The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave held the copy of the sword. Could he create a sword of a different shape—something bigger, sharper, or more powerful?

Just as he was about to repeat his experiment, the abominid he had immobilized bled out, and the spirit trial was over.

…

“Great way to spoil the mood.” Neave mumbled.

He focused on his troll muscle spirit power to see how it had changed.

Ah, fuck.

There was a huge reason why higher-ranked cores were more valuable than lower-ranked ones. It was technically accurate that any shitty spirit power granted by an abominid could transform into something realm-shatteringly overpowered. But this was only if one got impossibly lucky.

The way spirit powers evolved was unpredictable. If one had to bet on evolving an ability twice or more, they were shooting in the dark. The more likely outcome was that one would end up with some random shitty power.

Neave was somewhat lucky with his spirit powers, but not all of them went in the direction he had hoped.

Hard kidneys were a great example. His kidneys were right up there with his heart as one of the most resilient parts of his body, but this was mostly useless. Only on the very off chance that the outcome of a fight hinged on him preserving his kidneys would such a niche power matter.

His fire lungs had a similar issue, it wasn’t a subpar power per se, but it was far from what he would have preferred.

Similarly, although shapeshifting was great, it could have been something far more directly powerful, like a hyper-blunt-force-resistant body. It already gave Neave an elastic body, making his bones almost impossible to break, but this effect was heavily side-lined by the shapeshifting aspect of the power.

His troll muscle spirit power had just been added to the list of ‘not useless, but far from optimal’ evolutions. It evolved from troll muscle to troll physique. His muscles didn’t change much, but his entire body was more troll-like. He had acquired massive regeneration capabilities.

That was, sadly, right about it.

This was a terrible outcome. Neave would have infinitely preferred something like superior troll muscle.

It was technically possible to have several different powers affecting the same organ or part of the body, but this wasn’t a cumulative effect. Having both troll muscle and, for example, ogre muscle would be pointless since the mutually exclusive effects of these different types of muscle would interfere with one another.

Some spirit powers, like supernatural strength-boosting powers, could circumvent this limitation. Neave could easily add troll strength to his spirit power repertoire and boost his strength without altering his body. Only in sporadic and specific cases could a spirit power change his muscles further and still be beneficial.

He was hoping that would be the power troll muscle evolved into.

Troll physique wasn’t bad either, however. Some added toughness and regeneration was perfectly fine with Neave, even if it did suck a bit. He could also get something like a regeneration-boosting spirit power and push the effects of his regeneration into a different realm by burning life force.

He was about to pick another spirit power and initiate a trial again, but he felt something strange within his spirit. The first thing that came to his mind was that he had fucked something up.

Uh-oh. That isn’t good.

He felt like there was something within his spirit.

Neave was familiar with extensive spirit damage, and the thing he was currently sensing felt similar to having a literal hole in his spirit. He calmed himself. There was no need to panic.

It was true that it would indeed suck if he had done something that would kill him. He didn’t want to go back yet, since he depended on testing at least four or five spirit powers to make the best decision when he returned to reality.

But it also wasn’t the end of the world. Once he died, this spirit damage wouldn’t have ever happened in the first place.

Neave carefully probed around this unusual phenomenon and grew increasingly confused as he did so.

First, this didn’t feel like damage per se. It just felt different, unusual. As he probed around this new aspect of his spirit, he felt his consciousness slowly slipping away.

Neave appeared within his spirit realm.

…What the?

Did he accidentally start another trial? No, that didn’t seem to be the case. 

Neave grinned.

Well, that was an unexpected but welcome development. As the realization of what was happening slowly sank in, Neave realized how ridiculous this was.

He was unconscious and within a realm similar to the one in the loop. On top of that, he was also inside his spirit realm. While inside this other realm.

That was a ridiculous phenomenon, but the number of doors this opened for Neave was so great that he couldn’t even comprehend the potential benefits.

But as he calmed down and rationally thought about it, he couldn’t think of any benefits to this either.

True, he was within his spirit realm, and yes, technically, he could practice stuff in here or work on his martial arts. But that seemed to be just about it.

Time flowed faster within the spirit realm than outside, as apparent when undergoing a spirit trial. He didn’t know how much quicker, but it was undoubtedly a lot.

