Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack stared at his opponent. He was a large guy wielding an equally large metal pipe. His upper body was bare and scarred, his eyes were hard, and he looked quite badass overall.

Jack’s physique was equally intimidating, except he wore a tank top and casually held a flip-flop.

“Dao of Spanking?” the large guy said, eyes twitching. “I will show you a world of pain, kid.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack replied. “It’s clear your parents didn’t spank you enough. Let me help.”

The audience cheered at their trash talking. Jack inspected his opponent.

Human, Level 28

Faction: -

There wasn’t much to write home about. This guy was pretty average for the tournament.

Jack, however, wasn’t. The large guy’s eyes widened as he, too, fired off a scan. He quickly adopted a battle stance, not daring to take Jack lightly.

“So, you have some skill…” he muttered, eyes watching Jack’s every movement. “But I’m not weak either. Come!”

“Listen man, how about you just surrender and—”

“Shut up!”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Have it your way.”

The large man charged like a rhino, pipe held high. When it swung, the sand flew around him, and the sound was loud and sharp enough to make the nearby spectators frown.

Jack, of course, was no longer there. He had appeared behind the large guy, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “What disrespect…” he muttered. Hearing the voice coming from behind him, his opponent panicked and tried to jump away, but it was too late.

The flip-flop landed on his buttocks with a crisp slap. Everyone recoiled from the sound, while the large guy flew and landed face-first into the sand, dragging through it for a few feet. When he stood up again, his face was red, and not just from blood.

“I will fucking kill you!” he roared, then dashed in. Jack sidestepped the pipe twice. He was already faster than his opponent. With such a large, unwieldy weapon, the large guy had no chance of catching him.

Suddenly, Jack disappeared again. The giant of a man whipped around, only to find nothing. He turned back the other way in shock…and Jack still wasn’t there!

“Where are you!?” he roared.

“Always behind you. You turn slower than a ship.”

Another slap hit his buttocks and sent him into the sand again.

The audience erupted in laughter. Though there were three more fights going on, Jack had already become the star of the show. All eyes were on him—a fact that only increased his opponent’s humiliation.

Jack actually felt a bit bad. He was lucky enough that the System didn’t even consider the flip-flop a weapon in his hand, letting him use the Fistfighting skill. However, though he was easily faster than his opponent, he couldn’t finish the fight quickly. If he attacked any harder, the flip-flop would break, and he might be exposed!

Even with the Integration City’s materials, it could barely handle this level of stress.

Jack took in his opponent’s form, and his eyes softened. “Come on, man,” he said. “Surrender already.”

The large man glared daggers at him and clenched his teeth. He looked like he wanted to tear Jack limb from limb. However, at the end of the day, he was someone with enough mental faculties to comprehend a Dao Root and join the Integration Tournament.

“I resign,” he muttered through gritted teeth, and the audience erupted yet again.

Jack extended a hand, but his opponent ignored it and jumped into the spectator stands, then departed the arena. Jack shook his head.

I’m sorry, friend, but you can only blame yourself for being weak—and your luck for pitting you against me. At least, you have another shot at the tournament.

It took two losses for disqualification.

Meanwhile, the audience was still buzzing with cheers for Jack. He had already developed into a crowd favorite. When he climbed back to his spot, Karvahul welcomed him with open arms.

“I can already see it, my boy,” he declared. “We’ll make a fortune!”

“Sure thing, Karvahul.”

“That was great, Jack!” Edgar showered him with excitement. “You beat that guy easily!”

“He wasn’t too strong.” Jack shrugged. He reached down to pet Brock, who was already extending an open palm and expecting a salami. “We’ll see how long I can keep it up.”

“Excellent victory,” a woman from the nearby crowd came to congratulate Jack. Now that he’d shown his strength, people would clamor to meet him.

Not that he minded. These people were all elites, and he needed as many connections as he could get.

“Thank you,” he replied with a smile, shaking the woman’s hand. “Would you like some cheese?”

“Excuse me?”

He removed a package of cheese from his pocket and gave her a slice. “They’re excellent snacks,” he said, “and cheap, too. The merchants here are killing it.”

She nodded in appreciation before returning to her seat. Another man quickly took her place.

Before long, a small crowd had gathered around Jack, basking in his glory and free snacks. Many had noticed Dorman Whistles—the one who’d displayed excellent speed—sitting next to Jack, but he outright ignored anyone who spoke to him.

Meanwhile, Edgar was getting more and more nervous.

“—Second fight, Edgar Allano and the Dao of Magic versus Robin von Arginhold and the Dao of the Bow.”

