The Jester of Apocalypse

Kalen stared incredulously, watching the man spit on the ground and sit before him.

He had seen his fair share of eccentric cultivators, but he had never seen someone spit on the floor. Was this man insane, or was he intentionally disrespecting Kalen?

The obese man just stared right back at the merchant. He just kept staring. Kalen again asked him whether he needed anything, but the man kept staring in complete silence, his gaze distant. It was hard to judge exactly what the man was looking at due to his lazy eye.

Eventually, the man laughed and slapped his massive stomach like a drum.

“Nice to meet ya’ Kalen, ye seem like a lovely lad.” The man spoke and spat on the ground.

Kalen winced again.

“Sir, please do not spit on the pristine marble flooring. Otherwise, I will be forced to remove you.

“Ok.”

The man went silent. Kalen was about to ask the man for the third time what he wanted, but at this very moment, the man pulled out a monster core and placed it on the table.

Kalen scoffed. This core seemed to have S rank shape at first glance. But there was far too much transparent spirit around the edges. Cores having transparent spirit wasn’t unusual, but there was a distinct distribution that was highly unlikely except in the case of forgery.

A unique substance could be used to ‘round up’ cores. However, only fools would fall for such a trick, and Kalen was no fool. He grabbed the core, preparing himself to throw it at the man's face and kick him out, but as he touched it, he froze.

This core wasn’t fake.

It was a gold rank core holding a stone manipulation spirit power. The power was nothing special but had an S-ranked shape, specifically a seventh-grade S rank. Almost as high as the roundest core that had ever been found.

Kalen fumbled with the core for a bit until he regained his composure. This had suddenly turned into a serious business meeting indeed. Such a core was precious. Kalen put on a straight face and spoke to the man.

“What would you like to do with this core? I am assuming you have come here to sell it.”

The man’s gaze grew vacant again. Then he spat again, this time spitting on the table. Kalen cringed but didn’t want to compromise the deal, so he endured it.

“Ah, lad, I’d love to, but I got a more specific request than that. I’m here to trade the core for other things I need.”

“Indeed, what would you like to trade the core for?”

The man proceeded to list an arduously long list of spirit powers, materials, precious herbs, crystals, natural treasures, etc.

Kalen perked up as he listened to the man list everything he wanted. This was precisely the sort of thing someone would stock up on if they wanted to start a sect. And judging by the specifics of what the man wanted, he knew what he was talking about.

Not only had he listed fundamental spirit powers that would be excellent for younger disciples, but he also seemed to be sticking to large amounts of essential ingredients rather than exceptionally rare or precious ones.

He had misjudged the man, but the more he thought about it, the more it felt like this was what the man had intended from the start. This cunning individual played up a distracting persona that would make others look past him.

Kalen gave him a rather generous deal. After all, getting on good terms with this man as soon as possible would be good.

After all, at the end of the day, the only reason Kalen even sat on this tower, in the far reaches of the poor part of the capital, was to make deals with those bound to escape the outer layer.

***

Neave watched the merchant put all he had requested into a dimension ring. He took the ring, nodded, and left.

He once again transformed into his young master disguise and headed back to their new sect premises.

Neave was done with the shopping, and excitement burned in his veins. He had gotten his hands on a ton of stuff he wanted to experiment with. He tried to set up a place to conduct his experiments next.

Once he reached the sect premises, he found that Harel and Gabrias were even more frightened of him than usual. Marven looked at him with concern.

“Ah, don’t worry, old man, I was just out shopping. No murder had been done!”

That did not ease the tension one bit.

Neave invited everyone to come outside. There, he unloaded a tremendous amount of high-quality material from a dimension ring.

Gabrias gaped. The price of this material must have been absurd. Neave unloaded gigantic boxes of wood, stone, and metal that would allow them to make a much larger and much sturdier sect hall.

After unloading, he told them to go crazy while he planned to do something else. Neave transformed into a literal worm and proceeded to dig into the ground. They stared incredulously as he vanished into the soil.

Gabrias chuckled a bit. This was getting so absurd he wondered whether he had completely lost his mind. Harel gaped, and Marven cringed as ideas of what Neave could be up to came to mind.

Eventually, Marven declared it was time for them to start building their sect premises earnestly, and they began preparing for the construction.

***

As Neave dug through the ground, he marveled at the power of his set of spirit powers. Shapeshifting could do a lot more now that he had evolved it. He still couldn’t transform into other species, but he could morph his body into the shapes of different species.

