Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack’s clone flew through the wormhole, surrounded by dancing colors on all sides. They weren’t really colors—that was just the best way his human brain could translate the chaos of the dimensional sea. In truth, it was a place where spacetime lost all meaning, a place existing on a higher dimension than Jack could comprehend.

He imagined that, if a higher-dimensional creature existed, and if it was watching him right now, it might see him as a drawing jumping from one piece of paper to another. It was a mind-twister. He wondered if he’d ever have the power to actually enter the dimensional sea instead of cheating his way through.

Maybe not. Even the Old Gods of Space and Time couldn’t perform such a feat. Still, Jack could hope. As he’d recently realized, the cultivation world occupied a tiny fraction of a fraction of the universe. They were basically infants at the start of their journey. Who knew how far they could reach given a few billion years.

One step a generation… he thought, watching the end of the tunnel approach. He popped right through. A familiar sky welcomed him, containing the occasional flying beast. He watched a bird seemingly made of vines cross the air. As soon as it caught sight of him, it swooped in, releasing a low squawk. Jack laughed and petted its head.

As the master of this realm, the native creatures weren’t aggressive towards him. They felt the same kind of respect and excitement one would feel towards their father. The fluctuations of the Realm Heart rippled out of him, cultivating a sense of camaraderie in their hearts.

He could sense their souls aligned to his.

The flying vine creature buried its head in Jack’s chest, rubbing against him like a puppy. Ironically, the creature’s head alone was larger than Jack, but it wasn’t bothered. Neither was he. The hard vines, which would have torn a mortal apart, couldn’t even scratch his skin.

Looking at the creature confirmed one of Jack’s suspicions, and he was very glad for it. He couldn’t use the System to inspect it.

The last time he was here, this entire realm had counted as System space. The System had seeped in through the previous portal and claimed it. However, after losing contact with the wider System for so long, whatever constituted System space had faded, returning this realm to the virgin state it had always existed in.

It also meant nobody could spy on Jack.

“Wanna go on an adventure, buddy?” he asked, rubbing the nose of the vine-dragon thing. It squealed with joy. He flashed, reappearing on its back. “Let’s go!”

The vine dragon flapped its wings. Though made of vines, they were coated with sticky dense leaves, giving them the aerodynamics necessary to fly through the sky. Not that this monster needed it—as a late D-Grade creature, it could fly even without wings. The wings were most useful before maturity.

Jack and the vine dragon flew high, crossing the realm and letting Jack take it in. Any flying creatures he met squawked at his appearance, filled with joy and respect. Dense jungle spread below his feet, occupying almost the entirety of the Green Dragon realm. Jack could see hundreds of creatures as they flew by, consisting of an endless variety of life forms, some of which he hadn’t encountered during his last visit.

There was a hill-sized bush walking around, like a large turtle with dense shrubbery instead of a shell. He caught sight of dragons living above the clouds, their scales glowing green as they absorbed the light of the artificial sun for sustenance. Using his sharp eyesight, Jack even saw a little creature darting from branch to branch—a mouse-sized, wingless dragon.

The diversity of this realm was staggering. It made Jack proud—and also increased the respect he harbored towards Archon Green Dragon, the progenitor of this place.

Like the last time he was here, the dense Life aura surrounded him, attempting to cut down his power to a fraction of its usual level. Unlike the last time, he was very familiar with the Dao of Life. The aura couldn't affect him.

As master of the realm, Jack had an understanding of where everything was. He could instinctively sense the direction towards the massive temple at the center of the realm. He was moving towards it, but the temple wasn’t his goal. His real destination was the little village he knew existed near it—where the remnants of the expedition forces were staying.

When Jack had first arrived to this place, over four years ago, he was accompanied by elite cultivators from both the Hand of God and the Black Hole Church. When he later left the realm, he hadn’t taken them along, as he wasn’t confident in handling the strongest of them.

Now that he was, however, he intended to resolve this issue before attaching this realm to his inner world.

The vine dragon carried him across mountains and endless jungle. It was slow, by Jack’s current measure, but flying on its back was fun. He was pretty close, anyway. Only three hours later, the mountain-sized temple rose in the distance. It looked exactly as it had the last time he was here. To the side, he could even see the volcano in which he’d fought Baron Longform. He’d then escaped through the lava tunnels under it, swimming all the way the temple and almost dying in the process.

The cultivator village was somewhere between the temple and the volcano. Jack used his Dao of Spacetime to cloak himself and the vine dragon as they approached, ensuring they escaped detection. Thanks to his current understanding, and these people being at most early B-Grades, it was child’s play.

Soon, a small village appeared below him. He was impressed at what he saw. Elegant buildings spread in a circle, with a wide range of trees cut down around it to offer visibility of any incoming enemies. The houses were small and simple, but with a unique sense of aesthetics. Vines crawled up the walls, which were made of polished wood. Chimneys released tufts of smoke.

