The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 114: Indentured Servitude

While Harel, Hunter, and Gabrias cultivated, the others weren’t slacking off either.

Dukean and Marven were busy primarily eating and training themselves physically. They wanted to practice with their weapons, but Neave advised them against it for now.

The cultivating three had all been encased inside a spirit dome of their own, so they had the perfect environment to grow. Even with the highly optimal environment and the high potential they had realized in the spirit realm, achieving the task handed to them wouldn’t be easy.

Funnily enough, despite an order of magnitude difference in difficulty, Neave was confident that Harel would be done with her cultivation before the other two.

In the meantime, he tasked himself with getting as much done as possible before they returned to the spirit realm. While the monster coop was located beneath the main chamber of their base, Neave also decided to move the farm above it and, even further, to move the water chamber above the farm.

Despite his incredible speed, this was a massive pain in the ass.

But in the end, he finished his task by carefully transporting the plants one by one and simply drinking all the water while he moved the glass balls to their new location.

The ‘fertility’ fruit he had been growing for a while was finally ripe enough for his experiment. It was far from fully mature, and frankly, with how he had designed the fruit, it could ripen for years and still grow in potency.

But good enough was good enough.

Neave plucked the fruit and fed it to the glass shrub, which greedily absorbed it, unaware of its effects.

Hehehe, breed my child, breed. Spread your seed. Yes. That is the way.

Cackling internally, Neave casually walked back out of the cave to do more work. After locating the chambers with all the slimes, he tightened the seal and carefully stacked rocks and plated dirt to hide the entrances. With this arrangement, it was impossible to find the chambers by any means besides randomly digging into the wall and stumbling upon them.

Feeling satisfied with his work, he began a rather major project he had postponed for a while.

Near the main chamber, Neave found a somewhat open cave and started eating as much of the stone around it as possible. Although he was going through it quite quickly, he had to moderate his speed so his sacred blood could keep up with purging the stone from his body.

He ate and ate, gradually expanding the size of the room. It went significantly slower than he initially hoped, but he stuck with it until he was at least somewhat happy with the size.

After observing the roomy chamber he had created, Neave left the room and gathered tons of obsidian plants. The substance was melted and shaped into blocks Neave used the life force bridge on. After doing so, he used countless techniques, mainly focusing on the hardness and toughness of the material.

By the end, Neave could swing his hammer relatively hard at one of them, and that would happen was a few cracks would spread. Imbuing a liquid spirit tendril into it, heating it up, and sealing it back up was enough to restore it to perfection.

Finally, he grabbed the impossibly tough block of obsidian, roughly two meters by two meters in size, and placed it in the corner of the new room. Now, all he had to do was plate the entire chamber, floor, ceiling, and walls in this material!

Yup. All he had to do.

Neave turned around and roughly calculated the number of blocks he would need. Tears streaked down his eyes.

I really need a way to speed this up…

***

After what felt like days of work, Neave was finally done with around twenty percent.

Of the floor, that was.

This only left around… The walls and ceiling had roughly the same surface area, so twenty percent of one out of six… only approximately ninety-six percent of the work remained!

That would be done real quick, no?

Neave violently threw one of the blocks at a wall, and it bounced off without even chipping, “As if!”

This was madness. He overestimated his speed greatly. Should he compromise on their hardness and toughness, then?

No, they’re gonna break often, even like this. I will probably have to add a whole layer of more robust material on top of them to properly solidify them.

So what should he do?

A compromise was out of the question, naturally. Moving the training ground to the surface was possible, but they would be far too exposed.

This chamber was meant to be a place where they could all practice using their weapons. Naturally, it had to be highly fortified to not fall apart immediately. The surface would eliminate the need for walls and a ceiling, but that would only be a realistic prospect later once they’ve established a more significant presence up there.

Speaking of which, Neave really had to increase their manpower. As it stood, there were only six of them here. Once he was done training them in the spirit realm, he would first focus on experimentation, mainly golem creation.

While he was at it, he would also work on producing appropriate bodies for his avatar to possess. He had numerous ideas for what he wanted to do with the avatars. He still lamented the time he would have to waste on them, especially now, given the threat the demons and Astrador presented.

There wasn’t much of a choice, though, not besides dropping the idea altogether and focusing on something else. That wasn’t an option either since Neave knew that this spirit power presented a potentially enormous boost to his ability.

That wasn’t the only thing it presented, however. Neave grinned as he remembered one of the features of his power.

Unlimited range.

With that, he could safely pay Astrador a visit or investigate the demons without leaving the others exposed and vulnerable.

All from the safety of his main chamber.

While Neave suspected that his real life and his companions' lives were safe, there were no guarantees when one found themselves in a place like this. There was no such thing as too safe. Or too powerful.

Taking a deep breath, Neave contemplated how he could do this chamber more effectively. Perhaps he could…

Suddenly, the glass puppet flew in out of nowhere, and his allies came striding in.

He glanced at them and grinned, “I see you’re done with your task. Just out of curiosity, who finished first?”

Gabrias and Hunter bashfully pointed at the proud Harel, and Neave laughed.

Neave sighed a bit and looked over them, preparing to inform them about their next step, but Gabrias stepped forward and spoke up, “What’s this?”

“Oh? This will be the chamber where you will train with your weapons and spirit powers once you have them.”

Harel looked around, “Wow… This is extremely spacious.”

Neave shook his head, “Trust me, it isn’t big enough. I considered making it at least four or five times longer and wider and moving the ceiling up twice as high.”

