The Jester of Apocalypse
Chapter 89: The Good Shit

The children had a stick to defend themselves and some grub to feed on, and Neave nodded in satisfaction.

He was back in the room beside Sassy Shrub—temporary name—and jumping around playfully as he thought of all that happened.

Honestly speaking, not even he could really treat that weapon so carelessly. But they needed to see that. It would be a while before they really set themselves free, he knew, but he owed them some help.

Accidentally dying from misusing that thing was a genuine threat, but hey! His father was highly experienced. There was no way he would accidentally kill everyone…

Right?

Well, whatever, it would be fine! Probably… Most likely. Besides, he had more important things to do now than worry about that.

Excitement flowed through his veins at the thought of the Glass Shard. The monster core hadn’t been that big, yet the weapon turned out frighteningly powerful. Was it really possible to make something as powerful as that with so little effort?

Neave decided—he needed a weapon.

Was it a priority?

Hell no, not by a long shot. But there wasn’t all that much else he could do. He spent most of his time feeding the plant life force and brainstorming ways to speed up the process. Creating a weapon wouldn’t slow his progress down by much.

Now, the big question remained—what weapon did Neave want to use? Honestly, he had gotten somewhat bored of swords. That would be an absurd statement by anyone else, but he had spent endless years swinging one around. It was a good choice, certainly.

Practical, sharp, and pointy, it did the slashy and cutty and stabby things just fine.

However, Neave drooled at the thought of a big, fat sledgehammer. Oh yeah, the juicy impact, the scrumptious damage, the shockwave! Nothing could appeal to his heart more than shattering mountains with a swing.

Wasn’t it, like, the perfect weapon?

Neave remembered an important decision he had made.

No weaknesses.

No limits.

No compromise.

Frankly, he had failed to live up to this so many times that it barely held value anymore. But it was a worthwhile ideal to strive towards.

The sword was mighty, yes, but it struggled to deal with hard surfaces. What could even stop a sledgehammer? Alright, alright, hurr durr, it couldn’t cut things. That much was obvious, but who said he had to make one that couldn’t cut things?

He could puzzle something out. If he made a sledgehammer from this glass and used the same strategy as he had with the Glass Shard, he could relatively easily make a sledgehammer that could cut things just fine.

That was lame, though. Why make a sledgehammer for that, anyway? This glass was hard and sharp but wasn’t all that heavy. It wouldn’t make good material for a sledgehammer.

No, sledgehammers had to be heavy. They had to be like boom, pow, thunk, you know?

Like pow, yeah, that’s the stuff!

Neave swung an imaginary hammer around the room, pondering how to best make one.

***

The glass puppet sat on the ground nearby, cocking its head at his strange behavior. It got up and imitated Neave’s movements, trying to puzzle out what he was doing.

It couldn’t figure it out. It made sense. After all, the wisdom of its master wasn’t something it could grasp so quickly. It had to keep diligently working, and it could maybe eventually capture even a fraction of its master’s knowledge.

Master spotted it imitating him and laughed, "What are you doing, you dumbass!?" He rolled around on the floor, wildly cackling at its noble efforts.

Perhaps Master was just an idiot.

***

After feeding his goofy little shrub buddy some life force, it was time for a stroll through the nearby caves. Many nasty metal spikes lined the walls, and he approached one to see its properties. Pulling it off the wall, he tried bending, breaking, and otherwise just abusing the metal to see where its limits lay.

The results surprised him. It was ordinary metal. By all means, it seemed to be something firmly within the mortal realm. But damn, was it heavy. It wasn’t pure, either. It appeared to be an alloy of several different materials.

Yup, it was experiment time!

He gathered several spikes and carried them to a section of a cave not too far from the room with the glass shrubs. Although the obsidian shrubs still dominated the caves, countless tiny glass sprouts had already appeared, announcing the start of a new era.

Once he cleaned the room and felt satisfied with how organized it was, he left and found a slime.

Scant few regular slimes were left; most had turned into blood slimes. This was a problem. Neave dug out a cave section and lined the walls with obsidian, almost perfectly sealing it off from the outside.

Then, he placed one of the only regular slimes remaining in there. He fed the monster his limbs, and as it grew, it replicated. Anything that evolved or in any way deviated from being a regular slime was killed and eaten immediately.

Something, something, circle of life, something, either way, Neave had work to do.

After filling the room with slimes and ensuring nothing else snuck in, he sealed it thoroughly and left. This would be a backup plan, a seed in case the others went extinct.

Regular slimes were necessary, as they were a blank slate, an empty canvas that could be painted on. Blood slimes or other variations didn’t consistently evolve the right way, and regardless of how much they grew and evolved, there would always be a hint of blood marking their characteristics.

That was why it was essential to ensure a backup.

Once finished, he left and found another slime he carried to the special room he had prepared. It was a dome of crystal spirit which completely cut him off from the outside world. The air was filled with ethereal spirit, making for an optimal environment.

Staring at the little gooey fella, Neave pondered. How should he do this?

