Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 418: Bro Squad, Assemble!

Three figures hovered in space, ten thousand miles away from the Center Moon. They were Brock, Gan Salin, and Nauja. These three bros, who had once bonded on the outer planet of Field Nebula, were preparing to assault an outpost of the Hand of God.

“Girl Bro,” Brock said. “What do you see?”

“A thousand people. Most are D-Grades—only a handful are C-Grades, with the strongest among them at the late C-Grade.”

Nauja was an archer. Her vision was incredibly sharp—even from ten thousand miles away, she could distinguish the cultivators wandering through the outpost and even inspect the auras left behind by their powerhouses.

“You can make them out,” Salin noted, “but can you make out with them?”

His comment was ignored. “I am ready,” Brock said. “Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“Do I have a moment to pee?”

“Let’s go!”

Their restrained auras suddenly erupted. Two late D-Grades and a middle C-Grade may not have been much in Jack and Brock’s recent escapades, but they were almost apex existences in the Milky Way galaxy. The moment their auras appeared, the outpost below went on full alert.

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” came a sonorous voice. Space warped as a long-haired man stepped into the void, his aura firmly but politely resisting theirs. He was not the late C-Grade cultivator Nauja had mentioned, but a middle C-Grade one. “The Hand of God welcomes guests!” he exclaimed with a smile that didn’t reach his ears. “Could the three fellow cultivators please announce their names?”

“How about I announce your mother?” came Salin’s reply. The man’s smile froze—then, his eyes darkened.

“Who are you?” he demanded, dropping all pretense.

“We are the bros,” Brock replied, stepping forward, “and we are here for war.”

His aura shone golden. A book appeared in his hand, illuminating the void for a hundred miles, while the golden phantom of a brorilla manifested around his body, cladding him in the spirit of brohood. Then, without any more words, Brock charged forth.

“Hmph! The bros? What idiot name is that? If you think the Hand of God can be bullied, you are sorely mistaken!”

Facing Brock’s charge, the long-haired man’s aura didn’t weaken in the slightest. They were both middle C-Grades. Neither had reason to fear the other—or so the man thought. A slim sword appeared in his hands, thrusting forward and penetrating space to reach Brock’s golden book.

For a moment, the world came to a standstill. Their auras were similar in intensity. The raw power each commanded was around the same level. Yet, their Daos and experiences were incredibly far apart. Brock didn’t even pause. Raising his book, he shattered the other man’s sword light, charging right through.

The man paled. He withdrew his energy and conjured a hasty defense, but how could that compare to Brock’s attack? A golden cannonball smashed into his chest. His sword bent and flew out of his hand while his body folded and shot backward at tremendous speed. Blood shot out like red flowers.

“What!?”

This wasn’t the only enemy present. Many people were watching from Center Moon, and seeing one of their strongest protectors destroyed after a single blow, they couldn’t believe their eyes. “Quick, summon reinforcements!” a man shouted.

“The bros are here! The bros are here!” a woman cried out, not recognizing the name but hoping someone else would. In the next moment, however, space beside her parted to reveal an aloof young man whose face radiated insanity.

“You can also call us the three brosquetters,” he said calmly even as his palm pierced through her chest to grab her heart. “Whoops. Guess I should have let you live to tell the tale. Don’t worry though, I’ve got many more catchphrases to use—I’ve been coming up with them for a month!”

Seeing Gan Salin appear in their midst like an angel of death, the cultivators stirred into panic. It wasn’t that he alone could kill them all—it was just that, since these people dared attack, they must have confidence in their victory. In this situation, the surprised and ambushed Hand of God had already lost half the battle!

“Get into formation!” a steady voice echoed over Center Moon. Another C-Grade appeared in the void, and she was even stronger than the last one at the late C-Grade! Moreover, even amongst people of her level, she was considered an elite. She was also bald and wearing monk robes.

Salin’s eyes widened. “Shol!” he shouted, even though this person clearly had nothing to do with Shol. “Is that you? You became a woman!?”

“A worthy opponent,” Brock said, turning to face her. “Come. Our battle will be legendary!”

