The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 105: Black Shores

Running a cultivator to exhaustion wasn’t that difficult. If forced to use qi, they could be out of energy within minutes. But without qi…

That was a different story altogether.

The glass shrub. A fabulous being of mighty, mysterious powers, one whose path had taken a sharp turn into the deep unknown. This mysterious being was manipulating a glass puppet to chase a child on the bronze path to exhaustion.

Indeed, running a cultivator to exhaustion without forcing them to use qi was much more difficult. It was easier when a sadistic plant threatened to stab you, however.

Hunter panted. He wouldn't have felt so forced to run if it were anyone other than the creepy plant. Yet, as the glass puppet caught up with him, he thought this thing wouldn’t hesitate to skewer him for fun.

Unjust, barbaric, and needlessly mean, he thought, regretting ever agreeing to enter the nightmare realm. Why would Neave do this? Hunter had solid discipline. There was no need to force him to run like this. That was what he believed at first, yet, having something chasing you was miraculously effective at pulling strength out of you that you didn’t know you had.

His panting worsened, and he felt the insane burning in his legs and abs. Even his shoulders and neck hurt from running. It wasn’t much longer until Hunter genuinely couldn’t run anymore, and he collapsed on the ground.

The puppet eyed him, and Hunter’s heart roared at the threat. Luckily, it seemed satisfied with his efforts, so it left him to it as it returned to Neave.

Hunter stared at the chiseled obsidian floor. The dome had been transformed yet again. The smaller glass shrubs inside the dome were deemed useless by the mighty glass shrub, and Neave collected the plants for material, cleaning the room up to make space for their training.

Hunter’s anxiety and adrenaline slowly left him, and complete exhaustion overwhelmed him.

The call of sleep couldn’t be left unanswered any longer.

***

Neave saw the unconscious Hunter, and he nodded in satisfaction. The kid was already losing some weight. His muscles were too big to permit the type of flexibility he needed, and Neave felt that perhaps a few dozen more runs like that would be enough.

The others weren’t faring much better, either. Everyone had their own training. On a small, glass platform, Gabrias shakily stood up but rapidly lost ground and facepalmed again. The floor beneath him was already beginning to look quite bloody from all the times he smacked into it.

Neave nodded at the glass rollers attached to Gabrias feet.

His biggest weakness was that he had zero balance. It wasn’t unusual, given his insane height, but that didn’t make it any less detrimental to his combat ability. He was improving, though. Now, when he fell down, he didn’t smack his head full force into the floor. Lovely.

Not too far from him, Harel was benching crazy weight. Neave brought over the equipment he had used, although he had to make a few less heavy weights so everyone could utilize them.

Likely due to the stress from being here, Harel had lost a ton of muscle mass. She looked like a damn skeleton and needed to regain some bulk. Thus, Neave had her on a strict eat-and-lift schedule. She probably liked her training the most out of everyone in the room.

Dukean was left to his own devices. Neave gave him whatever he requested, and he seemed on a relatively balanced schedule, although he focused more on flexible strength than muscle mass.

Marven was on a nearly identical schedule as Harel, except his training was perhaps a little more in line with Dukean’s. For him, the food was the single most significant boost he could receive.

Neave nodded in satisfaction and left the chamber again. He reached the place where he was raising the monsters. There was a small area he had separated to grow a specific type of abominid.

Neave had created them by feeding them extremely specialized limbs, ones grown with the life force of several different species he had run into. It resulted in a flesh that made the creatures themselves rather clumsy and weak due to all of the clashing forces in their body, but the meat was packed with an insane variety of beneficial qi. It was packed with tons of toxic qi as well, but Neave could purge that with relative ease.

Raising monsters and experimenting on them was highly illegal and supremely taboo basically everywhere. After trying it for himself, Neave was one hundred percent confident that at least half of the sects did it secretly, likely in bases hidden somewhere deep in the wilderness.

It was so damn useful. Words couldn’t describe the utility of growing specialized monster meat like cattle. He nodded in satisfaction and went to another, fully isolated chamber.

A small glass orb hung off the ceiling, shining as brightly as a miniature sun, and the floor had a vast variety of different types of fruits and vegetables growing, even some grain in the corner.

These weren’t monster plants, either. They were simply plants. Neave had, after an insane amount of trial and error, managed to grow a limb that produced fruit and extracted a seed. That was only the beginning.

Seeds of all types and different varieties, created through unholy means and blended with the life force of countless different creatures, had resulted in a vast field of enviable growth.

The one Neave felt was most enviable was the far corner to the right, where he grew a specific grain species.

The grain was, as Neave would put it, fucking fantastic. The sheer quantity of energy it could contain made it challenging to keep the plants fed. There was a whole other section where Neave dedicated much time and effort to cultivating soil that could be used as fertilizer. It required an entirely different species of specialized grass-fungus hybrid.

After collecting some sparkly grain, Neave returned to the room with the monsters and threw it around on the floor. The chubby abominids rushed to collect the goods, and Neave grinned in satisfaction.

