The Jester of Apocalypse

Harel stepped forth, fury clear in her expression, "What!?" She screamed indignantly. “Wha—!? What the hell, Neave!? How are we supposed to train? How are we supposed to—!?”

“Shut up!” Neave yelled. “Everyone just shut up.”

Marven restrained Harel, but she just turned around and yelled at him instead, “Oh fuck off, you doting father, let me speak!”

Although he looked like he was clearly holding himself back from protesting, Dukean asked, “Are the demons on the move again?”

Hunter and Gabrias were quiet.

Neave looked at them, unsure of what else to say. One thing was clear, though. They weren’t safe here.

He wasn’t safe here, either.

Should he remove them from the realm, then?

“Who thought that!?” He yelled, losing faith in his own mind and thoughts.

Dukean approached Neave and shook him, demanding answers, while Harel seethed in Marven’s grasp.

Neave looked at the chaos before him. The worry, fear, the anger. His father stared at him with a conflicted expression, and the others bombarded him with questions. His ears were ringing, and it all fell into the background.

Taking a deep breath, Neave finally collected himself enough to think it through properly.

This realm was a trap. That was almost certain. His first instinct had been to leave as soon as possible, but… was that really the right choice? Perhaps dying prematurely could allow the manipulator to take hold of the others, one way or another.

The presence of a black plasma spirit within the monster's cores was frightening. If it spread to all the monsters, that would mean losing their chance to test spirit powers, making training a far riskier endeavor.

And the purpose behind that mysterious substance worried him. Was the manipulator gathering strength? If so, was it, no, he about to attack?

Finally, Neave got tired of Dukean’s interrogation, so he grabbed him by the arm and threw him across the room, "Just hear me out. I’m not saying this without a good reason."

Neave sat down and explained his fears about the black substance within monster cores. It was a patchy explanation at best, as he omitted the part about mind manipulation, so they weren’t exactly clear on why he feared it so much.

But it wasn’t that hard to understand, either. People feared the unknown for a good reason, and that reason only gained more weight when put in the context of a mysterious realm of darkness and powers that they knew little to nothing about.

This ‘darkness’ was clearly some form of foreign influence capable of manipulating monsters. Extrapolating that consuming that substance could be bad was something even Hunter could wrap his head around.

After he explained himself, a deathly silence enveloped the room. They were staying in the nightmare realm, and suddenly, the illusion of relative safety was shattered.

Suddenly, Gabrias lifted an enthusiastic arm, and everyone turned to face him. His face lit up as he pointed at a gigantic pile of carved obsidian blueprints.

***

For a while, construction projects effectively became the life of the Falken sect members.

Neave had created several tiaras to grant everyone at least some form of telekinesis to speed things up. The reason why he chose tiaras instead of crowns was petty beyond belief, and he provided no explanation. Ｒ₳ꞐοʙĘŜ

The first thing that was done was extreme reinforcement of the main chamber. Really extreme reinforcement.

To his surprise, Dukean knew the inscriptions for creating a teleportation platform. It was surprisingly uncomplicated and, luckily, didn’t need any unattainable materials.

Well, technically, the creation of teleportation platforms usually did require a few key, costly ingredients, but he had an easy way to circumvent this requirement.

The metal that had to be used needed to resist spatial turbulence; otherwise, it would be torn apart. Conveniently, ordinary hardness could substitute this function perfectly fine. The metal simply needed to be really freakin’ tough.

It did require further compensation for the lack of high-rank metal, but that problem was the same as with the golems. Several cores and multiple power sources with numerous thin threads to carry the energy would be sufficient.

Speaking of power sources, it had to be a rather potent monster core, and it had to be of at least A-grade roundness—another non-problem for Neave.

There was another problem, one they had no way to solve. To traverse vast distances, a special type of crystal was necessary for the teleportation circles to connect. Fortunately for them, they didn’t need to travel vast distances. And, if they did, for whatever reason, this could be sort of resolved through using a long chain of teleportation platforms.

Access to teleportation allowed them to create a near-impenetrable barrier around the main chamber. And it removed the need for a door. Usually, it would need at least a tiny hole somewhere so two teleporters could connect, but the openings for roots served that purpose just fine.

A similar ordeal was also replicated with the other chambers, making the prospect of something breaking into them far less likely. And given that using the teleporters without knowledge of the encrypted inscriptions that had to be inputted was impossible, this was about as safe as they could make them.

With that, they finally began with their serious construction.

***

The tiaras were fantastic for carrying things around but weren’t optimal for shaping objects. So, Neave created rings that could do that as well.

Gabrias changed his plans for the ball dome and instead made plans for a walled-off circular underground fortress.

