Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

As Jack skulked by a wall of the goblin tribe, a door opened right in front of him. He froze for a fraction of a second before darting behind it and holding his breath. Inwardly, he cursed; he didn’t just have to watch out for patrols, but also random goblins that needed to pee!

The door sandwiched him against the wall, and he was forced to put out a hand and gently stop it. He cursed again. In the silence of the night, and with his senses heightened from all the stalking, the door’s creaks came to his ears as loud as lovemaking pigs. Admittedly, they were pretty loud—goblins weren’t the best of builders, even though these huts had obviously been spawned by the System.

Through a crack in the door, Jack could see a naked goblin on the other side. It rubbed its eyes to send the drowsiness away, then, with a, “Hmm?,” it gazed at the door, which didn’t make the normal banging sound as it hit the wall.

Jack prepared to attack.

The goblin then shrugged and went about its business. Taking two steps to reach the corner of its hut, it just started pissing at it. Jack’s brows spasmed. He stifled a groan.

Ugh. Disgusting…

A moment later, the goblin was done, so it went back to the door, grabbed it from Jack’s gentle hands, and shut it again. Jack was left plastered on the wall, not knowing whether to feel relief or irritation that he had to hide from such beings.

He settled on resolve.

His feet slid across the dirt, carrying him across another gap and next to the wall of the largest hut. He looked around; nobody had spotted him. Good.

Jack put his ear against the wall, and hearing nothing, raised his head a bit. There was a window here, like most huts, and he peeked through.

Before him lay a despondently empty space. There was a rough table and chair, the pinnacle of goblin furnishing, as well as a shamanic staff leaning against the wall. A large pile of stones waited behind the closed door—an alarm system that Jack would bypass—while the fur of some unknown animal served as bedding on the ground—unprocessed, of course.

On the beddings, covered with another fur, lay the sleeping form of a goblin. Jack grinned. He stuck his head a bit deeper inside, inspecting all corners where a guard might lay in wait, then looked around and raised himself through the window. Now inside the goblin master hut, he looked around.

He wasn’t an idiot. Something was fishy here. This was too easy.

Yet, there was nothing besides the alarm stones by the door. He even wondered if this was another goblin serving as bait, but the shamanic staff was here—a crooked piece of wood adorned with colorful feathers and animalistic tokens—and the sleeping goblin wore the same face paint as the last time he’d seen it.

Either the Goblin Shaman was incredibly smart, or it wasn’t. Given its goblin nature, Jack was inclined to believe the latter.

He paced to the sleeping goblin and snapped its neck. Then, he waited. Nothing happened. No notifications, no warning bells, no fuss. Jack frowned. He looked outside the window and saw a goblin patrol at the edge of the clearing. He looked back at the dead goblin. He frowned deeper.

Well, shit.

And then came the warning bells. Shouts rose from the edge of the tribe, rousing all goblins within earshot—that is, every single goblin.

“Fuck!” Jack cursed, out loud this time. He didn’t know how they’d discovered him, but they clearly had. He had to fight or run. And, worst of all…he’d just been outsmarted by a goblin.

That left a sour taste in his mouth. Thankfully, he was determined to kill said goblin, and killing washed all sour tastes away.

As the tribe burst into activity, Jack jumped outside the window and landed on an unfortunate goblin passer-by. He turned its head into mush before looking around, only to find at least a dozen pairs of eyes on him. Both hobgoblins stared him down, surrounding a goblin thinner than most, with creepy painted lines on its body and sparks dancing on its fingers.

“Kekeke.” It chuckled. “Stupid intruder. We will eat your fingers one-by-one as punishment, and I’ll wear your hair as mine.”

“Oh, yeah? Give it a shot, little man.”

Jack wasn’t going to play around. As forty goblins screamed and pounced at him, he clenched his fists. His body caught on fire. His eyes sharpened, and his breath deepened. He became a fighter—an expert fistfighter.

It was time to crack some skulls. Jack roared.

Screams came from all sides as goblins fell on him. They swarmed him, coming from the front and back, the left and right.

Jack became a force of nature; a storm made of fists.

One punch took a goblin’s head clean off. Another landed on a chest and broke it apart, while a third uppercutted a goblin hard enough to send it flying. His hands turned into blurs as he punched in all directions simultaneously, but there was a limit to his power.

A swarm could not be stopped by single-target attacks.

