The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 71: Ecosystem

Neave held the slime in his hands—inside the nightmare realm.

He cackled and laughed and got his little giggles out of the way. It was so funny to Neave.

There was one thing he had to check first. Neave put the slime on the ground, and then he buried it. Slimes tended to get buried rather frequently and were utterly powerless to escape. Eventually, they could turn into earth slimes, but that wouldn’t be an issue for this one.

Neave didn’t know exactly how much time passed when he wasn’t in the realm, but he figured it didn’t matter for the sake of this experiment.

Neave left the nightmare realm. The slime was still in his grasp when he woke up. Then he reentered the realm. There was a visible indentation where he had buried the monster, but it didn’t dig out of its hole.

Neave clicked his tongue. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Any creature he took here would leave the moment he did. This meant that he couldn’t just fill the realm with infinite slimes.

Actually, this should have been obvious to Neave from the beginning. If that was how it worked, what would have stopped him from loading the realm with infinite Hunters?

He wasn’t out of options yet. Neave again entered the realm with the slime, and this time he fed the slime a lot of his blood.

As expected, the slime evolved into a blood slime. This wasn’t what Neave was aiming for, not quite. He chopped an entire arm off and fed it to the slime. Then, when it regrew, he fed it another arm.

Slowly, the slime grew larger and larger until, finally, tiny slimes started breaking apart from the big one.

Neave smiled broadly, took a small slime that detached from the big one, and buried it underground. He killed the rest of them so there wouldn’t be any mishaps.

He returned, finding the slime yet again snuggly trapped in his hug.

Neave knocked himself out and went to where he had buried the slime.

It was still buried right where he had left it.

Neave cackled like a maniac, mad with the power he had just discovered. He could already see it. The entire landscape transformed into a sprawling ecosystem of challenging opponents he could face in mortal combat.

And hopefully, some monsters that could at least harass Astrador a bit.

Suddenly, an utterly insane thought went through Neave’s mind. Any creature that entered this realm was forced to leave, but if they multiplied somehow, their offspring would stay inside the realm.

Did this mean that…? If he brought a man and a woman…?

Shivers ran down Neave’s spine. That wasn’t a pleasant path of thought to go down, so he swiftly suppressed that idea as deep as he could, and hopefully, it would never resurface again.

Now… What now?

Neave contemplated how he should approach this most efficiently. He could technically generate infinite organic matter by chopping his limbs off and growing them back. Was there a limit to this?

No, obviously, there was, but what did it hinge on? Neave went deep into his spirit and analyzed his spirit powers to the best of his ability.

After a short round of scrutiny, he realized a peculiar interaction between his powers.

Integrate could digest immense quantities of organic material into the body. His sacred blood purged everything harmful. His evolved stamina ability allowed him to drastically raise his maximum capacity for stored substance. Then finally, his regeneration ability utilized these extra nutrients and calories to construct new limbs if old ones were destroyed.

At this moment, Neave realized how bad the regeneration ability really was. If he didn’t have the extra reserves for organic substance in his body, it would take whatever it needed from the rest of his body to forcefully regrow missing limbs.

There was no way to consciously stop it, so if he lost a limb and had no backup in reserves, this spirit power would drain him enough to hinder his combat ability.

Thinking further, this may have happened when he faced that purple dragon.

This was why haphazardly evolving spirit powers or using them without caution was so dangerous. Neave had the tremendous privilege of a cornucopia of convenient spirit powers that could nullify one another’s side effects.

This was in significant part by his own design. Which was what he would like to believe. In reality, had he not gotten lucky with his initial crazy plan of an organ upgrade, he could have easily ended up dead.

Now that Neave thought about it, he wasn’t all that lucky with his powers in the first place. While they did allow for some crazy stunts, had Marven not found him back then, he likely would have died from the side effects anyway.

Neave put those thoughts away and refocused on the present. What was the game plan? How should he approach this scenario?

Neave contemplated it. He needed a few things. First, he needed a source of energy. Heat would be preferable. Monsters were indeed immortal, but they fed on living things. If there were a lack of organic matter, populating the nightmare realm would be a tremendous pain in the ass.

He would have to manually supply the organic material, qi, and life force needed for the monsters to evolve. He couldn’t be bothered to do that. So step one was simple.

It was time for some terraforming. Neave giggled, mad with power, as he jumped into the nearest rift.

As he fell, he dodged the spikes with a cheery smile. Eventually, he reached the bottom of the pit.

