The Jester of Apocalypse

A demon slithered around the surface, sniffing out any potential prey. Its wriggly tentacles squirmed and grasped branches of obsidian, and it pulled itself through the shadowy forest of black.

“Yo, dude, watch this!”

Something spoke. It turned around, spotting the tiny, pink-haired child, a creature that smelled of wonderfully tasty flesh. However, the demon paused as it felt the unusual object in the small being’s hands.

It swung the object and–

***

“Huh…? Where did it go?”

Neave glanced around, failing to spot the demon. His new toy was finally being used in practice, and Neave was excited to witness the aftermath. Yet, the demon just disappeared, vanishing into thin air.

Eventually, after quite a bit of squinting, he spotted a small patch of clouds, parting for something that flew through them at incredible speed.

…

“Oh fuck!”

That’s quite some distance. Neave giggled and kissed the sledgehammer, patting it lovingly and spinning around with it, “You’re so strong! Oh, my heavens, who’s the best hammer in the realm!? You are! Yes, you are!” Cradling it in his arms, he ran around, looking for other prey.

Eventually, he came across another demon. This time he swung the hammer down, hitting the demon straight on the top of its head.

Splat.

The instant the hammer touched the top of the demon's head, the shock wave liquified its entire body, and the puddle of demon slush splattered against the ground. The backlash of the strike was quite noticeable as well, but Neave could afford to ignore it due to his set of spirit powers.

The demon juice dripped and flowed into a puddle, and he cackled like a lunatic, “Yes! With my wonderful hammer, Tecton, I shall conquer the world!” He lowered his voice and glanced around nervously. Bringing his mouth closer to the hammer, he whispered, “Don’t tell Shrub I named you before it. It gets very jealous sometimes!”

There was a lot to do. Yes, Neave had so much work he could spend years working and doing nothing else.

“But it’s so boring!”

Sitting around like a dumbass and staring at a plant all the time wasn't the most exciting thing to do. Work was boring! Yes, terraforming the realm was necessary, and yes, he was neglecting the others by procrastinating and playing around, but doing work was so dull!

He didn’t really need to invent any new method for finishing this. Simply cycling life force infusions into the glass shrub would eventually spread enough of the plants around to fulfill his goal. The simplicity of his task was the main problem. Neave thrived off of crazy experiments with unknown outcomes.

True, he often complained that things didn’t go his way or that he wished everything would go as he wanted, but in reality, he would have no motivation to do anything without the uncertainty. As was the case currently.

So, he chose to give himself a temporary break and go have some fun instead.

The features of the massive sledgehammer were difficult to discern in the dark, but that wasn't a big obstacle to his perception.

The weapon was taller than Neave was, and it weighed an absurd amount. It weighed so much that Neave had to rely on several movement techniques to carry it.

Why movement techniques? It was simple. The weapon weighed so much that it was damn near impossible to maintain balance while holding it.

Neave had to constantly use movement techniques to keep his posture in check and use footing techniques to prevent the excessive weight of the hammer from sinking his body into the ground.

He ran much slower while holding the hammer, looking for something fun to do. As he ran, his steps grew slower and slower, and eventually, he had to stop.

Neave sweated and panted, dragging the hammer across the ground. Eventually, he couldn’t carry it anymore and had to take a break. The instant he let go of the hammer, even though it was already on the ground, the impact spread cracks around the area.

The handle hung in the air for a second, and as it fell over, it smashed the ground with absurd force.

Neave hadn’t experienced something as mundane as physical fatigue for so long that he had forgotten what it was like. The hammer was insanely heavy, to the point where his regeneration couldn’t keep up with the damage his muscles and tendons suffered under its mass.

It wasn’t just that, either. He constantly had to push his willpower of might spirit power to the limits, which left him feeling lethargic and drained. Even his impossibly firm resolve crumbled beneath the mass of this weapon.

Not in a billion years would Neave concede that he had made the hammer too heavy. Conventions and practicality be damned, he would find a way to wield the hammer with ease, no matter how ridiculous the solution may be.

However… Perhaps Neave didn’t need a ridiculous solution. A mundane one could suffice instead.

After resting, he returned to the cave, hauling Tecton behind his back. He left a trail of destruction in his wake. The hammer ended up with a simple yet devastating ability—force amplification.

This made the weapon quite destructive if not handled responsibly. Since Neave didn’t hold a shred of responsibility in a single cell of his body, destruction was inevitable.

Once back inside the cave, Neave sagged again, dropping to the ground and allowing himself to recover from the ordeal. The glass puppet walked up and cocked its head at him. Neave meekly lifted his hand, giving the glass shrub a thumbs up.

The puppet walked closer to Neave, grabbed his leg, and dragged him to its main body.

“What the fuck, dude? Let me rest!”

The shrub ignored his pleas and manipulated the puppet to throw Neave over to the base of the plant.

Neave simply closed his eyes and ignored the plant's attempts.

Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.

“Fucking stop!” Neave got up, grabbing the puppet's hand, which it was using to poke a sharp finger into his side over and over and over and over, “You have to grow the hell up!”

An absurd statement by every imaginable parameter.

Neave was still a little woozy. He clicked his tongue in annoyance and mumbled irritably while imbuing the plant with life force. Perhaps the imbuement was done with a little too much force this time. The puppet's protests were ignored as he forced more life force in, grinning like a maniac.

Eventually, he chose to be the bigger man and do it properly. The puppet walked over to the hammer lying on the ground and attempted to lift it.

Crazy laughter echoed through the caves as he made fun of the plant for thinking it could lift Tecton.

In annoyance, the puppet pouted and crossed its arms, glancing away from Neave.

Once Neave had finished feeding the plant, he got up and walked over to the hammer, effortlessly raising it off the ground. In reality, it wasn’t effortless at all, but Neave had to show the shrub who was boss around here.

“Now excuse me, fine brush, as I go off and wield this gigantic, stupidly heavy hammer easily.” Leaving the pouting puppet behind, he ran to another nearby cave.

The hammer crashed down, and Neave breathed out in exhaustion.

Once he flattened the ground in the cave section, he stepped into the middle of the flattened earth.

The soil shifted beneath his legs, and Neave knew this wouldn’t work all that well. He collected tons of obsidian plants and created a perfectly flat, shiny floor of obsidian. Neave used alchemy techniques to harden the floor and make it more rigid.

He didn’t bother with the life force compartment bridge technique, as this would serve just fine.

Mostly.

If it broke, it wouldn’t be a complicated fix anyway.

Neave stepped into the middle of the room again, hauling the sledgehammer. Then he swung it. He kept swinging the hammer, feeling its intense impact on his body every time he did.

Once he felt his exhaustion overflowing, he put the hammer down carefully and took a break. After giving himself enough time to rest and recover, he picked the hammer back up and continued his training.

That’s right. For the first time since he was a fugitive in Pavarrie, he was training his physical strength. Realizing potential by cultivating wasn't possible for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t improve his strength through mundane training.

He wasn’t sure how practical this training would be. True, he had a set of powers that allowed for near-constant training. But his body was that of someone in the foundation realm. Neave had already consumed insane amounts of monster flesh, likely more than anyone else.

This had morphed his body, his actual, physical body, independent of his spirit powers, and turned it into something spectacular. However… Neave didn’t know what this meant for his potential.

Did his body already fulfill most of its non-cultivation potential, making his efforts fruitless? That wasn’t baseless speculation, either. Eating monster meat was known to partially satisfy the function of training, allowing one to augment and supplement their training by consuming it.

This wasn’t something that added power entirely independent of training. It, in significant part, sped up the process that could naturally be achieved through exercise.

For most cultivators, this was a minuscule technicality that had no real consequence in the grand scheme of things. Hell, if one could fulfill the full potential of training their body within a realm, they would likely already be capable of advancing up the path.

For Neave, however, the details of how this worked, especially in interaction with his spirit powers, made all the difference in the world.

Training could be completely and utterly useless. Yet, Neave held on to a faint chance. Perhaps the peculiar combination of his spirit powers would, in one way or another, move those limits up high enough that he still had space to grow.

So he swung his hammer. Over and over, Neave completed the cycle of exhausting himself and resting. Eventually, he felt his strength grow. However, Neave frowned.

Is that because I’ve improved my body or because I’ve improved my willpower?

The willpower of might spirit power scaled with how much willpower an individual could exert. If Neave was improving his will, that was perfectly fine, but that wasn’t what he truly wanted to achieve.

How could he tell, though?

Neave slapped his forehead. It was obvious. All he had to do was enter his spirit realm. There, he could quickly discover how strong his body was if he didn’t have any spirit powers. After finding the tiny entrance in his spirit, he went inside.

In the blink of an eye, he was there.

The top of the mountain cone of steel looked over Neave’s entire spirit realm. It was pretty spacious, but the borders were plain to see.

Random shit, likely the most appropriate phrase to use here, was strewn throughout his private little world.

Neave had already turned the top of the steel mountain into something of a…

Lounge.

Sitting and waiting for the monsters to die was pretty dull sometimes. So the top of the mountain was absurdly fancy. A fine, silky smooth bed, a lovely couch, shelves of books, the contents of which reflected texts Neave had already read before, and many other random toys and even more random shit.

Neave could summon objects even during the trials themselves. Perhaps that could help him defeat the trial more easily, but the most practical application he found for this feature was its use in dicking around and creating random crap he could play with.

This expedition into the spirit realm was no different either. Neave walked over to a bit of the empty space left, which was rapidly running out, and got to work.

He created a massive barbell, trying to imitate the heavy metal he had created, but only partially succeeding.

Now… It was time to see whether Neave was getting stronger from the training.