The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave teleported into the sealed chamber that led to the underground magma. The moment he appeared, he paused in surprise.

The room was filled to the brim with lava slimes and golems. They turned to him, and he had to fend off several attacks. It was slightly exaggerated to say he was ‘fending them off,' given that the attacks couldn’t even leave a red mark on his body.

His clothes, however, weren’t nearly as resilient and given that he had no desire to be left naked, he used the crown telekinesis to stop the attacks from reaching him.

The inside of the chamber was nothing special. It was much hotter than before, but other than that, it just looked like an ordinary cave with many fire monsters inside.

"… Hmmmm?"

There were quite a few glass bushes in the room, which was… not good. Neave had explicitly warned the glass shrub against breaking into any of the sealed chambers.

Had these been planted before he sealed the chamber? Probably not. That is a conversation he would have to have with the shrub. Luckily, it didn’t seem to be a problem, as the fire monsters weren’t nearly powerful enough to break off the sturdy branches.

For now, at least.

Neave shrugged. It wouldn’t be a big deal even if they grew powerful enough. Rather, it would be preferable, as the primary purpose of these glass shrubs was to feed the monsters more energy.

These creatures seemed to be progressing just fine, so Neave balled his fist and shattered one of the walls.

"Be free, my children!" He yelled, and the monsters rushed past him, their fiery bodies lighting the darkness of the caverns.

It was time to allow them to start spreading through the underground. Truthfully, Neave’s intervention wasn’t entirely necessary, as the monsters would eventually break into caves by digging out from underneath the surface.

He wouldn’t be surprised to learn they had already done it. The magma that resided in the planet's core was the nearly perfect environment for them, and nothing but time was stopping them from making it all the way to every corner of this world.

The more pressing issue currently was something entirely different. Neave needed some creatures to feed on the fire monsters.

***

The small slime tightened its body, and eventually, it sprung, jumping into the air. Neave grabbed it before it could land and examined it.

"Hmm, pure slime, nice, nice, you’ll do just fine."

Neave left the sealed chamber and ran for a while through the caves, where he eventually unceremoniously dropped the slime and left it alone.

The slimes would grow gradually, and eventually, they would fill the realm. As he had learned through his experimentation, it took quite a bit of effort to turn a slime into something other than a slime, and he was confident that there would never be a real shortage of them in the realm.

Once there were many, they would find a way to grow in power and quality, and voila, various monsters would be born.

The ambient energy had grown quite a bit, and by now, Neave could confidently say that it was even thicker here than it was in the real world outside. ȓ𝖆Ν𝔬ВΕS

At least, it was in the surrounding area. This was somewhat unusual but unsurprising. The density of the glass brushes was insane, and they produced immense energy by merely existing.

There likely wasn’t a single plant of this level of quality in the outside world. Well, perhaps some top sects had cultivated a few that could compare in quality, but definitely none that could come even close to the speed of growth and spread.

These plants made Neave wonder a bit. Would they… produce anything? Like a fruit or flower? That wasn’t typical of them, as fruit and flowers had nothing to do with how these plants reproduced, but given how many of them there were, mutations weren’t impossible.

Some shrubs were already growing considerably thicker than their brethren, and some were drastically more branched out.

However this would turn out, time would tell.

***

Neave stood in the room where he grew his plants and found it… frustrating. It required a lot of work to maintain, and frankly, he couldn’t be bothered to keep working on these plants.

Sadly, he didn’t quite have a choice. Most of the produce here would be essential for experimentation later.

Yet, he couldn’t help but feel a little bitter. So much work would effectively go to waste once they were back outside.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Nothing was wasted on the others. Any bit of potential they comprehended or realized would accelerate their outside cultivation. Not to mention that they would acquire some juicy wayfarer’s authority once they reached great power here.

And they wouldn’t forget any techniques they produced or practiced.

For Neave, however, the vast majority of the experimentation here was scientific in nature. He was already concocting plans to postpone being discovered by the heavenly messenger. Given the time and knowledge, he could turn any discovery here into a big advantage out there.

That was the power of knowledge, and effectively, the same thing he had done back with the time loop.

That didn’t make it feel like any less of a waste, though, and he bitterly crouched down to examine some of his experiments.

A large assortment of plants was being grown for the express purpose of speeding up the spread of the glass shrubs.

Yet, that wasn’t all he had been doing here.

A small patch of blueish-green grass was in a tiny chamber adjacent to the larger one. However, the room wasn’t overwhelmingly rich in ambient energy, and the soil wasn’t loaded with liquid spirit.

That was right. It was grass Neave had been trying to grow for a while. A strand of grass that could reproduce inside the nightmare realm.

The core problem, for now, was that it both grew at impossibly slow speeds and took ages to spread. And sadly, there didn’t seem to be a solution to this problem. He had contemplated producing something like the sapient glass shrub, but given how jealously that thing protected its power, he wouldn’t be surprised if that sparked a war.

For now, he could only sigh and pat the grass on its imaginary head. "There, there. Don’t worry, little one. The naughty glass shrub will hear from me if it comes after you."

The grass, unsurprisingly, didn’t respond.

Speaking of the glass shrub, he had contemplated giving that thing some spirit powers, but honestly, he had no genuine desire to do so any longer. It wouldn’t really help him much, and it was likely to abuse them.

No matter how ridiculous that sounded, the glass shrub was too emotionally immature to be handed so much power. So, for now, Neave prayed it would learn a thing or two from the others, and then he may be willing to consider it.

After a quick check-up with everything else he had in store, he finally decided it was time to do some work.

Off to the workshop he went.

***

Neave would have started the work immediately, but frankly, the workshop he had made was far too primitive. It was rather far from the main chamber with the shrub, by necessity, given that there was a significant risk of him blowing something up, but that meant he had to constantly go and fetch things from the other chambers.

