Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Brock’s avalanche of palm strikes neutralized Starhair’s momentum just as he charged past the halfway mark. He was then pushed back. The hands kept slapping, a series of strikes so dense Starhair didn’t have time to teleport away. He tried regardless. A portal opened next to him, and just as he was halfway through it, a hand grabbed his robes and pulled him back out. There was no escaping this beating.

Starhair roared again. He gathered his hair into a soft shield, absorbing all impacts and reflecting them back. Hundreds of arms exploded, but Brock had many more. They kept crashing down. Starhair was smashed into a large planetary fragment and pushed through it until the entire thing shattered in a shower of ice. He kept flying backward until he rammed into the planet’s hard core. This time, because his shield was neutralizing most of the impact, he didn’t have the momentum to break through. He was stuck against the core, slowly forming a larger and larger crater as Brock pummeled him with palm strikes.

“Check it out!” Sophie's voice echoed. “Brock is going slap-happy on Starhair!”

Her comment must have enraged the peak B-Grade. He detonated a good part of his energy, erupting with enough force to pulverize the planet core below him and send away all of Brock’s golden arms. When the smoke cleared, Starhair sported a new form. He was now a ten-foot-tall humanoid made of starry hair. Jack assumed he’d somehow split his hair strands and turned them into armor.

“You fought well, but this ends now,” Starhair shouted. “Fall!” He charged at Brock, moving far faster than before, tearing up space wherever he passed. A few golden arms slapped into him, achieving nothing. He disintegrated them by merely rushing past.

His new set of armor gave him extreme defense, strength, and speed. He was vastly more powerful than before. It was clear he was going all-out, or at least close to it.

Facing this charging form, Brock didn’t panic. He brought his hands together. The Bro Code flipped to a new page, too fast for anyone to see, then slapped shut. “You are misbehaving,” Brock chanted slowly. “As your big bro, it is my duty to bring you back into line.”

Somehow, despite his slow words and Starhair’s blinding assault, he hadn’t arrived yet. Golden light erupted once again from Brock’s body. The ten thousand arms dissipated. So intense was the new burst of light that space shattered behind him, framing his figure in the void. Everyone looked away.

When they looked at Brock again, he was surrounded by the form of a golden brorilla. Jack knew it was a phantom because he’d seen this move before, but if he hadn’t, he would have certainly believed it was real. So lifelike and solid was the figure. It was a magnified version of Brock, shining golden from head to toe, radiating light like sort of brotherly buddha. His eyes held not anger, but love and strictness, as if Starhair was just a misbehaving child.

That comparison was apt size-wise, as well. Compared to Starhair’s ten-foot form, Brock was at least twice as tall.

It was only after the phantom solidified fully that Starhair reached Brock. Stars erupted within his hair armor. He punched out, carrying the force of detonating strikes. “Begone!” he shouted.

Brock brought his hands together, then raised an open palm. He brought it down on Starhair as one would slap a fly.

A colossal explosion shook the world. All the power Starhair had amassed was for naught. He was violently diverted from his course and flung away. His speed remained enough to sear space around him. A single large piece remained of the once-solid planet, and Starhair smashed right into it, once again showering the world in specks of ice and stone. He continued through, smashing through several smaller pieces of the planet before finally coming to a stop mid-space.

The projection zoomed in on him. He seemed enraged, in disbelief, and desperate. His hair-armored form remained whole. Then, suddenly, he reverted it. The hair fell away, turning back into the six strands attached to his head. Intense unwillingness covered his now visible face. He still seemed pissed as hell, but he forced himself to stand down.

A line of blood flowed from his forehead. He had given first blood. Brock had won the duel.

The audience cheered. “What a spectacular battle!” Sophie exclaimed. “An excellent demonstration from both fighters. Give it up for them, everyone!”

Cheers and claps resounded through the void. Jack cheered too, though the Elders remained calm by his side.

“That was a good fight,” Elder Soresight commented. “It was closer than it seemed.”

“Yes…” Boatman replied. He smiled. “But Brock wasn’t going completely all-out, even at the end. He never used the power of his bros to enhance himself. Maybe he considered it cheating.”

“Starhair didn’t go all-out either,” the other Elder said. “That boy has a very powerful but dangerous move. I’m glad he had the composure not to use it.”

Jack’s chest swelled with pride beside them. His little brother was so strong now. Once upon a time, he’d been small enough to ride on Jack’s shoulder, and all he did was throw poop at the people he disliked. Thinking back to those days, Jack couldn’t help feeling emotional. How far he’d come. Both of them.

“Well done, Brock,” he said, transmitting his voice directly to the brorilla.

Brock looked over and smiled. He then turned towards Starhair and flew over. The peak B-Grade hovered in place, steaming with rage, shame, and unwillingness. He looked angrily at Brock as he approached.

“Good fight, bro,” Brock said, extending a hand.

Starhair looked at it. He hesitated. Then, finally, he controlled his emotions and shook it.

“You won fair and square,” he admitted. “Good fight.”

The audience cheered again.

***

Jack’s clone covered distance rapidly. Their little starship, piloted by an Envoy called Druk-Druk, had already reached the Milky Way galaxy. Finding Earth wouldn’t be difficult—Jack knew the rough location of Earth in the Systemless part of the galaxy, and also its teleporter frequency.

Before that, however, there was something else he needed to do.

The starship hovered just outside System space. It was an invisible line Jack had brushed with his perception.

