The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave found himself back in the sect, dragging a squirming Hunter over to the others.

He lifted him to his feet, pointed at him, and told Marven.

“Change of plans, pops! He will take over the job of recruiting disciples!”

“Huh!?” Everyone yelled at once.

“... What?”

Marven looked distraught.

“Where did this come from?”

“Oh, I’m going to be extremely busy for a while, so he must do. Either way, that’s about it, so, bye-bye! I’m going to be back after a while.”

“Neave, wait!”

“Hmm?” Neave gave Marven an impatient stare, “What do you want, old man? I’m in a rush.”

“Neave, you can’t just leave us alone. Ilkivir is still alive. What if he tracks the sect down again? There is no way we can just beat him.”

“Oh, yeah.” Neave fired a tendril of liquid spirit at Marven.

Marven immediately froze and waited the process out. It was highly uncomfortable. Once finished, Marven dropped to his knees, grasping his heart and panting for breath.

Neave pulled a large bag of rounded cores from his dimension ring and threw them at Marven.

“Some of those should be good. I’m sure you can become at least strong enough to stop him from slaughtering you all. Now, do whatever you want and stay alive, ok? Bye!”

Neave left the sect disguised as the young master and hit the road.

Now, it was wild assumption time!

First, Neave was pretty confident that the god, or… Astrador? Wait, how did he know his name? Neave was somewhat positive that the god never introduced himself to Neave.

Huh.

He must have heard the name in one of the many lives, or rather, deaths he had experienced.

Names aside, it was time to theorize! Neave was convinced that the god couldn’t leave the area around the chamber for some reason. There was a field of sorts surrounding the area. Neave could sense it, although it was faint.

This meant that Neave was effectively free to do whatever the hell he wanted outside of that area for as long as he wanted.

Neave ran through the capital's streets, masterfully dodging anyone passing and approaching the border.

His underground laboratory was terrific for experimentation, but Neave needed access to something he could only find in the wilderness.

Neave ran past the capital's border and shot out into the wild.

Naturally, Neave had to eventually find a way past Astrador, but he first needed opponents.

He seemed to have run out of corrupt demons. At least close to where he appeared. Perhaps there were more somewhere far away from where he started, but that didn’t change the core of the issue.

There was a finite amount.

The nightmare realm was an excellent place to test things with permanent consequences, such as death, but it was still lacking in the other equally important advantage Neave had in the hell loop.

There just wasn’t anything that could push him to grow.

Neave felt that Astrador didn’t know that he could create spirit. He based this assumption on the fact that the god inflicted the worst torture imaginable on Neave because he wanted to know what he did with the self-destruct combination.

Even with this aside, the god was entirely right. Neave’s power was limited.

Neave already had a ton of spirit powers; among those he had, very few had overlap. Luckily, none of them had any form of strong mutual interference.

This was expected since he directed most of his powers toward enhancing what he already was. Every power, except fire breath, actually no, even that, had a solid connection to a concept that already existed naturally in his body.

Integrate was tied to digestion, troll physique to his physique, fire breath and ignite were connected to breathing, which involved a certain amount of combustion, and so on…

Even shape-shifting, although that was a massive stretch. Heh. Literally. People could change their bodies, although after a long time and within a limited range, but it was possible!

Spirit powers tied to something already existing within one’s body were extremely unlikely to interfere with one another.

Spirit powers that allowed one to do something completely supernatural were an entirely different story. These powers could still be mixed and matched. Of course, it was possible to have several, but there was always an underlying risk of interference.

There was a reason why Neave hadn’t added any supernatural powers to his set yet. He was overwhelmed by choice paralysis.

Of course, he could always add more powers that tied into different body parts or bodily functions, but he was running out of body parts.

Evolving the powers he already had was a no-go too. Every creature in his spirit trial was already a platinum rank. The gigantic abominids were technically a diamond-rank threat, but they were so vulnerable to the acid that they became a joke.

It was possible to evolve those powers further, but Neave would never do that. If he kept going, he would push the size of the foreign spirit far above his own. This meant he would become a minor spirit within his body and relinquish control to an abominid.

Given that this was impossible because the abominid had no soul of its own, Neave would just simply die.

Sadly, all the ability-boosting powers were tied to creatures too risky to evolve further. Neave wanted to find some from an abominid, but the make-up of their spirit was too chaotic to construct something like that.

There was a reason why Neave needed the nightmare realm to challenge him. It was because he needed to be pushed to new heights by force.

Sure, he could fight Astrador, but Astrador was a god. He was just too powerful. Neave couldn’t even survive long enough to realize what had happened. Luckily, that form was only a piece, a shard of the god's power. It wasn’t the whole god himself.

Yet, even a fragment of a fragment was too much for Neave to handle.

So he would have to catch up first.

Neave contemplated his current options. The first option was to gobble a ton of precious treasures to boost him further. Possible, not a bad choice, but the effect was limited and diminished with further use.

He had already consumed quite a variety of treasures from Maecy’s ring, and the rest had been lost.

Sigh.

That would naturally have to wait until he found a way to secure a lot of treasures. He still had quite a few in his ring and would use alchemy to construct some incredible stuff. But it was one thing at a time now.

Next up, there was eating monster meat. Or just monster parts. Integrate was incredible, and Neave suspected it was responsible for much of his overall power. However, he had consumed so much stuff already that the effect was painfully minuscule. Perhaps a few diamond-rank monsters would do him good, but he would have to be able to kill them first.

Next up, physical training.

…

“Hmm.”

He thought of it for a while.

“No.”

It wasn’t that it wouldn’t work, but rather that the effect would be minuscule. Not to even mention that it would take forever to build up an impactful amount of strength.

What he did feel would be a good idea, however, was martial arts practice. Mainly due to his thunder nerves, it had a potent ability to help him memorize specific movements. This would be a fantastic way for Neave to solidify his skills and get used to using his full strength.

The main problem was that he didn’t have a good way to do it. The power would only have a permanent effect if he trained outside the nightmare realm. He would also have to have an appropriate opponent.

Ever since he had gained this spirit power, the only opponent he fought against that wasn’t wildly inferior or superior to him was Ilkivir.

Perhaps he could fight Marven?

…

Actually, wait, that was a brilliant idea! However, he would have to give Marven a while to get his spirit powers and get accustomed to them.

So, what else?

Neave gasped.

Blacksmithing. He needed a weapon. But… He couldn’t take one into the nightmare realm. Could he make one there? Yes, actually, he definitely could, but he couldn’t get a monster core. He could only use empty spirit.

That was a massive downgrade.

Neave paused.

Wait a minute…

Neave could take others with him to the nightmare realm. He had confirmed this with Hunter. Out of a corner of his eye, he spotted a slime, ponderously preparing for a jump.

Neave grinned ear to ear.

“Now… Wouldn’t that make for a fun little experiment?”