The Jester of Apocalypse

Gabrias stood frozen, waiting for the puppet to move. Anxiety was already setting in, as it hadn’t moved even a bit for minutes.

What was happening? Was the glass brush busy with something else, thus, incapable of manipulating the puppet?

That wasn’t good news. Gabrias was alone on the surface and utterly defenseless without the puppet's help. He could perhaps take the Glass Shard, but he didn’t want to upset the shrub once it returned.

He anxiously scouted over the landscape, looking for any signs of movement. Sadly, he spotted movement almost immediately. A demon was heading toward them, slowly, sneakily moving its way through the thick growth.

Gabrias hoped the shrub wouldn’t be insulted as he walked over and grabbed the Glass Shard, preparing to fight.

The moment he grabbed the weapon, the puppet moved.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I was just…”

The construct of glass completely ignored his pleas, as well as the incoming demon, as it wrapped its arms around him. Then it went limp.

“... I’m sorry?”

Then it floated into the air.

And started flying away, taking the screaming Gabrias with it.

***

The demon knocked the last few shards of glass out of the air and warily observed the others. A massive pile of glass dust surrounded its feet, and it didn’t seem like any of it would be moving any time soon.

So it turned around and ran. Following the trail of blood the humans had left behind.

***

Psssstttt…

Marven winced as he watched Dukean cauterize his wound with the fire spirit power. He was already impressed beyond belief with the boy's willpower so far. It wasn’t something one would expect from a fifteen-year-old kid.

Dukean was an anomaly in many ways, and a few of them, Marven felt, could be partially attributed to the fact that he had already been here once and even starved to death.

On the one hand, it was clear that that would grant him an advantage in experience, but on the other hand, it made it all that more impressive that he had even dared to step back inside.

This wasn’t the time for idle musings. Marven swiftly brought his mind back to the subject matter—running as far away as possible from the demon.

They had taken a few sharp turns, and currently, they were heading to the surface.

There was no way they could return to their base or any point, and trying to find Neave was an absurd undertaking. Not only were the chances of stumbling upon him minuscule, but there was also a serious risk of running into a dead end.

Running into one again, that was, Marven thought, cursing as he stopped. He turned around and looked for another path.

There was another reason why they chose the surface. Those glass shards that had flown in out of nowhere were the doing of the glass brush, the being nurtured by Neave. If it was aware of their situation and helping them out, Neave likely already knew what was happening.

If they made it to the surface, that would make it the most accessible place for Neave to track them down.

As they ran, Dukean focused on shaping the sword, which looked about halfway done.

Remarkable, Marven thought, as he once again appreciated the young man’s drive.

Harel looked like she was fuming, and Marven couldn’t understand why. Hunter was silent, not having said a single word since their encounter with the powerful demon.

Marven cared little for their mental state, as survival was a bigger problem.

“...Shit!” Marven spotted another demon ahead of them. He would have to put Harel down and…

Suddenly, Dukean flew by ridiculously fast, landing a flying kick right at the demon’s head. His foot ignited in fire, and before the demon could regain its bearings, the metal spike flew down and opened its torso.

The demon was still alive, reaching for Dukean, but a strong gust of air concentrated on Dukean's palm as he slammed it into the demon's midsection and pushed it away, impaling it onto a spike protruding from the wall. The demon was about to push itself off the spike and set itself free, but the metallic protrusion bent to the side and locked the demon in place.

Carrying the two others, Marven harmlessly ran past the demon, and Dukean followed.

For the third time, Marven couldn’t help but appreciate Dukean.

Pffft… Even the kids in the top-tier sects are monsters.

A short run later, they found themselves up on the surface.

***

Neave stared at the floating shards of glass as they repeatedly made random shapes.

It was clear that the glass brush was trying to tell him something, but… Just, what the fuck?

“What is this!?” Neave pointed at the utterly nonsensical circles and arrows pointing in random directions.

Despite not being arranged in any coherent shape, the arrows still managed to convey a sense of frustration as they hurriedly formed a rough stickman.

The stickman then… Fell apart? But it was then put back together, and another stickman, which clearly had far too many limbs, formed next to it, and… Swung? Threw? Pointed its extra limbs at the other stickman?

Neave stared at the floating shapes in confusion and concluded that the glass shrub was hungry for attention. That must have been it.

“There, there, don’t worry, Shruby! I will be done with my task soon!”

