Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack opened his eyes to find he was drenched in sweat. He was still shaking. Watching a black hole from up-close was not an easy experience. It was like having a first-row table to the greatest forces of the universe…which sounded suspiciously like the Second Crusade.

The clone had been dragged back to the ship by Druk-Druk while the vision was ongoing. They were already far from System space and approaching Earth. The main body of Jack, however, had experienced the vision almost at the same time as the clone.

Death born of space… he thought, looking at his fist. All becomes one.

He hadn’t known what to expect from this first vision. What he saw, however, was better than anything he could have hoped for. The System hadn’t lied when it mentioned top-tier visions. It had given him the greatest gift possible. A path to unite his two dualities—Life-Death and Space-Time.

If I walk down the same path as that surfer… Can I combine all my Daos?

The thought was too exciting to ignore. He had suspected this was possible but didn’t know where to begin. It was so clear now. Of course it was a black hole. It combined death and space. What starting point could be better?

Once again, Jack was thankful for the System being so sloppy. It was so spread out that even the Immortals couldn’t control it. Otherwise, they would definitely not help him as they had. They might even try to harm him through it.

Which would be useless at this point. Jack had long located the mini System core inside him, a small glowing sphere attached to his soul—or inner world—which served as a storage and communication device. It could augment him when he leveled-up, but he could easily suppress or destroy it anytime he wanted. That’s what he would do if they ever tried to use it against him. Until then, it could only do good, not harm.

In fact, amongst the high-ranking Church cultivators, it was customary for people to remove their System core when they reached the A-Grade. That’s when it stopped being useful, as the System no longer awarded stat points in the A-Grade.

Jack shelved those thoughts to focus on his new Dao Vision. He even paused the absorption of space monster cores. There was so much to unpack.

Death born of space, he repeated. How can I achieve that?

In his mind, life and death were clearly connected, as were time and space. That much was obvious. However, despite his extremely deep insights into all of those Daos, he could not see the connection point between the two different sets. Spacetime was one thing. Life and Death were another. One pertained to mass and the fabric of reality, the other to souls and their mysterious interactions. One existed in the physical world, the other in a field of abstraction.

How could they be united?

It was clearly possible. The dark-skinned cultivator in the vision had achieved it, at least to some extent. Black holes could serve as a starting point. Jack knew he could also ask Elder Boatman, but he wanted to experiment by himself first. Asking for advice too early could get him on the wrong path.

He raised his hands and began summoning the power of space before realizing what he was about to do. He was still in his mansion on the New Cathedral. Playing with major forces here could have disastrous consequences.

“Brock!” he called out. “I’ll be going out for a bit, okay? See you soon!”

No reply arrived, but Jack knew Brock must have heard him. Therefore, he teleported over the mansion, then teleported again in quick succession. At his current level, each teleportation could span thousands of miles. Before long, he was so far away from the New Cathedral that the planet resembled a colorful dot. Nothing else was nearby, only emptiness.

Here should be fine, Jack figured. He resumed what he’d been doing. His hands came together. A ball formed between them, rippling and transparent, a sphere of pure space. Then, pressing his hands together, he tried to condense it. The physical sensation of compressing something between his hands helped. Soon, however, he realized that his hands were touching each other, and the ball of space was nowhere near compressed enough.

Grumbling, he let it dissipate. He opened his arms, this time manifesting a ball of space several miles wide. He was like a fly hugging a giant. Still, he began compressing it. The task was easy at first. The ball reduced in diameter from several miles, to a single mile, to a hundred feet, to ten feet. He was feeling serious resistance by now. Space was not an easy thing to fold.

He pressed on regardless. The ball continued to shrink, eventually becoming a sphere three feet across, pulsing with highly condensed power. Jack realized he was basically hugging a bomb, but he hoped it would be fine. He grabbed it with his hands and pushed it in, condensing it further. He moved slowly and methodically. It wasn’t just a matter of having the power to do it, but he had to simultaneously control the Dao so it didn’t break out. After all, the only thing keeping it together was his control, and the ball was growing more volatile as it was pressured.

It eventually reached the point of a beach ball, and he kept pushing. It became the size of a basketball, then a tennis ball between his palms. By this point, the ball was glowing from all the condensed energy, and Jack could feel the searing heat emitted. This was the same process he followed to unleash his Supernova attack, but pushed to new extremes.

He knew that the more he condensed the ball, the more it would seek to explode. However, there would come a point where the gravitational pull of the ball towards itself would overpower its ability to expand. It would collapse under its own weight, shrinking unstoppably until it became a single point of infinite density, turning into a black hole.

Jack had no desire to create an actual black hole this close to the New Cathedral, let alone right in his face. That point of no-return was very far away from the current compression level, anyway. What he was trying to do was sense how space reacted when pushed towards its endpoint. How did the Dao handle the possibility of death? What would happen?

He hadn’t tried this before, so he frankly had no idea. He just hoped that interesting things would happen as he approached the state of a black hole.

As Jack pushed down, compressing the ball to the limit of what he could control, a transformation occurred. The empty space inside the ball bubbled. At the very center, where the pressure was greatest, a little bit of foam appeared. Its color was unclear, flickering between various extremes. Jack was terrified. The foam didn’t feel threatening, but it was an unknown power held against his chest. Who knew its properties?

The surfer’s black foam had felt extremely dangerous.

He stopped compressing. His attention was split between maintaining the space ball and inspecting the foam. He could sense a bunch of properties inside it; it was like the Dao particles were so tightly pressed against each other that they began to merge, forming new, unknown substances that shouldn’t exist in the universe. It was genesis.

No. It was despair.

Jack could sense it. At first glance, this foam was a beautiful act of creation, the combination of existing particles into new, exciting forms.

