The Jester of Apocalypse
Chapter 101: Fourth Spirit

In a beautiful gazebo, sitting in a picturesque garden, six figures lounged in luxury, bathing in the goods of this world of wonders.

They all had luscious, blonde hair, except for one figure with a striking pink mane streaked in crimson. Their bodies donned pearly white togas orned in golden decorations. A young man grabbed a grape off a table and ate it.

He swallowed it, and rather than pleased, he looked severely disappointed.

Hunter turned to the others. "Is it just me, or is the food here kind of weird?"

The others turned to each other and nodded.

Dukean also grabbed a grape and swallowed it. "Yeah, it doesn’t feel like you’re eating something. It feels more like a vivid recollection of having eaten something in the past. It’s not satisfying at all."

The others nodded.

Neave passed by yet again, walking on the tips of his toes and twirling like a dancer. The bulky kid wore something akin to a cutesy dress and sprinkled flowers over everyone.

Harel took her blonde wig off, revealing the disastrous tragedy beneath, and shook the petals out of it. "Hey, Neave, can you please stop doing that? It’s annoying."

Neave summoned a pile of flowers above her head, burying her in them. "No."

After deciding they needed a break, Neave ran off, made a large section of his spirit realm look like a picturesque forest, and brought the others there. Once they were there, he took inspiration from ancient culture to help them heal from their mental wounds by civilizing them again.

They had grown far too wild, and it was time they were reintroduced into a decent society.

This unusual scene was strangely anxiety-inducing for the participants.

Hunter, Harel, and Marven had all seen their fair share of political tea parties like this in the Zearthorn sect, and Gabrias and Dukean had spent numerous awkward, boring afternoons in places that strikingly resembled this one.

Words like ‘manners’ and ‘proper behavior’ rang through everyone’s ears—except for Neave’s, who had never been forced to participate in or, rather, ‘invited to’ such tea parties.

Gabrias kept forgetting that he wouldn’t have to listen to his parents scream at him after he left this place.

Neave’s plan had failed, kind of, yet, in that failure, it had discovered a new type of success. This place was meant to be a relaxing, civilized escape from their anxious lives, but it instead turned into a time chamber that brought everyone back to their other, anxious lives.

What could have been anything between a few days to a few weeks, given how impossible it was to actually tell in a spirit realm, had been an excellent escape from their problems. They had no worries; there was no pain, no fear. And they had all the time in the world.

More than once, each of them had wondered. Would it not be… would it not be possible to live a whole life in here? Had they brought more people, if they had more to do, more to explore, new things to see—would it not be perfect?

No hunger, no death, no suffering.

According to Neave, the time dilation was extreme compared to the outside world. Just a single year outside could mean tens of thousands of years inside. A hundred? Millions. Millions of years of life—not even in the most optimistic estimates, not even with the immortality of a diamond path cultivator—could one expect to live that long.

But it didn’t take long for them to realize something Neave had learned such a long time ago that the concept of time itself was no longer relevant to the discussion—places like this—lives like these—they were empty. All that time held no meaning when there was no substance. Take their time resting—how long had it been since it started? It was hard to say whether it had been days or weeks. How much worse would it get on larger scales?

As Neave had discovered, telling the difference became impossible at some point. After a certain number, a period became a functional eternity—yet it would pass in the blink of an eye, all the same.

It didn’t take long for a feeling of timeless drifting to settle on them. And as they rested, they soon began feeling that, no matter how long they spent there, it wouldn’t matter. It would eventually end. They would eventually return, and all their problems would come back in full force, ready to devour them.

Marven took a long sip, downing the jug-sized cup of tea—given that they had practically an infinite supply and an infinite appetite, the portions had been steadily increasing for a while already—and glanced at his son. His eyes betrayed his inner thoughts, and Neave smiled at him with a nod.

And so their time there came to an end. There, standing at the edge of what had seemed like an infinite surface, each of them looked back at their little eternity—and felt the breeze of sanity wash over them again, bathing their spirit in hope and determination.

It was time for their training to continue.

