The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 125: Combine

The large tree’s leaves moved around in the wind, coiling its branches like snakes. A rabbit… Walked upright to Neave’s left, and a dog crawled like a worm.

“Something about this is kinda fucked up.”

Turns out that using the fourth spirit inside of the spirit realm created golems. Or, well, it breathed life into anything he touched.

Neave had a theory. He had likely spotted whatever invaded his soul, then panicked and defaulted to using the fourth spirit combo in self-defense. That did something to whatever was inside his spirit, and the residual turned nearby matter into golems.

Now, at least, he had a rough idea about the stuff outside his spirit realm.

The fourth spirit existed in some form inside monsters’ bodies or perhaps in living creatures in general. It was the final link, the thing that gave spirit character.

With integrate, Neave could likely absorb this substance into his body. This was a problem. Because he had absolutely no way to get it out. And judging by recent events, if some criteria was satisfied, it could invade, at the very least, the outer borders of his spirit realm.

The problem was that Neave had no idea whether this substance was a good or bad thing to have in his body. Judging by how things had played out, he was almost willing to assume that it had somehow helped him fight off the influence.

Now, it was just a question of whether that was a ‘kill competition’ or ‘repel invader’ sort of deal.

Many questions needed answering, but one stood out among them.

These creatures around Neave seemed just wrong. It wasn’t a mystery why, however. To begin with, the things he could create with liquid spirit were little more than shapes. If cracked open, all of these creatures he had created don’t even remotely resemble their real-life counterparts.

On the inside, these things don’t have bones, muscles, tendons, nerves, veins, or anything. And real bodies are far more complicated than even that. These things had nothing but mysterious, sticky red substance inside their body, and Neave assumed that was just filled in automatically somehow.

After all, regardless of how massive his ego was, he couldn’t even begin to dream about being capable of imagining an actual body and all of its intricacies.

That was why these things were nothing more than golems, and the shape of a golem’s body was little more than a suggestion as to how it should move.

It felt super gross having living creatures inside his spirit realm, especially if it was these creepy fucking things. Even when the others were inside here, Neave felt strange anxiety and discomfort if they were left alone.

Was that perhaps some sort of reflex reaction? Maybe he instinctively understood that having things living inside his spirit was a big no-no?

Maybe, maybe not. Who knew?

There was a second question that needed to be answered as well.

Why the hell did the fourth spirit combo explode when used outside? Perhaps it couldn’t exist independent of spirit?

The problem was that this theory was something he would have to risk his life to confirm. That combination wasn’t to be messed with in any circumstances. The destructive power of the combination was among the greatest Neave had ever seen.

These problems aside, there was a bigger question on Neave’s mind.

How could he use this to his advantage? After all, this was precisely the sort of thing he intended to explore by entering the nightmare realm.

The first idea that came to mind was to make a crap ton of golems to help him fight the spirit trial. This wasn’t a bad idea at all, but it was… Redundant.

He didn’t have any problems with doing the spirit trial himself, and currently, he didn’t have any new powers he wanted to evolve or acquire.

Hell, it was debatable whether he could even handle evolving any powers he had. As strong as he may be, potentially diamond-rank threats inside his spirit realm weren’t a joke.

The massive abominids only technically avoided qualifying as diamond-ranked threats. They were massive and overwhelmingly powerful, but their sheer number of weaknesses made them easy opponents to handle.

Well, technically, there were still two powers he could evolve once each. He hadn’t bothered getting the fire lungs to the dragon breath stage and crystal cardiovascular veins to the stasis stage.

Actually, no, he also hadn’t bothered evolving the hyper liver to its maximum capacity either, and it had two evolutions he could safely perform.

So, if he wanted to try the fourth spirit out, he had the luxury of four relatively free attempts.

It was still quite dangerous, but with his newly gained skill and power inside the spirit realm, Neave had no doubts that he could easily handle the full spirit trial, even if he fought it manually.

A crazy, crazy idea sparked in his mind. True, he didn’t need the fourth spirit to handle the spirit trial as it was at the moment. But what if he, let's say, wanted to evolve a power further?

What if he needed to get rid of diamond-ranked threats?

The idea hadn’t come to mind until now, simply because it was so damn insane. But hadn’t he defeated someone on the diamond path just recently?

True, there was a night and day difference between doing that outside the spirit realm and inside it.

But inside it, he had access to this new, mysterious form of spirit. And Neave knew damn well just how useful spirit could be if used correctly.

A grin spread wide on his face as he readied himself. It was time to see what it could do.

First, he decided to test anything that came to mind before he tried it in a trial.

Neave used liquid spirit to create a five-meter-tall golem of metal. He placed his hand onto the surface of the golem and imbued it with the fourth spirit.