His Daos of Life and Death, however, warned him that this was not the case. The act of creation was just a byproduct. What really occurred was the Dao particles trying desperately to survive. As they collapsed, they clung to each other, combining forces to resist the massive pressure.

They didn’t need to combine. Nothing forced them. They could have just broken down into nihility, but they wanted to survive. They feared death.

Jack struggled to maintain the ball as he focused on this foam. He inspected it thoroughly. He couldn’t read its properties yet, but that was fine because it was just a transitionary state. If he somehow kept pushing, the particles would unite more and more thoroughly until they just couldn’t anymore. They would collapse, and a singularity would be created. The death of the Dao. The end of the universe.

Calculating all those things while maintaining the highly volatile space ball was challenging. Jack’s concentration finally slipped. A tiny, imperceptible flaw appeared. The compressed energy rushed out of it like the wind escaping a balloon, and even as he tried to patch the hole, the ball had already destabilized. More and more interactions occurred, snowballing out of control.

“Fuck!” Jack said.

The ball exploded. There was no time to move away. The impact found him straight in the chest, catapulting him back so powerfully he skidded at almost the speed of light. A visible shockwave spread out, upsetting the surrounding spacetime. There was a dark, deadly void where the ball used to be. Particles rushed in to patch it, then popped out with a second explosion. The surrounding space was ravaged. Jack was glad he’d been pushed away.

He was also glad he’d thought to move away from the New Cathedral for this experiment.

If he had let this happen on the planet, the town would be gone. The force of the explosion vastly dwarfed a nuke’s. The only reason he’d survived point-blank was his extreme physicality, but even so, he was severely injured. His chest was a mangled mess of blood and bones. His arms had disintegrated from the elbow down. He groaned as the pain caught up to him, taking his breath away, then did his best to persevere while his regeneration got to work. It was slower now, without the support of the Life Drop. It took him a few minutes to heal completely.

By this point, the region of space around him had already returned to normal. As for the two shockwaves, they would dissipate harmlessly. By the time they reached the New Cathedral, they would at most feel like strong breezes from the sky. He might knock over someone’s vase.

Jack flexed his newly regenerated hands, still morphing at the pain. That had been dangerous. He’d known it wouldn’t kill him, but maybe he should put safety measures in place next time. Having his hands blown off was hardly pleasant.

But that ball was a very potent attack. Its power vastly eclipsed that of his Supernova. If he could weaponize it, it would become a powerful addition to his arsenal. It could evolve further, too—with enough power, and with enough control of spacetime, creating an actual black hole wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Though, doing it quick enough to use in battle was another story altogether.

There was also the issue of that mysterious foam. His original purpose had been to discover a way to unite life and death with spacetime, and that foam seemed to hold the key. He’d given space particles the fear of death and changed their behavior. It could be considered an initial success.

The System core inside him seemed to agree.

Congratulations! Space Mastery III → Space Mastery IV

Space Mastery IV: The power of space lies at your fingertips. You can use it freely, and even extreme applications are making themselves clear to you. You are well on the road to mastery.

Congratulations! Death Mastery III → Death Mastery IV

Death Mastery IV: Death is the end. The final, inevitable result of entropy. It is also just another power you control. You can spread this power to everything, even the Dao itself. You are well on the road to mastery.

Jack patted himself, smiling. After Meteor Punch, these were the first skills to reach the fourth tier, something he felt was long overdue. He was proud at himself.

The only thing missing was Time Mastery, a skill he guessed he should possess but didn’t. Who knows why. Maybe it fell together with Space Mastery?

In any case, this experiment had gone great—save for his exploding hands. If he meditated on the vision again, maybe tried the same thing a few more times, he might gain even more improvements. A new path had opened before him.

His Dao, which had felt a little stagnant recently, had just found the way forward.

He still intended to consult Elder Boatman, but for now, a little bit of resting would be nice. He was exhausted. Space parted easily around him, and he soon appeared at the entrance of his mansion, pushing open the door.

The Arch Priestess stood right in the middle of the entrance hall. She was staring at the door, and therefore, at him. His breath caught to his throat. Fuck, he said. I messed up.

Instantly, Jack was tense again. He tried to read her face for hints of her intentions, but that was difficult when everything but her eyes was covered by a veil. In those eyes, all he could see was…amusement?

That couldn’t be right.

She still wore long white robes, hiding everything except her golden eyes and tanned, bare feet. She stared at him, not speaking.

“Greetings, Arch Priestess,” Jack said calmly. He was suddenly very conscious of the fact he only wore shorts. “It’s an honor to have you visit me. How can I help you?”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then, she laughed. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Jack Rust,” she said. There it was again—that hint of amusement. “Keep up the good work.”

And just like that, she teleported away. Jack remained standing in the hall, still stressing out. What the hell was that about? he wondered. He shook his head. Whatever.

He walked through the next room, into the living room, intending to reach his office and reset his mind before returning to cultivation. However, he saw Brock in the living room. He lounged on a couch, relaxed, slurping on a bowl of gum worms while reading the Bro Code as one would a comic.

“Sup bro?” the brorilla said as Jack entered.

“Oh, hey Brock,” Jack said. “Did you see the Arch Priestess?”

“Yes. She came to discuss the Dao.”

Jack nodded, not fully comprehending. He recalled her promising to come over and discuss the Dao with Brock when she had the time. Something about being interested in the perspective of a beast-born cultivator. It made sense.

However…

Something was off. Something about Brock’s relaxed posture, something about his aura. Jack had seen this type of aura before in college, of all places. He suddenly had a very disturbing suspicion.

“Brock,” he said slowly. “Did you sleep with the Arch Priestess?”

Brock swallowed his gum worm. “Yes. Why?”