The Jester of Apocalypse

Neave was afraid of very few things. And he was terrified of only one.

A deep sense of unease washed over him when he returned to his spirit realm. It was so quiet. He had never had a reason to look out for sounds or fear danger in the comfortable embrace of his own spirit, so he had never realized it before… but the utter and absolute lack of sound was…

Unnerving.

Once again, the moment he appeared, he kept his senses wide open for absolutely anything that stood out. The fact that he felt nothing left him feeling deeply unsettled.

Encounters with the manipulator, as well as the statues all the way back in the loop, had a habit of messing with his recollection of what had happened.

It was frustrating, and every time it happened, it left him feeling powerless…

Weak.

Pathetic.

Taking a deep breath, which didn’t really achieve anything, given he was inside the realm, he refocused and observed. Anything, literally anything at all, that felt even slightly unusual would satisfy him for now.

Once again, he felt the unnerving feeling of the presence outside of his spirit realm.

Then he sensed something else. He perked up and rushed to his feet. No… he didn’t just feel it outside.

A tiny, near-negligible speck of that sensation was also in his spirit realm. The shock of the discovery left him so upset that his spiritual manifestation frayed for a moment.

Clenching his fist, it reformed to clarity, and he walked toward the feeling.

As expected, it was at the place where he encountered the golems. There were several patches of dirt missing, creating small holes in the ground, and not too far, the piles that used to be the golems were lying still as well.

Was something still hiding there? Slightly beyond his perception, in a layer beneath his spirit realm?

Was the…?

He walked forward. However, as he stood in the middle of the patch of ruined soil, he felt…

Well, whatever it was, it was in the immediate vicinity, that was certain, but try as he may, he couldn’t feel precisely where it was while next to it. It was the same with how it was easier to perceive the others from a large distance than it was when he was right next to them. When they were there, they were there. So, he must have been standing right beside the source of the sensation.

Given that he knew of only one way to crack and peel realities of his spirit realm off, which was by generating crystal spirit, he instead settled for digging around in the dirt.

However, when he reached for the soil, a tiny patch of it shifted. Instantly, he used a movement technique and backed as far away as possible. In mere moments, he was hundreds of meters away, and yet again, he could sense that something was there somewhere.

So he walked closer, carefully, and looked directly at the patch of dirt that had shifted. It moved again, and he steeled himself. He dug the earth, revealing… absolutely nothing beneath.

However, just as he was about to start digging deeper, the patch of dirt he had removed shifted again, causing him to flinch a bit.

"… Don't tell me?"

As he got closer, his suspicions were verified. The patch of dirt itself was the thing that was moving.

Because it was a golem.

It was around the size of his fist and seemingly incapable of anything more than slight shifting. Instantly, he violently crushed the piece of earth to power. 𝙧𝘈𝐍О𝔟ΕS̩

"Ew!"

The idea of things living in his spirit felt… yuck. It was like having worms crawl out of your ass, he felt. Probably worse. It was just gross and unsettling.

Staring at the patch of dirt that moved no more, he frowned.

This was what he had been sensing?

He turned in a random direction, staring off into his realm's distant, fake skies.

Then… Beyond my spirit realm? Golems…?

That couldn’t possibly be the case. If it was just a sea of golems outside the limits of his spirit realm, he’d eat a pile of abominid dung. He sat down in a cross-legged stance and thought about everything he had experienced with the recent encounter.

Once he entered the realm, something assaulted him. After that, he heard those violent whispers again, and his memory of the event cut off. However, as he regained himself, he noticed two things.

First, golems were fighting right before him. And second, whatever was outside his spirit had kind of half invaded it.

But… wait. The thing that had invaded his spirit first, or rather, the manipulator, he guessed, was also right before him and at the edge of his spirit…

He could feel himself shaking as a dark possibility sank in. Could the thing beyond his spirit realm be the influence?

No… that couldn’t be it. Could it? Perhaps these golems were a byproduct of whatever the manipulator was doing? But that made no sense. As far as he could tell, the invasion had failed. Hopefully, at least.

Something else was happening.

And to realize what, he had to remember. Sitting down with his spiritual sensation shut off, he did his best to recollect what had happened.

No good. It was as if the event he was trying to recall simply didn’t happen. He gripped his hair in frustration and scratched his scalp. Alright, then. New plan. Rather than remember what had happened, how about instead he tried guessing what he would have done in that scenario.