Neave put his arms together and focused. Qi and life force gathered and combined in his palms. White light enveloped Neave, and he returned to the real world.

He promptly went right back inside and ran over to the rift. He first noticed that it was considerably wider now and that all the spikes were gone, partially or fully destroyed.

…Wow.

That was a lot more destruction than he was expecting. Perhaps Astrador stopped him since this was dangerous even for him? Neave doubted that, but he kept it as a possibility in the back of his mind.

He took a peek down the rift and jumped in again. Once he reached the bottom, he discovered it was deeper this time. Neave noticed that the massive space at the bottom had broken into a cavern off in the corner.

Rather than blow himself up again right on the spot, Neave dug into the robust stone until he was buried fifty meters. Then he blew himself up.

Once he reached the bottom of the rift again, he found that burying himself first was a great idea, as far more energy was directly pushed into the surrounding stone rather than forced out of the rift. So he repeated the same thing once again.

The next time he returned, he found that he had broken into a far larger cave complex this time—a highly inconvenient one.

Neave clicked his tongue. His plan was ruined. There was too much empty space here. His goal was to reach magma and force an eruption to the surface. This would initially bring only a bit of heat, but he would repeat the maneuver until it resulted in enough energy on the surface, at least temporarily.

He planned to first create an ecosystem of lava golems and lava slimes. He thought manually feeding them for a long time could spread the heat far and wide while only requiring a small effort on Neave’s end.

Neave could then use the heat to cultivate plant life, which he could use to feed weaker monsters who would become prey to larger ones. Perhaps he could bring some animals over as well.

Actually, no. That was a terrible plan. Monsters could survive almost indefinitely without food and water. They simply stopped moving once they ran out of energy. Building a stable ecosystem exclusively from monsters was much more convenient since temporary instability would impact them far less than normal animals.

While he would also bring over monster plants, there was no avoiding bringing typical plants. Luckily, plants also happened to possess a pseudo-soul. They could be brought over to the realm the same way monsters could.

Sadly, this didn’t apply to something like a weapon. Plants had a quasi-soul, while weapons had a quasi-spirit.

His master plan just encountered a massive problem. There were too many underground caverns.

Before the magma could reach the surface, he would have to fill all the caverns, which sounded like a gigantic pain in the ass.

Neave paused.

Suddenly, he realized something. Why did he need to bring the magma to the surface?

He made the connection that plans thrived on the surface in the real world; thus, this place would also work the same way.

Why would that be the case? This realm had no sun. There was no reason to bring things up to the surface at all.

Neave navigated the caves for a while, manually digging down. He found large flat platforms of cooled obsidian. He blew through the upper layers until he encountered magma.

Brilliant.

Now he needed one more thing. Large amounts of organic material. Now, here he had the option of chopping his arms off endlessly. That was a shit-tier plan as far as he was concerned.

Neave suddenly got a genius idea. Couldn’t he just soak all the soil in his blood?

That wasn’t a bad plan. Sure, the plants that would prosper in such an environment were bound to be… Of a particular kind, but that wouldn’t be a problem if they just acted as a baseline for the ecosystem in conjunction with the fire monsters.

So Neave created a small blade out of spirit and cut his hand off. He was surprised at how easy it was to cut it off, likely because he was doing it himself. Spirit powers had some leeway in such situations. That and the spirit dagger was wickedly sharp. He wondered why he didn’t use that as a weapon more often until he remembered that spirit dissolved when the tiniest cracks appeared.

Neave lamented this because it looked so cool. Also, conceptually, it was badass. Who else had the privilege to brag that they used spirit as a physical weapon? Nobody. Except perhaps someone with many screws loose might have bludgeoned someone to death with a monster core.

People were just crazy sometimes.

Neave quickly encountered the problem of his hand growing back out and the bleeding stopping. Ah, yes, the regeneration power that couldn’t be stopped by force. Well, not regular force. Much was possible when one had Neave’s repertoire of tricks.

Neave cut his arm off again and used life force to prevent it from healing. He did this by enhancing the body's natural healing process enough to overpower the healing that came from his spirit powers.

Rather than grow a new hand, the arm scabbed over with an ugly scar. This sadly also stopped the bleeding.

Neave should have seen that one coming.

So, bleeding turned out to be much more challenging than he anticipated. That wasn’t something anybody had ever said or thought before, but Neave was a being of many firsts.

He contemplated his situation for a while. What should he do? Was it going to have to be arm-chopping in the end? Neave groaned. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him. It was the speed.

