The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 75: Food Chain

Neave spent less than an hour maximizing his resources. Eventually, the sheer burden of the extra life force and nutrients started becoming detrimental.

Once he considered himself full enough, when he started feeling severe pain, he stopped, grabbed a slime, and knocked himself out without hesitation.

The first thing he encountered once he found himself back in the starting area was Astrador, sitting on a rock and smiling gently at Neave.

“So, what have you been up to in the far reaches of this damned place?”

Neave grinned.

“Soul oath. I'll tell you what I’m doing. You’ll tell me how long I have before your messenger comes to pick me up.”

Astrador seemed torn.

“Although the curiosity is killing me, I do not need to know, so no. I refuse the offer.”

Neave shrugged, hugged the slime tight, and sped off into the distance, going in the same direction.

Astrador shook his head and vanished.

After Neave reached an appropriate distance, he ran into a cave, intending to go as deep as possible. Some demons were still creeping around the caves, but they were little more than an annoyance.

Once Neave was deep enough, it was time to start his project. He excavated much of the dirt, primarily by swallowing it to make it disappear. He reached lava again.

He almost ended up dropping the slime into the lava but stopped once he realized it would just burn and die an agonizing death. He placed the slime down, and it appeared to almost shake in relief for a moment.

Neave cut his arm off and fed it to the slime. The arm grew back nearly instantly as he felt the intense rush of energy take its place.

…Wow, I should have maxed out on energy sooner.

Who would have thought that the difference would be this enormous?

After feeding several of his arms to the slime, it grew. The core inside the slime visibly bulged and morphed until a piece broke off and a small slime detached. Rather than stop there, Neave kept chopping his arm off repeatedly to supply as much biomass as possible to the fledgling slimes.

Within a few hours, countless arms sat around the cave, and numerous slimes crawled over and ate them. The slimes multiplied. His arm was already regenerating much slower than it used to, so it was time to move on to the plan's next step.

He excavated as much lava as he could, creating a small lake. Neave had to admit he didn’t know how the slimes turned into lava slimes. Did he just chuck a few in there and hope they lived? Obviously, that would be foolish.

So he decided to torture a few poor slimes instead.

Neave trapped several of the gooey monsters in a small pit and repeatedly sprinkled them with splashes of lava. They winced and recoiled every time, but Neave fed them more arms to ensure they didn’t die from the damage.

Eventually, one of them began glowing. Neave watched with rapped attention. This slime was about to evolve. Its core changed, adopting far more color and growing only a little in size. Its body began morphing, and it turned to…

“Ew, what the fuck is that?”

A fleshy blob of skin. Neave frowned. It was an abominid. One that was created from his repeatedly feeding the slimes his body parts.

Neave chucked a rock at it and killed it. The other slimes fed on it, and Neave continued his experiment. He didn’t need an abominid at the moment.

Eventually, finally, one of the slimes began… Burning? Just burning. It didn’t seem to be dying from the fire. It simply had a small flame on top of its head. Or rather, just on top of it. Neave grabbed that slime by extending his arm and placed it into a separate pit.

After feeding the slime, it grew bigger until more fire slimes broke off. So he kept splashing them with lava. Eventually, one of the slimes turned into an abomnid again. This time… Well…

Neave watched in confusion as the burning abominid cooked alive and died. He grasped his forehead in confusion.

Was this how it worked? Could the slimes evolve into something doomed to die from the moment it was born? That made no sense.

It was strangely poetic, even if utterly absurd. Neave shrugged as the grotesque self-cooked monster got eaten by its brethren.

He continued the process, painstakingly waiting for one of the slimes to turn into a lava slime or at least a hotter fire slime.

Neave had no idea how much time had passed, but judging by the fact that the slimes had eaten all of his arms and the room was filled with chubby culprits, it must have been a while.

There were several abominids among the slimes, but those quickly got ganged up on and eaten by the slimes. Slimes couldn’t eat each other, but anything else seemed to be fair game.

Finally, after much anticipation, one of the slimes turned into a much hotter fire slime. Not a lava slime quite, but it was no plebian slime either.