It began moving, and it did so precisely as he assumed it would.

“Hmmm…”

There was a slight problem. Neave used more of the fourth spirit on the creature and achieved… Nothing.

“Crap.”

It didn’t seem to have a function of making things more powerful. Neave assumed that it simply made things alive, and then that was it. Once there was enough to make something move, its job was done.

Just to be sure, Neave thought, he decided to pour as much of the spirit as possible into the creature.

For a while, absolutely nothing of note happened. It didn’t seem to be aggressive toward Neave, which was a good sign, he supposed. The other golems weren’t aggressive toward one another either, which made Neave breathe out a sigh of relief.

After all, the first time he saw golems here, they seemed rather bloodthirsty. Could that have resulted from contact with the thing invading his spirit?

His idle thoughts were interrupted when finally, something changed. The golem started growing… Indistinct.

Its body began growing transparent, and he maintained an influx of the substance. It began morphing, sort of how liquid spirit looked when it was first materializing.

Neave let go of the golem and observed it, expecting something to happen. Would it evolve?

Gradually, the morphing stopped, and the golem reappeared, looking nearly identical to what it used to, with very few tiny details being just slightly different.

“Well… That’s disappointing.”

However, it did give Neave an idea. It could be possible to imbue even the trial monsters with this substance. And if they also began morphing, that could be a weakness, or perhaps killing them in this state could be effortless.

So Neave went back to the golem, imbuing it with more of the fourth spirit, which he had to name.

What about… Plasma spirit? It made sense in the context of the other spirits. Good enough.

Once again, the golem morphed, and Neave threw a stone at it this time.

Nothing happened. Eventually, the golem reappeared again. However, it looked drastically different.

It had clear accents of stone mixed into its metal, likely as a byproduct of Neave throwing it at it. This didn’t even weaken the golem, let alone destroy it.

Perhaps if he threw something like acid or water at it, he would get a better result?

This did beg the question, though. How would that affect the trial monsters? Would it perhaps even impact Neave’s spirit powers? If it did, that could potentially be a disaster.

Neave felt something touch his leg, and he turned to see the bunny golem lying on the floor after bumping into him.

Hmmmmmmm…

Without much thought, Neave once again touched the golem. Once it began morphing, Neave threw the bunny golem at it and watched the morphing gradually disappear.

“Pfffff–! Hahahahahahahaha!”

The thing that popped out was a combination of the two golems. It was a sizeable metallic golem with paws and ears, and it was a little hunched forward.

Once Neave was finally done laughing his ass off at the absurd sight, he got an insane idea.

Could I do this to a trial monster?

What if he grabbed one and meshed it with another? Neave doubted this would impact the spirit powers, but if it could combine two opponents into one, it could theoretically make the trials way easier.

It made a lot of sense as he thought about it. If he could combine all of the creatures into one massive abominid, the trial would become a joke. Even if he did evolve all of his powers.

This did beg a rather important question. What if it messed with the spirit powers somehow?

This wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought. The possibility of creating significant interference or outright ruining certain spirit powers was deeply unpleasant.

Neave took a deep breath and thought about it. Was it worth trying this?

It was a very high-risk, high-reward sort of deal. And he really wanted to try it. But he wouldn’t do it haphazardly if he was doing it.

After quickly running through his spirit powers, he finally settled on two. Hyper liver and durable organs were both powers he could do without.

Now, durable organs wasn’t bad, but it did interfere quite a bit with both hyper liver and superior troll physique.

His liver, in particular, was the target of far too many spirit powers, so if he could ‘lose’ the hyper liver power, he would be thrilled. Not to mention that this could theoretically open the doors to replacing these powers as well.

Neave still didn’t have a way to remove singular spirit powers. It was an all-or-nothing deal regardless of whether he used his method or the one provided by Astrador.

If this could allow him to remove singular spirit powers…

That was easily enough to make it worth trying.

***

Neave was shaking quite a bit. Two large abominids, one much bigger than the other, were still moving while all other trial monsters were dead.

To isolate the two of them and keep them alive, he had to face the spirit trial manually.

And oh boy, was it fun.

And dangerous. He nearly died. Neave had far overestimated his abilities in the spirit realm, and this experience was rather humbling.

It was finally time to try his experiment. With quite a bit of trepidation, Neave charged at one of the two abominids.

They were both alive and kicking, so Neave had to forcefully eject the plasma spirit into them while dodging many attacks.

It took quite a while, but luckily, it was relatively easy.

Eventually, both of the creatures began morphing.

“Well… Shit.”

He didn’t think about how he would push them into one another. They weren’t light, to say the least.

Luckily, a few large true strikes in one of their sides pushed it close enough to the other to make them touch.

And Neave watched with trepidation as the morphing mass of monster combined into one.