He had to supply a whole load of organic material, so resorting to such a primitive and inefficient method was suboptimal.

Neave got yet another brilliant idea. He created another tool out of spirit. This time, it was a tube. Neave cut his arm off again and grabbed one of the floppy veins squiring its juice everywhere. He hurried before it healed and inserted the tube into the vein.

The rest of the arm healed around it, but the tube remained solidly embedded into Neave’s hand. A powerful stream of blood was rushing through it, and Neave felt his blood being replenished faster than even this highly efficient method could drain it.

So he would help the process along. Neave used ignite and sped up his heartbeat drastically. He used his life force to constrain his veins and further empower every squeeze of his heart.

The stream of blood rushed out at such speed and force that it turned into a mist the moment it left the tube. That was convenient for dispersing it everywhere, at least.

Neave ran around the cave, testing his new tool for painting the walls red. It was an efficient method of getting nutrients into the soil.

“What the fuck are you doing, kid?”

Neave jumped and whirled, turning the stream of blood toward Astrador. The blood simply phased through his body, and he stared at Neave blankly, unimpressed. Neave removed the tube and stared at the god apprehensively.

“How did you leave your zone?”

“My what? Wait, don’t tell me you can sense the anchor?”

“The what now?”

Astrador chuckled incredulously and nodded, clearly impressed by the feat.

“That’s remarkable. I wonder how you can do it. Such perception shouldn’t be possible even for a demigod.”

“I have a perception spirit power.” Neave declared proudly.

Astradore scoffed at that.

“Oh please, that cheap, corrupt imitation you all call spirit powers would hardly suffice even if pushed to its very limits. That might help, but it isn’t the main reason why.”

Neave carefully noted the way the god talked about everything. He hadn’t already killed himself and left the realm only because he noticed the blood had passed through Astrador.

Astrador giggled at Neave’s expression.

“Kid, you would suck at card games.”

Neave used thunder nerves to paralyze his face. Astrador seemed offended.

“No, that’s cheating! I ban you from doing that!”

Neave laughed, his face maintaining the same expression. Then he turned serious, although there was no outward indication of that in anything but his posture.

“Why are you here? How are you here? Well, you’re not here or back in that cave, but you know what I mean.”

Astrador grinned.

“I’m forced to wait around like a dumbass any time you choose to enter this place, so I thought I’d come to check in on what you’re doing…” He looked around the room, every wall covered in blood, “Perhaps my punishment back then impacted you more than I initially thought. Either that, or you’re just bat shit insane by default.”

Neave had to laugh at that one a bit.

“So, in a nutshell, you’re here because you’re bored. As far as I can tell, the power you’re using to project your image here is a bit intensive. Perhaps a combination of being outside your anchor and projecting your consciousness into this realm by force?” Neave grinned widely.

Astrador rolled his eyes.

“Spare yourself the trouble, kid. You couldn’t figure my secrets out if you had a billion years.”

“Well, who says I don’t have a billion years?”

“While I appreciate the vacation you’re providing me with, I would much rather prefer you give up on going to that place sooner than that.”

“In your dreams.”

“You mean, in your dreams?”

“Good one, good one.”

“Say, kid, how about you take a break from being a lunatic and visit me in my cave?”

“Why, so you could kick me out again?”

“That wouldn’t achieve much at all. As you said, I am a bit bored being stuck waiting here. So I thought I would offer you a deal, a small trade. I will spar with you and give you a few pointers while you can test yourself against me. How’s that sound?”

“Wildly unfair, as you’re getting far more from that exchange than I am.”

“I’m not getting anything at all.”

“You’re getting a closer look into my power set, which I assume you’d like.”

“I think you’re underestimating both my ability to analyze your power even as we speak and the meaning of ‘a few pointers.’ A god’s tutoring is a privilege not even the mightiest beings in the universe can afford. If you wish, I will bind myself with a soul oath so I can’t trick you or avoid delivering on my promise. How’s that sound?”

Neave hesitated. It sounded like an excellent offer, and he had no reason to refuse. It reeked of hidden motives, however.

“I accept your deal.”

He had one reason, and one reason only to accept the deal. Astrador was convinced Neave could never defeat him and reach the underground chamber.

Neave wasn’t planning on ever giving up this chase. If he wanted to give Neave another advantage that could push him closer to success, there was no way Neave would refuse.

Time was on his side, after all, and Neave knew best the power of having all the time in the world.