Jack also saw the people. Most had abandoned their previous cultivator guises and now wore green, silken clothing formed of this realm’s native plants. It made them resemble elegant forest people. There was no visible distinction of who came from which faction. Such things became meaningless when they thought they were trapped forever.

They seemed happy, too.

Jack saw groups of cultivators gathered in gardens, laughing and playing games. Little animals ran around, domesticated and household versions of the realm’s fauna, while larger animals waited in pens or in a nearby field, taken care of by loving cultivators. Jack even spied a few cultivator couples, which he was certain were not a thing four years ago. There was a single little boy running around, constantly tailed by his mother.

This little village didn’t need walls, but Jack did see a plaque erected at the entrance, facing the jungle. It proudly declared them as the Green Cultivator Town.

Life really had moved on. These cultivators had probably had a hard time adjusting, but now they’d created a new life for themselves, one that seemed much more fulfilling than being disciples and Envoys of two warring factions.

Jack felt a momentary doubt in his heart. These people seemed so happy. Was this how it was meant to be? Was this the future the Immortals were stealing from the inhabitants of the world?

He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Unlike others, he did not go to war because that was all he knew. He did it because he had to. To ensure that his friends, family, and the world would be free to select a more peaceful life than his.

Jack gazed at the town again, more inquisitively this time. His perception spread out. Thanks to being so much more powerful than everybody at Green Cultivator Town, they couldn’t detect him. The difference in power was especially prominent since they were suppressed by the dense life energy, while he was not.

He looked inside the buildings. Inside the central one, which was larger than the others, Monk Uruselam was discussing with a few other cultivators—something about domesticating an animal called Leaf Sweeper. Jack had no idea what it was. All he cared about was that Monk Uruselam had become the leader of this small community, which wasn’t a terrible idea. The monk wasn’t nearly as kind as he seemed, but since there were no conflicts of interest here, he was a competent leader.

Jack looked for certain other people, too. Shi Mo, the middle-aged warrior who’d become friends with Jack in the past, had a little house where he cultivated. A pet draconic twig was curled around him, breathing in and out in peaceful sleep. The warrior himself had foregone his sword for a wooden hoe—a touching image.

The only other people Jack had interacted with were Borkuren Madiba, a frog-like, humanoid Church Envoy who’d helped him a few times on the Cathedral, and Sassa, a talented C-Grade of the Hand of God, whose last name he’d never gotten. That young girl had been a massive bitch during the banquet battles before entering the hidden realm, to the point where Jack had gloriously kicked her ass.

To his great amusement, however, he discovered that Borkuren and Sassa were now a couple. In fact, they were the sole couple which had children. Sassa was the mother of the boy running around earlier, it was just that she’d changed so much Jack hadn’t recognized her.

The once aloof, arrogant young girl had transformed into a caring mother. Her entire aura was different. Jack had no idea how that came to be, but he guessed that getting trapped here, presumably for life, had deeply impacted her and completely turned her life around. That was a good thing. Jack had planned on killing her to eliminate future trouble, as he did to all his enemies, but the less blood he had to spill, the better.

He watched Borkuren step out of a house, kiss her with his frog-like mouth, then wrap her in a big hug. She giggled as she hugged him back.

Yep. Loving couple alright.

Jack planned to appear before the town and explain what was going on, but not yet. The final person he looked for was his old enemy—Spacewind. He was the leader of the Church side of the expedition, as well as a massive dick who’d bullied Jack on various occasions and even tried to kill him.

Jack found him in the only house outside the town. While everyone else lived together and in harmony, Spacewind was alone in a stone building, stubbornly cultivating. It was unclear whether he isolated himself or others did it for him, but Jack thought it was fitting. A sad ending for a sad man.

“Thanks for the ride, bro,” Jack told the vine dragon beneath his feet. He patted it in the back. “Go live a happy life.”

The creature squawked once more, then flew away. Jack was left hovering in the sky. He slowly lowered himself to the ground and flew into Spacewind’s house through the window. His cloaking remained active. The other man, who prided himself in his understanding of space, didn’t have the slightest idea there was someone standing right in front of him. He was meditating. Jack could kill him as easily as blinking.

He dropped his cloaking. Instantly, Spacewind jumped back, terrified to the ends of his wits. His hair was disheveled, his clothes raggedy, and his eyes bloodshot. Those hadn’t come from Jack scaring him—they were his natural state now.

“What?” he cried out. “It’s… It’s you! Jack Rust! That’s… What!? I will kill you!”

True to his station, Spacewind recovered quickly. He straightened his palm and slashed it out like a knife. Jack raised a hand and caught it. Spacewind’s strike was frozen mid-air. He paled.

“What?” he muttered.

Jack gave a sad smile. This clone body wasn’t nearly as strong as the original, and his cultivation was only at a level similar to the late C-Grade, but his Dao understandings remained. Dealing with an early B-Grade like Spacewind was easy. He’d just wrapped space around his palm to easily catch Spacewind’s hand.

The man seemed like he was about to have a stroke.