The Jester of Apocalypse

The average strength of someone on a step on the path wasn’t a particularly valuable statistic. 

It could be compared to the average number of testicles people had. Yes, statistically speaking, people had one testicle on average. In reality, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, it was either none or two. 

That was kind of how the average strength of a step worked. True, if one took all of the people on a step, measured their physical strength, and found the mean, one would know the answer. It was a statistic that had already been measured. However, using that number to realistically approximate someone’s strength was idiotic. 

Most people would be either much weaker or much stronger than average, especially with spirit powers coming into play. That was without even considering all of the other aspects that made up someone's power and the possibility of someone having stronger legs, stronger arms, or a stronger back, and so on and so forth.

However, as previously mentioned, the average strength was indeed a known thing, and Neave already knew the numbers, as well as the more nuanced analysis of the possible ranges. 

Thus, after measuring his physical strength, he concluded that he was about as strong as someone on the third step of the bronze path. However, his strength was considerably high for that step, so he placed it somewhere between the bronze path's third and the silver path's first step. 

It wasn't impossible to outmuscle weaker cultivators on the first step of the silver path. 

This was considerably more power than he had anticipated. Having this much strength in the foundation realm was plainly absurd. This, however, was only the first time he measured his strength. 

By the thousandth time he measured his strength, Neave firmly held the power of someone on the second step of the silver path. 

Grinning like a lunatic, he dropped the weights, and they struck the ground violently. There was no indication of how or why he could increase his strength this much, but he could do it. 

Neave made more of the hyper-heavy metal to make some proper weights, just to make his exercise more efficient. Done with measuring his strength inside the spirit realm, he again left and picked up the weights outside, preparing for another workout session. 

The room he exercised in had a finely polished obsidian floor, with lovely chiseled stone walls surrounding the inside area. Racks upon racks of dumbells and weights lined the room's edges, and cracks visibly spread through the ground beneath them.

Neave's muscles bulged as he lifted a ridiculously heavy barbell off the ground and then above his head. His body was starting to look genuinely ridiculous. If he didn’t have his shapeshifting power, he would be facing a similar problem to the one Hunter met, where the sheer mass of his muscle would reduce his mobility. 

Having a body of slithery rubber helped with mobility quite a bit. And even inside the spirit realm, Neave didn't find his body too unmaneuverable, surprisingly so. Another pleasant surprise he would accept without questioning it too much.

He put the heavy weights down, accidentally smashing the floor again. No matter how many times he recreated it and made it more robust, it kept accidentally breaking under the absurd mass of his workout equipment. 

“Shit, I’m going to have to fix that again.” That was the first time he had spoken out loud in a while, and he could swear that his voice was a bit deeper than usual.

It was time to feed the plant again, so he postponed fixing the floor for now. A more thorough strengthening would be necessary once he did, though. Neave left the training room and ran back toward the shrub. On his way there, he passed countless knee-high glass bushes, and many more were already growing considerably larger than that.

Neave noticed that some of the old obsidian shrubs were beginning to fall apart. When he inspected the reason why, he realized that the glass shrub, the big one that he still hadn’t named, was spreading its roots and pushing them into the obsidian shrubs. 

“Damn, Shruby, that shit is hardcore!” 

Cannibalize the old to empower the new! That was how life was meant to be lived! 

Once back at the location of the shrub, Neave fed it more life force. It could take quite a bit more now. Recently, the shrub had progressed to the first step of the iron path. This seemed to have increased the range of its roots considerably. 

The area still wasn’t that big, around the size of a small forest back in the real world, but because it spread three-dimensionally, given that it had all of this underground space to fill, the radius mattered many times more. 

Once he was done feeding the plant, he pondered his muscles. They were shiny and bulging, much more prominent now than when he first started. 

That was likely it; that was the key! Now that he had more muscle, he had a bigger vessel to contain all the power! 

Probably... It was somewhat frustrating that he couldn't confidently pinpoint what exactly allowed for his growth in strength. If he could fully puzzle out what was responsible, he could potentially continue his growth much further.

Actually, it was likely that monster meat could regain some of its use again since he had more muscle to feed. 

Stretching, he got up and walked to a corner of the room where he had created a large mirror. He flexed and posed in the mirror, observing his absurd musculature.

Once he was done analyzing his progress, he blew some air out, and his muscles shrunk a bit. 

He could compress his body a little without losing function. It wasn’t something he planned on doing in fights, but it made his life a bit easier while doing random chores. Also, the Falken sect robes, the light blue clothes he was still wearing, were starting to strain under his mass.

Now, given that he was hitting a plateau in his growth and given that he had made substantial progress with the plant, it was time.

…

Well, it was time to do something, he felt. However… Nothing specific came to mind.

Experimenting on monsters wasn’t wise, as he had to first allow the glass shrubs to spread as far as possible, lest they be thoroughly devoured. The monsters that were still around had all been sealed in obsidian chambers, which were completely isolated from the outside so that they wouldn't run around and cause problems before the plants could spread.

Not much point in making more weapons, either. There was little immediate use in doing that. 

Finally, although he wanted to help the shrub grow as fast as possible, little intervention was required. There was always the possibility of forcing the damn thing to spread more quickly, but yet again, Neave felt it would be unwise to make an enemy out of the plant. 

“Oh, crap… What do I do?” 

Neave had been leaving food with the others, but he had no interest in interacting with them. Mainly since he believed in a hands-off approach in the beginning. It was best to let them adapt to this place without the certainty and comfort Neave’s presence provided. 

