The Jester of Apocalypse

Dukean and Neave returned to the library after several months of being stuck inside the realm. Once Dukean finally starved, Neave ejected all his blood to widen the pool in the underground chamber and left.

They found themselves face-to-face in the outside world again. Dukean looked quite distraught. He bowed to Neave.

“Thank you, that was a valuable experience. I never thought I would experience death and live to tell the tale.” He shook slightly as he said those words.

Neave didn’t rush him too much; he knew how Dukean must feel. He was a tough kid, but starving for months was an experience one didn’t walk away from unscathed. Once he had given him the few seconds of silence he deserved, he immediately went into speed mode.

“No time, give book and core, now!”

Dukean knew exactly why Neave was in a hurry. Rather than returning to his sect premises, Dukean pulled the book out of his dimension ring.

He had a copy of nearly every book in their library and many interesting, niche books, collecting which was his hobby. That was the only reason he even knew he owned what Neave needed.

Then, they had to move to a slightly secluded part of the library so Neave could privately round his cores up.

Dukean gave him a few cores that held rather interesting spirit powers. All the cores were gold rank, and the monsters Dukean would face in the spirit trial would be a difficult challenge even with rounded cores.

Dukean had no spirit powers. Standard practice in many high-end sects. Young disciples could usually afford to get more powerful before choosing a spirit power, so they could guarantee they would possess at least one platinum-rank ability without evolving and taking a chance.

Neave raised an eyebrow after inspecting the five monster cores Dukean presented him with. The cores were metal, fire, ice, earth, and air manipulation, respectively. The way Dukean picked his powers went against everything Neave believed was optimal practice.

The way Neave built his powers was by aiming at synergy. Dukean seemed to build them by stacking several individually powerful abilities. It wasn’t a terrible way to go about it, but it was pretty antithetical to Neave’s style.

Neave would ask Dukean why he chose those powers but decided it could wait. He was under an unknown time constraint.

Neave returned to the room that held the herbology and alchemy texts, just in case he needed any other knowledge. Overall, remaining within the library was a good idea since he was confident he would need extra knowledge almost every time he returned.

He comfortably seated himself in a chair, quickly read through the book given to him by Dukean, and blacked out.

Once he appeared back in the nightmare realm, unsurprisingly, he found Astrador waiting for him with a wide grin.

“Why didn’t you bring your friend over again?”

“If he wanted to, he could have tagged along. I would have permitted it. Given that he didn’t even ask, he probably doesn’t want to starve to death again.”

Astrador laughed.

“I’m surprised you can even comprehend his reasoning. I assumed your mind was too far gone to empathize with regular children.”

Neave scoffed and ran off, ignoring Astrador.

Soon enough, Neave found himself back in the experimental cave. The slimes were still going strong. Neave found a secluded section of the caverns and picked a random obsidian plant to start his work with.

He ran his mind through the knowledge he found in the book and sighed. He had what he needed now but didn’t have what he wanted. He wanted something to simplify the process but received a massive pain in the ass process that would take him years of work.

Strengthening one plant was a relatively straightforward process, but Neave needed to artificially create a breed of this plant that could independently reproduce. That was going to take a while.

The first thing he needed to do was to find how these plants multiplied in the first place.

For a moment, Neave had the chilling thought that these plants didn’t reproduce at all. That was a silly assumption and one that he dismissed almost immediately.

Once he started looking, he discovered the way these plants reproduced.

It was simple. The roots of the plants would extend and pop out of the ground elsewhere. It couldn’t have possibly been more perfect for Neave’s needs.

Technically, this meant that every obsidian plant in the entire realm was the product of a single plant interconnected through all the roots.

Neave doubted that the connection was entirely uninterrupted. Some roots would have broken off by mere chance, but that still simplified the process drastically.

This discovery also finally made Neave realize why he had struggled to imbue the plants.

The life force and spirit he imbued immediately dissipated through the roots and spread through the entire realm. This instantly diluted the imbuement, and the effect became negligible.

Now, Neave had two options. Either attempt to do the process on a connected plant and improve all the plants in the realm at once or disconnect one by breaking the roots and working on it individually.