Neave looked back down at the horrid monstrosity he was creating. A rough combination of limbs that had been haphazardly sewn together lay on the ground next to Neave’s feet.

Creating a humanoid monster was a high order and a task Neave simply couldn’t do yet, given the risk involved, so he settled for killing a bunch of abominids, then mixing and matching their limbs together.

After a few more minutes of work, he was finally done!

“Ta-dah! What do you think, Shruby?”

Frustration radiated from the incoherent shapes floating in the air, and Neave ignored them, “Whatever, your opinion is biased anyway! You’re probably just jealous again!”

The floating pieces sagged and scattered on the floor.

Neave harrumphed and went back to his experiment. It was far from an excellent solution to his problem, but he needed something to test the power out.

The tiny purple puppet floated over to the corpse and sank into it.

Neave frowned.

“Tendon there, muscle there, lots of muscles, actually, bone? No, wait, why are you simulating veins!? What the hell!? No, that’s completely pointless! Oh, fuck sake!”

Neave scratched his head in frustration.

The power only had a certain amount of energy it could dedicate at any time. That energy would be split between two things: manifesting fixes for parts of the body that didn’t work correctly and boosting the performance of the corpse.

For example, if the corpse had a severed tendon, the power would manifest an ethereal tendon instead, acting as a replacement. Or if a specific muscle were torn, it would patch it up. It also seemed to be fixing random shit like veins and nerves, even though those were utterly irrelevant to the corpse's performance.

That was one of the downsides of spirit powers; sometimes, they had pointless redundancy built into their function. As, well, they weren't built to begin with. Spirit powers were relatively random, or perhaps it was better to say, emergent, phenomena. There was no designer behind them, no grand scheme. They did what they did, regardless of the utility.

Neave's problem was that this power prioritized fixing issues over boosting performance. So, when it ran out of energy while fixing random body parts that held no importance to the combat capability of the corpse, it could no longer boost the combat capability of the corpse.

Funny how that worked, huh?

Neave bit his fingers until they bled and stared angrily at the horrific abomination he had constructed.

“Fucking useless bullshit.”

Of course, this power had a lot of potential. As far as its maximum power was concerned, it didn’t really have a maximum power. That depended on the ability of the body it was possessing, and if appropriately equipped, it could become a genuinely frightening asset.

So, what was the problem?

Well, once Neave left the nightmare realm, he would have to face the heavenly messenger. Probably very soon after he left too. There was no time for experimentation and bullshit time-sinks.

Every second would matter. Using any old corpse wouldn’t give him an edge in a fight against a cultivator of unknown but certainly superior strength.

Neave sighed. Whatever. This power would still come in helpful in terraforming the realm. There was one more upgrade Neave had failed to notice before.

The range of this power had increased—to practically infinity.

There was absolutely no limit he could sense to how far the corpse could be away from him. Even in a different realm, Neave was somewhat confident he could control it without a problem.

The part of the power responsible for that was the dimensional aspect, the same aspect that allowed him to store the corpses in a dedicated dimensional space.

Neave could think of several immediate benefits to this. He supposed he would have to settle for discovering something else to make a difference in the fight against the heavenly messenger.

Suddenly, the glass puppet flew over to Neave, carrying some form of horrific skin abominid.

Wait, no… Gabrias?

“Huh!?”

Neave was flabbergasted. Had the shrub lost its mind?

The naked Gabrias was released and plopped to the ground, still grasping the Glass Shard.

“L–Lo–Lord Neave!”

Neave pinched his brow. What in the realm was going on?

“What are you doing here? Did the shrub do this to you!?”

“No, I…” Gabrias paused as he turned to the glass puppet.

Neave turned to it as well. It seemed to be playing charades or something, as it showed a whole bunch of random movements Neave couldn’t possibly wrap his head around.

Gabrias gaped, “What!? Where!?”

… Are you serious?

“Can you tell what it’s trying to say?”

“Yes, and… It’s dire news! Marven and the others have left the cave and are being hunted by demons!”

Neave blinked, “Bruh.”

***

At first, Marven’s plan involved hiding somewhere in a depression, cowering beneath the growth, and hoping Neave would eventually find them.

That plan almost immediately came crashing down.

Dukean ran around, struggling to finish shaping the metal sword as he had to use it for self-defense.

