Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack opened his eyes in the New Cathedral. They flashed. A grin played on his lips, and power surged through his inner world.

Sitting in his office, Jack laughed with joy.

“Good job, myself!”

Several galaxies away, his clone had just absorbed the Green Dragon Realm. Working together, they had managed to attach the realm to the main body’s inner world, leading to yet another power-up for Jack.

He wasn’t sure how exactly this worked, but he was excited to find out. He quickly set to experimentation.

An egg-shaped portal floated in his mostly empty inner world. Through the vacuum echoed a sound like rushing waves; the sign of energy flowing rapidly from the realm to Jack’s inner world. The portal was only ten feet tall and six wide, but it pumped out energy at full capacity, like a drain at the bottom of the sea. The energy influx was far faster than what Jack could achieve by cultivating.

Originally, he would have needed hundreds of thousands of years of cultivation to reach the peak B-Grade. With this portal steadily pumping out energy, he could cut that down to a mere thousand. A more than great pace in normal circumstances. Of course, it wasn’t enough in the current war state, but it was a great step forward.

Jack stood in his inner world, gazing at the portal from afar. The other inhabitants of the world floated beside him.

“What a nice door!” The Stone exclaimed. “They forgot the knob, though. Do you have the details of the manufacturer? I’d like to give them a word or two! Speaking of doors, I remember seeing a beautiful one. It was white and marble, with two little flowers growing on it, and it smelled vaguely of lavender. Not that I have a nose, but so I was told. Speaking of lavender…”

Jack zoned out The Stone, as he’d gotten used to doing lately. He could now let it hang out in his inner world, speaking at will, and he just didn’t hear it. The human brain was a wonderful thing.

“Where does that lead, kid?” the turtle asked. Its eyes were narrowed. “Why does it feel so…homely?”

“That’s the Green Dragon Realm,” Jack replied. “The same place where you fell asleep a few years ago. I grafted it to my inner world.”

The turtle’s eyes brightened. “I see,” it said. “And you connected it here to…”

“To absorb its energy, mostly, as well as protect it from the universe,” Jack explained. “It has a ton of Life energy, too. I was thinking to use some of that energy to start refilling the Life Drop.”

“Brilliant!” The turtle nodded in approval. “You said you would refill it, and now you’re doing it. I like it when you keep your word.”

“I always keep my word.”

“Aren’t you worried about emptying it out?” the turtle asked, gazing at the portal again. It was releasing energy at a tremendous rate.

Jack shook his head. “The Green Dragon Realm is shaped as an inverse, wide cone. Just the jungle on its top is a hundred thousand miles wide. The entire thing has a volume hundreds of times larger than my inner realm’s, so all the energy I need is a drop in the bucket.”

Saint Venerable Thousand Shell thought for a moment. “That’s great,” he said, “but how exactly will you refill the Divine Blood?”

“Watch this.”

The Life Drop was currently glued to the middle finger of the fist-shaped meteor which occupied the center of Jack’s world. As he waved a hand, the Life Drop popped off, teleporting beside them. With another wave, it flew towards the portal, anchoring itself right before its entrance. The incoming flood of energy buffeted it, but thanks to Jack’s god-like powers in this world, it remained in place.

“There,” he said. “The incoming energy is life-attuned. As it brushes by the Life Drop, some of it will be absorbed.”

The turtle nodded. There was also something else in its beady eyes. A hint of…excitement? “Acceptable,” it said. “That breeze of life energy looks comfortable indeed. I will go take a nap. Wake me up when it’s one twentieth full.”

“Wait,” Jack said. “You mentioned the Life Drop has more applications. Can you teach me before you go?”

The turtle grumbled. “It’s useless now, kid. That’s why I said to wake me up at one twentieth. When it’s time for you to know, naturally you will know.”

With that, the turtle turned into a green ray of light, disappearing into the immobile Life Drop. Jack imagined it ruffling its shell and settling down for a nap. He shrugged.

The Green Dragon Realm was basically an energy generator for his inner world. Controlling a minor dimension certainly came with other uses—Jack fantasized summoning an army of plant dragons to fight for him in the future. For now, however, he was content with this.

But that didn’t mean he was done. He already had one minor dimension, yes—but what about a second?

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The real body reached into his space ring, removing an item that quickly appeared inside his inner world. It was a round bead blacker than black, absorbing any and all light that reached it. This was the seed of the Black Hole World, an anchor able to open a portal to that sealed place.

Jack had already used it once a few days ago. He’d flown far away from the New Cathedral, activated the bead, and passed into the Black Hole World. He’d then explained the current situation to Grand Elder Pasan, the leader of that world, and asked for her opinion.

Surprisingly, the Grand Elder had refused to leave yet. With the current state of the universe, and her people as pure-hearted and naive as they were, she figured that sending them out now would lead to widespread destruction. They’d already waited a billion years, she said—they could wait a little more until the Second Crusade ended. Or until they were needed.

Truth be told, they would be useless outside. Their strongest cultivators were at the D-Grade, and their inheritances, while great treasures to a backwater faction like the Animal Kingdom, were nothing much to the Black Hole Church. Jack disagreed with the Grand Elder’s decision on the principle of freedom, but he could see her reasoning.

Everything else aside, a minor dimension was an extremely valuable thing, both for hiding and transportation purposes. He could see the Church commandeering the Black Hole World for its forces and forcing the black hole people to relocate to a friendly planet, where they would be vulnerable. The Arch Priestess didn’t seem like an asshole, but it was the natural thing to do. Jack would have done the same if Earth was at stake. Letting such a valuable resource be wasted on low-level cultivators was unwise.

However, since Jack owed them a favor, he promised to keep the Black Hole World a secret for now.

The Grand Elder did, however, agree to let him connect their world to his inner world. The purpose of this wasn’t to use it as an energy battery like the Green Dragon Realm. After all, the Black Hole World was tiny, only a hundred miles across. Their energy was too little.

What they did have, however, was incredibly solid spacetime laws. Such a small dimension should have collapsed long ago by the sheer pressure of the dimensional sea surrounding it. The only reason it hadn’t was Archon Black Hole’s extreme understandings of spacetime. By sacrificing world size, he had achieved extreme stability—the exact opposite of what Archon Green Dragon had done with his own world, which was slowly deteriorating.

Jack had to wonder about the justification of Archon Black Hole doing that. The Black Hole World was meant to be a temporary shelter for his descendants. They were supposed to exit after a million years. With his powers, he could have easily crafted a massive world for them where they could live comfortably in sunlit prairies, and that world would still last for ten million years—ten times longer than necessary. Instead, the Archon had decided to make a stuffy ball of layered stone just a hundred miles across, sacrificing life quality to greatly extend the world’s lifetime.

Had the Archon lied to his descendants? Did he intend for them to stay trapped in there for a billion years? Maybe, Jack thought, it was a move of desperation. The Archon had grown so disillusioned with the outside world that he preferred his descendants to live in their own little world forever.

Jack didn’t know he felt about that. He was scared. Just what could drive a mighty Archon to such extreme despair? Was he right, or was there some other reasoning which Jack just didn’t grasp? Even Grand Elder Pasan revealed she had no idea.

In any case, that was an old matter, probably unrelated to modern-day events. The important thing was that Jack’s inner world was stable, but of course, it was nothing compared to what a Spacetime Archon could achieve. By connecting the two, he could allow their laws to intermingle, slowly enhancing the stability of his world. It wouldn’t increase his cultivation, but it would help with future breakthroughs.

A second connection point appeared in his inner world. This one was black, and shaped as a black hole instead of a portal. It didn’t suck in energy; it only circulated, breathing in and out like a living creature. Compared to the energy-flooding portal to the Green Dragon Realm, this second connection point seemed calm and steady, as if it could exist for eternity.

Looking at the two, Jack felt like he could see the Archons. Green Dragon was a powerful, rowdy individual, using his powers to kick up a storm whenever he went. Black Hole was calm, collected, and calculating. His plans reached deep into the future, a gradual accumulation.

Jack chuckled. He had a feeling his assumptions were accurate. He still remembered how, at the vision he saw of Green Dragon, the Archon had some…choice words for the Space and Time Old Gods. Which he’d said right to their faces.

“Two minor realms…” he muttered. “We’re doing pretty well here. Don’t you think so, Stone?”

The Stone, which had been going on about gardening techniques, propped up. “Most certainly!” it replied. “You’re standing on the shoulders of giants. That’s why I like you, Jack. You know how to get a good thing going.”

“...Are you trying to flatter me?”

The Stone deflated. “No,” it said in a small voice. Jack laughed.

“You don’t need to worry. I won’t abandon you, Stone. You’re a friend now. A bro. While I live, you will never be alone again.”

The Stone perked up. “Really?” it asked.

“Yes, really. Isn’t that right, Copy Jack?”

Copy Jack shrugged. “Yes,” he replied. The Stone beamed.

“Thank you, thank you! I knew I could count on you! That lion woman was so evil; just when I thought I’d been freed from an endless life of solitude, she threw me right into a space ring and left me there. Can you believe it? At least on my meteor I had something to enjoy. The stars were nice. There were astral winds. But in a ring? That’s goddamn boring.”

“She was a real piece of work,” Jack agreed. “How did you even see the stars, anyway? You don’t have eyes.”

“I sure do! Look here, right above my mouth.”

Jack frowned and leaned in. He could see nothing. The Stone had a human-shaped mouth with a stone interior, but above that, it was nothing but—

“Holy shit,” he said, drawing back.

“See? I do have eyes!” The Stone replied proudly.

Jack laughed. Right above its mouth, the Stone had two beady eyes so tiny they blended in. He only recognized them because one blinked.

“You’re a piece of work as well,” he said. “Anyway, I gotta get back to cultivating. I’ll take you out as soon as I find an opportunity. See you around, Stone, Copy Jack.”

“See you!” The Stone replied excitedly, while Copy Jack waved.

Jack opened his eyes in the real world. Interacting with his friends was nice, but he had work to do. The sack of space monster cores at his feet was only half-empty, but the progress it had given him was nothing short of impressive. He grinned as he opened his status screen.