Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

As Jack watched the healers pour green energy over an unconscious Edgar, he marveled at how close the battle had been.

Truthfully, he’d walked in expecting it to be a walk in the park. He’d walked away with two broken hands, several cracked ribs, many superficial wounds, first degree burns, and entire chunks of skin missing on his legs. Plus the pain of all those.

You little fucker, he thought, watching Edgar regain consciousness. He grinned. Well fucking fought.

Granted, things would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t underestimated Edgar, but that sort of mental warfare was also part of a battle. All in all, this fight had been the closest he’d come to losing.

The djinn healing Jack stopped, having completed her duties. He was now good as new.

Note one, I must befriend a good healer, he thought, admiring how all his injuries had disappeared. He flexed his fingers. And note two, my regeneration struggles against wounds produced by Dao Skills.

Edgar stood, thanked the healers, and approached Jack. “Shit, man,” he said with a smile, “you kicked my ass there.”

“You did a number on me, too. Sorry for the glasses.”

“No worries, I have spares.” He extended a hand. “Win this thing, Jack.”

Jack looked his friend in the eyes and nodded. “I damn will.”

They shook hands, and the crowd’s cheers reignited—they were still amidst the arena, after all.

Both healed, Jack and Edgar took the stairs and squeezed through a congratulatory crowd to reach their seats again—Edgar was too exhausted to fly. They were greeted by a wave of congratulations for a battle well-fought.

“I was very impressed, Edgar,” Vivi said. “To think you were asking me for advice only two weeks ago. Now, you could give me a run for my money.”

“I’m not there yet,” Edgar replied, blushing. “My final attack only worked because Jack didn’t expect it.”

“But it did work. Mental warfare and the element of surprise are crucial in every battle. Don’t undersell yourself.”

Surprisingly, even the usually silent Dorman approached Edgar. “I underestimated you,” he said with a bright smile and an extended hand. “You are not a weakling. I respect that.”

“Thanks,” Edgar replied awkwardly, shaking his hand.

Jack had been congratulated by everyone, too, but discreetly. He took his seat between Edgar and the Sage and accepted Brock’s firm handshake.

“That was a nice battle,” the Sage said.

“Thanks, Sage. Any unsolicited words of wisdom?” Jack asked back, smirking.

The Sage chuckled. “Your faction is very lucky to have you two. Did you notice? You were strong from the moment you arrived at the tournament, but Edgar had to fight for every inch of ground. He has advanced tremendously. I really wish I could see him grow into his potential.”

“Hmm?” Jack frowned. “Why? Are you planning to leave the planet?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Only the future will show.”

“Ah, of course. The future.”

Jack reclined back in his seat, content to watch the rest of the battles. Since he’d already advanced, he wasn’t worried anymore, so he could enjoy them.

“The next fight,” the head judge announced. Dorman and Vivi tensed up. “Dorman Whistles and the Dao of Speed versus Fesh Wui and the Dao of Wind.”

Dorman grinned. “Finally!” he exclaimed, jumping into the arena.

Jack leaned forward in his seat. This would be the highest-level battle of the tournament so far. Both fighters were roughly on his level of power.

Dorman landed without raising a single grain of sand, his daggers already out. Fesh Wui flew down from the curtained-off section of the arena. He was unarmed, but the talons he sported on both hands and legs were more than sharp enough.

“I’ve wanted to face you for a while,” Dorman said, brimming with fighting spirit. “Speed versus wind. Let’s see who’s faster.”

“You’re an intriguing opponent,” the eagle-man admitted with amusement. “I do not believe I’ll lose against a human, but it will be a worthy fight. You might even give me the final flash of insight I’m missing. Do your best, smoothskin.”

“Back at you, duckface.”

Dorman charged. At the same time, Fesh Wui flapped his wings and shot up. Dorman screeched to a halt, then tsked. “This is annoying,” he said. He couldn’t fly.

“Dance of the Gales!” Fesh Wui shouted from above. Winds picked up around the arena. The sand rose and flew in low-altitude streams, while many spectators held on to their hats to keep them from flying.

The sounds of crashing winds filled the arena. Gusts and gales zigzagged in random directions over the sand, crashing into each other with whooshing sounds. They followed profound patterns and natural laws that seemed completely random to laymen. It was a chaos that only Fesh Wui could navigate.

And navigate it he did.

As the winds tossed and turned, a hundred gales that never stayed constant, the eagle-man merged into them. He flew left and right, up and down. He was always at the right place at the right time for errant winds to guide him.

On the sand below, Dorman narrowed his eyes and adopted a fighting stance with both daggers raised.

Fesh Wui cut circles in mid-air, constantly coming lower. Most people could only see a blur. He was threatening to attack at any moment.

Until he did.

He came crashing down, talons poised to strike. Dorman reacted instantaneously, redirecting the blow and striking back. In the blink of an eye, both fighters had received light cuts, and Fesh Wui was back in the air. “Interesting!” he cawed out loud. “Let’s see how long you can last! Storm of Talons!”

The winds intensified. Fesh Wui’s speed increased further. He circled over Dorman’s still form like a lightning bolt, crashing down without patterns or warnings. The strikes were near-instantaneous and terribly dangerous, and it took all of Dorman’s concentration to react in time.

