Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack stared at the bear. The bear stared at him. It growled. He jumped.

“Shit!”

Earth Bear, Level 14

Bears are omnivorous creatures that stand at the apex of most food chains. Earth bears, in particular, are a stronger, highly territorial variant. They can use very limited earth magic, and the rocky parts of their fur can be used to craft F-Grade weapons and armor.

Earth Bears are most commonly found in the Ursus Forests of planet Ursi.

The bear wasn’t one to waste time. It lunged at Jack, swiping a large paw at him, and he only narrowly dodged the strike. The claws dug thick lines on the tree behind him.

Jack caught on fire. The now familiar fight or flight instincts kicked in, taking control and giving him greater power than his body could wield. A thousand synapses fired in his brain, all at once.

Fight or flight?

As if in slow motion, he considered the issue. One hit from the bear could incapacitate him. At the same time, it wasn’t particularly agile. He could dodge everything. Maybe he could make it.

The bear swiped again. Jack ducked under the blow, letting his stone hammer fall as he clenched his fists. His Fistfighting skill kicked in, further heightening his fighting awareness. As he dodged the claw, he rotated his body and shot a hard hook into the bear’s belly, throwing all his weight behind it.

His fist met rock-hard fur. The impact was so strong that, despite his augmented body, his knuckle bled and almost cracked. The bear, on the other hand, only bent its body a bit—a yellow glow had appeared on the point of impact and absorbed most of the damage.

Jack remembered its description. Limited earth magic. Fuck.

He jumped back, narrowly avoiding a set of sharp jaws, and turned around even in mid-air. He was faster than the bear, but the damage he dealt was minimal. It would catch him, eventually. He couldn’t afford this fight.

Flee.

His decision made, Jack felt his entire body lighten as his legs hummed with power. They smashed into the forest floor, throwing dirt and stones all around, shooting him forth at tremendous speed. A patch of bushes practically zoomed past his vision.

A roar and four heavy thuds behind him indicated that the bear had fallen on all fours. It would chase. Of course it would.

And so began Jack’s first race.

Humans cannot outrun bears. However, that only concerns pre-System humans. At 27 Physical, Jack had already outgrown that entire civilization—but had he outgrown a bear?

There was only one way to find out.

His bare feet smashed the ground hard enough to break it. His body was slanted forward, riding the air resistance to stay upright, and his hands frantically moved back and forth. The bear’s roar was approaching. Jack accelerated.

Running for your life was a unique feeling. Everything disappeared, all thoughts went silent, letting the running become your entire life.

Jack was one with the air, one with the forest. He wasn’t a human, but a movement, a gale crossing through bushes and over roots. His high Physical made the forest’s terrain easy to traverse. He zoomed left and right, passing through narrow parts on purpose to slow down the bear. In a straight line, he couldn’t match its speed, but this was a forest.

Where he only had to duck, the bear had to plow through fallen branches and hollow logs. It wasn’t only the roars that indicated its position, but also the sound of breaking wood and uprooted vegetation.

Despite all that, it was still approaching. A claw fell only inches behind his back. Jack’s eyes sharpened further as he went all-out.

He jumped over logs, swung from branches, and stepped on trees to make his turns sharper. The terrain became his ally, not an enemy. Though he’d only tried parkour once or twice before, he imagined this was how pros felt.

The bear was close behind him. He spared a glance its way and saw it emerge from an exploding bunch of logs, splinters flying everywhere but unable to penetrate its fur. It was on all fours and galloped at full speed, heedless of any obstacles in its way; only trees could slow it down, but those, too, were snapped in half occasionally.

Jack gritted his teeth. He realized the speeds he was moving at were superhuman. He’d run before, of course he had, but he only had 4 Physical then—before the System. Now, he had 27. The difference was stunning. Trees and bushes snapped into his vision momentarily before disappearing. His body reacted at such speed that his conscious processes could not keep up.

He was sprinting at the top of the world, and the bear slowly, slowly began to fall behind. Its roars got hollower, the sound of its crashes slightly duller.

However, sprinting like this for minutes was beginning to take its toll on Jack. He was getting tired. His lungs were burning, his legs made of lead. He caught himself panting.

He hadn’t tried out his running abilities, except when escaping the monkeys, but he was focused on them, then. Now, he could take in the changes in his body, and they were majestic.

His surroundings were slowly changing. He began to recognize things. That crooked tree, this malformed bush, the perfectly round clearing. He had left the bear’s territory and entered his own, where the hobgoblins prowled, but he had a big-ass bear on his back. Stealth be damned.

As he jumped over a fallen log, he saw them. Three hobgoblins, each standing slightly apart from each other as they gazed at him with surprise that quickly turned into fear when the log behind him exploded and an enraged bear flew through, galloping wildly.

Jack didn’t dare lead it at them. He was only barely outrunning the beast as it was; the slightest complication would doom him.

He kept running, filled with the mad desire to flee, and as he did, a wondrous feeling took over. His exhaustion disappeared. His strength grew. His senses sharpened. His feet now hammered against the ground even harder, pushing him forward so fast that the air screamed in his ears.

Exhaustion turned into fuel, into ecstasy. Jack now loved running. He could go on forever, and as he thought that, he accelerated even more, surpassing his previous limit.

