Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

The powers of life, death, time, and space swam calmly through the air. They turned around each other, entwining and disengaging, forming and deforming. Where Life and Death met, they yearned to unite. The same happened for Time and Space. However, if Time met Life, or any other combination, they simply swam unhindered as if not even noticing each other.

Jack sat in the center of these four swimming ribbons. His breathing was even, his eyes closed despite the many shapes and colors manifesting around him. He was considering his Daos, marching on the slow path of unifying them. Every question he solved birthed three more. Yet, he was advancing.

His cultivation was still progressing nicely. In his inner world, energy still erupted from the portal to the Green Dragon Realm, slowly but surely saturating him. From the steady black hole, the portal to the Black Hole World, laws rippled out, subtly enhancing his own.

Both in quantity and quality, his inner world was progressing. His Daos were advancing. His already formidable power was growing fiercer by the day. He yearned to let it out.

A knock on the door snapped him out of his reverie. The swimming colors collapsed, folding into themselves before disappearing. The magic hid away. Jack opened his eyes.

Another knock on the door. “Bro,” a voice called from outside.

“Coming,” he replied. As he stood, gazing at the chairs and desk of solid wood outfitting his office, his heart was already filled with trepidation. Brock wouldn’t interrupt his cultivation for no reason. Had something happened?

He walked to the door and opened it. Brock, who’d been about to knock again, knocked on Jack’s forehead instead. “Oh,” he said. “Hey, bro. Come. We have a guest.”

“Lead the way,” Jack replied, still smiling. The two crossed the empty mansion rooms—they’d been offered house staff but declined—to arrive at the main living room. There, sitting on a fluffy chair, was the Arch Priestess, wearing her signature white robes which covered everything but her eyes and feet.

“Arch Priestess,” Jack said, nodding respectfully. Why was she here? Well, he could think of a reason why, but what did she want with him? He shot a side glance at Brock, finding him nonplussed.

“Hello, Jack,” the Arch Priestess said. “Sit.”

Jack did as he was told.

“You may not have heard,” she began, “but the Immortals advanced yesterday. They implemented a new stratagem which caught us off guard and managed to kill three Elders while forcing us to recall our forward troops.”

“Three Elders?” Jack replied. Since he’d been cultivating, he hadn’t heard about this new development. “What happened?”

“They somehow managed to bring the System to this galaxy. We still don’t know how, or even if that’s actually true. It should have been impossible. Maybe they somehow displaced our troops into System space without their knowledge. Space shenanigans. In any case, the end result is that our troops suddenly found themselves in System space, which resulted in the enemy immediately locating and ambushing them.”

“That sounds terrible,” Jack said. “Hiding is our greatest weapon at this point, correct?”

“Very. The situation yesterday was grim. Right afterward, however, the Immortals contacted me. They were willing to halt their advance, giving us time to regroup, in exchange for me joining a “summit” they were organizing. Of course, that’s a trap. The only feasible way for me to join their summit is to physically go there, which will result in my certain death.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “So you refused.”

“Of course I accepted.”

He raised a brow. “I don’t follow, Arch Priestess.”

She smiled at him—under her veil. “You should. After all, you are the reason I don’t have to die.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I promised to attend their summit, and I cannot break that promise without ruining my Dao. However, while they are convinced the only way for me to join is my physical presence, there is something they do not know. Something that you, Jack, can help me with.”

He frowned in thought. A moment later, his eyes brightened. “Immortal Commune?”

“That’s right.” She grinned. “They don’t know about your class. You possess a way to contact the Immortals directly. Six days from now, you will send your clone to System space and have it activate the skill. You will then link up with your main body, and use that to project sound and image between our meeting room and the Immortals’ summit.”

“So you basically want me to be a projector.”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “I can do that. Will my clone be safe? If I’m not mistaken, it will need to remain in System space for the entirety of the summit.”

“I have already dispatched Elder Godspeed to your location. His specialization is obvious. If they try anything against your clone, Elder Godspeed will take you and run away, and they cannot blame me for breaking the connection.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“How close are you to the middle B-Grade?” she asked.

“Both close and far. Thanks to all the cores you gave me, I’ve reached 93% matter condensation. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of cores, so I’m stuck there.”

She nodded. “I can give you a couple more as a reward for helping us during the summit. That should get you to 100%. Then, while your clone is in System space, you can watch the next Dao Vision before activating your Immortal Commune skill. After the Immortals realize what your class is, they might block you from accessing Dao Visions, so it’s best to do it beforehand.”

“I understand. Thank you for your care, Arch Priestess.”

“My pleasure.” She smiled again. “With all that settled, you are free to go. I have some private business to discuss with your brother.”

Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. He glanced between the Arch Priestess and Brock. Both winked at him.

He had the feeling they were made for each other.

“I’ll go now,” he said weakly. “Have fun.”

“Thanks, bro,” Brock said as Jack walked away. He couldn’t help shaking his head. This place was getting crazier and crazier…and his little brother was growing up so quickly. In fact, the Arch Priestess had been visiting more and more frequently lately, and she and Brock had been going at it like rabbits in heat. There was great sound insulation, of course, so they could be discreet.

Jack had already communicated the Brock-Arch Priestess situation to Vivi through his clone. She was finding it extremely amusing. Her own little sitcom, she called it.

***

The Arch Priestess had fulfilled her promise. Three more space monster cores had arrived to Jack’s house, all bursting with energy. After quickly absorbing them over a few days, he’d reached 100% Matter Condensation. And that meant it was time for a small breakthrough.

Jack sat alone in meditation. His breaths came in and out, long like snakes of wind. His body pulsed with power.

In his inner world, energy ran rampart. The portal to the Green Dragon Realm had temporarily stopped spouting its green torrent. Only the Black Hole World still spun, steadily pumping its advanced laws into Jack’s inner world.

The energy density had reached a limit. By Jack’s calculations, it was exactly double the starting one. His inner world had gone from feeling empty to decently saturated, permeated by a feeling of contentment. If he didn’t know the proper way to cultivate through the B-Grade, he might have continued doing the same thing.

But he knew. Therefore, he got to work.

His palms crashed together, and it was like God’s angry roar. An intense shockwave rang through the entire inner world. The ambient energy, which had been spontaneously coalescing into formations, shattered back into individual particles. The bonds collapsed, and everything came into a state of flux as Jack’s roar smashed into the borders of his world, demolishing them and pushing outward.

“Expand!” he roared.

The moment the walls fell, they tried to rise again. But the energy was like a flood. Like an overfilled bowl, it spilled outwards, past the borders of Jack’s world, seeking to conquer the dimensional sea. His Daos spread with it, imposing order on the chaos. Entire regions of nothingless were tamed, forced into stable existence as they were flooded with laws and energy.

From ten thousand miles, Jack’s world reached eleven, then eleven and a half. The expansion slowed as it progressed. He reached twelve thousand miles and kept going, but the dimensional sea was fighting back now, whatever laws were assisting his expansion beginning to recede. Finally, at exactly 12,600 miles, the expansion came to a stop.

This wasn’t a demonstration of Jack’s potential. It was a process identical for everyone. Generations of cultivators had figured out that 26% was the optimal increase of the width of one’s inner world. After a total of three expansions—one in every minor breakthrough—he’d have an inner world with exactly double its initial diameter.

Jack could have pushed it farther if he really wanted to. Most people could. The reason he hadn’t, wasn’t that he had a better place to spend his remaining energy.

The energy density of his inner world had doubled from the time he first reached the B-Grade. Now, after increasing the inner world’s diameter by 26% and therefore doubling its total volume—since it was a sphere—the energy density had fallen to the exact level from which it started. His Matter Condensation was back to 0%.

However, to expand his inner world, he’d consumed part of the dimensional sea. And that part wasn’t devoid of energy. Multicolored wisps now floated in the borders of Jack’s world, forms of energy still undecided on what they would become. They’d just been dragged from nothingness into a reality governed by hard rules. This was their most malleable state.

Jack, exactly as generations of cultivators had instructed before him, capitalized on these energies. He grabbed them with his willpower and spread them evenly around his inner world. He then manipulated their composition and turned them into air, water, fire, and earth. The four elements formed the backbone of his world. The air formed a very thin atmosphere which filled the void. The water turned into moisture. Fire coalesced into large spheres, the progenitors of stars, while earth gathered together into free-floating chunks of stone, their respective gravities not powerful enough to form anything larger.

These chunks of stone were the most important part. They ranged in size from a human fist to a large table, all evenly spread and maintained separate by the current weakness of gravity. After all, gravity was a form of energy, too. Its effectiveness depended on the density of spacetime—the so-called G factor—which would increase along with the overall energy density of this inner world. As that happened, gravity would grow stronger, and the various chunks of stone would gather together into larger ones. That way, Jack could eventually begin creating a planet in his inner world.

This was all theory. Again, generations of cultivators had experimented with their inner worlds, eventually arriving at the current optimized progression through eons of trial and error. It was not a simple process, nor was it completely intuitive. Who knows what Jack would have done if he reached this step without instructions from his predecessors. However, now that he did have instructions to follow, the end result felt right. Harmonic, even.

Which didn’t mean it was perfect. Every problem had a solution which was simple, elegant, and wrong. The cultivation world was constantly evolving, one step every generation. They were optimizing their process. Once Jack reached an exceedingly high boundary, perhaps he could use his then-insights to further optimize some previous part of the cultivation path. For now, however, he had no grounds to do such things. The path he’d been shown felt right. Better than anything he could come up with. So he followed it.

Sometimes, you innovated. But only a fool would choose not to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Jack’s eyes snapped open. A flash of light erupted, lighting up the room. His aura deepened at that moment. If a low-level cultivator was watching, they would instinctively fall to their knees and worship.

Jack smiled. He had successfully reached the middle B-Grade.