive sword strapped to his back, and he was plated in beige armor. 

To his left walked a short brunette woman with a short sword sheathed to her side. She was wearing brown leather armor, but it was no ordinary leather. A few feet in front of him stood a man of average height. He wasn’t carrying any weapons. He had shoulder-length blonde hair, and he was wearing simple cultivator robes.

All of these people were on the first step of the gold path. They weren’t rushing the search for Neave. While the three gold path cultivators weren't in much danger, Gabrias wasn't safe. They had already run into several groups looking for Neave, and a fight had broken out once. 

The three gold path cultivators practically had to babysit the relatively weak Gabrias. Otherwise, their potential attackers would attempt to target him first, given that he was a weak spot in their group. If they lost Gabrias, the prospect of finding Neave immediately became much less probable, so Gabrias was utterly silent. 

These people were true warriors. The group that had attacked them was also on the first step of the gold path, but they had gotten utterly crushed in less than a minute.

These people were skilled warriors who had walked up to the gold path one step at a time. They had the skills, they had the equipment, and they had the spirit powers. All three of them had only a single spirit power. But all of their spirit powers were evolved several times, and they had effectively mastered their use in combat. Not just individually, but they maximized the synergy their abilities provided.

Another reason they were taking their time was that all the activity in the area had baited many monsters onto the surface. Nothing too dangerous, though, gold ranked at the highest, but that still meant they had to tread cautiously.

Gabrias still felt uneasy. He remembered the way that child had slaughtered the previous group. It was a sight he could never forget. Now he was going after him again. He knew that things were going to be different this time. The last group was a collection of warriors at the first step of the silver path. The first step of the gold path was in an entirely different realm of power. And these warriors were exceptional even for gold path cultivators.

But some small, irrational part still dreaded the moment they reached the child. All he could do was hope that part of him was truly just being unreasonable. 

***

The Emperor had been sitting on his throne for days already. He was getting reports of quite a distressing situation.

The child was being hunted down by several more prominent sects, mercenary groups, and even some criminal organizations. He couldn’t use his authority as the emperor here, sadly. Even if he tried, he would just be giving away that he was also interested in the child. He wished he could go off and find him alone, but sadly he was stuck waiting.

Waiting for those lazy idiots to show up. They had an unprecedented crisis, but he still couldn't expect a timely arrival.

He had sent her the damn message a while back and knew she must have received it. He would have to consider punishment if she ignored another call.

Just as he was thinking of sending out another message, the air shimmered in front of him, and a beautiful woman wearing red cultivator robes walked out into the throne room.

“Hello, Jeeves!”

Jeevian sighed.

“Hello, Beanna,”

Behind her, three others left the shimmering portal.

All of them cultivators of the diamond path.