It was time to visit the other critical chamber he had created.

Neave maneuvered through the caves, and after a short few hops through thick cave walls, he made it to the third chamber. He opened the spirit door and got a look inside.

It was a lake. A large, circular dome was fully isolated from the outside. From the ceiling of the room, water constantly dripped down. Several glass orbs were hanging on thin strings. The spheres produced water endlessly.

Neave had first created a species of water creature. Then, he bred them until he had found the suitable cores, ones he turned into what could basically be described as infinite water generators.

All of this was possible only after he discovered the secret power of the shapeshifting ability.

Neave was shocked when he first discovered that he could do that. He hadn’t experimented much with it initially, mainly because he feared the changes would be irreversible.

That wasn’t an incorrect assumption, either. Kind of. Any limb he monsterfied could be transformed back into his own limb if he burned his own life force. However, any time he morphed a limb, part of his life force would be transformed into the same type belonging to the foreign body part.

While it was possible to move alien life force and keep it anywhere he pleased within his body, there always had to be some amount of his own life force within all of his limbs. That life force would become victim to a transformation whenever he used this morphing ability.

For as long as he kept at least half of his body mass entirely his own, he could technically transform the rest into monster flesh without any long-term consequences.

Anything more than that, however, and he would forever remain partially a monster. Neave wasn’t entirely, or honestly, at all averse to that idea. If that monster shape granted him more power, he would happily keep it.

The problem was that he could no longer disguise himself as fully human afterward.

Now… He wouldn’t mind transforming, perhaps, his bones, let's say, and turning them into monster bones, preferably that of a species that had a body of, hmmm, let’s say, metal or crystal.

But he wouldn’t risk that haphazardly. He still didn’t understand everything about this power, and he hoped to learn as much as possible before feeling forced to transform into a literal monster.

Transforming an arm, however, wasn’t a problem.

He had a… Very, very unpleasant realization as he experimented with this power initially. Neave had always believed it didn’t matter what type of life force he burned when he healed himself.

Ha… Ha ha… Ha….

Oh, it mattered. It mattered a lot. He would be dead a long time ago if he didn’t have the sacred blood spirit power.

For a long time, Neave wondered why he had been in such a terrible state after escaping the assassins in Pavarrie and why his condition improved so much after getting his improved organs.

Back then, he brushed it off, thinking it was some peculiar combination of his powers that removed the consequences. It was almost entirely the purifying blood that had kept him alive.

Now, he was wiser, older even, although it was arguable by how much. He was no longer willing to risk his life doing utterly stupid crap. He would only do it for somewhat ridiculous crap now.

Character growth achieved, Neave thought as he pumped his fist in the air.

Back to the water chamber he went, and another one of the abominid-piggies was sent to the slaughter. Soon enough, a relatively presentable batch of meat was butchered into a pile. Neave used his ‘secret technique’ to purify the meat of any harmful qi. It was a secret since he didn’t want the others to know that he washed the meat in his blood.

Neave willed his avatar power, and a somewhat sizeable purple abominid appeared. It was carrying big boxes and even a cistern of water. This thing was so damn useful that Neave was almost willing to forget the unfortunate evolution. Almost.

He opened one of the bigger boxes and put the meat inside. Then, the avatar disappeared, taking the items together with it into the dimensional space, and Neave traveled back to the others.

Dukean was tasked with making the food, and they all ate. The meat tasted mediocre. It wasn’t bad. It was just kind of plain. Neave had mixed the traits of countless different beings into it, and the result averaged out into blandness.

Yet, they all ate the meat as if it were a heavenly golden apple.

The reason why was simple. Even if the flavor was suboptimal, the gains one could receive from eating it rivaled a supreme treasure.

They weren’t focusing on cultivation yet, as Neave wanted them to first build their bodies into optimal shape, so they were all already at least a rank above their own in strength.

While that might not seem much compared to Neave, whose power was now roughly at the level of someone on the third step of the silver path, having strength above your rank was very impressive.

Yet, consuming this meat did considerably more than just boost their strength. It was arguable that the strength boost was the least impactful of its myriad benefits.

Virtually every aspect, physical or mental, was boosted in one way or another. Granted, it was to varying degrees, but it was still mighty impressive. Several had a roughly similar impact to the boost to strength, but they mattered more since they were more difficult to directly train. However, All of them paled compared to the regeneration boost.

Neave may have been underselling his spirit powers' influence on the monsters since the sheer power of the regeneration enhancement could only be described as godlike.

It was to the degree that a silver, or perhaps even a gold-rank regeneration boosting power couldn’t compete with the enhancement they’ve received.

That was absolutely… They all felt tired at this point. Being in a constant state of shock at what Neave presented them with was exhausting to the point that they were beginning to wave off realm-shattering revelations as just another one of Neave’s wacky traits.

The creator ate the meat as well. To be honest, he ate the most out of anyone here. Regularly, he devoured those things whole while they were still alive. They were so packed with beneficial qi that even he received some benefit from it.

