Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Rory looked askance at the two armies and ten Gods who’d just popped into existence. He glanced back at the black hole, where the twelve runic pillars had been destroyed. The Sage appeared beside him.

“Elder Sage,” Rory said in a shaky voice, “what do we do?”

The Sage carried a calm smile. “This is unfortunate,” he said, “but I have a feeling everything will work out. How about you go join our army while I wait here?”

Rory looked at the Sage’s confident face, then at the army of the Black Hole Church which had spawned nearby. “Yes sir!” he cried out as he flew over.

***

Jack looked at the new astral field around them. He didn’t recognize the place—strange stars littered the void, not quite a galaxy, but clustered in large or smaller groups with vast swathes of void between them. There were also a few isolated ones, lazily drifting through the darkness. Through the gaps between clusters, other galaxies were visible. Jack couldn’t make out the Milky Way—from afar, all spiral galaxies looked alike.

“I thought your universe only had galaxies. What is this place?” Fiend Prince said. Jack had retreated to the front of his army after the duel, where the eager monster was also waiting.

“The former Ancient galaxy,” he replied. “The cradle of all life—except space monsters—which was destroyed during the First Crusade. Enas was trapped in a black hole near it.”

“Wait,” Fiend Prince said, gazing at the large black hole hovering nearby. “You don’t mean…”

“That’s right. The black hole you see holds Enas, the God of Life, and those funky rods were trying to rescue him.”

Fiend Prince stared agape. The plan of rescuing Enas was top secret—besides Jack, Brock, Boatman, and the Archons, almost nobody knew. To them, they’d just randomly teleported to a different point in space. Nothing much seemed to have changed, but those in the know were devastated. With the Gods and Immortals here, saving Enas was impossible. They’d just have to fight and hope the Gods didn’t turn on them afterward.

With the sudden teleportation putting a lull on the battle, Axelor turned to the Arch Priestess. “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” he asked, his voice shaking the void. Hints of his aura rolled over the Church army, giving the cultivators a sinking feeling.

“Does it really matter?” the Arch Priestess said, rising over her soldiers. Her expression was bitter. “It’s over now, anyway. Let’s just fight the war.”

“ENAS MUST NOT BE FREED.”

“Yes, it will be as you say.”

“That was an interesting plot you orchestrated, Arch Priestess,” the Heaven Immortal’s voice echoed, “but you failed. We will end this now.”

The Immortal army washed over the cosmos again. They descended on their enemies like a swarm of unfathomably powerful locusts, blasting the void open with endless surges of power.

World-destroying attacks flew everywhere, annihilating the ambient Dao, ripping it apart as everyone wrestled for control over it. In moments, the ambient Dao was gone, replaced with the wild energy of thousands of inner worlds. Almost every master of the universe was present, whether they had to leave seclusion to make it or withdraw from their retirement. This battle would be remembered for billions of years.

The Church army, while fewer in number than their opponents, was equally imposing. B-Grades fell into formation led by A-Grades. Massive runic circles appeared, powered by clusters of inner worlds, to spray death upon the enemy. Jack watched lances the size of planets spear through the void, launched forward like they weighed nothing. He saw several A-Grade wizards combining their powers to form sun-like fireballs, which they hurtled forward, and he saw a storm of Space Dao slice apart an area the size of a solar system. Summons sprang into existence— colossal angels and monsters, twelve-headed hydras, ogres the size of planets.

The usually tame fabric of reality now pulsed rapidly, every tiny touch causing it to tear and open to the void beyond. Even that void was weaponized, certain high-level cultivators pulling it out in batches and firing it at their opponents.

In this chaotic melee, the worst were Time cultivators. Fighting in three dimensions was bad enough—they spread the battle into the fourth as well, creating glimpses of reality which had yet to be or already had been. Every B-Grade’s Dao perception was short-circuited by the almighty chaos, forcing them to rely just on their sight to gauge the battlefield. In such a high-level conflict, they were little more than pawns. Only the strongest of them could fight freely. The rest remained close to their assigned A-Grades, adding their powers into formations.

Whenever a formation shattered, its members spread into the battlefield, fighting not to win, but to survive. Jack glimpsed many B-Grades getting sucked into dimensional gaps and disappear, or simply get torn apart at the aftermath of a more powerful cultivator’s battle.

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Many A-Grade cultivators were working by themselves, going head-to-head against the enemy masters. Dozens of these once elite confrontations now covered the entire battlefield. Jack spied Elder Boatman lead a squad of three A-Grades into battle, right under where Archon One Fist faced an enemy Archon clad in a mantle of chaos. Space around them was empty and desolate for endless miles, the tiny bodies of cultivators barely noticeable before the massive halos of their powers.

