Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

The green light pulsed. It turned into a beam and drove itself into the chest of a human standing nearby, too small for anyone to notice so far. He wore dirty clothes and had yellowed teeth, his hair disheveled. As the light entered him, his aura grew, quickly expanding from the early A-Grade all the way to the Archon level, rising still until it was similar in power to Axelor’s.

The Sage laughed. “After a billion years, I’m finally free!” he shouted in his normal voice. “Come, brother. Let’s end this.”

Axelor and Enas—who now occupied the Sage’s body—melted into a black and green pool of light respectively, then mixed together, forming a yin-yang shape in space. “You too, my siblings. Let us be reborn,” the Sage’s voice echoed. The two greater gods glanced at each other. Then, they too melted into pools of ethereal light which dove into the yin-yang diagram. An intense concentration of power shook the universe, once again dislodging space and time. The combined aura of twelve Gods rose through the Archon realm, advancing higher and higher until it slowed down. Then, with a pop, it burst through, its quantity lessening but its quality skyrocketing.

The Church army erupted into cheers. People shook in suppressed fury and joy, while others hugged the cultivators next to them and celebrated. “We did it!” they shouted. “There is hope!”

“All those sacrifices weren’t in vain!” a man shouted, raising his fists to the sky.

Jack held his breath. “They broke through!” he said, eyes shaking. “They reached the S-Grade!”

“Bro,” Brock said from the side, not sharing Jack’s excitement. “Did you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“When Life Bro and Entropy Bro fused, they only spoke in Life Bro’s voice. Not both, like the other fusions.”

The pool of light shone in all colors of the rainbow, then settled on green. The Sage reformed, his aura completely transformed, having risen to a quality similar to Jack’s except far grander. This was the true S-Grade.

“And so the God of All is reborn,” said the Sage, in his regular voice, “except it is me. Goodbye, my foolish siblings.”

“They miscalculated,” the Heaven Immortal said. “You did not merge with them. You consumed them. How did that—”

“No spoilers,” the Sage said, reappearing next to the Heaven Immortal and hitting it with a palm strike. A thousand different Daos formed a complex shield which was then completely overpowered and destroyed. The Sage’s palm smashed into the Heaven Immortal’s chest, and its entire robotic body exploded, its head and limbs flying in different directions. It was deader than dead.

Jack looked on, stunned. So did everyone else. Their cheers were cut abruptly. The Heaven Immortal, whom the Church cultivators had sacrificed themselves by the hundreds to delay, had been destroyed, just like that. The difference between Archons and S-Grades was tremendous. Unbridgeable.

The Church should have been celebrating, yet none of them moved. Sudden fear left them frozen. An instinctive understanding that something was very, very wrong.

Enas turned slowly to regard them. A silent astral breeze lifted his robes. His green aura was tinged with hints of darkness, falling over him and obstructing his image, leaving only cold eyes and a hard, predatory smile. As his aura submerged the Church cultivators in frozen water, their relief turned empty, their joy was dashed. They all felt a sinking feeling at the pit of their stomachs as despair, slow and steady, creeped over them.

The Church’s teachings spoke of Enas as a loving father, but there was nothing loving about this figure. He was cold and calculating, while they were defenseless cattle. His gaze hounded their souls.

Silence stretched for a while. Far away, the remnants of the Immortals’ army scrambled into a wild retreat, but Enas paid them no heed, only observing the Church cultivators. They instinctively grouped closer together like mortals in the winter.

Jack remembered the words of Axelor’s clone. Enas is no loving father, he’d said. All he cares about is himself.

“We… We won, right?” someone asked, gulping.

“I think so,” another replied.

“Why doesn’t this feel like winning?”

The Arch Priestess was completely silent. Jack and Brock glanced at each other, then back at Enas.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“He’s considering whether to kill us or not,” Brock said.

“We made a mistake,” Jack said through gritted teeth. He thought back to all those brave cultivators who gave their lives to let Enas be revived. Master Boatman, too. The scythe in his space ring suddenly felt accusatory, a token of Jack’s failure. His gaze grew dark. He clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into tempered flesh. “We exchanged a monster for another,” he spat out. “Robots, Gods… None of them care about us. Nobody’s coming to save us. We messed up so fucking hard. All those sacrifices were for nothing.”

His emotions warred between terror, regret, and grief. He and all other Church cultivators had fallen from the highest heavens to the pits of hell in a single moment. The God standing before them was something they could never, ever defeat, and they were completely at his mercy. �

Enas—still looking like Sage—moved his gaze slightly. It landed on Jack. Just the pressure of being stared at was so intense he could barely breathe.