Though some goblins died, many more managed to land on him. They were fearless, ignoring the death of their comrades to attack him frenziedly, and they succeeded in harming him. Claws ripped into his skin, teeth tried to dig his eyes out. Jack grabbed goblins and tossed them off his body like cats, but they were too many.

No matter how many he killed, more arrived to take their place. The wounds were shallow—his body was extremely durable by now—and his critical places were well-protected, but the sheer weight and violence of the goblins dragged him down. Something had to be done, or he would fall.

Through the bodies that covered him, Jack could see the two pale forms of the hobgoblins approaching. Their swords glinted in the moonlight, and their yellow eyes shone like embers.

His every instinct kicked in at once, inciting the familiar state of all-encompassing resolve. His muscles pulsed and groaned as they pulled beyond their limit, and his primal urges took to the forefront. Gone was the man, leaving only the warrior. Cold heart and burning body.

It was intoxicating.

Jack roared again. He dug his heels into the ground, stuck to the wall behind him, and spun around himself, smashing all goblins into the wood. The large hut creaked. The goblins’ claws drew bloody lines on his skin as they were torn away. He succeeded; he was free, if for a moment.

Jack didn’t waste any time pummeling them. Already, goblins watched him from the nearby rooftops, and they jumped on him like little green suicidal bombers—but when they landed, Jack wasn’t there.

His soles smashed into the ground, raising hell under a dark sky as he darted through the village at speeds the goblins couldn’t follow. He danced between walls and huts. He jumped on roofs, broke through them, and jumped back down. Goblins flew around him, some attacking him and some tossed away by brutal punches.

Jack was a hurricane that tore the goblin tribe apart, huts, bodies, and everything, and only the rock that made up the huts’ foundations could stand his fury. The goblins shrieked as they lost him, and they only saw a blur before getting punched to oblivion.

Jack was a moving storm, and the tribe could not take him.

But the shaman could.

His body suddenly slowed down. Red ethereal snakes wrapped around his limbs, dragging him down, impervious to his touch. They were like ghosts. At the same time, frigid cold assaulted his soul. Fear and despair threatened to overtake him, and his heart was shackled, trapped in cold iron.

Jack lost his footing and fell from the rooftops, landing on the soil a few feet below. A hobgoblin was there. A shortsword stabbed unerringly at his throat while his eyes were cloudy.

The shortsword missed its mark, and a punch landed on the hobgoblin’s sternum so hard that it spat out blood and flew back amidst the sound of breaking bones. Jack was there, squatting and panting, his eyes redder than the snakes binding him.

The chill to his soul had been tremendous, but Jack had withstood the ice pond; how could a mere goblin shaman stop him?

The goblins reached him as he was struggling. The little fuckers still didn’t care for their lives, and they fell on him in waves.

Jack was a menace.

He grabbed one by the head and crashed it into another. He punched a goblin so hard that three flew back, like pins in a bowling court. He ducked under a goblin’s assault, grabbed it by the leg, and used it as a weapon to send more of them flying.

Yet, they were many, and he could not face them all. He was bleeding from a hundred little wounds, and the losses were beginning to accumulate. He had to do something.

His gaze cut through the swarm of goblins, through the remaining hobgoblin, and into the eyes of the Goblin Shaman. It grinned as it met his stare, and Jack grinned back.

He flew backward. Some goblins missed him and fell to the ground, only to be stomped by their companions as they chased him. Jack ran around the village, letting the mindless goblins gnaw at his heels him as he slowly changed directions. The red snakes still bound him, but his soul could handle them, for now.

A moment later, he emerged at the center of the tribe, where the huts formed a small opening, and where the goblin shaman waited. A hobgoblin stepped in Jack’s path, shrouded in pure resolve. Its entire body shone black as phantasmal lines covered it, and for a moment, Jack thought he saw a ghost.

He didn’t care.

He fell onto the hobgoblin without slowing down in the slightest. It backpedaled to keep him within range, its shortsword weaving clean lines through the air. Jack struggled to dodge; with the red snakes around his limbs, moving was difficult, but he was still faster and better than a mere hobgoblin.

His face morphed into a mask of utter focus. His fists dove through the gaps, smashing into the hobgoblin. The shortsword cut him deep, but he didn’t stop—because, if he did, the goblin swarm would catch up.

One punch broke the hobgoblin’s jaw, another cracked its ribs, a third tossed the shortsword away. Jack caught a swing with his shoulder, letting the sword carve his outer arm as he punched the hobgoblin right in the face, sending it flying back and barely missing the shaman, who only cackled devilishly in his face.

