The Jester of Apocalypse

Chapter 144: The Next Batch

What surprised Hosolar the most wasn't the fact that they had failed but how they had failed. Two of them had undeniably died, but the third one had vanished, and another two seemed to have been erased. That child had truly peculiar means. And he knew it was the child and not some random monster due to the way they had perished; monsters weren’t capable of such trickery.

As the current highest authority within this realm, he could naturally sense the positions of anyone below him in a certain radius, of course, as long as they were subdivine.

Such was the nature of supreme divine authority. But the fact that he was currently embodying an avatar limited him in so many ways, and perception was merely one of them. Still, this wasn't something to be concerned about.

"They have finally arrived," he thought as he felt his quarry enter his range of perception. As one after another stepped into range, he counted a hundred and ten high paladins that had been delivered to serve him in his mission, the same number that he had personally seen when he had been at the Langen continent.

It took them a while to arrive, as was to be expected from servants who were only at the first stage of sub-divinity. "I see," he chuckled as he felt them lining up outside. "I suppose that cramming themselves in this tiny throne room would be rather inappropriate," he said as he got up and began walking out of the palace.

Among the high servants lined up outside the palace, fifty-seven of them were women, and fifty-three of them were men. He gazed at their pearly translucent skin, their silky soft, colorful hair, and the pristine, impeccably-crafted armor adorning their perfect bodies. “I suppose they can pass," he said, naturally unable to compare them to true divinity.

He walked out of the humbly decorated building into the well-maintained, verdant gardens of the Imperial Palace. As he stepped before the servants, who were lined up in several neat rows, he glanced at Brivia, who stood before all of them. "Well done on timely accomplishing your task," he commended. “As expected, the others have failed in theirs. The pawns died too quickly for me to assess anything about our opponents' strength. All that I know is that it certainly won't be easy to take the child down."

A brief flash of guilt passed through Brivia's eyes, and he touched her cheek. "There, there," he consoled her. "There is no reason for you to feel guilty about this."

"But I am the one who brought that hellspawn into this realm!" she yelled.

He merely smiled at that, and a brief sadness flashed through his eyes. "The sheer number of my own children who have stepped down the wrong path is almost uncountable. At some age, children become their own people, responsible for all they do and all that happens to them. Worry not about this; soon enough, he will be vanquished."

She smiled, genuine joy sparkling in her eyes.

"Now then," he said as he turned to the servants, "let us begin."

Those pathetic little worms he had sent as a test after that demonic entity were nothing compared to the elite guard of the Langen Continent. The only way they could even remotely compare to these servants was by having that lost young master at their side.

And even that would no longer be relevant soon enough.

After they finished dealing with this child, this realm would become completely cut off from the omnirealms. It had drifted far away enough already, and the corruption had spread too thoroughly for the gods to get any use out of it.

The demonkin were still lurking somewhere, guarding the corpse of the devil that had been slain eons ago, but they would never be a problem. If they wanted this little rat corner for themselves, they could have it. It wouldn’t be the first lost realm to have fallen to their schemes. But just like all the others, the only use the Devil faction would get out of this realm was limited to the realm itself.

The child was the only one that concerned them, anyway. He stepped before the first servant of interest; it was a tall, lightly-tanned man equipped with a great sword on his back. The man's eyes had nothing but unwavering loyalty within them, as was to be expected of the high paladins that the heavenly realms themselves had nurtured even from so far away.

Every pair of eyes he met stared back at him with pure admiration and resolve. All of them were going to die today; that was unavoidable, that was their mission, that was what they had been raised to do if need ever arrived.

So, he nodded in appreciation of their loyalty as he placed his finger on the man's forehead. A second later, a set of runes appeared. The man's body pulsed, a golden mist surrounded it, and after it was done, the man was slightly easier on the eyes and considerably more powerful.

Such a thing didn't cost Hosolar nearly as much as extracting a true strand would. All he had done was extract the potential out of the man's spirit in exchange for making that power temporary. It was a ritual quite similar to what was happening to himself then; the man became an avatar to his future self, but the only difference was that that future self would never exist.

Tears rushed down the man's eyes at the elation from feeling the power that coursed through him. "Thank you, my Lord," he thanked him. "With this, I can serve you to the best of my ability until I take my last breath."

"Fear not, my child," Hosolar responded, "the heavens themselves are on your side."

As such, he proceeded, moving from one servant to another, each acquiring a new set of runes upon their forehead. One after another, they rose from the first to the second stage of the subdivinity realm.

Unfortunately, none of them qualified to ascend to the third stage.

Until his finger landed on the fortieth forehead. Immediately, he pulled it back and raised an eyebrow. The servant he was about to bless was a woman; her hair was pure gold, and her eyes gleamed with a purple radiance as she looked up at him.

He looked down at her, squinting. "Why haven’t you done it yet?" he asked.

"I wouldn't dare, your eminence," she responded in her beautiful voice. "As someone who was raised to serve, it would be a great act of heresy to step upon the gifts I was provided."

"I see," he said, humming and squinting his eyes. "You were correct to do as you have done, but now, you have my permission," he said as he lowered himself into a squat until his nose nearly touched her own. "Take it," he commanded.

"As you wish, my lord," she obliged.

Moments later, a swirl of pearly light surrounded her, and all the other servants gasped in shock. Brivia looked particularly surprised at what she was seeing. After all, the woman was in the middle of achieving something that should be impossible in this realm.

