The Jester of Apocalypse

Marven and Dukean stared, frozen, at the absurd sight in front of them.

Hunter groaned and whimpered, kicking himself away from Harel, who still gripped the bloody branch.

Once Marven regained himself, he rushed forward, ensuring he stayed silent lest he said something he would regret.

Harel dropped the sharp branch and stepped back, hyperventilating and profusely apologizing, “I’m… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m… I’m sorry, Hunter. Oh heavens, I’m so sorry.”

Marven forced his expression to calm and looked at Harel, “It’s alright. Please just wait a bit, ok?”

Harel’s eyes reddened, and tears streaked down her cheeks, “I’m…” She ran off to her room.

Nobody stopped her.

Marven checked Hunter's wound. Luckily, it was far from lethal. It wasn’t even that deep. It had already stopped bleeding. Harel had probably swung out of reflex, but her nerves had to be frayed as hell if that was how she reacted.

Marven knew exactly why Harel did what she did, which was why he didn’t scorn her for doing it. He had spent his life surrounded by women, so he could at least somewhat claim he understood them.

This was Hunter’s fault.

Once Marven was done, he lifted Hunter off his feet. The kid looked terrified and awfully confused. He stared at Marven, a disbelieving expression seared into his face.

He wanted to say, was that it? She stabbed me, and you will just let her go?

Rather than letting Hunter ask the question, Marven put an arm on his shoulder and spoke, “You should count yourself lucky that you faced the consequences of indelicately handling women in a place where your life wasn’t at risk.”

Hunter stared at Marven with absolute disbelief, “You think this was my fault!? I was just trying to help her, she…”

“Hunter, please. If somebody, especially an anxious girl, refuses your help, you should back off.” Marven flicked Hunter’s forehead and told him to go back to work. The wound wasn’t much of an excuse not to.

Marven calmed his nerves and walked over to Harel’s room. He stood outside and clicked his tongue. Usually, he would wait for her to calm down and then offer her food, but neither was an option.

So he barged inside, choosing to be methodically indelicate instead.

“Get away from me!”

The absolute last thing he should say was, ‘Calm down.’

“That was a weak stab, honestly. I can’t believe you’ve spent all that time training under me.”

Harel wept and hugged her knees tighter, “I didn’t mean to do it.” She coughed and bawled, pushing her face into her legs, “I really didn’t mean to do it, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it. He totally deserved it!”

“You’re… You’re just… You’re saying tha–that to make me… Fe–feel better.”

“I’m sure the stab made you feel a bit better, too, no?”

She coughed a weak laugh out and promptly returned to crying.

Marven sighed in relief. Saying that was a risky move, and it had luckily paid off. The worst had passed. He walked over and sat before her, giving her enough space. He allowed her to cry for a while longer, and once she somewhat calmed down, he yelled to Dukean to bring them some water.

They drank, Marven made a snarky comment about the nasty water, Harel laughed a bit, and that was it. She was mostly okay, at least for the time being.

He wanted to ask her a question, but that would be a mistake. There was nothing he could ask her now. If he asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t say it. If he asked something like, ‘Why did you do it’ that would make him an idiot. The reason why was apparent.

He couldn’t tell her to return to work either, and he couldn’t just leave her alone. Staying with her was out of the question as well. All of those would be mistakes.

There was only one thing he could do. So he got up, “Harel, wait for a second, please.” Marven walked out of the room.

He located a neat, sword-shaped branch with a sharp edge and returned to the room. He showed her a technique, one that wasn’t of his own making, but it was a decent technique she could learn something from.

She meekly nodded and grabbed the branch, although somewhat hesitantly.

Marven winced once he saw her reaction, remembering she had just used a similar branch to stab someone, but it didn’t seem to bother her too much.

That was close.

“Hunter is perfectly fine, by the way, don’t worry. I will keep an eye on him.” Marven nodded to her and left the room, returning back to work.

Harel remained alone, and she looked down at the sword-shaped branch. There was a hint of hesitation in her movements as she swung it. Her swings usually didn't take much to put her into a meditative state, but they failed to do so now, no matter how many times she repeated the movements.

It wasn’t long until she put the branch down.

Harel sat on the ground and chose to meditate instead.

***

The worst part of strategizing was when one had to face unexpected difficulties. However, Neave knew precisely these difficulties made the trial and error process so exciting and ultimately rewarding.

He still thought the difficulties could go to hell. An opinion he held rather passionately.

The glass puppet cocked its head at him for the gazillionth time, yet again not comprehending what Neave was trying to explain.

How did one teach a plant? How could one educate a bush?

Neave truly wished he could just pull ideas out of his brain and shove them into the plant, so it would, even once, get what he was trying to tell it.

It wasn’t stupid, either. Hell, for a damn plant, it was brilliant. Some concepts, however, were obviously out of its reach.

Neave had concluded that the best way to spread the glass shrubs over the realm was to teach this plant how to manipulate life force. Neave could then effectively spoon feed it life force, which it could, in turn, spread over the realm and grow more mini-shrubs.

Now… Usually… This would be an idiotic idea. The plant was, well, a plant, but even putting that aside, it was only in the foundation realm. Expecting anyone to be able to manipulate life force as early as that was foolish. Neave was an exception among exceptions.

“But you’re already fucking doing it!?”

The golem cocked its head again, and this time Neave could swear it was feigning ignorance. Neave narrowed his eyes at it and bared his teeth, testing the glass puppet for any signs of guilt.

Alas, nothing.

Neave observed the flow of life force in the plant and quickly realized that it was manually controlling it to expand its roots. However, it refused to give the smaller shrubs any.

It wasn’t long until Neave concluded that the plant could do it. It was just a damn cheapskate.