The construction of the absolutely gigantic wall was a pain, to say the least. Neave had to create numerous teleportation platforms and use them repeatedly to deliver more metal to his allies. Naturally, he didn’t let them leave the safe area by themselves.

Luckily, his speed was incredible, and despite the absurd material requirements, he could supply them faster than they could use them.

The only even half-reliable way to track time in the nightmare realm was through their sleep patterns. Judging by that, it took them nearly three months to finish construction. That didn’t seem long, but with how fast they had been working, it was a testament to the absurdity of the undertaking.

And also, that was far from the end of their work.

Now, it was time to renovate the interior as well.

***

Gone were the unrestrained, wild caves of the old. Now, the inside of the radius of their fortress looked entirely different.

Forty-seven large, relatively naturally shaped chambers filled the inside of the fortress, and leading from one to the other were perfectly tidy, reinforced hallways.

The natural-looking chambers would be turned into natural habitats, where Neave planned to create a safe zone for monsters. He would grow plants there and ensure monsters could grow without being corrupted by the manipulator.

Sadly, these creatures would never become a real threat in combat, but that wasn’t why he restrained them like this. They needed monsters to grow and evolve into a large variety of creatures so they could test different types of spirit powers.

Ironically, as silly as it may seem, tracking those powers down would be much easier once they were outside. Crystal Palace, for example, had an immense variety of monster cores, holding a vast collection of different types of spirit powers. These were gathered over centuries of empire-wide wars against monster populations.

All one needed was enough money and a detailed enough description of the desired power.

Neave had reliable methods for growing monster cores as he wanted, but there was no way he could compare to that. Nearly anything they could discover here likely already existed in the collection of Crystal Palace. Barring perhaps the unique glass substance.

Still, it would serve its purpose.

Once they were done with this, Neave and Gabrias discussed the necessity of the ‘Divine Tower,’ as Gabrias called it. He claimed that building that tower was imperative, while Neave simply called him a dumbass who was getting carried away.

For now, they only had two more things to do.

Finishing the maze outside the fortress and shaping the habitats.

***

The maze was significantly more straightforward to create than any of them had expected. It wasn’t that surprising, however. After all, all they really had to do was shape the caves into relatively straight hallways.

The reason why they needed this maze was simple. Anything that tried reaching their fortress would have to be powerful enough to break through the exceptionally sturdy walls or wander the hallways to get to the barrier.

The hallways, however, weren’t going to be easy to explore.

First, Most of the walls had extremely uneven shards of crystallized spirit embedded within. Neave had confirmed, through his slime avatar, that that absolutely destroyed the ever-living shit out of any attempt to try and find a way through supernatural perception. The walls were also filled with traps.

On top of that, the hallways were shaped in a way that messed with the sense of direction, both through how they were constructed and, with Dukean’s help, through space-altering runes. Whether one tried going through the walls or the maze, they would be completely lost.

Then, there was the final piece of the puzzle—filling the mazes to the brim with golems.

With that being done, there was only one thing left to do.

Form the habitats.

***

Harel observed one of the many creeks that flowed through the chambers as she shaped a hole and placed a small sapling inside it. At first, she thought this chamber would be a drab, plain biome for the monsters, as all the others had been.

To her surprise, Neave went the extra mile to line the ceiling with beautifully textured glass, which reflected the many lights lining the ceiling in a way that made it almost look like some sort of ethereal sky.

And it reminded her of the chamber she practically grew up in.

She felt strange reminiscing about her past. It was bittersweet, to say the least. Hanging in the limbo of drive and desire, she couldn’t claim she had moved on. She was getting tired of being here. Tired of waiting.

“Hurry up,” she whispered unknowingly. “Give me another reason to live.”

***

Neave had delegated the overwhelming majority of the work to the others. It was mainly set up already; the habitats simply needed to be organized.

After chasing Gabrias away, who still desperately wanted to build the tower, he finally began the next step of his plans. Creating the golems.

Neave already had a solid idea of what to do and had puzzled out several fixes for the previously encountered problems. Yet, he knew it still wouldn’t be that easy.

But this was something worth doing either way.

When he returned to reality once again, he would have access to higher-ranked materials. Golems created with those wouldn’t be nearly as limited as the ones he made now.

As it stood, he had four cards to play against the messenger. His allies, mighty weapons, the fusion of spirit powers, and golem creation.

Oh, and Violet Avatar, although he still wasn’t entirely sure how useful that would be in the fight.

It was easy to assume that the golems would be another extra weapon in the arsenal, but they were far from ‘merely’ anything. An autonomous, unlimited army of superweapons shouldn’t be underestimated.

Even by the messenger.

With that in mind, he finally sat before a pile of simple metal and glass.

It was time to perfect these things once and for all.