“Shit!” Edgar paled. Jack got excited.

“Finally!” he exclaimed. “Go, Edgar! And don’t mind if you lose; just do your best!”

“You got it, kid.” Karvahul slapped his back, making Edgar stumble a step.

“Yeah…” Edgar gulped. “Fine. I’m going.”

Despite Edgar’s nervousness, his powers were flashy. Magic was no joke.

A blue cloud appeared under his feet and slowly delivered him to the arena, where a tall man with a bow and a green cap awaited. He was actually the one right before them in the registration line, and he stood at least a hundred feet away from Edgar.

Human, Level 27

Faction: Robin’s Boys

Edgar nodded. The archer nodded back. Then, he nocked an arrow and fired it.

Edgar was barely ready. He erected a hasty blue shield that stopped the arrow in its tracks, but frowned in the process.

From the spectator stands, Jack also frowned. He didn’t know exactly how Edgar’s powers worked, but he assumed they used mana—the System’s magical resource. Therefore, he could only imagine that stopping an arrow like that must have cost a lot of it.

Edgar seemed to agree. A second arrow was already on its way, but he curved his shield so that the arrow only changed course, not stopped outright. This took significantly less mana.

The archer fired two more arrows, which Edgar deflected with minimum effort. The archer countered that by shooting straight into Edgar’s center of mass, making deflections more difficult. Edgar countered the counter by running around, letting his deflections work with better angles.

Nobody got a Dao Root without putting in a lot of effort. For all of Edgar’s squirming, he had been the highest level cultivator of Valville outside Henry’s Fang. He had hunted monsters alone, braved dangers, and danced with death. After Jack took over, Edgar kept hunting and reached Level 24.

He was no weakling.

Even a quarter of the arena was enough for people to fight at long range. The archer kept firing from a hundred feet away, and Edgar was content to let that happen. After all, the opponent’s quiver was emptying quickly, and his frown indicated he was out of ideas.

When the arrows became sparser, Edgar went on the offensive. He opened his arms and unleashed a flock of transparent blue hawks that flew at the archer from all directions. Seeing that, the archer charged right for Edgar, letting the birds surround him.

As he charged, he spun around himself and shot arrows rapidly. He no longer reached for his quiver; arrows made of mana materialized in his hands, letting him shoot faster and with no ammo considerations.

He was amazing to watch. He spun and shot at mind-boggling speeds, accurately taking down all birds that approached him. Edgar instructed them to maneuver, but his concentration was clearly stretched thin; the birds could only wobble a bit mid-air, completely unable to dodge the fast arrows or throw off the archer’s aim.

Moreover, the archer was fast, way too fast. His left hand held the bow, and his right a machete that he’d drawn from under his cloak. He reached Edgar in a moment and slashed the machete at his shield at an angle that couldn’t be deflected, only blocked head-on. The shield disappeared, giving way to a massive fireball that flew at the archer’s face and torso, but he’d seen it coming.

Instead of following through with his strike, the archer used the momentum to tilt his body heavily sideways, letting the fireball sail narrowly over his head. As his body was bent almost ninety degrees to the right, he resumed his slash, aiming at Edgar’s armpit from below.

The change had occurred so fast that Edgar had no hope of responding in time. And yet, the shield reappeared at the perfect spot to block the machete.

Edgar had calculated exactly what the archer would do. Suddenly finding his attack blocked and himself completely off balance, the archer had no time to move before Edgar’s outstretched right hand—the one that had pushed the large fireball—slammed down into him, unleashing a new fireball equally massive as the first. It was like a fireplace. If it hit and pinned the archer to the ground, it would do more than second degree burns.

“I resign!” he croaked out quickly.

Edgar’s fireball winked out of existence. His hand slapped the chest of the other man, who fell on his back, already off-balance as he was.

The arena, that had been completely silent before, erupted into a new round of cheers, and Jack cheered the hardest. Brock’s triumphant monkey yells echoed throughout the stands—after all, he considered Edgar part of his pack!

Though Edgar and the archer’s battle hadn’t been at the highest level, it had undoubtedly been one of the most intense yet.

Edgar was sweating buckets, shivering, and breathing quickly. Despite that, he held out an arm for the other man, who grabbed it from the forearm and pulled himself up.

“Nice battle,” he said. He had a thick blond mustache over his lips, and despite his face’s sharp lines, he should have been around forty. “You got me there.”

“It was luck,” Edgar said quickly.

“What are you saying, boy? Open your ears. All those people are cheering for you!”

Edgar looked around and realized he was showered in cheers. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people were clapping for him. He immediately felt flustered, proud, awkward, and simultaneously like he wanted to roar and hide in a hole. He had no idea what he felt.