By the virtue of her own work, by the merit of her own power, the woman was ascending to the second step of sub-divinity, having grasped the true strand of servitude. Hosolar was hesitant as he stared down at her; such talent would be appreciated even in the higher realms. If he took this woman with him, she would undoubtedly become someone at least vaguely important. But his mission took absolute priority.

His finger descended upon her forehead, and, like it had on so many others, a set of runes appeared on her forehead.

"Thank you, my lord," she thanked him, crying tears of joy at the opportunity she had been provided. It was no surprise; she was about to complete her duty in a way that no other servant could compete with as she stepped upon the third step of sub-divinity.

Not even an hour later, all these servants had been anointed and given their task. This was good, excellent even; there was no way the child could handle an onslaught like this. Those barbarians he had sent after them before were one thing; these servants were another.

In fact, sending a servant of the third stage was even somewhat excessive, but it was at least the level of assurance he needed. The heavens were smiling upon him on that day; with an army so powerful to be sent to accomplish the task he had come here to complete, he had the luxury of saving his power to further assist in sealing this realm for good.

"You may rise, children," he said as they slowly got up one by one.

He raised his hand into the air, and runic imprints appeared above. As the servants looked at them, their meaning was imprinted directly into their minds; it was the location of where the scouts he had sent had perished.

"Go annihilate those who dare bare their fangs at the Heavenly alliance!"

***

The great god was currently in the middle of his private realm. Nobody could see his body, and that was for the best. If the surrounding gods laid their eyes upon him, they might all die of shock one after another. His right eye had a set of purple runes intertwined through it, and his left arm hung limply to the side.

Both body parts were utterly useless.

"Heavens damn it!" he swore. “How!? Why!?” he asked.

How was it possible for him to have sacrificed so much yet achieved nothing? Worst of all, he was trying to reach Hosolar to tell him to practice utmost vigilance in exterminating that little piece of shit, but he couldn't reach him!

Some form of unholy interference surrounded the entire lost realm, making him incapable of stepping into contact with it. His own arrogance and foolishness were the cause of that; from all the power he had squandered in his fruitless mission, that thing had fed.

He couldn't stop himself from chuckling maniacally; the consequences of his blunders still coursed through his very being, and a deep sense of exhaustion enveloped him. For the first time in forever, all he could do was wait helplessly as someone else performed the mission on which he had staked everything.

***

A little purple slime slithered through the caverns just below the empire's capital. Its golden, slimy crown shone in the darkness, reflecting the violet glow of the avatar, and the black sunglasses made it look super cool.

Looking at it up close and from the perspective of a monster, Neave reached another level of appreciation for the fantastic creation of the late empress. Any monster who gazed upon this intricately intertwined series of caves would see nothing but a barren void of energy.

But he, as someone who knew the trick behind it, couldn't be deceived so quickly, and the King Slime couldn't be tricked at all. Although it was faint, he still sensed the flow of energy from above, and there he saw something pretty damn exciting.

He had been spying on Hosolar for a while already, waiting to see what the man would do. No matter how much time passed, the demigod merely sat on the throne and waited for something to happen.

It was apparent that he wasn't waiting for the emperor and his gang to succeed in their mission.

A big part of him was concerned that the demigod was waiting for somebody else to arrive or some sort of other heavenly entity to descend upon the realm to be sent after them. Either that or he was gathering power to come after them himself.

But no, neither of those two was the correct answer. What that idiot had been waiting for was a gang of utterly useless cannon fodder that he likely planned to send after him and his allies. Neave couldn't help but grin—well, he would if he was in his real body, but now, as he was in the body of a slime, he shifted its body into the form of a face and made that grin instead.

The reason why he was so happy was that he had reached something of a bottleneck. He had enough of the glorious material the emperor had handed him to create the power conduits. But he severely lacked quality material to make proper armor for the golorgs.

He had to settle for a lot of platinum-ranked material that had been heavily modified to suit his needs. In the fight against the demigod, that simply wouldn't be enough. Lo and behold, ya boy Hosolar came in with the clutch assist. After all, that army of minions had some real shiny armor covering their tender little bodies.

Suddenly, he sensed something that he didn't expect to encounter.

‘Uh-oh,’ he thought to himself. ‘Did one of those just go up to the third step of the diamond path?’

Maybe that man wasn't just a bumbling, ignorant idiot like his father.

Frankly, this made things a little bit complicated. The emperor had surrendered because he had seen that he would have lost the fight if he had fought them, but that wasn't to say that the man wouldn't have done a pretty damn good job if he had actually decided to put his life on the line. Naturally, he would have eventually gone down, and so would even a thousand people of his rank, especially now that Neave had his summons.

Based on the energy he could see coming from the one who had ascended to the third step of the diamond path, fighting this batch of hunters wouldn't be as straightforward—so much for easily gathering materials.

He could also sense a peculiar energy coming off from the armor and weapons they were equipped with. What was that? Some sort of blessing? Some sort of holy affinity thing?

Either way, the others were still looking for the most potent treasures they could discover. Not only that, but he didn't want to call upon them because he was afraid that these servants were being merely used as a scouting party or information-gathering unit. He risked revealing too much about his party to the demigod if he couldn't handle them himself.

He didn't care much about the man learning things about him since he wasn't the main player of this story; his allies would do most of the work, and thus, keeping their power and weapons a secret was the least he could do.

Suddenly, the over one hundred humans began moving, and he unsummoned the slime. His mind whirred as he rushed to think of a solution.

What could he do to get rid of them without involving the others?