Neave smiled in satisfaction and went on to the next step. He grabbed the burning ball of slime and put it into another designated pit. This time, he replicated them until he had enough to ensure a backup.

Once he saved his progress, he created another pit. One that he filled with lava. Once done, he chucked one of the burning slimes to see whether it could survive.

It could, although it was struggling a bit. Neave kept it well-fed, multiplied the slime, and eventually, voila.

A lava slime was born.

Neave separated this one into its own pit, multiplied it, removed one, placed it into another lava hole, and continued his experiments.

Now, he just stared at the slime and waited. And waited. And waited. He didn’t feed it anything; instead, he stared at it and waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened.

What’s wrong…?

He was baffled. Lava slimes and lava golems were meant to be capable of feeding and growing off of lava alone, according to the books. So why was this piece of shit slime just sitting there?

Perhaps it took considerably longer than estimated? Then Neave would wait longer.

A mind-numbing amount of time later, after the lava had cooled countless times, only to be refilled by Neave, yet again, nothing happened.

Not even a smidgeon of progress.

Many slimes had already scattered, and most had run out of energy, merely sitting dormant, waiting for prey to walk into them. The other fire slimes had also run out of power, seemingly becoming a little less than regular slimes again.

Feeding one of them his finger proved they could still turn back into fire slimes when fed.

Neave continued waiting, and after digging out the damn lava pit for the hundredth time, he was right about done waiting. The slimes wouldn’t grow on their own.

But why?

Was there something missing? Was there something essentially different in the lava here compared to the lava back in the real world?

Neave contemplated it for a while, sifting through countless bits of knowledge.

After realizing what was wrong, Neave slapped his forehead so hard it created a shock wave.

“You stupid fucking idiot, this realm is void of spirit!”

Monsters in real life could grow even when entirely isolated and trapped. This was why slimes, for example, could get buried underground and still evolve, slowly turning into earth slimes.

Energy was one thing, but something had to provide life force or spirit. Neave could feed them his limbs, sufficient to deliver much life force. Although lava could sustain the slime, given that it hadn’t been extinguished yet, it couldn’t help it grow.

Something had to contribute to building the spirit in the monster core.

It was so simple Neave wanted to slap himself for failing to realize it. After actually hitting himself, he realized that there was a massive flaw in his plan.

How was he going to supply the spirit?

Technically, he could continuously merge all of his life force with his qi and produce tons of ethereal spirit. Neave groaned at the thought of this. It would be inefficient. It would slowly spread through the realm, which would be a great way to get it everywhere, but it would grow so dilute that it would take Neave heavens knew how many repeats to fill up the entire damn realm.

That wasn’t enough. Something had to produce spirit as well.

But what?

Usually, it was plant life that produced the bulk of spirit in the real world. Plants would die, and a smidgeon of ethereal spirit would be released. Growing plants in this realm wasn’t going to be an easy task.

Sure, Neave could get some fire-happy plants and shove them near an open source of lava. But that would be too temporary. The lava would eventually cool down, and the plants would wither and die.

Plants weren’t like monsters. They weren’t immortal. Monster plants were far more monsters than plants, meaning they couldn’t realize their potential, so they were useless.

All living creatures could ‘cultivate.’ Whether this worked the same for bugs and plain grass as it did for persons was debatable, but with time, anything could realize potential.

This realization of potential could be an excellent way for Neave to fill this realm with life. It wasn’t known exactly where the energy for potential originated from, but the standard agreement was that it was the inside of the soul.

That was an internal source of energy, one not limited by outside factors. So if Neave could start plant life in this realm, it would grow, realize potential and eventually become a self-sufficient source of spirit and life force.

Monsters couldn’t realize potential on their own. They could only steal it from other things. For that purpose, plants would suffice.

This still left the problem of heat and energy.

Plants couldn’t just grow in an environment completely void of heat, light, nutrients, and available energy. This meant that Neave had to…

Neave had to…

What about the obsidian plants?

Those were definitely alive. They grew extremely slowly, but it was still a damn plant.

They seemed to love the nightmare realm.

Neave grinned.

The process of terraforming would continue smoothly anyway.