The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 119: Behold the King Slime

Neave took a deep breath, picked up a small, squishy, yellow cube, and placed it into the slime’s body. It stayed inside, and he continued to the next object, a red ball. Then finally, a green pyramid.

He turned around and grabbed a squishy golden crown and a pair of rubbery sunglasses. Placing both of those on the slime, he took a step back to admire his handy work.

A small tear ran down his eye, and he smiled happily. It was so beautiful.

The purple slime now finally had equipment. It took Neave a while to figure out how to equip the slime. His first idea was to simply make a glass orb and place it into the slime’s body.

This didn’t necessarily not work, but there was no way to prevent the acid from gradually degrading the quality of the item. Not to mention that a solid ball in the middle of the slime drastically limited the slime's rubbery flexibility.

Eventually, Neave found a way to overcome this by using a slime gel material resembling rubber.

Producing this material was a huge pain in the ass, even without trying to grant the object a power.

And while trying to grant the object a power, it became nearly impossible.

The reason was that turning slime into a solid material required an extensive set of alchemy techniques. And liquids that already had a quasi-spirit really hated having techniques used on them. He figured out a solution eventually, even though it was rather inelegant.

The object's center was liquified, becoming more solid toward the outer edges. This allowed Neave to stretch the outer rubbery layer around a ball of spirit while melting the spirit core in the substance.

Once the core was melted, it would shrink, solidifying the remainder of the slime inside due to the pressure the outer layer exerted.

It seemed like a relatively simple method for doing it, but it was anything but. Problems like messing up the object's final shape and, worst of all, ending up with an already damaged product made the process a nightmare.

The sheer number of techniques he had to use on the slime substance was mind-boggling. It was so squishy and elastic now that it was practically softer than the slime itself.

Not to mention the actual selection of the materials for generating the spirit powers, which was a nightmare and a half!

For the three shapes in the middle of the slime, Neave stuck to using slime cores. Usually, slime cores were pathetically weak, and the powers they granted either people or items were so unfitting that nobody bothered using them.

They easily had among the worst side effects one could expect from spirit powers. Turning one's own body extremely acidic didn't make for a pretty end.

For a slime, however, those side effects were a bonus.

The three items inside the slime were all a product of slime cores. And the powers they granted the slime were exceptionally fitting.

First, the red ball. It was a power Neave took from a massive slime. It was straightforward, which was what one could expect from a round object with a spirit power. It effectively allowed the slime body to shrink or grow in size. It wasn’t a real growth either since it effectively just stretched the body to look bigger.

It worked wonders, though, and it had plenty of uses.

Neave actually tried using the weapon himself, and he bloated his arm to the point of exploding.

The other powers were none less self-destructive.

The yellow cube was actually taken from a tentacle slime, and the power it allowed for was creepy. The slime could now generate tentacles!

Yet again, his curiosity won over, and Neave tried using it himself. The power cracked his skin open and extracted his blood as a gooey, coagulated substance that formed tentacles.

Frankly, the power wasn’t even all that bad, and Neave considered using an item with slime powers in the future.

No matter what anyone said, the power technically allowed him to wield several weapons simultaneously. If his spirit could endure the pressure, a simple rubber cube could turn him into a weapon of mass destruction.

And more notably, it could potentially allow Neave to equip the slime with weapons as well.

That would be tricky, though. He would have to find a way to store the weapons somewhere on the slime’s body without resulting in pure havoc.

Perhaps a dimensional storage item? He had no bloody idea how those were made, and all that he had read about it was that it required metals of silver rank or higher. The production process itself was something of an open secret, and sadly, Neave wasn’t in on the information.

Either way, Neave could already somewhat create tentacles with the slime body, and with this item, the task would become much easier.

And now, finally, the terrifying little green pyramid.

Oh boy.

When Neave first tried using this, he realized that the use of this item tried to quite literally tear his arm off or some other random limb. He initially stopped the item out of reflex but realized it wasn’t a big deal, even if he lost a limb to test it.

But he paused. Something about the item's effect on his limb gave him a sense of premonition and distinct danger.

So he instead created a temporary avatar out of a dead abominid and used the item while possessing it.

The item detached one of the abominids limbs, and the leg-arm-limb-thingy hopped to the other side of the room, attached to the wall, and exploded.

The explosion was quite decent, too.

Neave winced once he saw the effect. This was why he made his workshop so far away from the main chamber. Had he accidentally used that item and sent one of his limbs forward… Yikes. That would have likely bombed the entire area.

Perhaps he should make a more secure testing chamber. And put it a bit further away from the workshop.

Next up was the slime crown. This was the most considerable pain in the ass item of the batch since he had to recreate it seven times. It had a habit of creating a power that resulted in the ability to manipulate objects into turning elastic. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it was just lame.

Crowns seemed to result in a particular type of power that usually focused on control, or well, power over something. Authority. That made sense, Neave supposed.

Neave eventually made a crown that manipulated slime. He was also about to reject this item, as it was a bit too situational, but he quickly realized something.

The green triangle could detach pieces of the slime's body and turn them into bombs, but they didn’t travel all that fast. With the crown, those bombs became high-speed projectiles.

There was another thing that had to be considered. For example, something like Neave’s crown could manipulate anything with general telekinesis. However, this came at the cost of making the power considerably less potent.