The winds kept picking up. Fesh Wui’s strikes became sharper. Though he sported several cuts and ripped feathers himself, Dorman was in worse shape. Blood drenched his tight clothes in places, and more flowed from a deep cut on his forehead, blinding his left eye. Without it, Dorman lacked depth perception, and that only made the situation uglier. However, he wasn’t discouraged.

“Oh yeah?” he shouted in rage. “I can run, too!”

Suddenly, Dorman became a blur himself. He couldn’t fly, but he moved around the arena floor at blinding speed, zigzagging at random. He was a flash that moved from one end of the arena to the other without rhyme or reason. Moreover, he used the worm-like movement that alternated between being slow and fast without a set pattern, and he even occasionally darted sideways as if leaping at prey.

It would be more difficult for Fesh Wui to hit a moving target.

But it was a challenge he welcomed. The two fighters disappeared between the winds and sands, becoming two blurs that occasionally clashed in flashes of steel. They exchanged dozens of strikes in a few seconds. The spectators cheered, even though most couldn’t tell what was happening or who was winning. Even some E-Grade merchants couldn’t tell.

Jack could. His high stats helped him keep track of the two fighters, and he could see they were roughly equally matched. However, as the seconds passed, Dorman found himself on the back foot more and more. His left eye inhibited his depth perception, disorienting him just enough that Fesh Wui could seize the upper hand.

Of course, Jack knew that Dorman still hadn’t revealed all his abilities, but it wasn’t difficult for Fesh Wui to infer that, too. Almost everyone had an active Skill.

The critical clash came unannounced. It was one strike amongst many. Jack barely caught the signs. As he watched the two of them about to collide, his gut whispered that something was different.

A spark of electricity flashed between Dorman’s daggers. They snapped forward like an insect’s mandibles, accelerating more than should be possible and aiming to cut off Fesh Wui’s extended legs. They were wreathed in lightning and boomed like thunder.

Fesh Wui reacted just in time. Two blades of wind shot out of his legs, from just behind the talons, so highly condensed they could be seen by the naked eye. They headed for Dorman’s daggers. If the blades of wind blocked the daggers, as Fesh Wui clearly intended to do, Dorman wouldn’t have time to reposition, and he would be pierced clean by the talons.

But Dorman had another ace in his sleeve.

Mid-Skill, he activated another. His speed shot up tremendously as Fesh Wui slowed down in his eyes. He went on overdrive, putting the rest of the world in slow motion. He jumped and rotated. The talons only scratched his side, inflicting deep but manageable wounds. The wind blades missed his daggers, which turned vertically instead of horizontally.

The lightning snap carried on, and the daggers crossed each other in the base of Fesh Wui’s left wing, cutting it clean off without slowing in the slightest. Fesh Wui’s momentum carried him forward, but missing a wing, he could only drag against the sand until he came to a halt.

These all take time to describe, but they happened so quickly that if Jack had blinked, he would have missed the entire exchange. Most people didn’t understand what transpired. They only saw them clashing like every other time, then a momentary flash of lightning, and then Dorman was standing with his arms crossed and outstretched while Fesh Wui screamed on the ground.

“I resign!” he cried out in blind panic. “Heal me! My wing! My wing!”

The despair in his voice was such that even Jack felt a hint of pity. The djinn healers practically flew into the arena to help him, ignoring Dorman, who had fallen to the ground and panted hard with obvious injuries.

A healer grabbed the wing off the ground and pushed it against the stub, while the head healer—a djinn with three question marks in place of Level—chanted something as she pressed her hands to the wound. Three more healers touched her on the shoulder, transferring green energy from their bodies to hers.

Muscle and sinew tied together. The process was slow, but a few moments later, the lead healer kneeled on the ground, panting, while Fesh Wui shone with joy. “My wing!” he cried out. “My wing is back! Thank you! Thank you!”

Jack didn’t know what to feel. He had seen people lose limbs in the first phase of the tournament, and almost all of them had ended up crippled. Only healers at the D-Grade could reattach or regrow severed limbs. The only way for a high E-Grade healer to do so was to act immediately after the dismembering, and even then, it was a tall task.

Their urgency to treat Fesh Wui and ignore Dorman wasn’t unjustified. However, it still left a bitter taste in Jack’s mouth.

Fesh Wui flew away, cradling his reattached wing with extreme love and completely ignoring Dorman, whom the healers finally turned to, quickly fixing his wounds. Dorman jumped up to the stands and was congratulated by everyone. He sported a big, wide grin.

“Were those both Dao Skills?” Jack couldn’t help asking.

“Yes,” Dorman replied. “One from the Dao of Speed and one from the Dao of Lightning.”

“Shit, man. Well done.”

“Thank you!”

I must get more Dao Skills. After seeing the synergy between Dorman’s Dao Skills, Jack’s resolve was renewed.

“But if you have the Dao Roots of Speed and Lightning, what is that worm teaching you?” he wondered aloud, only to get a strange look by Dorman.

“My master is a cloud worm,” he replied, like it was self-explanatory.

Jack nodded. “Oh yes, my bad. A cloud worm. Of course.”

Dorman nodded back, either not getting or ignoring Jack’s sarcasm, but the announcer’s voice cut them off right then.

“Next fight,” she shouted, then announced the two duelists. Jack turned to look at the sands with deep interest.