The Jester of Apocalypse
Chapter 90: Muscle

A demon slithered around the surface, sniffing out any potential prey. Its wriggly tentacles squirmed and grasped branches of obsidian, and it pulled itself through the shadowy forest of black.

"Yo, dude, watch this!"

Something spoke. It turned around, spotting the tiny, pink-haired child, a creature that smelled of wonderfully tasty flesh. However, it paused as it felt the unusual object in the small being’s hands.

It swung the object and—

***

"Huh…? Where did it go?" Neave glanced around, failing to spot the demon.

His new toy was finally being used in practice, and he was excited to witness the aftermath. Yet, the demon just disappeared, vanishing into thin air.

Eventually, after quite a bit of squinting, he spotted a small patch of clouds, parting for something that had flown through them at incredible speed.

…

"Oh shit!"

That was quite some distance. Giggling, he kissed the sledgehammer, patting it lovingly and spinning around with it. "You’re so strong! Oh, my heavens, who’s the best hammer in the realm!? You are! Yes, you are!" Cradling it in his arms, he ran around, looking for other prey.

Eventually, he came across another demon. This time, he swung the hammer down, landing an overhead strike.

Splat.

The instant the hammer touched the top of the demon's head, a shock wave liquified its entire body, and the puddle of demon slush splattered against the ground, most of it immediately vaporizing into noxious smoke. The strike's backlash was also quite noticeable, but his spirit powers made quick work of what little damage his arms had suffered.

"Yes!” He screamed in joy, finally seeing what he had been aching for all that time. “With my wonderful hammer, Tecton, I shall conquer the world!" He lowered his voice and glanced around nervously. Bringing his mouth closer to the hammer, he whispered, "Don’t tell Shrubby I named you before it. It gets very jealous sometimes!"

There was a lot to do. Yes, he had so much work that he wouldn’t be done for years.

"But it’s so boring!"

Sitting around like a dumbass and staring at a plant all the time wasn't the most exciting thing to do. Work was boring! Yes, terraforming the realm was necessary, and yes, he was neglecting the others by procrastinating and playing around, but doing work was so dull!

He didn’t really need to invent any new method for finishing this. Simply cycling life force infusions into the glass shrub would eventually spread enough of the plants around to fulfill his goal. The simplicity of his task was the main problem, as he preferred crazy experiments with unexpected outcomes.

True, he often complained that things didn’t go his way or that he wished everything would go as he wanted, but in reality, the uncertainty created excitement.

So, he chose to give himself a temporary break and go have some fun instead.

The features of his beautiful new weapon were hard to discern in the dark, but that wasn't a significant obstacle to his perception.

The weapon was taller than he was, and it weighed an absurd amount—so much that he had to rely on several movement techniques just to prevent himself from toppling over—or sinking into the ground—whenever he picked it up.

On his hunt for the demons, he sped through the landscape, carefully examining every nook and cranny. As he ran, his steps slowed, and eventually, he had to stop.

For some strange reason, he was panting and sweating. The hammer felt strangely heavy in his arms, and eventually, his grip on it slipped. It landed with a frightening crash that shook the nearby area.

The handle hung in the air for a second, and as it fell over, it, too, echoed with a massive boom.

What the hell was wrong with him? Did he get inflicted with some form of curse or something?

Or could it be that… he was tired?

It had been so long since he felt mundane physical exhaustion that it left him surprised. The hammer was insanely heavy, to the point where his regeneration couldn’t keep up with the damage his muscles and tendons suffered under its mass.

It wasn’t just that, either. He constantly had to push his willpower of might spirit power to the limits, which left him feeling lethargic and drained. Even his impossibly firm resolve crumbled beneath the mass of Tecton.

Not in a billion years would he concede that he had made the hammer too heavy. Conventions and practicality be damned, he would find a way to wield the hammer with ease, no matter how ridiculous the solution may be.

However… perhaps he didn’t need a ridiculous solution.

After resting, he returned to the cave, hauling Tecton behind his back. He left a trail of destruction in his wake. The hammer ended up with a simple yet devastating ability—force amplification.

This made the weapon quite destructive if not handled responsibly. Since Neave didn’t hold a shred of responsibility in a single cell of his body, mass collateral destruction was inevitable.

Once back inside the cave, he sagged again, dropping to the ground and allowing himself to recover from the ordeal. The glass puppet walked up and cocked its head at him. He meekly lifted his hand, giving the glass shrub a thumbs up.

The puppet approached him, grabbed his leg, and dragged him to its main body.

"What the fuck, dude!?” He protested with a groan. “Let me rest!"

The shrub ignored his pleas and manipulated the puppet to throw Neave over to the base of the plant.

He simply closed his eyes and ignored the blatant disrespect, refusing to feed the plant out of sheer stubbornness.

Poke, went the puppet, jabbing Neave’s side with a sharp finger and—poke—it went again.

Poke.

Poke.

Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.