“What are your intentions?” he managed to say.

Enas smiled coldly. “Isn’t it obvious? Mortals have proven themselves too dangerous. To ensure my continued survival, I will purge all life from the universe except my own.”

Jack expected something like this, but it still burned his heart. “Why would you do that?” he cried out, finding more of his strength. “You created us! We saved you!”

“Ah,” Enas said, shaking his head. “If you created a bomb, would you let it sit in your living room until it destroyed you? Would you love it?”

“We are not objects.”

“You are toys. A little experiment I designed to test my powers. It went pretty well, but it’s time to end it. You will no longer be a threat after today, but others may follow in your footsteps. I cannot allow that.”

Jack felt helpless. And stupid. So many of his fellow cultivators had given their lives, and he had been about to as well, just to create a monster even more unbeatable than the Heaven Immortal. He could see no way out. There was nothing in the universe which could stop an S-Grade.

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He wanted to roar in fury, but the Arch Priestess had gone silent from shame. Everyone looked at him to speak. He had to at least try.

“You can’t do this to us,” he pleaded. “We don’t want to kill you. We don’t want anything from you—we just want to live!”

“For now, maybe,” Enas replied condescendingly. “But not forever. You do not understand the nature of your own consciousness. Mortality is an expanding inevitability, and sooner or later, someone will appear with both the will and power to threaten me.”

“And you’ll kill us all, just for that?”

“Tell me, Jack. How silly would you feel if your throne was usurped by a bunch of toys you made?”

“We are not toys, we’re people!”

“To you, maybe. To me, you’re just a bunch of stardust formed into shapes which make it move in patterns. You’re not even alive, not in the same way I am. You’re slightly more complex objects. Breaking you means nothing.”

“You can’t think that!” Jack shouted, anger rising inside him. “What are you even saying? You think we’re not alive? My sacrifices and effort meant nothing? My son’s life was nothing? All the brave people who sacrificed themselves for you today were nothing?”

“Yes,” the God replied.

Jack was about to erupt. He would have, if he didn’t know it would be useless. “You can’t actually believe that! You are the God of Life, for God’s sake! You need to respect life.”

“No, Jack. I am the God of Survival. My survival,” Enas said. “I do want to thank you for freeing me, though. My imprisonment turned out to be a fortunate event, but it would mean little if I was never released.”

“Fortunate?”

“That’s right. Existing away from the other Gods allowed me to develop a stronger individuality and be able to absorb them instead of merely fusing. My presence near System space let me distribute clones like the Sage you know, guiding the world’s development to where the other Gods would need to fuse with me, so I could absorb and annex them. Delaying the Crusade until you were ready was challenging, but I succeeded. Now, your efforts are mine to reap.”

“You make no sense.”

Enas smiled coldly. “That’s a really nice body, Jack. Better than mine. It would be a shame not to acquire it.”

“What?” Jack asked again, but the God did not reply. He turned into a green meteor which charged towards Jack, completely disregarding the gathered Church army.

They were flooded with the same dark feelings as Jack. Seeing the God approach, these brave cultivators snorted and raised their weapons.

“Jack is the future,” a peak A-Grade said, leveling a blade at God. “If you want to harm him, you’ll need to get through us.”

“Alright,” the reply lazily drifted over.

A single green meteor flew into hundreds of the universe’s strongest cultivators. Not one person retreated. A thousand different Daos rose to meet Enas, each glowing the power to sunder planets. The green meteor crashed into them like a bowling ball against glass, shattering them all, opening the void wide, eradicating the meaning of timespace.

Energy offsets flew everywhere as Enas appeared amidst the army. He waved his hands, conducting a symphony of death. Streaks of intense life energy followed them. Every time those streaks approached a cultivator, they pierced straight through his defenses, then infiltrated his body and overfilled it with life. It didn’t matter if they were B-Grade or A-Grade. Everyone was the same in the face of absolute power. Bodies exploded like flesh balloons filled with blood. The explosions came close together, resembling firecrackers, and blood rained through the void.

Entire squads flew towards Enas, passing through the gaps in his attacks. They unleashed their own attacks, only to have them split ineffectively against his body. It was like his mere physicality superceded all natural laws. Even their self-detonations were useless. The Arch Priestess flashed beside Enas. She was slapped away before she even made her move, instantly rendered unconscious and near-death. A bunch of healers rushed after her as Enas kept tearing at the army.

It was a massacre.