Abilities that manipulated a particular substance, such as the glass shrub's power, were usually significantly more powerful.

The same thing went for this crown as well. While it could only manipulate slime, that made it damn effective at doing its job.

And now, finally, it was time for the rubber sunglasses. This initially resulted in one of the worst powers Neave had ever witnessed, period.

Slime perception. The ability to perceive slime. Absurdly enough, it didn't even work through walls. And sadly, as long as he used slime to create the item, it refused to do anything else.

It didn’t even grant the supernatural perception of energy that slimes seemed to have.

After much hesitation, he finally buckled and used a glass slime core. While it was still slime, technically, it was a vastly different monster species.

Whatever. The power it ended up with was semi-decent. It could send out a sort of sharp pulse that could cut things, kind of like a flying sword strike technique.

It was decent in power, but it sort of felt out of place on the slime, which made Neave sad. He still refused to swap the sunglasses for something else.

It was sunglasses. On a slime. With a crown.

He decided to create another pair once he found a solution to the problem, but getting rid of them was absolutely out of the question.

Neave observed his wonderful creation, eager to try it out in combat. The sleek, glowing purple, with the red ball, yellow cube, and green triangle, adorned with a golden rubber crown and black sunglasses.

Perfection. That was all there was to say. This creation was perfect.

Something about it did make Neave wonder a bit, however. The slime powers were exceptionally mighty, so he wondered why he had never gotten the idea to use them or acquire a power like that himself.

Well… Hmmm… Why didn’t I think of that?

The reason why was… Well, kind of stupid. It was just that slime powers were considered utterly worthless by the world at large. Slimes were defined by their horribly misshapen cores.

As a spirit power, you effectively sabotaged your future growth by taking one, and as a weapon, the spiritual interference was so drastic that it could outright kill weaker cultivators. If the actual effect of the weapon didn’t finish them off first, that was.

There was also the problem of their weakness, which made their evolutionary paths utterly unpredictable, and if someone chose to take a more powerful core from a bigger slime, they would have to settle for even worse spiritual interference as the cores only grew more misshapen the bigger the slime was.

However, everything pointed to them being a damn-near-perfect fit for Neave. And a slime power was different enough in nature that it wouldn’t interfere with anything else he had. Except for the shapeshifting power, actually. That one was going to sting a bit.

It wasn’t strictly a slime monster, especially not after evolving, but its nature might be rather similar.

Still, that made him grin. Looks like he knew what power he would seek next. He wouldn’t get into it haphazardly, however. He had to do proper research before sabotaging himself in the nightmare realm.

Now wasn’t the time for that, either. It was time to go test the slime in combat.

***

A nasty abominid raged inside the chamber Neave had created, and its gigantic claws were sharp enough to leave marks on the steel dome.

This creature was rather well-defined, so Neave wasn’t sure it even qualified as an abominid any longer.

It was a mutant reptilian bear type of creature, and the power it packed was rather considerable. Neave estimated it to be on the upper end of the second step of the platinum path in threat.

Perfect for testing out his new creation.

The purple slime dropped into the chamber from a small hole from above, and the raging monster turned to it when it spotted it.

It roared and rushed toward the tiny creature. The slime shrunk to the size of a pellet and jumped at impossible speed toward the monster.

The moment it impacted its torso, it instantly expanded to over ten meters in size, sending the monster flying into the dome's wall. The impact didn’t seem to damage it much, but as it was about to regain its composure, a slimy tentacle grabbed its leg.

The monster was swung from one end of the dome to the other and repeatedly slammed into every surface in the chamber. Eventually, it managed to regain enough control to sever the tentacle and free itself, but the moment it did, yet another one came flying at it and shoved it into the wall.

Suddenly, the tentacle detached from the slime, and the monster had to remove it from its skin to move freely again. But before it could, the slime tentacle began glowing a raging purple color until it exploded violently, smashing the creature into the wall again.

Yet again, a tentacle grabbed it before it could recover and spun it around the slime's body. The slime gradually shrank, and the speed at which the creature spun drastically accelerated until it was yet again sent flying into the wall.

Several globules of slime detached from the purple slime and flew like arrows toward the creature, exploding on impact and causing severe damage.

A sharp pulse struck the creature directly into its midsection, and its stomach was split open. The slime shrunk yet again and barrelled straight into the open gash on the creature's midsection, where it sank directly into its body.

The creature shambled around helplessly, bones cracked and body crushed, as it tried to regain its bearing. Suddenly, its stomach began expanding. The slime grew several times its size, exploding the monster's body and splattering guts all over the chamber.

Neave returned to his body and screamed in joy, “Again! I have to try something else out!”

He returned to the slime body and sent a tentacle to the wall of the chamber, where it attached to a large handle, and opened a smaller chamber connected to the bigger one. A similar creature, slightly larger than the previous one, immediately came rushing out, bolting directly toward the smell of blood.

The slime stood still as Neave waited for the creature to come close. Once it did, a sharp pulse suddenly cut a delicate incision on the creature's stomach. A tiny, compressed globule of slime immediately shot directly into the opening.

The creature's body lit up with a purple glow, its entire torso puffed outwardly and then slowly deflated. Smoke rushed out of every orifice on its body, and it shambled for a few more steps until it dropped dead.

Neave yet again returned to his body, giggling in ecstasy.

Looks like the glasses would synergize rather well, after all.