***

While the others prepared to leave, Neave decided to dip for a bit as he headed to check something out.

For a while already, he had been feeling something strange. The first time he noticed it was when he had left them alone to go make the forest and the gazebo. No matter how far he was from them, he could tell precisely where they were in his spirit—as if their existence was a beacon he could feel through a sixth sense of sorts.

While that was a convenient discovery, it wasn’t the thing he was concerned with. Instead, after he noticed that weird feeling, he began noticing… more of it. A lot more of it.

He ran through the serene forest of fake plant life, then out into the empty desert of plain red, which stretched in every direction.

As he did, he stopped and looked up into the sky.

This was somewhat different, however. It didn’t feel like it was inside his spirit realm. It felt like it was outside of it. He felt his comrades, and he also felt where they were. There was a distinct sense of distance, a feeling of closeness and location that betrayed precisely where they were at any moment.

For this, however, it felt like more. It was everywhere, in every direction he looked in, feeling as if it were just outside of reach, past an invisible barrier, yet that sense of distance was absent. It was in a place that he could never touch upon—infinitely far away from where he was.

The interesting part was that he had actually felt this feeling before. It was akin to a background noise, a constant buzzing of distant bees that played just at the limen of hearing. But back then, he hadn’t had a reason to assume it was anything but a part of the strange feeling of being in his spirit realm.

Thinking back, however, he realized it hadn’t always been there. At some point along the journey, this sensation had been introduced, and it was getting more intense in seemingly random patterns.

As he took it in, shifting his focus above, then past the horizons, then below the ground, he couldn’t stop a sense of dread from pooling in the back of his mind.

Something he had done along the line had introduced this weird feeling into his realm. So far, there was no indication that it was a problem. But he couldn’t rest easy until he knew what lay beneath this mysterious phenomenon. So Neave did what he did best. He experimented.

It didn’t take long for him to give up, however. Thinking through all his options, he rather quickly realized there was nothing to try. What was he supposed to do? Use a movement technique to leave the range of his spirit to check it out?

Usually, when presented with problems like this, he employed the old trusty strategy of ‘throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.’ The problem was that he no longer had that privilege. His methods were drastic and, more often than not, presented considerable risk to his life.

If he had infinite lives, such as in the hellish loop, he would try anything that came to mind. Trying to leave the spirit realm, pushing generating crystalized spirit to the limit, doing both at once, and maybe trying other lifeforce-qi combinations were just some things he could do. All those ideas risked death.

But hey, he’d still do it, just to see what would happen. That's what he had always done. The lack of need to worry about death was an invaluable tool for exploring things likely to make you dead.

The sea of red and the stretches of blue above reached distances that nauseated him by merely looking at them. There was danger in death now. There was a risk that not only he but his allies as well had to take.

But he still pondered his options. There was still one interesting combination he hadn’t tried inside his spirit realm.

The uh… boom combo.

If he was at liberty to do so, he would have tried that one first. Would it blow his spirit up? Probably, but he would have tried it. Maybe it would act differently within the spirit realm, the way all the other combinations seemed to.

Actually, he hadn’t thought much about it, but that combination was highly unusual. Was it just a random mix that created a powerful explosion?

No, it had that same spiritual shimmering as the other spirit combinations. So… could it be another form of spirit? That seemed like a bit of a reach, however.

No other form of spirit existed that he knew of, so there was nothing to equate a highly unstable phenomenon like that to… but he didn’t know about liquid spirit either until he discovered it.

Oh crap…

There was another thing Neave remembered. When he tried using that combo against Astrador, the god resorted to extreme measures to figure out what he had done.

What if that really was another form of spirit?

What if it held the same level of utility as the other forms and wasn’t just a suicide move. The temptation to try using it within his spirit realm was getting absurd, and it took everything he had to restrain himself.

He would try to figure it out at some point in the future, but it was too great of a risk to do it now. Anything with such high chances of outright killing him was an absurd risk in a situation where he had only one attempt.

So, rather than continue exploring this, which he felt was taking him in a dangerous direction, he decided to return to the others.

