The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 126: Merging

As Neave observed the results of the merging, he felt… Well, not disappointment per se, as he hadn’t yet confirmed the actual results of the experiment, but he was certainly moderating his expectations.

The two large abominids had merged into a single abominid roughly around the size of the larger one of the two. It was clear that the merging was successful as the resulting abominid looked distinctly different and had hints of both in its body.

Now, the problem was… The final abominid hadn’t gotten more powerful. It was effectively as powerful as the bigger one of the two had been.

This was a bad sign. Mainly because this made Neave assume that the experiment was a failure. There was a simple reason why. Judging by the fact that the ‘power’ of the smaller one was effectively entirely lost, he was assuming that this merging wasn’t permanent.

Or, rather, he would face the two separately again the next time he entered a spirit trial.

Now… If it did actually reflect on the spirit powers…

There was still the faint hope that this allowed him to merge all the monsters into one frighteningly easy opponent without losing anything. Still, if he had learned something about experimentation so far, it was that it was never that easy.

After readying himself for utter disappointment, Neave manifested a large hammer and pummeled the new opponent into mush.

And left the spirit realm.

The moment he did, he froze. Something was wrong. No… Different. At first, he thought that the hyper liver power had vanished, but no…

It has combined with durable organs.

And now, those two powers had formed a sort of super organs power, where they were both more durable and faster.

This had been one of the things he had expected to achieve. Nay, it was one of the things he wanted to achieve, yet, something about the combination was weird. It felt as if… Well, it wasn’t an additive combination.

It felt as if a part of the durable organs' power was lost, and it had gained the ability to speed up the function of his organs instead. Which was something Neave found rather unpleasant, by the way. His heart was beating insanely fast, and he could feel his stomach rumbling.

Neave had no idea how to feel about this. Was this… Better? Worse?

Sadly, it wasn’t all that clear-cut.

It wasn’t a strictly good or bad thing. It was a trade-off. He lost a certain degree of power from both powers and meshed their functions more adequately. This allowed a certain degree of freedom to modify his powers and completely removed their mutual interference.

The problem was that the combination wasn’t necessarily better than the sum of its parts.

He was tempted by the prospect of merging all of his powers into one to altogether remove their mutual interference, but that was a brutally stupid idea. It would cost him the vast majority of his power and likely create some abominable ability that would kill him on the spot.

Yet, it opened the doors to a valuable opportunity.

Several criteria needed to be satisfied, but if they were, Neave wasn’t at all averse to merging certain powers.

The first criterion that needed to be satisfied was that the mutual interference between the powers needed to be impactful enough to warrant their merging.

The second criterion to be satisfied was that the power lost due to merging wouldn’t be missed.

And the third criterion was that the combined power ultimately had to be not terrible.

With that in mind, Neave got to thinking about his powers.

First, there was integrate. This power didn’t need merging with anything. It didn’t really interfere with any other powers. Its main problem was that it was an intrinsically self-destructive ability that needed compensation from other forces.

No need to merge this one.

Next up was sacred blood. This was a bit more complicated. Neave was tempted to merge it with crystal cardiovascular system, but that didn’t make much sense upon further thought. And not to mention, the spirit power was likely the most significant individual power he had, so he absolutely didn’t want to lose any of its potency.

There was… Another combination.

What if he combined it with integrate? It felt right, but upon further consideration, it also felt…

Hmmmm…

There was a problem with this idea. Integrate and sacred blood were mighty spirit powers, both through raw power and their nature.

If combined, that would mean cutting their cumulative power in half.

That wasn’t an easy loss to swallow. As far as Neave could tell, they worked perfectly together, but was that the case?

What if their combination would manifest some emergent property far surpassing their individual values?

It was a risk that Neave wasn’t willing to take lightly. The integrate plus sacred blood combo was one of his most valuable tools, and risking it for unpredictable benefits wasn’t wise.

However, this was something he would keep in mind for the future. For now, he chose to leave them separated.

Next up, shapeshifting. This was another one of his trump cards, and it worked perfectly fine. Combining it with other powers was a risk, and it wasn’t at all necessary.

Superior troll physique. Well… This was a power he was easily willing to combine with several others.

Upon further thought, most of the powers that modified his body in one way or another were probably a good target for combination.

They did have a certain degree of mutual interference, and honestly, if he lost some power in certain abilities, it was hard to say it would be missed.

Ignite and thunder nerves were subpar for several reasons, and their primary function was complete crap anyway. The newly combined hyper liver and durable organs should be shoved into the mix without hesitation. Losing crystal cardiovascular system was a little iffy, but frankly, the entire function of that power was to just restrain sacred blood, which he could likely do with the newly combined power anyway.