“Foolish human!” it shrieked. “You’re almost dead!”

Jack barely heard it. Not only was he bleeding profusely, the hobgoblin had also scraped the surface of his arm so deeply that the bone showed. He was in terrible pain, surrounded, and with an army at his heels. Moreover, the red snakes still tried to infiltrate his soul, and the more exhausted he got, the weaker his resistance.

He no longer had the strength to escape the tribe. All he could do now was kill the shaman.

Everything else disappeared. Only that hateful little creature was left, with its evil laughter and gloating eyes. It was within range. Jack pounced. His punches dug into the goblin’s body and tore it apart, destroying it so hard it turned into smoke. Jack roared in triumph.

But goblins didn’t turn into smoke.

“Kekeke, silly human.”

He turned around, and the shaman was there, on the large hut’s rooftop. This time, it held its staff, too. Jack was sure this was the real body—but through his pain and haze, he looked deeper.

As soon as he did, the goblin shaman turned transparent, and a new body appeared, watching him from behind a flood of goblins that poured right at Jack. He stared at it. “Not so silly,” the shaman gloated, “but tasty, anyway. I will eat your brain. Kekeke!”

Jack grunted. The sound he made was barely human, more like a bull’s, and so he acted. Bringing both arms before his face, he ducked deep and ran at the horde, aiming to blast right through it. The shaman laughed. “You’re crazy!”

And maybe he was—but it worked.

Faced with Jack’s unstoppable charge and their own momentum, the goblin army was broken like bowling pins. Some flew away, others were stomped, and yet more were simply pushed aside as Jack plowed through.

Some goblins grabbed on to him, trying to carve his skin even further, but he didn’t care. He was relentless. Only one thought remained in his mind: the goblin shaman had to die.

“Fool!” it shouted. Its staff—which had somehow appeared in its hands—shone red, and a wall of flames rose from nothing to block Jack’s path. It was like facing an open oven, a wildfire in the middle of the forest. Whether he turned left or right, more goblins awaited to tear him apart.

Jack didn’t turn left or right. He didn’t break pace, either. He just kept running.

He dove into the flames. The goblins on him screamed as they were scorched, and Jack screamed too. These weren’t normal flames; every spark was like molten iron on his skin, every ember striving to burn through his bones. Even the red snakes were extinguished.

But Jack was strong, too. He screamed through the pain and kept running, channeling the resolve he’d built in the ice pond.

It was only a second, but it felt like eternity. However, everything was worth it when he burst out of the flames and met the goblin’s shocked, fearful gaze. He stood before it, bleeding, injured, burned, but triumphant.

“What?” it muttered, stepping back. “That’s impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible.”

Jack reared his right fist, gathering as much strength as he could. The goblin waved its staff, trying to cast something, but it was far too late. His fist dug deep into its face, smashing the goblin against the ground so hard it bounced off higher than his head. It was dead before it even landed.

At the same time, a wave of euphoria flooded Jack. He had won.

The flames disappeared, but behind them, the remaining goblins jumped at him once again. His eyes snapped back to reality. What?! But I—

Level Up! You have reached Level 12.

Level Up! You have reached Level 13.

Level Up! You have reached Level 14.

Level Up! You have reached Level 15.

Goblin Boss defeated! Would you like to despawn the group? Y/N

Wh—Yes! Yes! Fucking yes!

The blue screens disappeared, revealing a claw heading right for his face. Jack closed his eyes.

And the claw never arrived. When he opened his eyes again, the goblins had disappeared, soundlessly dissolving into thin air. Despite his pain, he looked around incredulously. Not the slightest hint of their presence was left. Their weapons, their bodies, their clothes, even their huts were gone. Jack was left alone and bleeding in an empty forest clearing, where only the High Speed Bush remained.

He quickly invested all eight stat points from the level-ups into Physical, and he felt his skin squirm as mortal wounds shut themselves. The bleeding slowed down, then stopped. He still felt dizzy and weak, but at least he was alive and would continue being so.

Those four Levels had saved his life. For once, the System had been kind to him.

Jack fell to his knees. His strength left him. So did the battle haze, and the pain of all his wounds shone through, but it was welcome. It only showed he was still alive.

He had won.

And, at the end of it all, a new blue screen shone before his eyes.

Level 15 reached. Congratulations! Class System unlocked. Please choose your Class: