The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 120: Golemcraft

Sateron lay sprawled out on the ground. He could hear nothing but the distant clings of glass shrubs and see nothing but the murky darkness of the sky above.

He wanted to lash out. Anger overflowed in his body, and he wanted revenge, retribution for what had been done to him. His creator, the ‘Great God’ mad with power, had been everything he truly had.

Without him, he had nothing. Nothing at all.

It wasn’t long until thoughts of taking his own life sparked in his mind. It wouldn’t be easy. Death didn’t come lightly to those in the subdivinity stage, even when they truly desired it.

However, he didn’t really want to die. He wanted to live. Now, his chance of getting a shot at life was wasted. Gone, like any light that had once been in this wretched realm, and it was a question of whether it had ever existed in the first place.

He couldn’t stop his mind from drifting to the horrifying human Astrador wanted him to kill.

Neave. What a strange being he was.

Sateron had loads of information injected directly into his mind. Knowledge of the world at large, of the free, infinite realms that expanded throughout the universe.

Part of him wondered whether he would be happier if he had never known about green pastures and lush forests. If he had never known of expansive seas and blue skies.

Which begged the question. Why did those humans willingly enter this realm? Perhaps to them, this realm was as fantastical as the outside was to Sateron. Or maybe they just didn’t care, given that nothing truly stopped them from leaving whenever they wanted.

What to think? What to do?

Existence felt like such a painful thing to Sateron. All was void of joy and hope, yet he still craved living. That was simply irrational. It would perhaps be best to end himself, after all.

But… How?

Food wouldn’t be a problem. Anyone at the subdivinity stage could survive indefinitely without food. Water would become a problem eventually, but not after a long time.

He closed his eyes contemplatively and confirmed it. No matter how far he dug, he couldn’t find a true desire for death.

If he was already choosing to live, to remain here, he shouldn’t be musing about such foolish stuff anyway. Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, Sateron got up.

“Well then… If I’m staying here… I suppose I could look for a way out.”

***

Several bear-like reptile mutants rushed at the slime avatar, and Neave swung his tentacles. The creatures were torn apart and blown up from the inside in seconds.

The slimy avatar slithered into one of the bodies, possessing it by spreading the tentacles through the creature's veins, and Neave fought the other monsters by manipulating one of the corpses

It was a wildly inefficient strategy, as Neave couldn’t muster even a fraction of the creature's strength. Still, it was rather hardcore, and Neave could easily imagine it being an incredible scare-tactic back in the real world.

The creatures were torn apart eventually, and Neave processed their bodies into slime feed.

The slime could eat things on its own, and its digestion had improved drastically. Neave’s energy manipulation skills allowed him to manually purge the slime’s body of impurities, but that was slower and less efficient than just using his own blood.

Neave was happy with the slime, and there wasn’t anything that immediately came to his mind regarding improving the creature. He wanted to experiment further and begin the construction of the second combat avatar, but he had to delay this for now.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it, but none of the monsters he had created yet felt good enough. Neave wanted something truly special, like this slime. It was a creation that felt right and played a peculiar, distinct role.

Its perception was excellent, and it was perfect for handling large numbers of weaker opponents. Neave wanted all his avatars to play a certain function, a specific role. They had to be something special, otherwise, the value of creating them and the utility of wasting attention on controlling them would drop.

He had briefly tested manipulating five temporary avatars simultaneously, which was crazy difficult. Neave had to manually swap attention between the five of them at insane speeds, rapidly leaving him feeling disoriented and nauseated.

Even with much practice, manipulating seven avatars in combat wouldn’t be easy. And it would only be worth doing if there was a point in having seven to begin with.

If he just had seven avatars that fulfilled the exact same function, he would be better off entirely focusing on only two than wasting his attention on using all of them at once.

There was no shortage of ideas for what to do, but it could wait for now. There was something essential he had to do first.

***

Neave appeared in the main chamber, finding Harel in the middle of a hardcore exercise session. Nobody else was to be seen.

“Yo, Harel!”

She lifted the barbell and returned it to the rack with a clang, and she turned to face Neave, “Oh! Why are you here?”

“... I never said I would be disappearing, did I?”

“Hmmm… You didn’t?”

“I’m pretty sure that I didn’t. Either way, where are the others?”

Harel shrugged, “I don’t know. Everyone is kind of off doing their own thing.”

“Uh-huh… I see. Well, I’ll be around here for a while, so you feel free to do your own thing too.”

She nodded at him and returned to doing exercise.

Neave hopped outside for a bit and rushed to a nearby cave in search of more of that metal. Once he gathered quite a bit, he returned to the main chamber, dropping a ton of it on the ground.

Harel perked up, “What are you doing?”

Neave turned around with a grin, “I’ll be making golems.”

“What!? You can make golems?”

“I know a lot of the theory, as I had spent much time learning alchemy.”

“That’s amazing! How many do you think you can make? How powerful can you make them?”

Neave laughed slightly at that, “I don’t know, hahaha, probably pretty powerful.”

“Can I watch?”

“Sure, I don’t mind. You want to try learning something?”

“No, but I might make a suggestion or two.”

He grinned and shook his head.

Golem creation.

It was a massive discipline, and its potential was truly immense. The power of golems was limited, naturally, but they had many unique advantages.

The first was numbers. You could use as many as you could make, really, as long as you could create proper command inscriptions. Next, they didn’t require food and could stand guard somewhere indefinitely.

And finally, destroying them was a serious challenge. They were slower and weaker than cultivators, naturally, but metal constructs sure could take a punch.

Neave took a deep breath.

Harel stared at him in confusion as he focused, “What are you doing now?”

“I don’t really have all the materials I need, unfortunately. I’m trying to think of alternatives or perhaps a way to find those materials anyway.”

“What do you need?”

“Tons of shit.” Neave sighed, “Certain types of crystals are needed if I want to engrave certain functions, and I need higher-tier metals. The first won’t be a massive problem, as I can mostly replace them with glass from the glass shrubs. The second one, however…”

“I see… You did mention once that this realm had only mundane materials.”

“Yeah… Technically the glass shrub glass isn’t fully mundane. It is only quasi-mundane. It is in the same rung as ordinary monster hides or bones. Essentially, it's mundane material, but the remnant spirit inside it allows it to surpass the value of its rank.”

“Couldn’t you breed monsters and use their body parts, then?”

Neave shook his head and knocked on the obsidian tiles on the floor, “You may have noticed that I use obsidian for these tiles and not glass. Have you ever wondered why?”

“Not really. I thought it was because the glass shrub would get angry at you.”

Neave snickered at that, “No, that’s not why. It’s because I have to purge the material of any remnant spirit before I can use alchemy techniques on it. The glass from the glass shrubs isn’t ordinary, even without the remnant spirit, but it's more fragile than the obsidian.”

“Wait, why didn’t you use obsidian for Marven’s weapon?”

“The glass is purer and many times more conductive to the power I placed in it.“

Harel nodded, “I see. So, what are you gonna do?”

“Whelp… There is no way to stimulate the optimal effect for standard practice.” He turned to her with a smirk, “But that doesn’t mean I have to go by standard practice.”

***

Neave decided to make the golems in the main chamber for a simple reason. It wasn’t that dangerous, at least not when compared to what he had been doing prior, and spending time here would at least let the others know he was alive.

Also, he kind of liked having someone there to watch him work. Truth be told, he was hoping to find Dukean here. Partly because he was the only one who stood any chance of being helpful and partly because Neave simply liked Dukean.

Talking to him was always fun, and regardless of his young age, the kid had some profound things to say.

Harel was likely the worst person he could have encountered here. Perhaps Hunter would have been worse, but he would at least stay quiet. Not only was she unhelpful, but she was also honestly a distraction. It wasn’t enough to hinder Neave in any noticeable way, however, so he didn’t mind it.

The moment Neave started with the first step of the process, he immediately encountered a massive advantage he had.

The golem core, the primary energy unit, was usually created by making a round metal ball with a quasi-spirit inside.

The main problem with this step, at least usually, was that tons of work had to be done to prevent the core from doing random shit and to ensure the object's interference didn’t hinder the golem’s function.

Neave could melt an empty spirit core, and make it perfectly round, completely voiding both problems.

The quasi-spirit’s function in the core was to produce energy. The bigger the monster core used was, the more power the golem core could produce.

This was the second major advantage he had. Neave could create a room-sized ball of spirit and use it as the core.

This was where the advantages turned into problems, however.

First, golem core inscriptions and the theory behind them were planned around the inefficiencies. Neave could somewhat piece together a functional set of inscriptions if he just went with all the ‘if the core doesn’t have this exact problem’ methods, but that wouldn’t be as straightforward as just putting them together.

This nearly made him want to simply use a monster core, but that had an entirely different set of problems he was even less likely to solve.

His second problem was the lack of high-rank metal at his disposal. This was a critical issue. Alchemy couldn’t compensate for low-rank metals. If that were possible, Neave could probably turn plain iron into diamond-rank material.

There was the sword he had thrown away, but that was neither metal nor enough material, to begin with.

High-rank metal was necessary because Neave had to construct a set of veins that would act as a power conduit. Lower-rank veins simply couldn’t transfer enough power, and mortal metals were abysmal at this task.

There were a few other problems he had to tackle, and a lot of experimentation would be required.

However, Neave grinned, despite the problems he had to face. There was a solution, one usually impossible to employ due to spiritual interference, but he had no such issue to face.

Nothing was stopping Neave from cramming as many golem cores into its body as he wanted.