Once he was back, he declared something the others hadn’t expected to hear yet. "We are leaving the spirit realm for now!"

Marven raised an eyebrow, "What?”

The others perked up, too.

Dukean frowned. “But we still have time, no? Why rush to leave already?”

Neave shook his head. "There are no limitations to taking you in and out, you know?”

That seemed to relieve their worries a bit.

“So we will be back soon anyway,” he said. “We have to go out now to do something we can only do outside."

Rather than wait for anyone to ask what he was talking about, he booted them out of the realm, and they appeared standing in the sealed chamber with the glass shrub.

It didn’t feel like much time had passed since they entered. Even if there was no real way to tell.

He clapped his hands as he grinned at them cheerfully. "As for what we’re going to be doing—training, of course."

The others seemed relatively receptive to the idea. But what had felt like an eternity of freedom from nightmare realm problems had made them… well…

Perhaps Neave had a point back when he said seeking comfort was inadvisable. While the ‘memory food,’ as they called it, was unsatisfying, it was infinitely superior to abominid flesh.

Still, none of them were willing to complain. It seemed that they were willing to suffer through it. Neave knew precisely what their conflicted expressions meant. He let them simmer in it a bit, enough for all of them to at least be prepared to make the sacrifice.

As he saw them come to terms with their fate, he winked and lifted his arm.

With his will, Shapeshifting triggered and transformed his regular human arm into an orc or perhaps troll limb. This display was followed by an explanation, "While the flesh of abominids fed my body parts resembles human flesh, it isn’t.

"My body is full of life force. More than I can spend through ordinary means, and that life force still holds a vague impression of the monsters I’ve consumed. If I try, I can restrict it to a specific type of life force."

His interaction with the god and the advice he had received had inspired Neave to take a look at his powers from a different point of view. Indeed, spirit powers originating from monster cores weren’t designed. It wasn’t a creation meant to do one specific function but a complex, profound remnant of a monster’s existence, something encapsulating their entire being.

They held properties that stretched beyond just a singular function. And with enough time, dedication, and creativity, pretty much every spirit power could be used in secondary or tertiary ways.

Neave focused, and the arm grew more… troll-like. It turned a shade greener, and strange spots and warts popped up on the skin, turning it far more distinctly inhuman compared to the somewhat green limb from before. "A moment ago, that was my arm morphed to look slightly different. This, on the other hand,” he accented the statement with a massive grin, “isn’t my arm at all. This is an ability that is part of my Shapeshifting power,” he explained.

“Food isn’t the only challenge we have. I realized that without biovariety, we would lose much of the value an ecosystem would provide. I’ve been looking for a solution for a while and realized that Shapeshifting can be influenced by burning life force."

The others listened with rapt attention, and Neave nearly giggled at how obvious their expectations were.

He chopped the arm off and threw it on the ground. "That right there is troll flesh. It still holds some vague hints of my spirit powers, but if anything, that merely makes it a more valuable tool for breeding monsters. Other than that, you won’t find any major differences between this limb and one that has been cut off from an actual wild troll."

Then, in place of the arm he had just removed, he grew another limb, but this time it turned into wood and grew leaves over its surface, "I have eaten numerous plants as well, so creating a varied, flourishing eco-system won’t be a problem."

The glass puppet perked up upon hearing that, and he could smell trouble coming from a mile away, but he ignored it for now and turned to his allies again. "Now, I believe none of you will have objections to eating monsters I’ve bred by feeding them this, right?"

It wasn’t hard to notice that Neave had a rather utilitarian approach to things. If it was the solution that worked, it was the solution that should be used. That was how he solved problems.

And this, even by relatively normal standards, wasn’t an unacceptable solution. Yet, the reminder of civility, the trip back to their old lives, was the thing that was holding them back. If a practice was deemed unacceptable in any context, it was always for a reason.

Some reasons were better, others were worse, but at the end of the day, society functioned on unspoken rules built on, admittedly, irrational behavior. Having stepped into the realm of insanity and returned, the ragged bunch was far from remaining overly sentimental about their old moral values.

