The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave appeared back before the glass shrub and sighed. He had fed the children and left them with a stick to fight off the animals of the night.

He had played up the theatrics, but honestly speaking, not even he could really treat that weapon so carelessly. He had to play up the performance for their sake, though. Accidentally dying from misusing that thing was a genuine threat, but hey! His father was highly experienced. There was no way he would accidentally kill everyone…

Right?

Well, whatever, it would be fine! Probably… Most likely. He had more important things to do for now than worry about that.

Excitement flowed through his veins at the thought of the Glass Shard. He didn’t even make the spirit ball that big, yet the weapon turned out frighteningly powerful. That was the bare minimum of effort, yet it resulted in something as nasty as that?

Neave decided. He absolutely had to make himself a weapon as well. Was it a priority currently?

Hell no, not by a long shot, but there wasn’t all that much else he could do. He spent most of his time feeding the plant life force and brainstorming ways to speed up the process. Creating a weapon wouldn’t considerably slow the progress down.

Now, a big question remained. What weapon did Neave want to use? Honestly, he had gotten somewhat bored of swords. That would be an absurd statement by anyone else, but Neave had spent endless years using a sword in the hellish loop. It was a good weapon, certainly.

Very practical, very sharp, and pointy, it did the slashy and cutty and stabby things just fine.

However, Neave drooled at the thought of a big, fat fucking sledgehammer. He remembered how he felt using one against those purple reptiles. Oh yeah, the juicy impact, the scrumptious damage, the shockwave! Nothing could appeal to his heart more than the idea of shattering mountains with a swing.

Wasn’t a sledgehammer, like, the perfect weapon?

Neave remembered an important decision he had made.

No weaknesses.

No limits.

No compromise.

The sword was mighty, yes, but it struggled to deal with hard surfaces. What could even stop a sledgehammer?

Alright, alright, hurr durr, it couldn’t cut things. Neave knew that much, but who said he had to make a sledgehammer that couldn’t cut things?

He could puzzle something out. If he made a sledgehammer from this glass and used the same strategy as he had with the Glass Shard, he could relatively easily make a sledgehammer that could cut things just fine.

That was lame, though. Why make a sledgehammer for that, anyway? This glass was tough and sharp but wasn’t all that heavy. It wouldn’t make good material for a sledgehammer.

Neave frowned. No, sledgehammers had to be heavy. They had to be like boom, pow, thunk, you know?

Like pow, yeah, that’s the stuff!

Neave swung an imaginary hammer around the room.

***

The glass puppet sat on the ground nearby, cocking its head at his strange behavior. It got up and imitated Neave’s movements, trying to puzzle out what he was doing.

It couldn’t figure it out. It made sense. After all, the wisdom of its master wasn’t something it could grasp so quickly. It had to keep diligently working, and it could maybe eventually capture even a fraction of its master’s knowledge.

Neave spotted the plant imitating him and laughed, “What are you doing, you dumbass!?” Neave rolled around on the floor, wildly cackling at the glass puppet.

Perhaps Master was just an idiot.

***

Neave fed the plant some life force and ran aimlessly around the caves.

He came across many patches with those nasty metal spikes and decided to pull out a few of them and test the quality of the material.

Neave couldn’t help but be surprised. It was ordinary metal. By all means, it seemed to be something firmly within the mortal realm. But damn, was it heavy. It wasn’t pure metal, either. It appeared to be an alloy of several different materials.

Yup, it was experiment time!

Neave gathered several spikes and carried them to a section of a cave not too far from the room with the glass shrubs.

Although the obsidian shrubs still dominated the caves, Neave could already see countless tiny sprouts.

Once Neave cleaned the room and was satisfied with how organized it was, he left and found a slime. Neave frowned.

Scant few regular slimes were left; most had turned into blood slimes. This was a problem. Neave dug out a cave section and lined the walls with obsidian, almost perfectly sealing it off from the outside.

Then, he placed a slime in there. He fed the monster his limbs, and as it grew, it replicated. Anything that evolved or in any way deviated from being a regular slime was killed and eaten immediately.

Something, something, circle of life, something, either way, Neave had work to do.

He filled the room with countless slimes, and once he made sure nothing besides regular slimes was in the room, he sealed it off thoroughly and left.

This would be a sort of backup plan, a pocket of regular slimes just in case the other ones went extinct.

Regular slimes were necessary, as they were a sort of blank slate, an empty canvas that could be painted however Neave pleased. Blood slimes or other variations didn’t consistently evolve the right way, and regardless of how much they grew and evolved, there would always be a hint of blood marking their characteristics.

That was why it was essential to ensure a backup.

Once finished, he left and found another slime he carried to the special room he had prepared. It was a dome of crystal spirit that completely cut him off from the outside world. The air was filled with ethereal spirit, optimizing the environment for growing this slime.

Staring at the little gooey fella, Neave pondered. How should he do this?

