Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 436: It’s Time

The Forest of the Strong had been a silent place lately. Eric had been kidnapped in front of everyone’s face. The joyful atmosphere had been broken apart.

Huali and Dorman were distraught. Harambe was inconsolable for having failed to stop this, though he never could have. Edgar sat on the highest tower of his newly-built academy, sipping wine and sighing over the ugliness of the world.

The professor had aged overnight. She had been old before, but it hadn’t seemed like it. Now, her age was evident. Messy white hair filled her head, and deep wrinkles had appeared around her eyes. From a combative woman, she had turned into a despondent grandmother. Even her steady grip over the world’s workings had weakened. She was unable to focus. She was forgetting things.

Age took its toll on everyone, and the professor had remained stranded at the peak E-Grade, never reaching the D-Grade and extending her life.

Six months after Eric’s kidnapping, the professor had retired. She withdrew to a small house near the Forest of the Strong where she passed her days in peace, surrounded by friends and family. In her place, Vivi took over running the Bare Fist Brotherhood, and by extension, Earth.

Vivi had been affected by the loss of her son in a different way. Though she hoped Jack would be able to save him, some maternal instinct spoke against that hope. Deep inside, she could feel that her son was dead—and, after a period of manic grief, she’d regathered herself, resolving to help the cultivators of Earth increase their power so they would never be vulnerable again. So Ebele would be safe.

Unlike Jack, Vivi had ample experience with grief. She’d lived a hard life and even led a bloody revolution when the Integration came. She had mourned many people, both family and friends, including her parents.

Of course, her son was an unimaginably more painful loss. It wasn’t something she could get over anytime soon, but prior experience helped her at least gather her bearings and keep operating through the grief.

Under her guidance, the Brotherhood took a more power-oriented turn. She didn’t have people kill each other, as the Immortals and the System did, but she imposed stricter training regimes and harder schedules. This was done out of love for her people—when the next enemy came, they had to be ready.

Working hard helped keep her mind off things. Her own cultivation had stabilized at the middle D-Grade—she was now progressing very, very slowly. Maybe she would reach the late D-Grade by the end of her life, if she was lucky. It was how far her talent could take her.

Of course, the late D-Grade realm sounded low compared to Jack and his universe-class standards, but to normal cultivators it was a godlike realm.

On the surface, the one who’d been affected by Eric’s loss the least was Ebele. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; there were two factors contributing to her stance.

One was the young of her age. When Eric was kidnapped, she had been five years old, and she hadn’t watched it happen. She didn’t even understand the concept of death. The reality of the situation was only something she’d pieced together from the reactions of everyone around her, so it had been less of a shock to her than, say, her mother.

The other reason was that Ebele’s disposition was similar to her father’s. Whenever problems arose, her first reaction was to become stronger. When Eric was kidnapped, she didn’t change her stance, just dove deeper into it. She worked harder; with more vigor. She pushed herself more.

Cultivating before adulthood was a risk, because the soul was still changing and the cultivator may discover they’d accidentally shifted away from their Dao. Ebele, with the guidance of excellent teachers, wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake. But she still yearned for power. She looked forward to her twenty-fifth birthday—the age her mother had deemed best to start cultivating.

Until then, she would do everything in her power to grow stronger in other ways. She took full advantage of the many cultivation resources her family possessed—like the Ice Pond. She sharpened her fighting skills. She read books, and studied, and refined and improved herself with every opportunity. She tried to gather as many experiences as possible.

By the age of six, Ebele could speak two languages, draw, and wrestle with children twice her age. She was familiar with most weapons, specializing in the sword, and with several martials arts. Thanks to all the resources she enjoyed, her stats had reached the level of post-System adults despite not cultivating yet. She was hailed as a prodigy across the Forest of the Strong, with her teachers most praising her attitude—not just her hard work, but also her ability to rest as needed and keep her mind flexible. That was difficult even for adults; to achieve such a mindstate at only six years old was something that didn’t come from any resources, but only vast quantities of raw talent. It was a concept she understood instinctively.

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However, maturity came at a cost. Though Ebele’s mind and heart were beyond her age, she lost out on some of the joy of being a toddler.

