The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 104: 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, yet he reacted with a frown instead of satisfaction.

Hunter turned to the others, “Do you all feel weird when eating something in here?”

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 and buried her, “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 here. Once they were here, he was inspired by ancient culture to help them heal from their mental wounds by civilizing them again.

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

Although the others disagreed heavily with Neave’s methods initially, they had to concede that this wacky strategy worked. In a ‘fake it until you make it' sort of sense.

This unusual scene was strangely anxiety-inducing. It reminded everyone far too much of fancy meetings with influential individuals that liked to believe themselves to be more important than others.

Hunter, Harel, and Marven had all seen their fair share of 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.

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 it found a different type of success in failure. 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.

Nonetheless, it still achieved an important goal.

It had recovered a fraction of their lost sanity.

***

After messing around in the gazebo, Neave left the others there for a while, while he left to go check something out.

When he left them to go build this place, Neave noticed something unusual. Even though he had gone quite far from them, he could still clearly sense their position within his spirit realm.

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.

This was somewhat different, however. It didn’t feel like it was inside his spirit realm. It felt like it was outside of it. Just a little out of reach and yet, infinitely far away in every direction.

He had felt this before but assumed it was merely an unusual sensation specific to being within the spirit realm.

Now, however, he was confident that something was strange about that. It wasn’t that he didn’t notice it when he first entered the spirit realm. It was that it simply hadn’t been here back then.

Something he had done along the lines had introduced this weird feeling into his realm, and he hoped it wasn’t a problem.

He couldn’t rest easy until he knew what lay beneath this mysterious phenomenon. So Neave did what he did best. He experimented.

***

Neave gave up almost immediately.

He had pondered all his options for investigating this problem, and he realized something. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

This situation was thoroughly baffling, but unless he was willing to take enormous risks, he had no idea how to discover the origin of that sensation.

Usually, when presented with problems like this, Neave employed the old trusty strategy of ‘throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.’ The problem was that he didn’t have the privilege of doing that now.

If he had infinite lives, such as in the hellish loop, he would first generate crystallized spirit in his realm again. Indeed, it seemed to tear his spirit apart the first time he did it, and it would likely kill him if he tried again.

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 the exploration of things likely to make you dead.

That privilege was long-lost, however, but that didn’t stop Neave from fantasizing about it.

What if he tried some other combinations inside his spirit? Knowing his insane methods, if he had discovered how to enter his spirit realm within the hellish loop, he would have tried every possible combo of life force and qi inside the realm as well as the outside.

Even the… The you know… Boom combo, as Neave called it.

He would have tried that first. Would it have blown 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.

What was that anyway? Neave 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… Another form of spirit? Neave wanted to conclude that that was silly given that no other form of spirit existed, but he didn’t know about liquid spirit either until he discovered it.

Oh crap…

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

What if that really was another form of spirit?

What if it held the same level of utility as the other forms?

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, “Why? It’s quite early still… Or do you think we can return?”

Neave shook his head, “There are no limitations to taking you inside this place, so we will be back soon anyway. We have to go out now to do something we can only do outside.”

Rather than wait for anyone to ask, Neave 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.

Neave continued, “Now, we are going to train! Physically, this time.” He grinned.

The others seemed relatively receptive to the idea, except for the one obvious problem they had to address.

Food.

Perhaps Neave had a point back when he said seeking comfort was inadvisable. The idea of returning to that gross flesh again was revolting.

To their surprise, Neave understood what they wanted to say and had a solution to this problem.

He lifted his arm, and it turned from his regular, human arm to a troll-like limb. This display was followed by an explanation, “While the flesh of abominids fed my body parts resembles human flesh, it isn’t. There is a great deal of influence by my spirit powers, and specific traits of a troll have manifested before. Not just that, either.

“My body is full of life force. More than I can spend any time soon, 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.”

Neave focused, and the troll arm grew more… Trolly. It turned a shade greener, strange spots and warts popped up on the skin, and it was convincingly inhuman, “This is an ability that is part of my shapeshifting power. Food isn’t the only challenge we have. I realized that without biovariety, we would lose much of the value a dangerous ecosystem would provide. I’ve been looking for a solution for a while already and realized that shapeshifting can be influenced by burning life force.”

That was a lot to take in. The others understood that Neave was a freak, but he still couldn’t stop surprising them with the weird yet impressive stuff he could achieve.

Neave chopped the troll arm off and threw it on the ground, “That is, by all means, troll flesh. It still holds some impression of my spirit powers, making it more valuable as a tool for breeding more powerful 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.”

Before they could even think of a question, Neave grew out another arm. 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 Neave 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?”

That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Speaking from, well, almost any point of view, there was no reason to refuse. However, that didn’t make it easy to accept.

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.

In a twisted paradox, the irrational nature of people could only be handled through unreasonable rules, and within this context, that was, ironically, the most rational thing to do.

“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. We’ve already eaten worse than this, and I think it’s time we accept that living in this realm means making sacrifices.”

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?”

“Think about it, Neave. Once we are back outside, all the training we have done here will be pointless. 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, except it's not a good point at all, Dukean. Even if we spend centuries training you in the bodies you have now, you won’t stand a damn chance against the messenger and his people unless we figure out a way to boost your power. The best solution is to have you all realize as much potential as possible inside the realm. That way, once you’re back outside, you can cultivate rapidly and at least stand a chance. Training you all with the bodies you have now is pointless and simply a waste of time.” Neave grinned at them, “Trust me, it will be best if you get a taste of true power first. Our priority should be to discover the best path for you individually…”

“...And then go fucking crazy with it.”

//////////

Join me on Patreon, where you can read 15 chapters ahead! /fiction/62411/the-jester-of-apocalypse/span>