The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave stood before the glass shrub, mouth agape.

“Ok, now I can see why Astrador reacted like that.”

Something still clawed at the back of Neave’s mind. Why would this destroy his entire realm? He thought back to the way the god phrased that question. What did he mean by your entire realm?

Was that another trick? Perhaps he was referring to the nightmare realm and not the outer realm? If that was the case, Neave believed him. Yet, he didn’t think he was being tricked. After all, even the manipulator agreed with what the god had said.

Neave wanted to pull his hair out in frustration. Why was everything so unclear? He could easily decide on his own if he had more information and the knowledge he needed.

But he didn’t. And he couldn’t.

“Fuuuck.”

With this ridiculous thing before him, the gravity of what Neave was doing was beginning to sink in. Now… What would he do about it?

Neave stopped.

He got up. Neave ran into an abandoned cavern.

He punched the walls, collapsing the cavern and crushing the stone repeatedly. After several minutes of venting his frustration, he stepped back and calmed down.

What did Neave know?

Astrador was bad. The manipulator was also bad. The devils were bad.

Neave decided. He would simplify things for himself and act off of the information he had. Astrador hadn’t known that Neave could create spirit. Judging by his reaction, Neave’s ability to do so was much more significant than even Neave thought himself.

That little detail quickly became the center of Neave’s thoughts. Spirit was a powerful weapon he hadn’t even begun utilizing yet.

Astrador claimed Neave could end up destroying his realm, but now that Neave thought about it, that was a perfectly acceptable risk. Monsters were growing daily, and the chaos they spread increased exponentially.

Eventually, they would likely destroy the realm anyway.

So fuck it, then. Neave laughed. Fuck it all. He could sacrifice many things for a greater purpose. The world needed to change because its current trajectory was taking it to destruction anyway. So why would Neave care that he risked destroying it?

He sighed.

That was a shitty way of thinking about it, and he knew it. He couldn’t even fake apathy toward the implications of such actions, but there was no alternative. No matter what he did, he felt like he was playing into someone’s hands. It was driving him insane, well, even more insane than he already was.

No matter what he did, he would be doing someone else's bidding. 

Even if he did nothing.

Neave strongly felt it was time to end that. This was what he felt truly belonged to him, his power, his ultimate goals. 

A path toward a better world. A path toward a greater reality.

So it was best he take a step back and start small. If he wanted the world to improve, there was only one place to start.

The newly built Falken sect.

“Aaaargh!” Neave screamed and kicked a rock, “But I can’t fucking do that!”

It was infuriating. He was being hunted by a heavenly messenger and needed all the power he could get. Everything was getting on his nerves since he felt everything distracted him from his primary goals.

Neave took a deep breath.

One thing at a time. Building this realm and turning it into a place where he could grow was still his priority. Until he could gain the right to have his own opinion on this subject, he needed to first get powerful enough to learn what the fuck was happening in the first place.

Neave returned to the plant. Feeding it a bit more life force didn’t grow the plant anymore. What it did do, was cause rapid growth of new offshoots of the plant to pop out of the ground.

Some of the sprouting bushes were already growing. Neave fed some of them individually, which helped them grow faster.

Rather than continuously feeding the plants directly, Neave simplified the process.

He released a ton of his life force, at least half of it, into the air around the plants. He could see most of them visibly growing at the influx of life force, but significantly slower than when he did it directly to a plant.

After experimenting with the plants, the cavern was filled with loads of short glass brushes. Neave was pleased with the work he had done.

Neave thought the plants were fine for now, so he went to one of them and broke off a branch.

At least, he tried to, but it was unbelievably hard.

It took a few true strikes to break an entire branch off. That was immensely tough, far more than expected. After taking the branches, Neave went off in search of a slime. Once he found one, he fed it a few chipped pieces of brush glass.

The slime died almost immediately.

“...What the fuck?”

What was the point of these bushes in the first place if they would just genocide all the monsters?

Neave spent a good while processing the pieces of the branch. He ground them up into fine dust, used a few alchemy techniques, although nothing he tried seemed to have a significant impact, and finally melted the dust into his blood, charged with life force and loaded with liquid spirit.

If this concoction didn’t benefit the slimes, Neave would wreck the plants and give up on the idea.

He reached for another slime and fed it some of the bloody liquid.

The slime writhed and jiggled aggressively, but Neave didn’t let it run away. He drip-fed the liquid, and it stopped squirming after a while. Neave believed the slime had also died at some point, but its monster core was perfectly fine.