He wanted to feed the slime the metal to create a metal slime or golem. But how should he feed the slime? Was it alright to just provide it the raw metal and pray for the best?

Of course it wasn’t! It was only obvious that he had to first create a decent alloy or purify the metal to ensure he only fed the little slime buddy the best he had.

So Neave got to work. A painful amount of time later, Neave had a few piles of… Different metal. It was hard to say whether it was pure or not.

In fact, some of the metal was inferior in quality, as Neave had clearly purified it of whatever made it decent, to begin with.

Neave groaned. Why? He yearned for a simpler life with fewer complications, one where all would always turn out the exact way he wanted it to and, without any exceptions, be amazing.

He wasn’t capable of overthrowing the entire blacksmithing industry quite yet. Purifying metals was a serious business. So how could he simplify it?

Maybe he could just inject the metal into his veins and have his sacred blood purify it? Neave chuckled at the thought. Sacred blood would remove all the metal, so there was no point in…

There was… No... Neave knew this feeling quite well already. The moment when either an absolutely brilliant or utterly idiotic idea sparked in his mind.

After walking over to a small obsidian brush, he plucked the branches and shaped them into a bowl. Once he returned, he spilled his blood into the bowl, adding a bit of liquid spirit for good measure.

Then, he grabbed a decent-sized chunk of raw metal and plonked it into the blood. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t doing anything.

Neave carefully fished the metal chunk out and…

“Oh, come the fuck on!”

There was no difference.

“Ugghhh… Wait!” No, there was one thing he could still do.

Neave extended a tendril of liquid spirit into his blood and put the metal chunk back into the bowl.

“Uh…” With barely any effort, he manipulated his blood to purify the metal chunk and remove all inferior materials.

He didn’t even have to strain himself. Just burning lifeforce in his blood seemed to work perfectly fine.

The now pearly shiny chunk of metal was firmly grasped in his shivering hands as he grinned gleefully.

Looks like he would be putting the blacksmithing industry out of business today anyway.

This metal felt a little floaty, however. It was hard to explain what was off about it. Neave extended a tendril of liquid spirit into it, heated it up, and shaped it into a ball.

“Oh, makes sense!” It was a little lighter because he had purged all of the impurities, which left minuscule patches of empty space inside the chunk. Now that he had squished it together, he felt that same weight again. A little heavier now, actually.

Neave stared at the perfect ball of metal, and he pondered. There was one more thing he could do. Well, there were several things he could do, but there was one thing he could achieve quite easily.

A silvery sheen surrounded his hand, and he touched the metal ball, feeling it grow heftier. Alchemy had a few techniques that could be used to manipulate metal, and one of them allowed Neave to make the metal heavier.

It was an exhausting process, however, and every time he used a technique, it became more and more difficult.

Neave sighed. That was to be expected, naturally. His qi was miserably weak, and even with nigh perfect control, the power it could exert over the metal was limited. That didn’t mean he was out of options, however.

He filled up the bowl with liquid spirit this time and imbued the spirit with life force, pushing it to its limits. Placing the chunk inside, he manipulated the life force to seep into the metal.

Once it was inside, he burned it.

This was difficult enough that it left even him exhausted. Once he was done, however, he grabbed the metal ball and used another qi technique. It worked perfectly fine. It worked incredibly well, even.

Neave had burned his life force to create a sort of impression bridge. It was an advanced alchemy technique that was only done at the highest level. It allowed one to segregate individual modifications of the metal to avoid mutual interference or, in this case, to avoid diminishing returns from multiple stacking effects.

Every time Neave used an alchemy technique on the metal now, the change he created would be compartmentalized. This was to say that his previous modifications wouldn’t impact future changes. Thus, there wouldn’t be any drop-off in efficiency when he modified the metal.

Naturally, this wasn’t unlimited. The life force could only contain so many different compartments, and eventually, Neave would run out of them, and using further techniques would become impossible.

Now, finding out where those limits lay was only a matter of time.

***

Neave sweated as he held the ridiculously heavy metal ball in his hand.

“What the fuck is even happening anymore?” Apparently, either due to his fine control or the assistance of his liquid spirit, the limit for individual compartments was high.

Very, very, very fucking high. Holy shit, where did it end!?

Neave thought as he used another technique.

He had emptied his qi reserves many times over, and the metal kept getting heavier until finally, Neave suddenly found the limit, and his following qi technique did virtually nothing.

Neave sagged and dropped to the ground. The metal ball was released from his hands and created a mini crater as it struck the floor, jolting Neave up.

Slimes didn’t have emotions or sapience, as far as Neave knew, but he could swear this thing was cowering in the corner, hiding in fear of what Neave planned to do to it.

It better, since this wasn’t going to be any ordinary experiment.

“You better look forward to it, you little poopball, because I’m about to spoon-feed you the good shit.”

Neave picked up the ball of metal.

The slime shivered.