Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack had never heard anything like that. He’d never even considered it. Everyone spoke of nine fruits, that was the whole theme of the C-Grade. Nine was as close to perfection as one could get.

But what if it wasn’t? What if there could be ten fruits, it was just that no one had been able to achieve them?

Why was this breakthrough the only fatal one? Could it be that cultivators were meant to have ten fruits, and people had just found a way to force this breakthrough at nine?

Or, maybe, nine fruits really was the limit, and the tenth fruit was the step towards an unattainable perfection? The true perfect path?

Whoever said that nine signified perfection? Bullshit! It was obviously ten, ten was the number!

Jack knew this was insane. He had no guarantee it would work, that it even could work. Maybe ten fruits weren’t possible—maybe nine really was the limit, and cultivators were doomed to have an imperfect inner world. The only hint he had at the existence of a tenth fruit, besides his own wishes, was the tenth fruit he’d glimpsed at at the Green Dragon Realm, which could mean all sorts of other things.

If Jack tried to develop a tenth fruit right now and failed, that would severely affect his breakthrough. It might even fail completely and kill him. To even think of attempting it was the sign of a madman.

Good thing he was one.

Let’s go! Jack thought. His attention became razor-sharp. His Dao spread out, covering the Dao Tree and slowing down its disappearance. It was too late to stop it, but he could delay it a bit. At the same time, part of his gathered energy seeped into the remaining nine fruits, invigorating them. They were alive once again, blooming with power.

Jack focused his mind on the crown of the tree. Nine fruits decorated it, evenly splitting its energy streams. It seemed complete, but Jack now suspected it wasn’t. He tried to create another fruit.

The tree no longer possessed roots or a trunk, so he forcefully poured energy into the crown. The branches shivered. The leaves fluttered, and the fruits wobbled as if questioning his decision.

For every other fruit, the process had been natural. He would pour energy into his Dao Tree, then focus on a concept. If his foundation was solid enough, that energy would automatically enter a flower and form a Dao Fruit.

That didn’t happen. Instead, the energy just circulated aimlessly among the branches, not knowing where to go and finding no gap to plug. Jack wasn’t one to quit easily. He grabbed that energy with his willpower and forced it into one flower which looked slightly larger than the others. The energy protested. The flower shook as if about to explode. Jack kept them both intact with his force of will, forcing them to fuse.

His brain turned wobbly. In the real world, people stared at him from afar, noticing that he’d suddenly grown paler and his nose had begun to bleed. Worried cries emerged everywhere.

“What’s going on?” Elder Heavenstar exclaimed. “Will he really fail his breakthrough?”

“He is blocking the tree’s disintegration,” Elder Boatman replied—his perception was shaper and his experience richer than Heavenstar’s. His usually impassive voice now contained a hint of anger. “What is he doing? That boy is an idiot!”

All across the crowd, people were worried about Jack. Some took joy in his misfortune, bragging about how he was not as great as he seemed. Even the Sage seemed puzzled—his eyes were closed, however, as if observing something with great focus.

Sovereign Heavenly Spoon had forgotten to blink. Dorman stared like his world was broken. Min Ling was shocked, her hands clasped together. You can’t fail! she shouted inwardly. Not you!

Seeing that Jack didn’t immediately turn better, most people assumed he really had messed up his breakthrough. They couldn’t bear to watch. The majority of the crowd flew to the other side of the asteroid, where Brock was seemingly doing much better. His breathing was even, and his body stable—he even seemed ready to begin the creation of his inner world.

***

Jack didn’t care about anything else. His entire being was focused on developing this tenth fruit. The energy and flower were both resisting, but he used iron will to force them into unity. This was overdrawing his mental reserves—even if he abandoned the tenth fruit right now and continued with his breakthrough, the size of his inner world would be greatly affected.

Yet, he persisted. Jack wasn’t driven by the fear of failure, but by the drive to succeed. He wouldn’t cower.

“Grow!” he shouted, pouring even more energy into the flower. It stubbornly resisted—then, ever so slowly, a little shape began to emerge from its midst. It was just the most fundamental form of a fruit, far from a complete one. Yet, the moment Jack saw it, his hope was rekindled. He decided to throw all caution to the wind and go all-out.

“GROW!” he commanded. Of the massive amount of energy he had amassed by dissolving his Dao foundation and Dao Tree, a significant portion dove into this newborn fruit. It struggled to grow. It was like the world itself was resisting it, but this was Jack’s soul, it was his world. If he wanted a tenth fruit, he would have a tenth fruit!

He roared and pushed harder. Veins stuck out on his temples. The nine fruits protested the new arrival to their complete system, but Jack forced them to make room. A tenth concept arrived. It wasn’t one Jack had identified yet, but it was exactly what was missing, a concept true to the deepest reaches of his soul. He knew it was meant to be. He pushed even harder.

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The more this new fruit grew, the greater the resistance it faced. Jack poured more and more power into it. The energy he had amassed, which was meant to expand his inner world, was now being sacrificed to grow this tenth fruit. It was a mad gamble—one which might not even be wise. It seemed insane. Even if he did grow this fruit, with what energy would he continue his breakthrough?

The only thing in favor of this development was Jack’s instinct, and he intended to follow it to the end. That was the true path. That was the Jack way.

The fruit developed slowly. It grew from a flower, into a rod, into a shape resembling a feather. It surpassed the size of a new fruit and kept going.

Jack wasn’t just making it appear. He wanted to grow it directly to maturity. That was the only way it could assist his breakthrough—it would be useless otherwise.

The fruit kept growing. Over half of Jack’s amassed energy went into it, a much larger amount than any other fruit had absorbed. Its size almost reached the others. Jack felt a power forcing it down, constricting the fruit, as if the world itself wouldn’t permit it to exist.