"I don’t mind it." Dukean stepped forward, and everyone turned to face him. "And I don’t think anyone else should mind it either."

The others nodded.

However, Dukean wasn’t finished yet. He raised his hand and continued, "There is one thing I want to point out, however. We should return to the spirit realm and continue the training."

Neave shook his head, "The progress you can make is limited if you don’t first improve your bodies and cultivation."

"It is exactly that limit we should operate under first."

"Exactly why do you think that?" Neave asked, squinting his eyes.

"Think about it, Neave. Once we are back outside, all the training we have done here will be pointless. In the end, we will only be able to improve our cultivation. But our bodies won’t have the time to change,” he said, eliciting a few nods from the others. “We should do as much practice as possible with the bodies we have now so the skill will translate to our real bodies once we’re back outside."

"That is a good point,” Neave conceded, “except it's not a good point at all, Dukey boy.”

Dukean frowned, and Neave waved a hand to placate him, “You’ve seen how good I am at fighting. But I still hold no confidence in beating the heavenly messenger. Why do you think that is?”

“… Because you aren’t powerful enough,” Dukean said cautiously.

“Exactly,” Neave confirmed. “When that rift broke recently, I fought two diamond-ranked opponents simultaneously.”

Marven’s brow furrowed. “You don’t mean—!?”

“Yup,” he nodded. “Carfen and the dragon. And you know what happened? Despite being leagues above both opponents in skill, I was ultimately defeated by speed and power that I couldn’t overcome. And this was the case for someone on the first step of the diamond path. We have no idea how powerful the messenger is.”

Dukean was about to say something, but Neave interrupted him. “You should have more information on this than I do, so let me ask you a question—how many cultivators are there on the second step of the diamond path?”

The young master instantly responded. “Two. Emperor Jeevian and The Grand Queen of Langen.”

“And why is that?”

“Why do you think I would know? That’s a secret that not even my father is privy to.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Neave said, pointing a finger at him. “We don’t know what it takes to get someone to the second step of the diamond path. Maybe we’ll figure it out, but honestly, I’m not willing to bet on that possibility,” he said with uncharacteristic pessimism. “As far as we know, the first step of the diamond path is the best you can reach. And, maybe, perhaps, there is a possibility that five diamond path cultivators with godlike skill, weapons of mass destruction, and a carefully designed set of spirit powers can defeat one heavenly messenger. But what if you can’t?”

That sent an echo of hesitation through them.

Marven stepped forward. “Well, what do you suggest? We will be in a fight against time from the moment we return. It’s not like we can afford the months it would take to make a notable difference in physique.”

“That’s exactly right,” Dukean added. “You weren’t particularly subtle with your stunts in the capital, either. There is a solid chance that the messenger will sniff us out in a matter of hours.”

Neave frowned. “You aren’t wrong. But we still have one option,” he said, pointing a finger at the sky. “The barrier surrounding the capital is there purely for detection purposes, and as far as I could sense, it stretches too far both up and down for circumvention to be a viable strategy.”

“So?” Dukean asked. “Do you know of a way around it?”

“Nope,” he said. “But who said we have to go around it?”

That confused both the old cultivator and the young master, so Neave elaborated, tapping his head. “The emperor’s library holds most of the alchemical knowledge gathered throughout the empire’s history—and I have most of it in my head, plus numerous special tricks I can pull due to my ability to create spirit in several forms. All I need to use that advantage to its fullest is a large collection of resources,” then a shit-eating grin spread on his cheeks as he asked, “Tell me, Dukean, where do you think we could get an emperor’s treasury worth of resources?”

Dukean instantly paled, “You don’t mean to break into the emperor’s treasu—!?”

“No, you dumbass,” Neave said, rolling his eyes as he grinned harder and pointed a finger down. “I’m talking about the underground.”

Rather than lighten up, Dukean paled harder, now joined by Marven.

“We’ll be going to be digging straight down. A place where monsters notoriously gather due to their attraction to the mass of humanity above…”

Now, the others were paling as well.

“We are going to Empress' Abyss.”

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