Attacked, naturally. Likely jumped the thing before him and slammed it with a true strike.

That didn’t tell him all that much about what had happened at all.

What if… What if he had done something similar to the crimson strike? The thing where he combined life force into a true strike? That was hard to do, and replicating it manually seemed almost impossible. But he could totally imagine it happening in a moment of panic. Inside of the spirit realm, though…

Now that he thought about it, what was that phenomenon anyway? Back when he used it on Astrador, it almost felt as if a higher, sapient power was manipulating reality itself to work in his favor.

At first, he had thought that the peculiarities with it were simply due to the nature of the foreign life force in his body.

But what if there was something more to it?

There was one thing that immediately came to mind. Ever since he had upgraded Absorb into Integrate, there was something else he was absorbing whenever he ate a monster.

Could it be remnant spirit? That was simply liquid spirit but with a deeply rooted impression of the creature it was inside of. What if that liquid spirit was colored, sort of? The way monster cores were.

Neave froze. "Wait a fucking minute!"

What the hell was that!? How had he never thought of this before!? Why was monster spirit colored? What was that color inside of it anyway?

It didn’t make sense for it to just be impurities, and it certainly wasn’t paint.

He got up and walked around, unable to sit still. The spirit he produced was blank. He had always thought, from the very beginning, that it was like the difference between dirt and a plant. The spirit he created was too homogenous and pure. It didn’t have any peculiar properties.

It was missing life. It was unliving, thus missing the core property that usually gave it its power, its substance.

Was that really it, though?

That insinuated that spirit could be shaped in a sense. That it had a property past only size and geometric shape.

But that wasn’t the case. Even in the difference between dead dirt and a plant, the plant had a quasi-soul. It wasn’t just dirt shaped like a plant. There was another critical element to it.

He materialized a bit of liquid spirit, and in his hands, a plant appeared.

Or rather, it was the shape of a plant—but It wasn’t alive. It was little more than an inert object in the form of a small sapling.

However, the dirt had been alive. There was something that made even otherwise dead dirt move. Yet this plant remained unliving.

It wasn’t just the shape. It wasn’t just the structure.

There was something else he needed. A key he was missing.

His mind rushed to the spiritual shimmer, to Astrador’s reaction. Every part of him screamed that he was about to do something unimaginably stupid, but he ignored his own pleas.

If faced with a power he wasn’t sure he could defeat… what was the thing he would do first? A true strike would be pointless, he knew. Running wasn’t his style.

No.

He knew exactly what he would do. It was already a contingency plan when he faced the heavenly messenger.

Qi combined with life force and with a spiritual shimmer…

Neave generated the boom combo right between his palms.

***

The blank servant stood just outside the radius of the glass shrub’s range of perception. It ceaselessly patrolled the surrounding area, and upon confirming no target presence within its range, it descended into the underground caves.

Yet again, just a bit outside of the range, it stood and waited. Whenever the scope of the glass shrubs expanded, it took a step back, maintaining the exact distance necessary to avoid detection.

Eventually, it could sense something approaching. Ponderously, a small slime hopped, reaching further out with each bounce.

The blank servant stood unmoving, unperturbed. Soon enough, the small slime reached it, leaving the range of the glass shrub's perception.

The white being seized the slime instantly, ripping the core out of its body with a swift movement. Its torso opened, and it placed the small monster core inside, only to close it once again.

One had been secured.

It was time to return to the master.

It turned around and ran out of the caves.

***

Astrador sensed the blank servant enter the anchor, and a conflicted expression appeared on his face. Soon enough, it stood before him and handed him the disgusting object.

It took all the willpower he had to prevent himself from crushing the core the instant he touched it. It felt beneath him to even look at it, let alone hold it like this.

And yet, he was planning on using it as a weapon.

Astrador couldn’t help but chuckle. What a joke.

Indeed, this was beneath the Great God.

Yet, while the Great God of the Heavenly Realms wielded principles, Astrador the man wielded hypocrisy.

Be it god or devil, at this level of power, there was no avoiding compromises. While the devils believed their little stunt with this abomination in his hands was a brilliant move, they should have known better.

Nothing stopped him from using their weapon for his own purposes.

And nothing could stop him from ensuring he achieved precisely what he wanted.