Endurance boost technically altered his body, but that power should be left alone.

Thinking about it now, Neave genuinely felt… Depressed. These powers were horrid. He already knew that, but as he thought about it in this context, there were so many he didn’t mind outright losing.

That made him feel better about his new ability to combine them. With the integration, it was possible to remove a lot of the slack and transform them into a singular power that didn’t cause many issues for him.

At first, he was concerned about losing power, but now… He was almost entirely confident that he would gain power by doing this rather than lose any.

Next up, regeneration power…

What about combining it with distance from death?

This felt like another sacred blood and integrate situation, where both powers are phenomenal individually but could theoretically provide something fantastic if combined into a singular entity.

And yet again, Neave decided to leave them alone. They played together rather nicely, and there was no need to touch them without a valid reason.

Now, perception power, cognitive boost, and dexterity boost…

“Wait a minute!”

Combining these three powers was a no-brainer. They all operated in the realm of the nervous system, and if the interference between them were removed, Neave would simply be better off.

However…

Should he combine this with thunder nerves?

Putting thunder nerves in the same category as all other body modification powers was tempting, certainly.

It had a degree of interference with durable organs and superior troll physique. Removing that and adding metallic properties to the rest of his body seemed like a done deal.

But was it really?

The three nerve-related supernatural boosts would come together into a frighteningly effective singular power, and the prospect of incorporating that directly into the function of his nerves was insanely tempting.

This whole problem suddenly became a lot more complicated.

No compromises, my ass.

What if he just combined all of them into one power?

The idea of that was… Problematic. The powers would get too cut down, and the individual properties would be too diluted. There was…

Well, there was the option of doing it in several takes to weigh the powers differently. In that case, he would first combine the three nerve boosts. Then, he would combine the singular nerve-boosting power with thunder nerves, creating a fifty-fifty split between them, and then he would put it into the superior troll physique.

Putting that aside for the moment, he continued thinking.

The speed boost… He wanted to get rid of it somehow because it was among his worst powers. True, it made him faster, but it significantly impacted his precision and ease of movement.

While he could compensate for it with skill, he was better off investing his attention elsewhere.

But he didn’t have any powers he wanted to merge it with.

Perhaps… Willpower of might? That would likely result in a power that allowed him to boost both speed and strength while slightly reducing the impact of the terrible incongruence to his movements.

Wait…

Wait a damn minute. The willpower of might spirit power… Wouldn’t that technically allow him to use his will to boost any other power he merged it with?

Quickly running through his options, there were several that immediately stood out. Combining it with the cognitive boost wasn’t a bad idea, but it felt kind of lame. Integrate was also possible, but he would rather not bother with manually boosting that.

Wait… Regeneration boost, distance from death…

Combined with willpower of might?

“Oh, man.”

Oh man, indeed. That was a fantastic combination. That was precisely the sort of thing he wanted to discover. A combination of powers provided him with the absolute best of all elements involved.

Not only would that allow him to drastically boost the power of both his regeneration and ability to resist death, but it would also likely merge into something superior to any of the three powers individually.

All of this while also removing any mutual interference they had.

Thinking of all the other powers with a similar mindset, he found no other combinations that stood out. But there were several optimizations he discovered.

The endurance ability that he had chosen to leave alone previously would be incorporated into the fire lungs first.

But before that, he would look for a fire golem because he wanted to add another power to fire lungs.

Before anything, he would add a fire resistance power. This would reduce the greatest weakness fire lungs had, and with the endurance boost, the fuel capacity and where it was stored would be impacted drastically, naturally at the price of the actual power of ignite.

Other than that, he would also first merge crystal cardiovascular system and super organs.

Finally, the resulting superior fire lungs, crystal super-organs, and ultimate thunder nerves would be combined with the superior troll physique into new, ultimate physique-boosting spirit power.

Integrate, sacred blood, shapeshifting, and violet avatar would remain untouched.

Which only left the speed boost.

Neave truly decided to think outside the box for a moment as he pondered all of his options.

It wasn’t long until he came up with the ultimate solution to this problem. He would raise monsters and look for as many speed-boosting powers as possible, and then, he would take all of them into his spirit.

Naturally, this would create a messy collection of powers that would be unusable… Until they were combined. With their combination, any weaknesses of the different powers would be ironed out, and a pure, flawless speed-boosting power would be created.

Then, together with the regeneration boost, distance from death, and willpower of might, it would be combined into a singular ability that allowed his willpower to boost his strength, speed, durability, and recovery abilities, as well as defy death itself.

Any time he needed to initiate a spirit trial to do the fusion of spirit powers, he would find some extremely minor spirit power that played well with those being combined, and then he would enter the trial by consuming it.

Now… It was time to get to work.