"Fucking stop!" Neave screamed as he grabbed the puppet's hand, which it was using to poke his side over and over and over and over— "Grow up, you little shit!" An absurd statement by every imaginable parameter.

He was still a little woozy, and the plant wasn’t quitting, so he clicked his tongue in annoyance and mumbled irritably while imbuing the plant with life force. Perhaps the imbuement was done with a little too much power this time. The puppet's protests were ignored as he forced more life force in, grinning like a maniac.

Eventually, he chose to be the bigger man and do it properly. The puppet walked over to the hammer lying on the ground and attempted to lift it, likely in a petulant attempt at intimidating him, and failed miserably.

Wicked laughter echoed through the caves as he made fun of the plant for thinking it could lift Tecton.

In annoyance, the puppet pouted and crossed its arms, turning its head away.

Once he finished feeding the plant, he got up and walked over to the hammer, effortlessly raising it off the ground. In reality, it wasn’t effortless at all, but he had to show who was boss around here.

"Now, excuse me, fine brush, as I go off and wield this gigantic, stupidly heavy hammer as if it weighed nothing at all! Muahahahaha!" Leaving the pouting puppet behind, he ran to another nearby cave.

The hammer crashed down, and he breathed out in exhaustion.

For the next part of his plan, he needed a medium-sized room, so he ate through the walls until he had a roughly square space he could work with. While the cavern floor wasn’t soft, he knew it would have to be stronger for what he was about to do next.

After collecting a sizeable pile of obsidian branches, he melted them into a smooth floor that he additionally hardened with alchemy techniques. He didn’t go as far as he would for weapon material, but it needed to be quite damn hard to survive the abuse he was about to put it through.

Once done, he grabbed the sledgehammer and swung it through the air. It whistled menacingly, and the air vibrated with intense pressure. Swinging it through the air over and over, he eventually felt himself reach the point of exhaustion.

When he could no longer continue, he put the hammer down carefully and took a break. After giving himself enough time to rest and recover, he picked it back up and continued his training.

That was right. For the first time since he was a fugitive in Pavarrie, he was training his physical strength. Realizing potential by cultivating wasn't possible for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t improve through mundane training—even if he had no idea by how much.

His body was that of someone in the foundation realm, and he had already consumed insane amounts of monster flesh, likely more than anyone else.

This had morphed his body, his actual, physical body, independent of his spirit powers, and turned it into something spectacular. However… conversely, this might potentially mean that he was already reaching the upper limits.

Did his body already fulfill most of its non-cultivation potential, making his efforts fruitless? That wasn’t baseless speculation, either. Eating monster meat was known to partially satisfy the function of training, allowing one to augment and supplement their training by consuming it.

This wasn’t something that purely added power entirely independent of training. It, in significant part, sped up the process that could naturally be achieved through exercise.

For most cultivators, this was a minuscule technicality that had no real consequence in the grand scheme. Hell, if one could fulfill the full potential of training their body within a realm, they would likely already be capable of advancing up the path, making this a non-existent bottleneck.

For Neave, however, the details of how this worked, especially in interaction with his spirit powers, made all the difference in the world.

Training could be completely and utterly useless. Yet, he held on to a faint chance. Perhaps the peculiar combination of his spirit powers would, in one way or another, move those limits up high enough that he still had some space to grow.

So he swung his hammer. Over and over, he completed the cycle of exhausting himself and resting. Eventually, he felt it—he had grown. But…

Is that because I’ve improved my body or because I’ve improved my willpower? Or could have my spirit powers grown instead?

The Willpower of Might spirit power scaled with how much willpower he could exert. If he was improving his will, that was perfectly fine, but that wasn’t what he wanted to achieve.

But it wasn’t like he had an easy way to check whether he—

When he realized it, he couldn’t stop himself from facepalming. Of course. It had been so damn obvious. He could check the strength of his body independent of his spirit powers. All he had to do was enter his spirit realm.

After finding the tiny entrance in his spirit, he went inside.

The top of the mountain-cone of steel looked over his entire spirit realm. It was pretty spacious and horribly cluttered, but the borders were plain to see.

He had already turned the top of the steel mountain into something of a… lounge.

Sitting and waiting for the monsters to die was pretty dull sometimes. So, the top of the mountain was absurdly fancy. A fine, silky smooth bed, a lovely couch, shelves of books, the contents of which reflected texts he had already read before, and many other random toys and even more random shit.

Nothing stopped him from summoning objects during the trials, and more than once, he had wondered how he could use that to his advantage in the trials themselves. But the most practical application he found for this feature was its use in dicking around and creating random crap he could play with.

This expedition into the spirit realm was no different either. Walking over to a bit of the empty space left, which was rapidly running out, he got to work.

He created a massive barbell from the material he had artificially created outside. The weight on it was adjustable through a simple mechanism.

As he cracked his neck, he bent over and grabbed the barbell. It was time to see what his training was really worth.