The choice was as straightforward as it could possibly be. Neave immediately cut one of the plants off and surrounded it and himself in a dome of crystallized spirit. Doing every plant at once was an undertaking Neave couldn’t do even if he had billions of times more resources. So he would have to work on one and help it reproduce.

He isolated himself inside a dome of crystal spirit primarily to keep the experiment firmly sealed off from the outside. This way, any ethereal spirit he pushed into the room wouldn’t dissipate, and any liquid spirit he imbued into the plant, and the ground, wouldn’t simply flow away.

The first thing Neave did once sealed off was create the optimal plant cultivation environment.

He released a good deal of life force into the air first. Then he filled the dome with as much ethereal spirit as it was willing to take. Which, apparently, was quite a bit. There wasn’t even a limit, as far as Neave could tell, but at one point, Neave felt that if he continued, the crystal dome would shatter.

Neave used his life force tendril technique to slowly imbue the plant with as much liquid spirit and life force as possible. This wasn’t a lot, it seemed. He could only infuse a minuscule amount of life force into the plant.

The plant seemed more receptive to the liquid spirit, but not by much. Neave also firmly imbued every grain of soil and stone around them with liquid spirit. The dome extended through the ground as well, so the liquid spirit wouldn’t flow away.

Now, it was time.

Neave remembered the formula for the qi technique he needed to use and mastered it in minutes. There was a problem with the fact that he was only at the beginning of the foundation realm, but all that meant was that he would have to repeat the technique enough times to get it to work.

Neave used the technique on the plant. He felt bits of qi seep into it and stick.

Neave wanted to groan. The amount of qi stuck inside the plant was so miserably tiny that he would likely have to repeat this process millions of times. It took him around ten seconds to use the technique.

That’s not that bad.

Neave had spent more time achieving less. It could take years, but once he got into the flow of things, time would pass before he knew it.

Luckily, the process wasn’t very intensive on Neave’s qi or other resources. He was just sitting there, which meant that his vast resources could keep him going for a hundred years if need be. The qi technique required so little qi that he could let his natural qi recovery rate keep him going.

Neave lost himself in the process. Once tens of times turned to hundreds of times, and hundreds of times turned to thousands, time flowed like a calm river, and Neave immersed himself in the temporal tides.

***

Neave wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he started, but he knew it must have been a while.

It was apparent, given that the person he saw reflected in the smooth surface of the crystal dome had clearly aged quite a bit. His hair was long now, draping over his back, and his face looked slightly older. Neave almost resembled his young master form now, although he was still considerably shorter.

Neave never thought that spending time inside this realm would result in him physically aging. He wasn’t sure why that had never crossed his mind. He had experienced his hair growing out before, so physical growth should have been a logical extension of that process.

He had more than enough nutrients to sustain his growth, and if time passed as usual, there would be no reason for him not to.

This was bad. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it did mean that Neave had limited time he could spend in the realm with a body that fully represented the body he had outside.

Naturally, he could use shape-shifting to shrink himself, but that wasn’t optimal. Still, it was a minor setback and something he treated as more of a curiosity than something meaningful.

The important thing, however, was the plant in front of him.

Neave grinned widely. The feeble obsidian plant was no more.

It still looked quite feeble. Actually, it looked even more fragile now than it used to.

The branches had shrunk, and what used to be pitch-black obsidian branches had grown transparent, with only a slight shade of gray within.

Appearances could be deceiving, however.

Neave touched the prickly points with his finger. It was sharp enough that it could cut into even his finger.

Testing the plant by trying to break the branches with his finger resulted in Neave discovering that this plant was harder than any material he had encountered.

Neave wished he had something like this plant outside of this realm. Most weapons that possessed a quasi-spirit were made from metals, given that you had to be able to melt the material first. Glass could serve the purpose, but ordinary glass was trash compared to the mighty branches of this plant.

Neave wanted to break off a bit of the branch to melt some spirit into it.

Neave paused.

Did he have to break the branch off first?

His mind whirled with ideas. There were slimes here. Monsters. He could create a massive monster core.

One he could use to bestow this plant with a spirit power.