The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 122: Schemes

The black shores roiled.

The sea of tar morphed as the dark liquid rose. Then it lowered. A creature, bathed in pitch black, crawled out of the depths and dropped to the dark soil.

The abominid lay there, unmoving. And when it got up, it didn’t fumble. Now, it had a purpose. It had a goal. It was no mere livestock.

It had become yet another agent of vengeance. But. One step at a time.

As it moved, the black substance dried on its skin and chipped off, leaving the same ugly surface beneath. Its skin was a patchwork of mismatched furs, and its seven limbs that resembled neither legs nor arms barely carried it forward.

But it pushed on. Exhaustion had long overtaken it, as the black sea was no place for its kind. There was no energy. There was no substance to drive it forward.

So it crawled toward it, teetering on the edge of collapse. Eventually, it sensed a faint hint of turbulence in the air. There were vague hints of spirit, vestiges of life force, and the winds carried the familiar sense of potential within.

It was faint, distant, and oh-so-weak, but enough to sustain it. Its spirit, a morphing center roughly resembling a crystal, greedily absorbed the ambient energy. And it was taking more than its fair share.

The creature fumbled and collapsed, unable to keep moving forward. The crystal core siphoned more and more energy from the air, and rather than fight it, the abominid rejoiced. The center expanded and rounded, shedding some excess substance.

Two of its limbs and a small part of its side suddenly detached from its body, carrying the core pieces within. Its body morphed and twisted, turning from an indistinct mass of limbs and flesh into something resembling a crooked animal, its four limbs carrying it forward and one extra attached to its back.

Its skin was no longer mismatched but merely colorful.

And it had even formed a head, one with eighteen eyes and two sets of jaws.

The pieces that broke off morphed and roiled, turning into children that were much like it used to be.

They were oblivious to their origins, and teaching them vengeance would be cruel, weak, and helpless as they were.

However, their legacy would be carried onward as the abominid consumed them one by one, incorporating their power into its own.

Its body was reinvigorated and full of energy, and it ran. Slowly, the energy density around it grew, and it ran faster and faster.

***

Astrador stood, surrounded by eight ghostly, pearly white figures. With a slight tremor, he lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. The eight figures instantly solidified and turned from ethereal shadows to solid white.

They had no features, facial or otherwise, and resembled blank mannequins in the shapes of ordinary men and women.

The blank servants.

These were nothing special. Any backwater god could materialize hundreds without batting an eye.

It was difficult in this place, but it wasn’t a considerable investment of power, not much more than it would be outside.

However, he did invest extra effort into creating them, as ordinary ones wouldn’t be enough for the mission.

The blank servants were not of much use and were only used for low-level tasks and household maintenance.

Some hick demi-gods even dared use them as some sort of display of power.

Blank servants were nothing but an imitation of humans, having a stimulated soul instead of a real one. They had no desires, no emotions, no spark. They had no needs either. They simply were, and they did as they were told.

Granted, without that spark, they were rather useless. The power they could possess was limited, as realizing potential was impossible without desire.

However, they did do as they were told.

Just in case, Astrador placed a hand on each of them, checking for any possible interference. As their souls were false, they weren’t inviolable, and he could easily peer inside and see whether anything that didn’t belong could be found there.

He breathed out a sigh of relief. These would do their job properly, without any chance of that thing’s interference.

It wasn’t yet time for them to move, however. Astrador tapped one of them on the forehead, and it ran off. They had the physical characteristics of someone in the nascent divine spark stage, or rather, as the lower realm rubes called it, the golden path.

That would be enough for one to fulfill its mission for now. The others would wait. Astrador sat down and focused.

Yet again, eight indistinct figures appeared around him.

***

Off in a random cave, a golem stood before Neave. There were no monsters nearby, as Neave specifically moved to an empty area.

The golem stood perfectly upright and seemed to have no intention of moving anywhere. Neave walked over to it and gave it a light tap. A small technique lit up, sending a yellow pulse through the golem's body, and it started to move.