Finally, some cultivators got cold feet. Heroism collapsed before desperation. They tried to run away, only to discover that a green sphere had surrounded their army at some point, its walls webbed. Anyone who touched it exploded in a shower of flesh and blood. In desperation, people tried shrinking to pass through its gaps, teleporting through it, or attacking it. Everyone exploded all the same. The green web was as holistic as Enas’s body, superceding and countering all individual Daos. It remained based on the Dao of Life, but the sheer quality and quantity trumped everyone else’s to the point where individual Daos did not matter. Even the Daos directly opposite that of Life were useless. God-killer swords were useless when wielded by ants.

A brave soul self-detonated against the web to save her people, but this attack was as ineffective as the rest of them.

Enas snorted again. “Bunch of ants,” he said. As people turned to look at him again, they found he’d at some point teleported right next to Jack. Jack punched out a black hole, only for Enas’s palm to grab his fist and snuff out the hole. Brock smashed his staff against Enas’s head, but the God didn’t even bother defending. The staff snapped on impact, and Brock’s palm split as he was sent flying backward.

A green web appeared around Enas and Jack, forcing everyone to make some distance or die. The outer net remained as well, trapping the cultivators between two concentric spheres. After their comrades’ gruesome fate, they didn’t dare touch either.

Only Jack and Enas were left inside the inner web. Jack tried to pull out his fist but couldn’t even budge it. Resolve filled his gaze. Before he could self-detonate, an unstoppable force shrouded his body, freezing him completely. Even the energy of his inner world ground to a stop. He was completely immobilized and defenseless.

His only bright thought was the fact that Enas apparently wanted to steal his body, which Jack knew was impossible. There was no way. As great as the difference between them was, it was nowhere near enough to achieve something as complex. Jack’s soul was imprinted into every cell of his body, every strand of energy. He was one with his Dao. Stealing it away was impossible.

But Enas seemed confident, and that scared Jack.

The God grinned devilishly. “You’re probably thinking I can’t do it,” he said, “but you’ve been dancing in my palm for longer than you think. Awaken.”

Deep in Jack’s body, Copy Jack opened his eyes. Green energy flooded out, far more than he should possess, and connected with the Life Drop to raise a storm of life energy which whipped against every single cell of Jack’s body. His inner world was unaffected—it was his soul, vested into every inch of this world, that came under attack.

Venerable Saint Thousand Shell roared under the onslaught. It could barely shield itself against such power. It grabbed the Stone and Franky and retreated into the Life Drop, which was now completely empty. Its inside was the calm eye of the storm, granting them temporary safety, but the turtle realized to its horror that any control it had over the Supreme Blood was gone.

“Copy Jack!” it roared in angry disbelief. “What are you doing!?”

Copy Jack, still outside the Life Drop, ignored them completely.

“Harboring nascent souls is a risky endeavor,” Enas said slowly as the storm of energy in Jack’s body grew stronger. “I remember how this one contained the will to travel and see the outside world. It was growing nicely, and it quite liked you, too. Too bad it was naive—once it touched my drop of blood, so many years go, I destroyed its will and occupied its mind. How do you think the Sage could always find you and knew so much about you? I was watching, Jack. Always watching.”

Even Copy Jack… I couldn't protect… Jack thought, but he didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He remained immobilized, and as the attack on his soul ramped up, so did the pain. Copy Jack had existed inside him for so long he was completely harmonized with Jack, allowing him to access every tiny bit of his soul.

It was like a grater passing over Jack’s soul, again and again, striving to destroy his sense of self. A terrible force sought to delete him, wrestle away control of every fiber of being he possessed, to steal his body, power, and identity. Everything that he was would be gone.

Jack felt a pain greater than anything he’d ever endured before. Even the Trial of Will in the Hall of Trials paled in comparison. He would have screamed if his mouth wasn’t immobilized as well.

“Surrender, and the pain will go away,” Enas said. Jack shook in his grip, his body convulsing to the pain. The cultivators around them watched in mute despair, blocked by the inapproachable green web, while Brock had closed his eyes in fierce meditation. The golden aura around him undulated. Everyone else could only wait for the inevitable.

A few moments later, however, Enas frowned. Jack was still thrashing, but nothing else was happening.

“Why do you not yield?” he asked, a measure of strain in his voice. “You know it is impossible for you to resist. I saw your performance in the Hall of Trials—you’ll never outlast me.”

Jack was indeed in extreme pain. Anyone else would have yielded instantly—only his experience in withstanding pain let him last this long. He could sense that, the moment his will wavered, his soul would lose its support, and it would be wiped away forever. He would well and truly die.

No! he screamed through the pain, sensing his grip on reality lessen. No!