On this day, she was sitting in the Ice Pond, cultivating at an area near the waterfall. According to her mother, this was where her father had taken his first step into the Dao of the Fist—and Ebele, who was a proud individual by nature, gazed towards that waterfall every time she was about to give up, drawing from it the courage to keep going.

She didn’t remember her father a lot, but she idolized him. She wanted to be like him, and to do that, she couldn’t lose out. If he could endure the Ice Pond, so could she.

Ebele may have been a prodigy, but she remained six years old. Most things in her mind were seen through the lenses of a child.

Mom and dad will be proud of me, she thought, gritting her teeth as she endured the biting cold spreading over her legs. She was alone in a dark, cold cave, but she pushed herself to keep going. Her little teeth chittered, but her heart never gave out.

Next time, I will protect Mom. Until Dad comes back, I will make sure she never cries again. I… I will protect her. I must! Because, if I don’t do it, no one will!

***

On the path of cultivation, there were times when you could blitz through, advancing at a tremendous pace. There were also times when you had to take things slow, sitting down and waiting for the right time to come.

This was one of the latter periods for Jack.

He stayed in the Black Hole World for around one year. In that period, his power didn’t increase in the slightest. If anything, it degraded, as his soul had released the last of his pent-up energy. He was now thoroughly a cripple, with a Dao Tree that could neither gather energy nor utilize it effectively. Despite his incomparably robust foundation, formidable body, and deep Dao, his current battle prowess was no better than the average middle C-Grade.

But Jack didn’t mind. He took this time to immerse himself in his mortality. With the absence of immediate danger and little sense of time, he could finally relax. Cultivation became a hobby instead of a need. He found pleasure.

For this past year, he would regularly cultivate at the Vortex, deepening his Dao understandings. He let the process be slow and methodical. Simultaneously, he tried to look deep inside himself and come to terms with both his grief and Dao. It wasn’t easy, but steps were being made. Through loving himself, he had earned the time for the shock of the loss to abate, slowly returning all those feelings to more manageable levels.

Between cultivation sessions, Jack had decided to spend time with the Black Hole People. He enjoyed them. In this past year, he had concluded that there was no secret dictatorship, no control of speech or mind, no mastermind in the shadows. They were just genuinely good people.

They laughed a lot. Though their environment was dull, they did their best to brighten it up, painting everything in bright colors and talking each other up at every opportunity. At day, they would work, and at night, they would relax and enjoy themselves. Bars were aplenty in the Black Hole World, filled with the sound of warm laughter.

The crime rates were low. So was poverty. The only way to survive for a billion years was to form an undeniably great society and educate the next generation to be as kind as the previous. The Black Hole people saw themselves as grains of sand, as members of a larger organism. They were just one in an endless line of generations—by so adjusting their perspective, they could withstand the passage of time and the pointlessness of their existence.

But then again, wasn’t all existence pointless?

In spending time with these people, Jack didn’t speak much. He didn’t tell the populace about the outside universe or the way he thought. He simply listened—absorbing their mindset like a sponge, slowly acclimating himself to calm, peaceful nirvana.

For his entire life as a cultivator, he had been struggling against his fate at every step. The Black Hole People did the exact opposite. They embraced it and laughed.

It was a beautiful way to live.

Over one year, Jack’s heart mellowed. He forgot about the violence of his earlier days, letting his mind and soul undergo a subtle transformation. His core solidified, settling down from the craze which had spanned his journey.

His grief represented Death. The Vortex represented Spacetime. And the Black Hole people, with their unique yet alluring lifestyle, represented Life.

This was a cultivation paradise for Jack. All his Daos were clearly expressed. Just by existing, he could draw them in, increasing his understandings every day. Over the course of a year, his Dao soared. He reached heights he could previously only imagine. Through reaching rock bottom and slowly climbing his way back up, he had achieved a complete transformation of himself.

Though his overall power had degraded, his Dao had skyrocketed. If he could repair the crack, it wouldn’t be as simple as returning to his previous level of power—he would be much, much stronger. All that progress was like a bomb of potential waiting to erupt.

But everything hinged on him being able to repair his Dao crack.

One particular day, Jack had been meditating near the Vortex. His eyes slowly opened, revealing the light of deep stars. His lips curved into a thoughtful smile. “I guess…” he whispered in the void, “it’s time to give it a go.”