Integrate was a lot faster than digesting things than absorb. It still put everything he digested directly into his blood, but pure blood, or rather, sacred blood, was very good at keeping harmful substances out of his body.

As for where those substances went, Neave had no clue. They appeared to just vanish into thin air.

This effectively meant Neave could get rid of all the dirt and stone in his way by eating through it. Eventually, he judged that he was deep enough underground and decided to start his project.

Neave ate dirt and stone until he carved something roughly in the shape of a room. Then he pulled special stone bricks from his dimension ring and started lining the walls and floor. He heated the bricks with his fire breath and used the life force tendril to seal the gaps.

Eventually, he created a medium-sized room. The stone bricks were designed to seal a chamber from outside perception and interference, and Neave ensured this place was properly sealed.

This little room would be the humble beginnings of his laboratory!

He pulled out several objects, such as tables, chairs, and crystal lanterns, that he used to decorate the room. Once he was done with that, he pulled out a set of fire-proof bricks that he used to construct a furnace.

Neave pulled out a book from his dimension ring. He had bought several books covering basic subjects, but he needed to visit a local library, preferably one with high-end knowledge.

The book he pulled out talked about the basics of smithing. It covered how to make a furnace and the basic processes of weaponsmithing. Neave didn’t care much for the techniques as much as he did for the specific design of the furnace.

One thing that had suddenly become very obvious to him was that this room was completely sealed from the outside. This meant that he had nowhere he could release the smoke.

Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about that since some of the more advanced strategies for smelting didn’t involve any fire but instead used a particular type of fire crystal, some of which he had luckily purchased.

Once he was done with the furnace, he also pulled out the alchemy station he had purchased. Neave liked this one. It had a bunch of fancy pipes and tubes and cauldrons and stuff.

He again noticed the lack of air ventilation but judged it to be okay, probably. He was concerned that he may die from suffocation down here. Luckily, he was confident that his spirit powers would allow him to survive long enough to see whether or not that would be a problem.

The only other thing he had set up, for now, was an extraordinary set of interlocking bars with many strings and ropes tied to it. This was a station designed for golem production. The structure was meant to keep the different limbs in place during assembly.

After he finished, he pulled out a set of monster cores rather than starting with any of the experiments.

They were already quite round, but most were weak, in the bronze and iron ranges. The powers within were direct boosts to strength, speed, endurance, toughness, regeneration, cognitive abilities, perception, and dexterity.

None were body-modifying spirit powers, meaning they acted as a supernatural boost to their respective aspects.

Neave simply rounded them up, consumed them, and evolved them all until they reached platinum rank in power.

He didn’t want to risk any evolutions to diamond rank with these powers since it could potentially result in a monster capable of reaching the top of the mountain, and he didn’t want to deal with that. A diamond rank threat would spell death for Neave.

As promised, he defeated the spirit trials by doing little more than just lazing on top of the steel mountain-cone and picking his nose.

Not all of them evolved linearly, which was to be expected from low-rank spirit powers.

The strength boost ended up evolving into willpower of might. His strength was greater at all times, but his will influenced the effect.

The speed boost evolved linearly to a much stronger speed boost.

The endurance boost evolved into a rather convenient power that increased Neave’s maximum calorie capacity by a huge margin. Coupled with his integrate ability, this would come in very handy.

The toughness boost evolved into a very unusual ability. The best way Neave could describe would be as distance from death. It increased the amount of total damage Neave could take before he died. 

The regeneration power evolved into a power that could regrow lost body parts.

Are you fucking kidding me?

This was an exceptionally lucky evolution, which was to be expected, given how many chances he was taking. Neave cackled as he realized that, combined with his troll physique, this made him even more of a cockroach.

The boost to cognitive abilities evolved linearly. It was a simple power that allowed Neave to think faster. It didn’t make him smarter or anything. If he were stupid, he would still be stupid, just quicker. This would come in handy with his ability to boost his perception of time.

The perception power didn’t entirely evolve linearly. It expanded. It wasn’t just a quantitative boost to his perception. Neave could now sense things that he wasn’t even aware of before.

The way the air moved, the structure of objects he was looking at, the potential of anything he set his eyes on, the inside of his spirit, and so much more. It felt like an entire layer of reality had been peeled off.

As for the dexterity boost, it evolved fully linearly. But this wasn’t particularly noticeable. Neave was already incredibly dextrous, so it was hard to tell whether much had changed. He supposed it would be easier for him to make fine movements now, but in fighting, this power wouldn’t be a make-or-break advantage.

Neave got off his feet, stretched a bit, and got to work.

There was a lot of experimenting that needed to be done.