Suddenly, the slime mutated in an instant. It grew more transparent, and Neave could see faint shimmers deep within.

It didn’t seem particularly powerful. In fact, it didn’t move much at all. Neave scratched his head and fed the slime a few of his limbs. It absorbed them surprisingly slowly, ponderously chipping away at the flesh.

Could this be an evolution that drastically weakened the slime’s absorption ability? If so, wasn’t it a considerable reduction in power?

Neave felt this was the case but soon changed this opinion. The slime shimmered much more brightly and began morphing. It turned into a small, misshapen transparent golem.

Now we’re talking.

Neave was satisfied with the work he had done. He intended to feed the golem more of his blood or something to get it to grow faster, but it moved on its own and attacked him.

Its attacks were appropriately pathetic, and it couldn’t damage Neave seriously. However, it was slightly concerning that it still hurt him a bit. It jabbed at Neave’s leg with small, sharp limbs.

The limbs were frighteningly sharp. Neave restrained the golem and chipped a bit of the material off.

It seemed to possess similar properties to the glass shrub, but not identical. It was significantly more fragile, but this was still a step in the right direction. Neave brought the golem over to the glass shrubs and let it go.

The golem immediately ran toward the nearest plant. It attacked it, trying to chew pieces off, but failed repeatedly. Neave helped it by chipping off another branch and feeding it to it.

It still couldn’t chew it properly. It scraped its teeth on it, producing a jarring, annoying sound. Neave watched the little fella try to swallow the branch whole, but it got a large, glass branch stuck in its throat. Neave laughed.

He helped it further by chipping the branch into pieces, and that it seemed to be capable of eating. Lovely.

Neave watched the golem swallow the small pieces one by one. It was a slow process, agonizingly so. Once it was done, it just sat there on the ground, unmoving.

…Could it even digest the glass?

Neave firmly doubted it could. After observing it for a long time, it was still sitting on the ground, presumably waiting for the plant to digest.

“...How do I break it to you, buddy? I don’t think that it’s going to work.”

The golem almost looked sad for a second, but Neave realized it was just reacting to the sound of his voice.

Neave decided to help the little fella by feeding it more life force. It absorbed Neave’s life force greedily, and soon enough, it evolved.

It grew slightly bigger. It still wasn’t a significant threat, but it was progressing.

Neave pondered it.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be best to leave this thing near the glass shrubs. If it grew big enough to damage the plants, it could potentially eat all of them and end Neave’s plans prematurely.

Neave decided until he could cover the entire realm with plants, he would moderate the monster population to prevent a plant genocide.

So, sadly for it, the little golem fella had to go. Neave mercifully ended it with a quick true strike thrust straight at where the core was. He pulled the core out, letting the mostly whole body of the golem drop to the ground.

Neave touched the monster's core out of curiosity.

…

This was likely the most circumstantial spirit power Neave had ever seen.

It was a glass manipulation but directed explicitly toward the glass the shrubs were made from. So unless one had many of these shrubs, they shouldn’t expect the power to be practical.

…

Wait a minute. Hold the fuck on for a second.

Neave glanced at the giant plant, the first one he had cultivated.

What if he granted it this spirit power?

Would that even work?

Now that it had a spirit of its own, it would have to pass a spirit trial. And, well, Neave simply couldn’t imagine the plant passing a spirit trial. It would be the lamest spirit trial ever. A stupidly tough brush and a weakling golem.

However, it got Neave wondering. Could that get the plant stuck in a permanent spirit trial? Was something like that possible to begin with?

Some part of him felt this was an immeasurably stupid idea, but another part couldn’t resist finding out.

Neave walked up to the plant. He melted one of the branches, which became infinitely more difficult now that the plant had grown more powerful, and placed the small monster core, after rounding it up, into the molten glass.

The core melted into the glass, and Neave waited in anticipation.

Nothing happened. For minutes, Neave stood there and stared at the plant. Simply put, everything stayed the same. It just sat there inertly. After an hour of waiting for the plant to do something, Neave started to feel that, even if the plant managed to pass the spirit trial, it could just not be conscious enough to use the power.

Neave sighed and gave up. For now, he would…

Neave heard rustling. He turned around and spotted the small golem getting up.

“???” He didn’t say anything, but his facial expression spoke for itself.

Neave waved his hands in confusion, unable to comprehend what was happening. Was it possessed? He tore its damn core out. The stupid thing couldn’t possibly still be alive!

The golem shakily got up to its feet.

It turned to face Neave and ponderously walked toward him. Once it reached Neave…

It knelt before him.