Yes, his presence was far too comforting, Neave felt. His amazing humor, excellent cooking, and superb company were all far too cozy to help them develop the necessary discipline. 

That was why he threw the occasional monster meat, processed, of course, and ran away before they could spot him. 

It broke his heart to be tough on them, but he knew it was necessary for their own good. What a champion of responsibility he was, indeed. 

Now, what was he thinking about again? 

Oh, right, something to do. 

Well… There was always the option of getting more powerful, of course. The training had gotten extremely dull, though. 

“Hmmmmmmmm…” Neave summoned the violet avatar. 

The tiny ethereal avatar appeared on the floor before him. 

Neave shrugged. Evolving it to gold rank wasn’t risky at all. Furthermore, evolving it again would likely create a platinum-rank threat, but Neave wasn’t scared of that either. He was drastically more powerful even in the spirit trial now, so what was the point of dilly-dallying? 

Yet, Neave still hesitated. 

He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter that much if this power turned out to be a dud. However, Neave would be devastated. Especially now, after creating a weapon and honing his body, he felt endless possibilities with this little guy. 

The violet avatar spirit power worked in peculiar ways. 

The creature itself was static in strength, which meant that it couldn’t do something like physically train and grow, sadly. It could be stored within a small dimensional space, and anything it held in its hands, as long as it could lift it off the ground, would also be stored. 

Now, the avatar itself could also be destroyed and resummoned. If it suffered damage, there was no way to repair it otherwise. The summoning demanded life force, which made Neave rather thankful he had such vast reserves. Ordinary cultivators couldn't be so careless with the avatar.

Neave could also do stuff such as modify the avatar. Its body was translucent and felt floaty to the touch, but it still acted as if it were made of solid matter. 

If Neave wanted to, he could tear an arm off and replace it with a metal spike or something. 

Now, there was a catch. If Neave removed any part of its body located in the same place a muscle would be, the usual functions of that muscle would be lost. 

So if he removed an arm, he couldn’t simply create a metallic arm with two segments and have it behave like a part of its body. 

Actually, perhaps he could if he had more knowledge or experience with golem creation. However, there wasn’t much point in modifying its body. None Neave could see yet. 

It was easy enough to equip it with armor and give it a weapon. 

There were a lot of upgrades Neave wanted the avatar to receive after an evolution. Namely, he wanted it to acquire an extraordinary power, like one of those the dragon’s puppets had.

Neave didn’t want, however, for one of those powers to be in the vein of that crystal-manipulating puppet, or rather, he didn’t want it to get a power that would be completely useless. If it could manipulate the purple crystal, that would be utterly pointless here because there was none of that material anywhere. 

Its basic shape shouldn't change too much, either. If it transformed into something wildly inhuman, there could be problems with equipping the puppet. Well, something like four arms or wings wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. 

The more Neave thought about it, the more possible problems he could predict. What if the evolution increased the number of puppets without altering anything else? The dragon had three. True, those were all different in power and nature, and Neave wouldn't mind having puppets like that. But if they remained the same... Even if he had fifty of these little guys, they wouldn’t be very useful…

Or would they? 

A weapon didn’t need to be big to be powerful, especially with what Neave could do.

What if he created a bunch of ridiculously powerful daggers and sent an army of nasty little guys to battle? 

Actually, wait, that wouldn’t be useful at all, given that he would still have to manually control the body of the individual avatars. Or would he? Which was better? Naturally, if he could manually control the avatar, he would get the most use out of it, but if it gained independent function... How skilled would it be? Was there a way to assuage a lack of performance? Could he train them? 

Neave sighed in frustration. This was stupid. At this point, he would rather have a plain, man-shaped pupped. Neave even vowed not to upgrade the power to platinum rank if it ended up being simple and practical. 

Now… It was finally time. 

Neave grabbed the little purple fella off the ground, kissed it on the forehead, and unsummoned it. 

It was time for it to get an upgrade. 

Within seconds, Neave was inside a spirit trial. 

He didn’t know what to do, so he grabbed a random book off a shelf, plopped his body on the comfy bed, and yawned. 

He could feel constant tremors, likely as all the gigantic abominids smashed into the steel mountain. No dragons were flying above him, either, so that was good news. 

Neave felt so relaxed that he nearly fell asleep. It wasn’t possible to be unconscious inside the spirit realm, but one could still feel drowsy. He almost regretted that he couldn’t fall asleep. After all, it would be one hell of a thing to brag about if he could say that he had beaten a spirit trial while asleep.

Rather than accept at face value that sleep was impossible, Neave attempted to bend reality to his will to force his manifestation into a state of simulated sleep. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t how any of this worked, so he failed.

Initially, at least. Eventually, his sheer stubbornness allowed him to shut his thoughts off. Combined with closed eyes, that was right about as close as someone could get to sleep in a spirit trial. 

Since Neave was the only judge on this matter, he decreed that it counted. He spent the rest of the time in the spirit trial, eyes closed and mind void of thoughts. 

Appearing back outside was what eventually broke him out of his state, and he almost forgot about what he was doing in the first place. 

Once he remembered, he panicked momentarily as he examined the changes in his spirit power. 

Neave’s mouth hung open. 

Violet mist appeared before him, swirling in a small vortex, as Neave summoned the violet avatar—a tiny, ethereal puppet that hadn’t changed one bit. 

Neither inwardly nor outwardly did the avatar change in any way. 

Yet, Neave wasn’t upset. Instead, he was grinning like a lunatic.

“Now that’s an unexpected upgrade I’m willing to take.”