As time passed, Neave related to the glass shrub more and more. He wondered how a creature could be so jealous. Now, he wondered no more. These bastard leeches and parasites were improving at a pace that made him envious.

Not to mention that, because they were actually fucking cultivating, they had a drastically higher ceiling, and their growth wouldn’t slow down nearly as quickly as Neave’s had.

Well, it would be a long time until they could rival him. Honestly, they could likely never truly threaten him.

Neave wasn’t even close to done with empowering himself, and, well, he felt that there were more secrets he had yet to unravel.

He finished watching them eat and eagerly return to their training.

Oh, you little kids can have your fun, okay, okay, Neave thought in the most condescending voice he could imagine. Then, he returned to the chamber with the plants.

A small corner of that chamber had a few… Dangerous, or as Neave would say, fun experiments.

Neave was growing a specific type of fruit he wanted to feed to the glass shrub. This plant had also been granted a spirit, but it started with a monster core, and it wasn’t nearly as massive as the one Neave used on the glass shrub.

There was no way he would be introducing another monster like that any time soon. That damn plant had already reached the silver path, and its growth wasn’t slowing.

The thing he was growing here could be called a fertility elixir.

The realm already had enough atmospheric energy for monsters to grow independently. Which they were doing quite nicely. However, Neave would still prefer it if the process was faster. So he would feed the damn plant some fertility drugs and force it to get on with it already.

Neave observed the walls of the chamber he found himself in. He had settled for a different design. It was a triple-layered barrier. He made a layer of glass from the glass brushes, slightly altered with the alchemy techniques to boost their hardness, then a layer of crystalized spirit, and another layer of glass.

This made a powerful, nearly fully sealed barrier that was quite resistant to attacks from the outside or inside.

There was still some other stuff Neave could do to enhance the protection, but one thing at a time. The list of stuff he had to experiment with grew daily, and he had priorities.

The seals on these chambers were an improvement on what he did with the glass shrub’s chamber. They still weren’t and never would be perfect unless he made an unbroken spirit dome that fully enveloped the room.

However, this made it impossible to get in and go out. Perhaps there was some way he could do it, but movement techniques couldn’t move Neave through solid spirit. That was straight-up impossible, for the same reasons the barrier was so efficient.

Qi simply couldn’t flow in and out. No form of energy could.

Which was great, as far as Neave was concerned. The lower the odds of something escaping its designated chambers, the better. And it was best nothing could ever enter inside.

The plants weren’t a big problem since if there wasn’t for their optimal environment, they couldn’t grow outside anyway, but the monsters…

Monster experimentation was illegal for a reason. Experiments going in the wrong direction could cause calamities, and it wasn’t once that such a calamity had transpired.

There was once a sect that did something similar to what Neave was doing. The chamber where they grew their monsters had an unexpected evolution. One of the creatures evolved into a considerably more powerful version of itself.

It wasn’t a big deal on its own. However, it was a fox in a chicken coop, and it devoured all of the other monsters, rapidly ascending in power.

The sect was annihilated, and the monstrosity decimated the nearby land as it made its way through the now-unprotected settlements, feasting on hordes of people and becoming a nearly diamond-ranked threat in a matter of days.

Neave maintained a careful watch over the monster coop and kept their numbers to a minimum. It still felt like it was a matter of time until something happened, and everything went to shit.

The nightmare realm was a dangerous place. What Neave was doing was absolutely insane but necessary. He hadn’t talked much to the others about his fears and anxieties, mainly because it was best they remained focused on their growth.

The demon that hunted the others down recently heavily weighed on Neave’s mind. That thing was absurdly tough. It wasn’t a real threat to Neave, but it was an ominous sign nonetheless.

The demons were moving.

And Neave knew…

Astrador wouldn’t simply sit by and wait for long.

Whatever was brewing beyond the walls of these caves… Soon.

It would be coming for them yet again.

***

The waves crashed against the beaches of the sea of tar.

Splash. Splash. Splash. Thud.

One such wave carried a body, and the crashing left it stranded ashore. A lithe, smooth body of morphing black lay on the withered sands. Unmoving.

Splash. Thud. Splash. Thud.

More just like it crashed into the land.

And eventually.

They began to move.

***

Sateron stood, back firmly straight, observing and touching the edge of the barrier. He had spent his entire life inside here up until now, and he knew. It was likely death that awaited him beyond these walls.

His body was already that of an adolescent.

His father, no… Astrador hated when he called him that. His creator claimed that he was ugly. By cultivator standards, he was apparently a dashing young man, but Astrador didn’t think the lower realms even had standards at all.

Sateron didn’t know. He had never seen a reflection of his face.

Yet, he had knowledge of the outside world. Imbued directly into his being. It was a vast, expansive, infinite collection of realms to be in and explore. It was a stage much greater than this confined barrier.

Soon.

Soon, he would be given a chance.

He merely had to kill a few humans. And then, his fath—No, his creator, would allow him to go outside.

Soon.

He would get to experience what it was like.

Soon.

He would take a life for the first time.