“See you around,” the archer said, waving and jumping back to his seat. As if dreaming, Edgar used his last dregs of mana to summon a blue cloud under his feet and fly next to Jack, where he collapsed in his seat.

“Well done.” Jack smiled, patting his shoulder. “You were awesome down there!”

“I know you had it in you, my boy!” Karvahul patted his other shoulder.

Edgar’s thoughts moved so fast he couldn’t form words. He almost spiraled into a panic attack before feeling a soft, warm feeling from his lap. Looking down, it was Brock, who was sitting on his lap and giving him a manly thumbs-up.

Edgar smiled.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked.

“No…but I’ll be fine.”

“Perfect. Want some salami?”

“God yes.”

The nearby people erupted into laughter. Thanks to the performance of Jack and Edgar, as well as Jack’s free snacks that served as easy invitations, a lively group had already formed around them, laughing and chatting. They couldn’t see it, but many people were staring at them throughout the arena.

They stayed for a while longer, but not much was happening. Though some strong people appeared, their enemies were nothing special. No more interesting fights occurred. At some point, Jack was running out of snacks, and Edgar was feeling more and more stuffy thanks to all the people.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Jack said. “We can’t stay here all day. There will be fights for a long time, and they’ll only get more interesting as time goes by.”

It wasn’t just him. Half the arena was empty now as people were trickling out. Edgar nodded quickly, and a beat later, so did Karvahul.

“See you, guys,” Jack waved their new friends goodbye, and the four of them—including Brock—walked to the stairs. They didn’t invite anyone else along; though Jack had some social skills, he wasn’t a particularly social man himself, and his networking efforts had a limit. A couple friends—and Karvahul—were enough.

However, as they were about to exit the spectator stands, the announcer’s voice caught Jack’s ear.

“Rufus Emberheart and the Dao of Supremacy versus Maylin Rubenstein and the Dao of the Fist.”

Dao of the Fist?

It was the first time he heard his own Dao being called out; it really was rare, as Karvahul had said. He turned to stare at the arena, where two people faced off.

One was a barbaric-looking woman with clenched fists and teeth.

The other was a lion-man. A Leonine, the same race as the C-Grade Overseer. One of the five scions. A blond mane framed his head, and his golden eyes seemed to see through everything.

“That’s the tournament favorite. He’s almost certainly the winner, actually,” Karvahul said somberly. “Rufus Emberheart. The strongest of the scions.”

“Is he really that strong?” Jack asked. He hadn’t caught sight of Gan Salin or any of the other five scions in the arena—wherever they were hiding, they clearly didn’t want to meddle with the common riffraff of this planet.

“You’ll see.”

Jack scanned both fighters.

Human, Level 31

Faction: -

Leonine, Level 49

Faction: -

Title: Planetary Frontrunner (1)

49? Jack was shocked before realizing what his title said. His eyes widened. 1!?

The leonine stood in the arena and looked at his opponent like she was a fly. Jack felt intimately insulted. This girl had the same Dao as him—the Dao of the Fist—so there was kinship between them.

She charged, fists held at the ready. Rufus Emberheart raised his hand—a lion paw—and simply swiped it forward.

Jack didn’t understand what happened. One moment, the woman was charging at him. The next, she was plastered on the far energy wall, the sound of her breaking bones echoing throughout the arena. She fell to the ground and didn’t stand again.

The audience didn’t cheer. They were busy considering what had just happened. A djinn healer approached the woman with glowing blue hands, then kneeled beside her and frowned deeply. A moment later, the blue glow faded. She looked at the head judge and shook her head.

The head judge frowned. She gave Rufus Emberheart a long stare. For his part, he simply stayed there for a moment, then jumped all the way to a small, curtained-off section at the highest end of the spectator stands—probably where the scions rested. He parted the curtain and made to walk through it.

He had murdered that woman of the Dao of the Fist. He had clearly been significantly stronger but hadn’t held back. It was clearly on purpose, and the rules indicated he should be punished.

However, the head judge remained silent. Clearly, she was about to let this pass. Was it favoritism? Was it because Rufus was the tournament favorite, one of the five scions, and a descendant of the Animal Kingdom—though nobody said that out loud?

Jack’s gut said fuck yes.

Meanwhile, the other three fights had ended as well. The head judge announced, “Next fights, Mary—”

“Hey!” A voice interrupted her from somewhere on the stands, too loud to ignore. Everyone looked for its source and found Jack standing tall and proud. “He killed her on purpose. That is against the rules. He must be punished.”