The bear didn’t. He could hear its tired panting through the growls, could hear it slow down, and he grinned. In the animal kingdom, humans weren’t sprinters; they were endurance runners. Since the bear hadn’t caught up yet, victory would be his.

Confidence swelled inside him, enhanced by the euphoric feeling of being one with himself. He felt fast, strong, invincible, that he could take on everything the world threw at him. He controlled this entire forest. He could grab the ground and stop Earth’s rotation, then spin it in reverse.

He almost stopped and turned around to face the bear before catching himself. The feeling of unmatched arrogance disappeared as quickly as it had come, but the euphoric confidence remained.

He kept running, savoring the feeling. At some point, he realized the thuds and growls had disappeared. The bear had given up.

Jack stopped, too, taking a look at the empty forest behind him. How long had he been running alone? It didn’t matter. He was still full of energy, full of vigor and strength, and though he didn’t dare face the bear yet, there was another enemy in the forest.

His forest.

Jack turned around and ran in the opposite direction. They couldn’t have gone far. The trees zoomed past him, he ducked under branches and jumped over bushes like an Olympic athlete. He wasn’t going at full throttle now, just enough to stay fast. And he was being silent.

He flew into a forest path, and through a patch of bushes, he saw them. The hobgoblins were huddled up in a circle, discussing something, possibly himself. He turned and shot right at them like a barbaric missile.

He’d struggled against one hobgoblin when he was Level 5, but he had now reached Level 10, plus the increased bonuses from the ice pond. He was massively stronger than before, and most importantly, he was fully warmed-up. So what if they had shortswords? They couldn’t touch him.

Jack launched himself at the hobgoblins. They turned to look, and one of them caught a punch in its face, sending it flying into a tree and cracking its bark. A trembling groan escaped the hobgoblin’s lips before it stumbled, still upright but barely. Its fuzzy eyes met Jack, and it drew its sword.

Jack didn’t go after it. As soon as he landed the first punch, he stepped into the ground with enough force to extinguish his momentum. The dirt exploded. His entire body creaked, but he didn’t mind. Before the hobgoblins could escape their surprise, he turned and elbowed a second one in the chest, cracking ribs and sending it kneeling on the ground.

He then punched ahead, but the third hobgoblin managed to jump back in time and draw its sword. It adopted a stance that seemed well-trained, and despite Jack’s overwhelming ambush, the hobgoblin’s eyes didn’t falter.

The first hobgoblin, the one he’d punched in the face, stepped behind him. It still hadn’t recovered from the strike—it might even had had a minor concussion—but it was ready to fight.

Hobgoblins were nothing like goblins. They were disciplined, intelligent, trained warriors. They were hardened veterans. Tricks and ambushes wouldn’t be enough to take them down.

But Jack knew that. He wasn’t counting on an ambush. He wanted to fight them head-on, test himself against their blades. He was flooded with battle lust, eager to try out his skills at the edge of danger.

He banged his fists together, eyeing the two hobgoblins that were trying to surround him. “Come!” he shouted.

The two of them looked at each other and nodded.

Jack, still in their encirclement, watched them intently. Besides the two standing hobgoblins, the one that had been elbowed before still struggled to stand due to its broken ribcage, but Jack didn’t discard it entirely. It could still throw out its shortsword, trip him, or do other nasty things if he wasn’t careful.

But he would be.

The two goblins rushed him at the same time, one from in front and the other from behind. Their movements were sharp, their stances solid. Jack didn’t see an easy way to attack them or dodge.

Despite that…they were slow.

Jack’s stats had already jumped beyond theirs. Training and expertise could only achieve so much in the face of absolute power.

As they fell on him, blades swinging, Jack’s body came alive. He turned and twisted, dodging attacks at the last moment even when they seemed unavoidable. His speed was such that their weapons couldn’t follow, and their carefully devised stances weren’t designed against overwhelming opponents. Hobgoblins were used to fighting other hobgoblins, not superheroes.

Jack was like a dancer. His reflexes were so fast that he moved at the same time they did, and his speed was such that he’d dodged before they even finished their attack. Two shortswords fell from different directions, but Jack still weaved between them masterfully, passing through gaps that the naked eye could only barely catch.

This wasn’t just his stats, of course. His Fistfighting skill was running at full throttle, and as he dodged and weaved between attacks, he grew more and more familiar with his body at a stunning rate.

Dodging like this wasn’t easy. Jack was dancing on the razor’s edge, and yet, he kept going. When he had the opportunity to counter-attack, he didn’t. This feeling of harmony was beyond wondrous, and he felt that, if he stopped now, this opportunity wouldn’t reappear easily. He had to grasp at straws to survive this dungeon, to dig out even the last dregs of his potential. A little danger was nothing.

His movements sharpened, his thoughts accelerated. He leaned from one movement to the next, using skill to dodge instead of just speed. His body became one with his will, and he felt in complete control of his every limb and muscle.

The hobgoblins didn’t know he was holding back, of course, so they were still careful, not daring to attack too wildly in case he struck back. Unbeknownst to them, they were spelling the doom of their tribe.

Finally, in one movement, everything came together in Jack’s mind. He, his body, and his enemies became one.

Ding!

Skill upgraded. Fistfighting (I) → Fistfighting (II)

Through the battle haze, he grinned.