Jack saw Sovereign Heavenly Spoon and Min Ling dash into an enemy squad: a planet-sized green phantom tried to scoop up some cultivators and eat them, but an equally massive hammer smashed into it, eliciting a pained moan. Red lightning escaped a crack in the void to assault the hammer, melting it, while purple flames electrified its caster. The green phantom escaped the hammer’s suppression, reaching out and scooping the enemy cultivator directly into its mouth. It burped before roaming deeper into the battlefield.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

There was another part of the battlefield, however. A part which Jack wanted to rush, but which he’d been advised not to. In a distant region of the void, the ten Gods and the most powerful Archons of each side struggled together. They were far less people than in the main battlefield, but their battle easily overwhelmed anything else.

Jack was momentarily transfixed. The Gods battled in a rough group, throwing around their colossal powers like it meant nothing. A lesser cultivator wouldn’t have noticed, but Jack saw in their Dao manipulations the signs of amateurs. They possessed great power but didn’t know to wield it properly—probably because they never had to. A significant measure of their power was wasted. They weren’t really amateurs, of course, just nowhere close to possessing the average Archon’s wealth of battle experience. Despite that, they could match the mightiest of mortal Archons.

Jack briefly wondered whether the Gods had actually reached the S-Grade and just didn’t know how to control their power. A wave of aura dispelled that notion. The Gods were clearly Archons, just deeper into that realm than any mortal had been able to reach.

Axelor himself was on a different level. His dark tentacles lashed around wildly, each carrying the power of a normal Archon. They were made of Entropy so dense it turned solid, and he had an entire planet’s worth of the thing. If he desired to destroy a place like Earth, it would take nothing more than an afterthought, similar to a human flicking a switch.

Right now, that massive behemoth of a God had clashed repeatedly against the Heaven Immortal and the other thirty-two Immortals. They had arrayed themselves into a seamless formation to hold their own against the God of Entropy, forcing him to a standstill.

The other nine Gods and the Arch Priestess—the only representative of Church forces in that battlefield—faced the elite forces of the Immortal army. They didn’t possess ten extreme Archons to match all of them—in fact, they barely possessed ten Archons total—but they were backed by dozens of A-Grades, all contributing their power to establish a wide array of formations. In a wild display of skill, they managed to stall the nine Gods and the Arch Priestess, who was an extreme Archon herself. Jack wondered what exactly their plan was, because both their extreme Archon front and the thirty-three Immortals seemed to struggle.

Because the Immortals needed to spend most of their forces on the Gods, only a few Archons and A-Grades were left in the main battlefield, but they were enough to match the Church army.

Jack and Brock had already been rushing to join the battle. They were equal to an Archon and a peak A-Grade respectively—their arrival could massively impact the main battlefield, which split in their wake. Jack shot a straight punch. It tunneled through the battlefield, dragging along many enemy A and B-Grades, swirling them along its path. It pierced through several formations before an Archon dove in its path, blocking it between crossed arms.

“Jack Rust!” she shouted, an Amazonian goddess somewhat similar to Vivi in appearance. “Your duel made my blood boil. Do you dare to face me, Archon Three Lives?”

Jack smiled. “Why wouldn’t I dare?” he shouted back, registering that her title had little to do with her imposing physique. “Will you be alright, Brock?” he asked, turning to the side, only to find that Brock was already gone. A massive golden brorilla rampaged through another corner of the battlefield, cladding all allies it came near in a thin golden aura. The aura persisted as the brorilla moved, slowly conquering the battlefield.

Jack laughed, locked his stare onto Archon Three Lives, and charged.

***

Elder Boatman summoned a flood of death energy and sent it swooping forward, finally overwhelming his opponent’s Chaos. He sighed as he looked around. Back in my day, an A-Grade battle was the talk of the millennium, he thought, taking in the dozens of A-Grade battles happening simultaneously. He sighed again. Youngsters.

Yet, he couldn’t deny his excitement. It’d been a long time since he grew too powerful to fight often, and this war brought back all the passion his life had been missing for the last half a million years. He loathed all the deaths which came from it, but no cultivator could resist the allure of a good battle.

At least, most of us dying are old folk, he thought, gazing over the battlefield again. The majority of cultivators were past their prime. It made sense for a high-level battlefield, yet it still struck him as a pleasant sight. He was in good company.

His vision fell on the youngsters. The geniuses of the Church, packed into one tight squad and sent to pursue their luck. He and many others had agreed to keep an eye on them, step in if necessary, but that hadn’t been the case so far. The geniuses performed admirably. He watched as a giant spoon slipped under an enemy formation and raised it all up. Red lightning and purple flames crackled around it, frying enemy cultivators, while an array of deep but weak Daos enhanced them both. Starhair, Strawpin, and Fiend Prince had been sent to support Heavenly Spoon and Min Ling—the future pillars of the Church fighting together.

He turned his gaze to another part of the battlefield, where Brock led a hundred low-level cultivators into a rampage and Jack faced off against an Archon.

I’ll be able to retire peacefully in a few years, Boatman thought, provided we win. He spotted an enemy late A-Grade glancing over the genius squad and moving over. Boatman rushed to intercept her—far enough away that the geniuses wouldn’t notice.