This place was massive, yet not big enough. Despite being too small for Neave’s purposes, that didn’t change the fact that it was damn huge. The others gaped at the display before them, and Marven looked at the large patch of obsidian tiles, “What about these? Aren’t they going to be too fragile?”

“Go ahead. Hit it with all you got.”

Marven hesitated a bit but soon enough listened to Neave. He got into a stance, pulled his fist back, and struck a tile with all his might. Some cracks appeared around where his fist struck, but the tile was primarily intact, “Incredible.”

Gabrias looked ready to burst from excitement throughout this whole thing, “This! This is remarkable!” He prostrated before Neave and yelled again, “Oh, grand master, teach me your ways!”

Neave shook his head. Naive. He had an incredibly specialized set of tools and powers that permitted him to create something like this. There was no way the others could…

Wait a minute, “Can you!? Wait, wait, wait, Marven, come here!”

Marven walked over to Neave. Neave grabbed a pile of obsidian, imbuing them with the liquid tendril and forcing them into the shape of a block. The others were blown away by his speed and precision.

Neave could do this even without a spirit power dedicated to it, although his crown’s telekinesis certainly helped. Once done, he presented Marven with the block. Lifting his hand and focusing a bit, Neave manifested the shards of potential that contained the harden and toughen alchemy techniques.

“I’m going to need you to learn this technique. Can you do it?”

Marven awkwardly chuckled and scratched his cheek, “Neave, I…”

“It’s okay if it’s a little hard, don’t worry. I will help you with learning the…”

“No, I mean… I already know those techniques.”

“What?”

Neave looked at the others, who lifted their hands one after another and also shared that they knew the techniques. In the end, it turned out that everyone already knew the two alchemy techniques.

“But… How!?”

“Hahahaha, Neave, these are fundamental techniques. All disciples are taught the basics of most disciplines, and anyone that has lived in a sect will probably know these two, as they are among the essential few that are taught for alchemy.”

He couldn’t believe it. He’d wasted so much effort when they could have been helping. The life force bridge was the most challenging part of enhancing the material, yes, but it was by far the fastest. It took him seconds to manifest the bridge, while it took him many times longer to finish enhancing the material.

Neave asked Marven to try enhancing the material to gauge how valuable the help of the others would really be in this situation.

Marven used the hardening technique, and the raw potency of his qi immediately filled one of the compartments to the brim. So he continued to the next and the next and the next and so on, finishing the work in only a little longer than a minute.

“... Are you fucking kidding meeeee!?” This whole time he could have been helped by the others!? The sheer amount of time he wasted on enhancing things was mind-boggling!

“Why didn’t you assholes say you knew the techniques!?”

The others looked confused, and Dukean spoke up first, “Well, we didn’t know what you were doing… The quality of the material was altered far past anything I’ve ever seen, so I assumed you were utilizing some unique strategy.”

The others nodded in agreement, and Neave realized something. This whole thing happened because he was being an idiot. No, this happened because he was underestimating them this entire time.

Were they…

Neave got up and looked at the others, a massive grin plastered to his face, “Before we continue with the training, I think I have another use for you.”

***

Apparently, Neave had been a massive idiot this whole time. When they started working, Gabrias began questioning why Neave was doing things the way he was. He asked about using the obsidian blocks, their arrangement, future plans, etc.

Neave could swear he saw Gabrias’ awe and admiration for him gradually evaporate with everything he said.

Gabrias listened to Neave’s explanation, then gave his opinion. Rather than a frightened, cowardly man, Gabrias suddenly transformed into an experienced, slightly exasperated construction worker trying to explain to a client why their idea was stupid, “The obsidian blocks are effectively glass filled with impurities. It is a solid, malleable material that is convenient for use, but it is a vastly inferior alternative to what you should be doing. But that’s for later. First, the shape of the room.”

He pointed at the ceiling, specifically the corners, and continued, “The structural integrity of this underground cave is unnaturally solid, primarily due to the obsidian and now, glass roots that spread through it. They keep the walls in place and stop the caves from collapsing, but that integrity is a temporary exception to the rule. The shape of this room is bad. Making a square space like this puts a massive strain on the middle and corners of the ceiling. If we strike the walls, intentionally or otherwise, that will cause a shockwave to spread through the walls of the cave, and in places where the walls suddenly make a ninety-degree turn, the shock will cause a strain. That is why the cave's ceiling should be a dome, the way it is with the chamber.”

Neave knew everything Gabrias was talking about. He just didn’t really think about it. With his materials and supernatural ability to make things night-indestructible, the only thing he was thinking about when he designed the room was making it easy to stack the obsidian blocks.

However, rather than contradicting Gabrias, explaining himself, or using excuses, he remained silent. After listening to Gabrias talk a while longer, he soon concluded that the man knew what he was talking about, even mentioning some things Neave didn’t expect to hear and honestly didn’t know since he had never read anything about it.

If Gabrias was this good at it, that made Neave’s life significantly easier. He had been underestimating the others primarily due to his pride and immature disregard. Now, he suddenly opened his eyes to the whole other side of the spectrum.

If the others could be this good at something, couldn’t he delegate a ton of work to them? There would be much that needed to be done in the future, and if he could task them with one or two things each and make them take care of it in his stead, he could dedicate a ton of his focus to doing the things only he could do.

That was right! These people were competent, no? Marven used to be a sect master. He must know a thing or two. And who said Neave didn’t believe in the potential of others?

He couldn’t stop a grin from forming on his face as suddenly, a massive chunk of his schedule had been freed up. That was right. They should all do their part as well.

And their part would be literally everything they could do without Neave’s help.