Marven constantly juggled between giving Dukean a moment to breathe and keeping Harel and Hunter alive.

This was a nightmare.

Countless demons surrounded them, and he could see myriad others scurrying through the thick growth.

Harel was lashing out at anything approaching her like a rabid dog while Hunter stood still. He looked like he was either contemplating something or, the more likely possibility, his brain had shut down under all the stress.

Marven needed Dukean to hurry up and finish the sword, but what he needed the most was Neave to arrive. They were running out of time. Because Marven was running out of qi.

He couldn’t even use sword techniques, so all he had left were awfully unpracticed unarmed combat techniques. They were still mighty and couldn’t be called sloppy, but compared to his masterful swordsmanship, they were simply a waste of energy.

A massive waste of energy at that.

Marven’s foot landed on a demon’s head, which caved in beneath the pressure of the strike. He turned in the air and kicked again, shoving the demon away while he swapped his focus to another.

He was really feeling the lack of his spirit powers, and the lack of his endurance power hurt the most. It had evolved long ago into a power that drastically reduced his qi consumption. Without it, he felt like he was a sixty-year-old mortal farmhand again, as he quickly ran out of energy and felt like he was about to die.

Out of nowhere, Hunter broke apart from Harel and ran toward a large boulder. He used a qi technique to punch at the stone, shattering it into bits and breaking a large piece off.

Marven didn’t allow Hunter’s bewildering actions to disrupt his focus, but the others weren’t so disciplined.

Harel screamed, “What the hell are you doing, Hunter!?”

Hunter turned around, “Father! No, Dukean! Could you carry this stone into the air with your earth manipulation if we all climbed on top of it!?”

“I…!?” Dukean paused. No, he could definitely do that.

Marven grinned as his knee sank into the stomach of another demon, and it flew away, “Dukean, how long until you’re done with that sword!?”

“I’m already finished!” Dukean threw the metal sword at Marven.

Marven caught the sword, “Everyone, climb on the rock!”

They all scurried to climb onto the broken-off piece of rock while Marven cleaved through the demons en masse.

Once Dukean, Harel, and Hunter were on, Marven yelled, “Lift it off the ground! Don’t worry about me!”

Dukean listened to him and strained. He could do it. That didn’t mean it would be easy.

The rock floated up, unsteadily bobbing and weaving into the air as it took off. Instantly, several demons stretched their tentacles to grab onto the floating stone, but Marven was there to cut them off before they could reach it.

Dukean was shaking and breathing unsteadily, but he calmed himself and focused. It became much easier once he could simply concentrate on holding the stone in place.

Marven, however, wasn’t thrilled with his decision, “Don’t stop! Lift it as high into the air as you can manage!”

Dukean couldn’t help but chuckle at the unreasonable demand, but he complied, and the platform rose higher.

Once he was around fifty meters higher up, Marven yelled at him again, “Prepare yourself! I’m going to jump on!”

“Are you fucking…!?”

Dukean focused as hard as he could, and the platform froze in the air again. Marven lowered his stance and jumped with all his might, leaving a crater behind.

Once he made it up there, rather than landing on the stone, his feet floated a little, meaning Dukean didn’t have to exert extra effort to hold him up. However, that didn’t help much, “I–I can’...t… Hold on… Much longer!”

Marven firmly gripped the sword, holding it before his body, “Don’t worry… You won’t have to.”

A celestial blue light lit up around Marven.

Harel gaped as she instantly realized what he was doing, and Hunter reflexively stepped back a bit. Dukean didn’t need to know what was happening since he could sense the intense power behind that technique.

The sword crackled and sparked as the intense energy wrapped around it. It could just barely endure the pressure.

A massive, cyan sword appeared before them, lighting up the nightmare realm, granting it the touch of day for the first time in uncountable years.

Marven took a deep breath, and the sword sank into the earth.

With a single moment of delay, the sword exploded into billions of small strikes, flattening the overgrown surface around it as it shredded the bodies of demons into mince.

Once the light died down, all that was left behind was shattered obsidian and minced demon flesh.

Dukean slowly lowered the stone, and once it finally touched the ground, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

That relief didn’t last long, however.

Squirming tentacles appeared from beneath the piles of glass and, one by one, grabbed every piece of scattered limb they could find. As they retracted, all flowing to the same location, the source of the shadowy tendrils appeared.

The superior demon had arrived.