So, he decided to replicate a smaller version of all the essential chambers before starting his experiments.

A small water chamber, plant field, a few monster coops, and a rudimentary testing ground later, he felt confident that would be enough.

A medium-sized room was plated in thick obsidian bricks. He could have plated it in metal, but it didn’t matter if the room was hyper-resistant. The only thing he needed, or rather wanted, was a relatively tidy, clean-looking room.

A smidgeon of vanity was behind his design choices, but he considered that an investment in his future productivity.

Despite having black, reflective walls, the room looked rather bright, warm, and pleasant. He had created a chandelier with a glowing glass ball in the center and a beautiful collection of glass pieces hanging around it.

There were quite a few pieces of furniture made of pure glass, and he had even produced a large carpet by skinning a few abominids. The carpets were pink streaked with red, of course, as the fur was the same as the hair growing on his head.

He had decorated the office to the point that he had to make another room adjacent to it where he wouldn’t risk destroying all the fancy decorations. Which made that last room nearly meaningless. Well, besides looking pretty and being a decent place to relax. Actually, just having a place to chill and think through his plans wasn’t useless at all.

While his spirit realm was excellent for getting more time to think things through, it wasn’t the best place to plan, as he had no access to his spirit powers, including the several cognition-boosting powers he had.

The first thing he experimented with once he finally got started was a slime. It all started with them, it seemed. However, this time, he wasn’t growing any monsters.

A sharp needle appeared in his hand. It was a long piece of glass he had granted a giant ball of pure spirit. It had no extraordinary power, but the quasi-soul was not to be underestimated.

He injected the needle into the slime’s body, reaching all the way to its core. While alive, a monster’s core wasn’t actually true crystal. It was something between crystal and ethereal spirit. Only with a monster’s death did it become fully crystalline.

As the needle approached the small mass of shifting spirit, the slime shook and shivered briefly until its core crumbled under the pressure.

A Violet Avatar crawled into the slime's body before its goop could dissipate and spill into a nasty puddle. It couldn’t enter. For some reason, the avatar kept bouncing off the slime’s body.

Neaave slapped his forehead as he remembered to use a tendril of liquid spirit guided by life force to ‘wash out’ the remnant spirit from the slime’s body. Once that was done, Violet Avatar could enter unhindered.

The slime glowed with low, purple light as its body firmed up again. He grinned.

He focused and found himself manipulating the slime’s body from its perspective. Immediately, he was thrown out of focus and had to stop.

"… That is so trippy."

This was the first time he had tried genuinely manipulating the corpse of another being, and it was a very unusual experience. And it was also one that presented a serious problem.

He effectively left his body whenever he entered the slime. That meant his main body was empty whenever he used the violet avatar.

That was a massive problem. One of the ability's main appeals was that it effectively added another body for him to use in combat. If he had to discard his actual body to use it, it would ruin the core purpose of the power.

He wouldn’t be dissuaded by something so minor, however. The dragon could use the power without issue; if it could do it, then damn it, so could he.

While it was incredibly nauseating, it was possible to rapidly swap between his body and the slime’s. Gritting his teeth, he kept doing it for a while, and gradually, the process grew faster and faster. Finally, after a bit of practice, he could swap perspectives instantly and change right back.

That wasn’t a perfect solution, but it wasn’t bad. With enough practice and skill, he could use both bodies in a fight.

The issue was that he could have up to seven bodies. It was unclear whether he could use that many bodies simultaneously and still show a decent degree of skill, even with ages of practice.

Despite this problem, the power was still worth using, if anything, for the scouting potential and the ability to fight opponents without risk to himself.

There was also the possibility of making every puppet extremely specialized and then swapping between them based on whichever one he needed the most.

For now, he had to return to learning how to control the body.

Back in the shiny slime, he tried moving. It seemed impossible. There were no muscles, tendons, or bones, and this creature's anatomy felt foreign to him. Bit by bit, he experimented with different movements, and eventually, he felt confident he was on the right track.

The slime body tensed a bit and immediately relaxed, jiggling slightly. It tightened again, this time far more, and once it released the pressure, it hopped in the air slightly. Then it tensed greatly and jumped so fast it slammed into the ceiling, and its body suffered damage.

The backlash threw him out of the avatar and left him with an intense desire to puke, but he grinned despite that. That was so thrilling! Who knew something so simple would be so much fun!? Being in the slime's body felt strangely liberating, he had to say. It was to the point where he contemplated keeping this body.

He frowned at that. Was it really worth it? The problem was that the slime no longer had a core. This meant it didn’t have any growth potential. Or… wait—was that really true? It couldn’t evolve, but did that mean it couldn’t grow?

For starters, adding spirit powers to the thing was impossible. The reason why was simple. He could easily melt a monster core in the slime's body, granting it a quasi-spirit. While its body was alive, there was no soul in there. It would be like melting a monster core in any other liquid.

The problem was that this would make it impossible for Neave to possess it again.

He had actually tried this exact thing with another slime corpse, but all it did was produce the equivalent of a slime-corpse-shaped weapon that pretty quickly melted.

The only way to enter the body would be by purging the quasi-spirit, which would remove the entire point of doing it in the first place.

So that was out of the question.

There was the possibility of feeding it a ton of treasures, but the question was, what would that achieve? A bouncier, more resilient slime? Not a great damage dealer. Perhaps it could gain toxic or acidic properties, even without evolving? That could theoretically work.

Equipping it was… well… it was a damn slime. How would one even equip it?

Well… actually… there was one way to do it.

A few other ideas later, he had a few things he wanted to try out. Was experimenting on a slime like this worth it?

Yes.

After all, Neave knew best just how much potential there was in merely having fun.