He wanted to feed the slime the metal to create a metal slime or golem. But how should he feed the slime? Was it right to just provide it the raw metal and pray for the best?

Of course it wasn’t! It was only obvious that he had to first create a decent alloy or purify the metal to ensure he only fed the little slime buddy the best he had.

So he got to work. A painful amount of time later, his efforts produced a pile of… different metal. It was hard to say whether it was pure; hell, he couldn’t tell if it was even better.

In fact, some of the metal was inferior in quality, as he had clearly purified it of whatever made it decent to begin with.

He groaned. Why? He yearned for a simpler life with fewer complications, one where all would always turn out the exact way he wanted it to and, without any exceptions, be amazing.

Those damn blacksmiths weren’t losing their jobs that easily, it seemed. Purifying metals was a serious business. So, how could he simplify it?

Maybe he could just inject the metal into his veins and have his sacred blood purify it? That was a rather funny, though. Sacred Blood would remove all the metal, so there was no point in…

There was… no… He knew this feeling quite well already. The moment when either an absolutely brilliant or utterly idiotic idea sparked in his mind.

After walking over to a small obsidian brush, he plucked the branches and shaped them into a bowl. Once he returned, he spilled his blood into the bowl, adding a bit of liquid spirit for good measure.

Then, he grabbed a decent-sized chunk of raw metal and plonked it inside. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t doing anything. A while later, he fished the chunk of metal out to find—

"Oh, come the fuck on!"

—no difference whatsoever.

"Ugghhh… Wait!" No, there was one thing he could still do.

He extended a tendril of liquid spirit into his blood and put the metal chunk back into the bowl.

"Uhm…" He blinked. With barely any effort, he manipulated his blood to purify the metal chunk and remove all inferior materials.

It didn’t even take a moment of focus, nor did it take any finesse. All it took was a few sparks of life force and… voila… he supposed. The now pearly shiny chunk of metal was firmly grasped in his shivering hands as he grinned gleefully.

Looks like he would be putting the blacksmithing industry out of business today anyway.

This metal felt a little floaty, however. It was hard to explain what was off about it. Neave extended a tendril of liquid spirit into it, heated it up, and shaped it into a ball.

It had been a little lighter because he had purged all the impurities, leaving minuscule patches of empty space inside the chunk. Now that he had squished it together, he felt that same weight again—a little heavier now, actually.

As he stared at the perfect ball of raw material, he pondered. There was one more thing he could do. Well, there were numerous things he could do, but there was one thing he could achieve quite easily.

A silvery sheen surrounded his hand, and he touched the metal ball, feeling it grow heftier. Alchemy had a few techniques that could be used to manipulate metal, and one of them allowed him to make the metal heavier.

It was an exhausting process, however, and every time he used a technique, it became more and more difficult.

Despite that being the expected outcome, he couldn’t stop a sigh from escaping his lips. His qi was miserably weak, and even with nigh perfect control, its power was limited. That didn’t mean he was out of options, however.

He filled the bowl with liquid spirit this time and imbued it with life force, pushing it to its limits. Placing the chunk inside, he manipulated the life force to seep into the metal.

Once it was inside, he burned it.

This was difficult enough that it left even him exhausted. Once he was done, however, he grabbed the metal ball and used another qi technique. It worked perfectly fine. It worked incredibly well, even.

What he had just done was a technique called impression segmentation. It was an advanced alchemy technique only done at the highest level. It allowed one to segregate individual modifications of a material to avoid mutual interference or, in this case, to avoid diminishing returns from stacking effects.

Every time he used an alchemy technique on the metal, the change he created would be compartmentalized. This was to say that his previous modifications wouldn’t impact future changes. Thus, there wouldn’t be any drop-off in efficiency when he modified the metal.

Naturally, this wasn’t unlimited. The life force could only contain so many different compartments, and eventually, he would run out, and using further techniques would become impossible.

Finding out where those limits lay was only a matter of time.

***

Neave sweated as he held the absurdly heavy metal ball in his hand.

"What the fuck is even happening anymore?" Apparently, either due to his fine control or the assistance of his liquid spirit, the limit for individual compartments was high.

Very, very, very fucking high. Holy shit, is there even an end!? He thought as he used another technique.

He had emptied his qi reserves many times over, and the metal kept getting heavier until finally, he suddenly found the limit, and his following qi technique did virtually nothing.

It was as if he deflated as he finally allowed himself to rest a bit. A faint headache had tried its best to fight past his healing and even nearly succeeded, but alas. Without thinking, he dropped the metal ball.

It hit the ground with a dull thunk and sank into the ground as if it were soft snow.

Slimes didn’t have emotions or sapience, as far as he knew, but he could swear this thing was cowering in the corner, hiding in fear of what Neave planned to do to it.

It better since this wouldn’t be any ordinary experiment.

"You better look forward to it, you little poopball, because I’m about to spoon-feed you the good shit."

His fingers stretched to retrieve the tiny sphere—and the slime shivered.