It turned right and began walking. Neave jumped in front of it, waving his hands. That didn’t get the golem to stop, but it did try to imitate his movements.

“Oh fuck! I didn’t build in any reason for them to stop fucking moving!”

It seemed that it would never end once the golem began its patrol. It would still occasionally stop and observe its surroundings, but that happened entirely randomly or when it perceived something it had no built-in response for.

This meant that Neave’s plan of teaching the golem a few things would have to be done on the run.

Neave stood before the golem and walked backward as he tried making a series of movements it would imitate. And the golem imitated him indeed—by walking backward.

“No, not like that!”

He walked forward, and the golem eventually began walking forward as well. As Neave went back, it started imitating him again, and eventually, the golem began to walk back and forward repeatedly.

“... At least it's not moving far.”

That was about as close to standing as he could get it to do, which was perfect to teach it some other stuff. Neave kept trying to teach the golem how to do combat stances or how to strike, but all it ended up doing was half-starting those movements and immediately canceling them, as patrolling took priority in the hierarchy of its systems.

There was one way to rectify this and one way alone. Neave struck the golem, throwing a rock at it, and it immediately stopped. That instantly moved the hierarchy of the combat controls above patrolling, and it got into a preprogrammed stance to face Neave.

Neave summarily kicked its ass, doing his best not to damage the golem in any way. Yet, it didn’t seem willing to imitate anything he did.

“Oh yeah, it must first stop combat and restart it again to apply what it had learned.”

Thus, Neave disappeared, letting the golem run around for a few minutes until it began patrolling again.

Once it did, Neave once again appeared before it. This time, the stance it got into was a little different.

It bent forward and put one of its arms behind its body.

And kept doing that until its body was balled up and its arm wrapped around its torso.

Neave kicked the golem and smashed it to bits, “Fucking piece of shit!”

Should he just stick to a standard command center? It wouldn’t be optimal, but he had learned several high-level premade inscriptions for golem cores that would at least do a passable job.

However, with only mundane metals available and without special crystals, it would never be more than a shadow of the golems those inscriptions were designed for. And he wasn’t sure he could get them to work with multiple cores, to begin with.

Neave stood above the golem and bent over to pick up the broken parts, trying to salvage whatever he could. However, as he bent forward, he suddenly saw the ground rush up and hit him in the head.

He lay dazed on the ground, unsure of what was happening. Suddenly, he jolted and stood up. Had he just collapsed?

“Hahahaha… No… It isn’t that bad… Right?”

His arm shook. This couldn’t go on forever. It had been a long time since he had last slept, and whatever that was doing to his body, mind, and spirit wasn’t willing to wait for that much longer.

Taking a deep breath, he forced his tremors away and opened his eyes wide.

“No sleep.” There was no way he would allow himself to go unconscious. It was to the point where he would rather die first. But it was too early. The others weren’t there yet, and he hadn’t learned enough.

As it stood, they couldn’t face the messenger and get away with their lives. Hell, they didn’t even have the most basic of plans.

However… This wasn’t something he could just shrug off, either. Yet again, he sat on the floor and cleared his mind. Focusing on the inner flow of his body he…

Instantly, his arm shot off and smashed into his leg, crushing his femur, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He had been way too close to falling asleep just then. His leg recovered, and he got up, pacing around the room. There was an intense pull on his eyelids, and his entire body felt weak.

There was no way around it. He had to find a solution.

“Wait!”

Neave yet again got into a seated position. There was one thing he could do, and he cursed himself for not realizing sooner. Relaxing and closing his eyes, he summoned the slime avatar and possessed its body.

Then, he turned around and watched his body slowly fall asleep as fatigue washed over it.

Eat shit! Who said I had to be unconscious to be unconscious!?

The slime jiggled, and Neave manifested arms to flex them in front of his sleeping body.

Suddenly, he froze.

And watched his unconscious body begin moving on its own.

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