Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 453: Slaying Supreme

A frenzy had overtaken Jack and Travelus both. They no longer thought, no longer calculated. They moved purely on instinct. One had developed it through a long life of strife—the other, by a short few years of continuously risking his life. They were veterans going completely all-out. The colosseum had never been livelier.

Jack molded spacetime like soft dough. He pierced through it, accelerated his attacks, and slowed his opponent’s. Life coursed through his limbs, maintaining his rapidly waning energy, while death was infused into the opponent with every punch. Every understanding Jack possessed operated at full throttle, his body cracking out punches with every iota of strength it possessed.

Travelus did not shrink away either. The depth of his Dao was less than Jack’s, but he backed it up with a vastly superior cultivation. Moreover, he possessed some tricks of his own. Though he’d now deteriorated to the late B-Grade realm, he’d once approached the A-Grade. His spacetime hindered Jack’s, using raw power to make it harder to manipulate. His Supremacy seeped through with every spear strike, trying to cut down the confidence in Jack’s heart.

This was the final, desperate battle on both sides.

Jack was not getting an advantage. His cultivation was just too low, and he also had to keep restraining the phantoms in the sky. The seconds passed one at a time. Eva Solvig should be almost here, and Jack was already a lamp without oil. If she arrived, he was as good as dead.

A tiny corner of Travelus’s mind remained rational. He didn’t have to win—he just had to not lose. As long as his energy expenditure matched the opponent’s, he was good.

He saw Jack grow desperate. A massive amount of energy gathered into his fist, condensing to a terrifying degree. He thrust it out before Travelus could retreat. “Supernova!”

The old man gritted his teeth. This was the critical moment. “Spear of Divinity!”

A blinding white spear shot forth, carrying the resolve of a god. Two unstoppable forces clashed. The world was washed away. Tremendous shockwaves spread through the universe, shattering the spatial barriers that served as the walls of this arena. Even the frozen phantoms in the sky were shaken.

The void shattered around Jack and Lonihor, trapping them in a spaceless vacuum. The vision of the arena around them was slowly dispersing, the cries of the spectators growing distant.

Jack’s hand had shattered into bone fragments. As for the spear of Travelus, its tip had broken off. The two cultivators had been evenly matched in this collision—the difference was that Jack’s electricity had worn off, his energy running completely dry. Even the Life Drop transformation had reverted.

Travelus could sense it clearly—Jack had finally run out.

As for the old man himself, though he was almost the same, he’d held back a trace amount of energy. He’d wanted to be ready for all eventualities—but, as it turned out, he’d been too careful. This battle was his victory. Pride entered his eyes. The two fighters were still close to each other, barely a few feet apart, but one of them was completely spent, and it wasn’t Travelus.

He wasn’t even sure if Jack remained conscious.

“You fought well,” he forced out through a bloodied mouth. “To match me from a Grade lower… You are too talented. Too much of a threat. Goodbye, Jack Rust. Let me have the honor of killing the world’s greatest talent.”

Travelus did not have too much strength left, but it was certainly enough to finish this off. He shook his spear, sending off the broken tip, and stabbed it straight into Jack’s chest, aiming for his heart. He was already relieved that this was over.

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The spear penetrated Jack’s skin. It split his flesh, heading ever deeper, then slammed into his ribcage…and stopped. It couldn’t break the bones.

Travelus’s eyes widened. “What!?”

He was a late B-Grade. No matter how efficiently Jack Rust infused his Dao into his body, no matter how advanced his understandings, all of that was moot now. He only possessed the frail body of a C-Grade. Travelus should have been able to pierce him effortlessly.

Then, why…

Mid-fighting, it was hard to differentiate between the intensity of one’s mortal body and the durability provided by infusing one’s body with Dao. Travelus had heard that Jack was physically gifted but didn’t know how much. Coupled with Jack never making it obvious throughout the fight, he’d greatly underestimated Jack’s physical body.

Even now, he struggled to comprehend this. He thought that Jack’s Dao by itself was enough to make him a prodigy, but such a degree of body tempering was just insane!

Was I…deceived?

The old man raised his gaze. He met Jack’s eyes—and he saw that deep inside them, beneath the exhaustion and injury, beneath the impending doom, existed an inextinguishable flame. Those weren’t the eyes of a dead man—they burst with resolve, more alive than ever.

Travelus had never experienced such horror. He could not explain it. He panicked. His arm drew back, pulling away the spear to instinctively defend himself, but realized he could not. Another hand had wrapped around his wrist at some point—a grip which squeezed his bones. It was like being grabbed by a planet. No matter how Travelus struggled, he could not escape. The hand holding him was completely immovable. He paled.

Jack showed a bloody smile. “Got you,” he whispered. One of his hands was holding onto the wrist of Travelus—even with his Life Drop transformation undone, that still left him with one hand free. It clenched into a fist. There was nothing special about it; no Dao, no external energy at all. It was a pure physical fist. Yet, the moment it clenched, Travelus felt his instinct go haywire. Intense fear took him over. He suddenly felt like a mortal grabbed by a bear—only now did he realize that Jack didn’t need any sort of Dao to maul him. He could do it with his bare hands.

How can he be human? Travelus thought in frozen terror. They lied to me! This is… This is a titan!

Jack swung his punch. There was no Dao behind it, but there was no Dao defending Travelus either. He’d spent the last of his energy in that spear strike. This was a pure physical collision—one he was destined to lose.

Travelus’s Angel battle form was still present. His body was covered in plate armor, but that did not include his face. Jack’s fist slipped right in. It carried the power to obliterate mountain ranges—the face of a late B-Grade, especially an elderly one, was like soft mush.

Jack’s hand met flesh, then bone, but did not halt. A skull splintered. Jack’s fist dove into the helmet to the wrist, until it met metal. Only then did he stop his swing. He felt the old man’s body tense up, then grow limp. He slowly withdrew his fist. The plate armor dispersed, leaving only a broken body hanging in the void, and the twelve divine phantoms dissipated like they were never there.

Jack tilted his head back and drew a deep, trembling breath. He was utterly exhausted; not passing out was a struggle.

Level up! You have reached Level 343.

Level up! You have reached Level 344.

…

Level up! You have reached Level 360. Further levels locked until the development of your next Dao Fruit.

Congratulations! Titan Taunt II → Titan Taunt III

Jack was happy about the skill. More importantly, however, he didn’t even know how many levels he’d gotten. “All into Physical…” he managed to whisper. The familiar rush of power did not flood him like it used to—it was more like a faint trickle entering his cracked body. Yet, it was enough. He quickly gathered himself and used the trace energy he’d regained to fly through the void, barely achieving two teleportations before he ran out.

Thankfully, the Trampling Ram had already been flying his way. They met him halfway, already charging up a warp. Brock teleported outside the ship, grabbed Jack, then teleported back inside. The energy around the ship kept building up. The universe was deathly silent.

A white-haired woman suddenly crossed the void before them. She was disheveled and urgent—her hands flashed as they shot out a white beam of purity. “No!” she shouted.

A golden shield appeared, slowing down her attack just enough. The Ram tore through space and disappeared, teleporting light years away. Eva remained alone in the void, accompanied only by the nearby, headless, floating corpse which used to belong to Travelus Lonihor. Fear and rage alternated on her face.

Finally, she raised her head and screamed.

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