“THIS IS MY WORLD! I COMMAND IT!” Jack shouted, his eyes red. “GROW!”

The opposing energy faltered. Jack’s tenth fruit sprang to full size—a white feather, light and free. The moment it finished growing, it fell perfectly into place among the system of the other nine fruits. The energy circulation between them turned smoother. All the errors were eliminated.

The opposing force disappeared like it was never there. Jack lost his breath for a moment. He stopped supporting the new fruit—and nothing happened. It stayed there, proud and true.

Ten fruits. This was perfection. This was the Dao.

And finally, Jack knew exactly what his tenth fruit was about. His previous fruits formed a system containing everything but lacking direction. Even the Fist was only a tool, a way forward, not a destination. Only this final concept was the real driving force behind Jack’s every decision since the Integration.

Freedom.

He laughed wildly, the sound echoing all over his soul world. “Fear me, world!” he roared. “Perfection really is unattainable. Nobody can reach it, but I can choose to try—because I am free!”

New power erupted from inside him. He felt like he’d just undergone a qualitative evolution—like he’d become incomparable to before. This wasn’t just the tenth fruit. It was a whole new realm, a realm in which he alone could stand.

“Inner world, here I come!” he shouted.

The ten fruits hung on the crown of his tree for just a moment—an image which Jack burned inside his brain, one he would never forget. One which, perhaps, had never before been seen in the history of the universe.

Jack grabbed his first fruit, that of the Fist. He tore it off the branch and crushed it between his hands—purple juice flew out, the fruit collapsing into pure energy. An incorporeal purple mass floated beside Jack, flanked by the remaining half of his energy. He’d just destroyed his own fruit, but he couldn’t be more excited. This was the way forward. This was the path to true power—true freedom.

His all-out gamble had succeeded! What would be the reward?

He tore down the fruit of Space, then Life, then Death. The various shapes disappeared, leaving only the colored concepts floating around him. Jack laughed. He destroyed the rest of the fruits as well. The tree finished disintegrated. Only his very last Dao Fruit remained, hanging alone in the void, a white feather representing Freedom. It had only existed for a few moments, yet Jack could sense that its importance surpassed everything else he’d achieved.

“Thank you,” he said, then crushed it in his hands. A tenth concept rose to meet the others, and Jack pushed his hands together, forcing all those concepts to merge. Where the colors met, his soul shattered. A gap was created. The energy he’d amassed before flowed inside, guided by its own instincts to create space and time, matter and energy.

It was a world inside a world, rapidly expanding inside Jack’s soul. Everywhere it touched, the previous soul world collapsed, replaced by the new order. Jack was unaffected by it, as were Copy Jack, the Life Drop, and the Realm Heart. They were simply enveloped by Jack’s inner world, dragged into it.

Finally, the borders of the inner world reached those of his previous soul world and converted everything. There was no soul anymore—only a world filling his very being, exactly one thousand miles across. It was an empty vastness containing only starry dust, the particles on which the world was built.

This was Jack’s core now. His inner world. The breakthrough had succeeded, but he contained his joy, because there was still a way to go. The borders of this world didn’t really exist—they weren’t in the same dimension as his body, but more like a separate island in the endless sea of spacetime. As long as it remained stable, and as long as he had the energy to feed it, it could keep growing.

He sensed it clearly. Right now, this world was in its most malleable state. Now was the time to expand it as much as he could. Moreover, the system of laws directing it was perfect, with no gaps in between. It wasn’t the same system as in the universe outside, but one equally real, as if Jack was cultivating his own universe to stand on par with the actual one.

With his perfect laws in place, stability wasn’t an issue. Moreover, thanks to that great stability, the energy it needed to expand was minimal.

Jack had no idea how large he could make his inner world, but he knew that he couldn’t wait to find out. He spread his hands, and like a god, he commanded, “Expand!”

***

The crowd remained restless in the outside world. Most had flown off to watch Brock’s breakthrough, not bearing to see a genius fall. A few had remained, however, including both A-Grades. At a certain point, the Sage’s eyes flew open, filled with genuine disbelief. Elder Boatman reacted a beat later, narrowing his eyes at Jack, not with shock but hesitation.

“Jack seems to have recovered…” he muttered. “Good. However, I can sense he’s wasted a lot of energy. Creating a decent world will be impossible.”

“It is regrettable, but he has fallen,” Heavenstar agreed with a sigh. “What a shame. I really believed in this young man.”

The soul was inviolable. Even these A-Grades couldn’t see inside Jack’s soul, so they couldn’t see he had created a new fruit. Even the fluctuations of his aura were obstructed by the tremendous amounts of power surrounding him. All they could see was that he remained at seemingly the same point of his cultivation, but over half of his energy had been wasted recovering from whatever had set him back.

Most spectators, however, couldn’t even see that.

“Hey, Jack Rust recovered!” a C-Grade celebrated. “Come check him out, everyone! I think he’ll begin forming his inner world soon!”

“Are you kidding me!?” a voice rang in his mind—one of his friends who’d flown to the other side of the asteroid. “The brorilla has already started. You come here!”

“He started!?”

The cultivator was surprised. Generally speaking, the more talented a cultivator, the faster they could form their inner world. In the eyes of everyone, Brock succeeding first marked him as more talented than Jack, not to mention that Jack had almost failed entirely.

I guess he really was overstated… What a disappointment. The cultivator sighed, then rushed over to meet his friends on the other side of the asteroid. Whatever the case, Brock the brorilla was now expanding his inner world. If he was more talented than the famous Jack Rust, just how many miles could he reach?

Everyone rushed over, eager to watch.

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