“What are you, a freakin’ toddler!?”

It kind of was, in a way.

Neave was very close to giving up on this idea. It was good enough that it could spread its roots faster anyway.

Which it had been doing for a while already, clearly. Neave tracked the plant's roots and deduced that it had spread them for miles in every direction. There would be countless smaller shrubs growing in the entire area soon anyway, just not as fast as Neave would like. And not as fast as they could if the plant wasn't a fucking...

It took a lot of strength to cut that train of thought off. Thankfully, Neave managed to do it since he felt that if he hadn't, he would have been well on his way to smashing the shrub to bits.

Forcing a ton of life force into its body was also an option. It would be forced to expend it then. He had actually inadvertently done this once already. However, he didn’t want to use this strategy. It had a horrible impact on the plant's spirit.

The shrub hating him wasn't on the list of things Neave wanted to achieve, partially for pragmatic reasons and partially because he was kind of fond of it. It almost seemed to have a sense of humor occasionally. They would get along just fine in time.

Maybe when it grew up a bit.

Through his mighty cunning and trial and error, he eventually managed to cut a deal with the shrub. Extra life force was promised if it spread its roots even further. It agreed to do that without a hitch, and Neave gave it a generous donation. However, it was a strictly moderated trickle of life force, as he didn’t want to harm the plant.

Eventually, it was exhausted from the forceful root spreading, and Neave decided to let it rest for a while, while he focused on other stuff in the meantime.

The first of which he was really excited to do.

Neave got up. He struck a ‘cool’ pose, or at least what he thought looked cool, and began chanting, “I summon thee, visage of my likeness, to conquer the realms and subdue divinity! Appear, Violet avatar!”

All of this chanting was utterly unnecessary.

A small patch of soil next to Neave lit up with purple light. Mist appeared, swirling in a vortex of power that summoned the… Violet avatar.

A mighty figure of chiseled muscle stood beneath Neave…at only around a foot tall.

Neave’s eyebrow twitched.

“Whyyyyyy!?” He got to his knees, strangling himself and spluttering at the tiny puppet, “Is it at least strong?”

No. The answer was no.

Neave clicked his tongue. He tried controlling the little ethereal puppet with his will and found no trouble doing so. But it was just pathetic.

There wasn’t much he could expect. It was a silver-ranked spirit power in the spirit of a foundation realm child.

In reality, most of his powers suffered from a similar issue. However, their interactions and the way they stacked with one another, not to mention that he had evolved all of them to their utmost limits, somewhat circumvented this problem.

With this tiny avatar, though…?

He would have to evolve it first and see.

Yet, he was hesitant. There wouldn’t be much trouble with the trial monster… At first.

However, all that Neave could safely do was a single evolution.

Why?

He didn’t really have infinite attempts, and these bastard reptilian monsters really loved evolving into dragons.

Neave was far too aware of the fact that, when in the spirit trial, he had no spirit powers. Without spirit powers, he was perhaps at the third step of the bronze path in strength.

That was an utterly absurd power level for someone still in the foundation realm. Even without spirit powers, he had the physique of someone six realms above him! Yet, it wasn’t enough.

Fighting a platinum-rank monster was facing not overwhelming skill but overwhelming power. He could successfully do it. He was mostly confident, but that didn’t mean he could carelessly take risks, especially not when so much was at stake.

“Is it time…”

Should he do some more renovation in his spirit realm?

It was true that his current strategy was unbelievably efficient. It just couldn’t cope with flying creatures, though.

It was only a matter of one question. Was this avatar power worth it?

The answer to that was, oh hell yeah, definitely.

This was an extremely rare type of spirit power that, by its nature, had no way to interfere with any other abilities. It could potentially interfere with powers that emerged from those purple snakes, but anything else? Not really.

How much powers overlapped and interfered with one another depended on two things, the target and the nature of the power. Many of Neave's powers overlapped, and frankly, it was likely a bigger issue than it may seem initially. True, that didn't stop the powers from mutually empowering one another and stacking, but it drained them significantly faster and occasionally caused issues with how they behaved. It wasn't a 'one plus one equals two' type of stacking either.

A lot of power was lost due to interference.

The purple crystal substance those monsters had consumed was something foreign, something unique. It was a different type of power, thus, of a different nature from any of the other powers Neave had.

Not to mention that it was a purely external power that didn’t alter his body in any way. Thus, regardless of how powerful it was, it was a power that came without any side effects or unwanted consequences. Both its target and its nature were utterly different from any other power Neave had.

That wasn’t the only reason why Neave put so much faith into this power.

Neave made the little creature disappear. Then, he made it reappear again. Neave handed it a small rock and controlled it to grab and hold onto it. He made it disappear again. This time, it disappeared, and the rock disappeared with it.

Once the creature reappeared, it was still holding onto the rock.

Neave grinned.

This.

This was why he needed this power to work.

It effectively worked the same as a dimension ring, sort of, which meant that Neave could equip the puppet with anything he wanted.

Anything at all.

Stupidly powerful armor? You got it. Mighty equipment? Yup. Weapons of mass destruction? Hehe, fuck yeah, baby!

This little thing was a rule-breaker that Neave could abuse optimally. However, it was also a whole bag of issues. Neave could only pray that it didn't evolve into an inconvenient shape, and prayer wasn't high on his list of habits.

At this moment, Neave noticed the glass golem hanging over his shoulder, observing the little purple avatar intently.

It pointed at it, then at itself.

Neave grinned.

“Yes, buddy! I’m just like you now! Kind of.”

The puppet froze. It looked at the purple avatar on the ground.

It walked up to it, observed it from above, then kicked it, showing it into a wall.

Neave stared at the golem, which struck a self-satisfied pose.

I think this little shit has jealousy problems…