This meant he had a lot more time. But how could he spend that time from a practical perspective—looking for new, useful true strikes? Prodding around, hoping to discover something new?

He realized he was holding the sword the same way he would if he was inside a spirit trial.

The sword he created with liquid spirit sat on the ground near him.

Neave looked around his spirit realm. It looked like the beginning area of the loop he had spent countless years trapped in. But it had suffered quite a beating from all the spirit trials.

And the signs of that beating are everywhere around me.

Neave wasn’t entirely processing the implications of this yet. In the book about spirit powers, he read that some people had spirit realms that were inherently more useful for conquering trials than others.

Neave's face practically deformed into the picture of ecstasy. It wasn’t even really a grin anymore. He bent over, picked up a rock, and threw it.

He picked up another rock and threw it as well. Then he picked up two stones and put them one atop another.

Neave laughed. This was just too funny. He focused his liquid spirit channeling again, and this time materialized another sword, but not quite the same as the one he usually got. This one was heavier, longer, and a lot sharper.

Then he threw the old sword on the ground. He knew exactly where he had appeared when he entered the spirit realm.

This time, he left the spirit realm and returned to the same spot, holding his new sword.

Neave moved again, hopping a few meters to the side, and left the spirit realm again. Then, once he reentered, that was precisely where he reappeared.

Now it was time for the final test. Neave created a large rock, stepped on it, and positioned himself perfectly to attack. Then he left the spirit realm and started a spirit trial.

He evolved the steel nervous system ability.

Once he reentered the spirit trial, he stood on top of the rock he had created and in the perfect position to strike.

Oh my, isn’t that convenient?

The spirit trial was quite torturous. Once he had evolved his shapeshifting power, the rubber champion became an even smaller and more challenging piece of work. On top of this, he had the massive troll and now a gigantic steel golem.

By the time he finished the spirit trial, his spirit was truly battered.

Neave decided to wait and use his life force to reconstruct his spirit slowly, one bit at a time. He felt he couldn’t fully recover from this, but it didn’t matter since he was in the conveniently-inconsequential realm anyway.

The steel nervous system ability evolved into… Well, it was pretty hard to name this new ability. It went in a completely unexpected direction. His nerves could now deeply memorize specific movements. Using these movements was a lot easier and could be done entirely automatically.

To the point where he could be sleeping, and the ability would still work.

He wasn’t sure how useful that would be, but it seemed convenient. Right now, his priority was fixing his spirit. He didn’t know how long had passed, but he felt his spirit regain stability again.

His qi reserves had also recovered almost entirely from his run away from the demons. While one couldn’t cultivate further without proper rest and food, recovering qi reserves was different. Qi recovered passively, the fastest when one stood still. And Neave’s reserves recovered relatively quickly, given how tiny they were.

Once his spirit had healed, and his qi reserves were serviceable, he returned to his spirit realm. Neave smiled and got to experimenting. He focused, and soon enough, a shimmering, beautiful cloud of glittery white mist surrounded him.

Wow, now that is beautiful.

He could feel it slowly shifting around him and settling into the realm.

The first time Neave tried using ethereal spirit, he assumed it did nothing since it disappeared. Now it was time to give a more honest attempt at manipulating it.

He tried layering liquid spirit over it, to no success.

Neave sighed. Out of all three forms of spirit, ethereal spirit was the one he had the greatest expectations of, and those expectations had been thoroughly crushed so far. He was still confident it must have some uses that he hadn’t discovered yet.

Neave chose first to do some recon around his spirit realm.

It was truly tiny. The mega-abominid alone took up almost ten percent of all the space within his realm. 

Well, that wasn’t strictly true.

His spirit realm didn’t necessarily have ‘borders’ or ‘limits,’ but the further he went from the center, the less stable it became. At first, this was just a strong sense of unease and lack of control over his spirit manifestation, but very quickly, the floor and objects turned immaterial and began morphing.

This was when he would start taking damage to his spirit.

Neave went over to recheck the border, trying to measure precisely how much space he had. The moment he approached the unstable area, he frowned.

That… What?

Something was off. His spirit realm felt stable up to a bit further out than usual.

“Ohohoho, don’t tell me.” He giggled and materialized more ethereal spirit. It fluttered and whirled around in the air as the spirit realm greedily absorbed it.

The stable area extended just a bit further once again.