“Can you hold them for a moment?” he asked Druk-Druk, motioning to the desk-sized, opaque space bubble hovering inside the starship. The captain rolled her eyes and accepted. This bubble housed the Church cultivators Jack had released from the Green Dragon Realm. Once they made it to Earth, the Bare Fist Brotherhood would give Druk-Druk a larger starship so she could carry everyone back to the New Cathedral.

As she took over maintaining the space bubble, Jack teleported outside the starship. He hovered before the border of System space, taking a deep breath. Then, he flew in.

You have returned to the New World. Welcome!

He grinned at the System notification. Quickly pushing it aside, he looked into his Class, trying to summon his newest Dao Vision, the entire reason he’d risked coming here.

His Paragon of Cultivation class offered him a top-tier Dao Vision at every minor realm, including the early B-Grade. However, as Jack was outside System space, the Dao Visions couldn’t be “downloaded.” He hoped that would happen automatically as soon as the clone entered System space. After all, they shared the class.

Nothing happened for a few moments. Jack only felt a strange emptiness. Are they onto me? he wondered. Should we run?

And then, the Dao Vision arrived. It struck his mind like a sledgehammer. He shook from the shock. His body escaped his control, as he was already drawn into the vision, but that was fine. They expected it. Druk-Druk would pull him back to the ship and step on the gas to get as far away from this place as possible.

Therefore, Jack focused on perceiving the Dao Vision. And what a vision it was.

***

The universe was silent. Stars glittered in the far distance like inconsequential dots. But not everywhere. A large part of Jack’s vision was covered by absolute darkness.

He realized he was facing a black hole. A real one, not the imitation that was the Animal Abyss. He could sense spacetime going haywire, absolutely demolished by a far superior power. It was pulled apart the same way a machine would dismantle a stuffed toy. Slowly, but surely. Inevitably.

Jack had studied black holes before. He knew some principles from Earth science, had read about them in Archon Green Dragon’s inheritance, had seen one from a distance at the Cathedral, and had experienced a faint version of the real thing in the Animal Abyss. However, those experiences all paled compared to the real thing. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Despite his recent power-ups, he was like an ant before this anomaly. Even the Arch Priestess, whom he’d met recently, would seem weak here.

Jack knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that black holes existed on a higher realm than cultivators. Even Gods. That’s why Enas, the most powerful Old God and arguably most powerful entity in the universe, had been unable to escape after falling into one.

Wait. What exactly is this vision about? Jack wondered.

Every Dao Vision he’d seen so far was based on a cultivator. It showed them doing something. However, he’d floated before the black hole for a few moments now without anything happening. Was there no other cultivator here? Was the vision just about meditating on the black hole?

He wouldn’t complain if it was.

As he looked around, however, he discovered that was not the case. There was someone here. A single man, dark of skin and hair, barely visible in the darkness. His aura labeled him as marginally weaker than the Arch Priestess, but he was also an Archon.

It was not Archon Black Hole, as Jack had initially suspected. He’d never seen this person before.

The man hovered in space a couple miles away from Jack, unaffected by the terrible spacetime flows surrounding the black hole. No, not exactly unaffected; as Jack took a closer look, he noticed the man was riding what resembled a silver surfboard made of extremely dense material. It could have been fashioned out of an actual neutron star. This surf board alone warped space around it, and the man was using his Dao to enhance that influence, anchoring himself and the surfboard against the pull of the black hole. They weren’t immobile, either; just surfing around the event horizon.

Jack would be lying if he said he expected to see someone surfing a black hole. Then again, this was probably easier than outright resisting its gravitational pull.

Jack himself was just a projection here. The gravity didn’t affect him. If it did, he would have been powerless to resist.

The dark-skinned man muttered something. Jack didn’t quite catch it. He tried to float closer but found himself unable to move. All he could do was strain his ears and try to catch the words, instinctively spread outward by the man’s powerful Dao.

“The death of space…” the man muttered. “A downward spiral. A universal end. Everything ends here, but where does it begin?”

He seemed to be in the middle of his meditation. Jack knew Archons could detect the System recording them to make Dao Visions, but this one was apparently too focused on his ruminations and resisting the black hole to notice. Below his surfboard, a torrent of dark energy shot out for endless miles, the aftereffect of the friction between him and the black hole.

Before Jack could consider those words, the man spread his hands. Space bent and shattered around him. The void appeared; and out of it crawled death. Not the death of living creatures, but the death of space and time, of the Dao itself. The true end.

Jack shivered at the sight. What emerged from the void manifested as black foam in the physical world, but on a spiritual level, it was beyond his understanding. He had the irrational fear that this encroaching darkness was so deadly it could harm him through the Dao Vision. Thankfully, it didn’t approach him. It merged with the flow, angling towards the black hole. It seeped in gradually, disappearing behind the event horizon.

Jack couldn’t sense what happened afterwards, but he could see it clearly. This true death energy was similar to the black hole’s. They merged together, not fighting because of their different sources, just agreeing on total death. The event horizon welcomed this energy, and the black hole grew a tiny bit larger.

Their compatibility wasn’t absolute, however. Though similar energies, the black hole’s was purer. A small part of the man’s foam dissipated as it was purified. That didn’t disappoint him; instead, he smiled, pearly white teeth shining in the darkness. He seemed satisfied.

“Death born of space,” he muttered. “All becomes one.”