A steel staff appeared in the woman’s hands and she rushed to battle. The other C-Grade had also recovered slightly and returned to join her. For a time, the three C-Grades waged war deep in space, the shockwaves of their clashes spreading for dozens of miles. Yet, a steady golden aura was slowly but steadily taking the lead—Brock was facing two people by himself and winning.

Meanwhile, Salin was brawling against a crowd of D-Grades. He was not weak. After experiencing so many things and reaching the late D-Grade, he was even more powerful than most peak D-Grades—and a core part of that were his Trial Planet titles.

Against a crowd of mostly middle D-Grades, he was like a wolf against a group of armed toddlers.

“Formation!” a man shouted, stepping ahead of the other D-Grades. They formed into three groups of nine—and some stragglers—with each group combining their powers to form a result greater than the addition of its parts.

“Oh boy!” Salin exclaimed. “I was never good at math. Riddle me this: If there are three groups of nine, which is the same as nine groups of three, does that mean each of you corresponds to one third of a person?”

His question made zero sense. As it echoed, strings of insanity were woven into the air, entrapping the minds of the enemy cultivators and hindering their movements. The weakest ones were even swayed into his nonsense. “It’s four sixteenths, actually,” a man responded only to be slapped at the back of the head by the person standing next to him.

“Focus! Don’t fall for his tricks!”

“Crap! Thanks, you saved me!”

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Salin was embroiled into heavy battle. He might be strong, but his opponents weren’t weak either—as soon as they managed to organize, facing twenty-seven of them was difficult, let alone when they used formations.

Suddenly, however, a sun illuminated the sky. “Sun?” Gan Salin cried out. “But it’s night!”

There was no day or night in Field Nebula. Before the enemies could recover from his words, a tremendous explosion resounded in their midst, demolishing several miles of land. Injured cultivators cried out in pain. Yet another sun appeared in the sky, then another, as a hail of arrows descended towards Center Moon.

Ten thousand miles away, Nauja was pulling her bow and shooting ceaselessly. Golden arrows appeared every time she drew back the bowstring, then shot out as she released it. Strangely, their power did not diminish as they traveled, but rather increased, as if the arrows were made of magnets which gathered the world energy into a mantle around them.

“Sun Piercing Arrows!” Nauja shouted, speeding up as she got into a rhythm. This was the skill she’d inherited from Trial Planet. Though she was nowhere near piercing a sun yet, bombarding a moon was easily done, especially when gravity was working in her favor.

Arrows rained down like divine hellfire, submerging a third of Center Moon in flames and smoke. Screams cut through the air. Gan Salin sat on a rock, chewing on a wooden pipe as he began recounting, “It was 1945. Their bombs covered the sky, our children cried as…”

“Make him stop, I’m begging you!” an enemy cultivator shouted, clutching his head both due to the explosions and Salin’s words. But it was useless. He was already sucked into Salin’s World of Insanity—the special ability he’d developed after reaching the D-Grade.

This cultivator’s world suddenly transformed into an illusion of Second World War London, and the person himself had become a powerless mortal facing endless bombardment. “I don’t even know what this place is!” he shouted in despair, looking down. “What am I even wearing!?”A bomb landed on him, extinguishing his mind and soul. The cultivator’s intact body slumped to the ground, his life severed.

“Salin!” Nauja’s words echoed harshly into his mind. “How many times have I told you not to imitate real tragedies in your attacks!?”

“Thirty-seven!” he replied.

The two of them had fought together many times. They moved in sync. When Nauja’s bombardment was combined with Salin’s World of Insanity, the two skills overlapped and cut away all paths of retreat for the enemy. Even the twenty-seven D-Grades facing them could do nothing but try their hardest to survive. Their only hope was the C-Grades arriving to save them…but, unfortunately, they were too preoccupied.

A golden brorilla hovered in the void. His one hand held a book—the other, an open palm ready to swat the enemies. A staff and a sword besieged him on either side, but the brorilla was unperturbed, calmly defending and waiting for his chance to strike.

“You are not true bros,” Brock’s words resounded through the void like heavenly judgment. “You occupy the territory of fallen innocents. You support authoritative butchers. In the name of all bros in the universe, I will end you.”

The more he made his case, the stronger he became—and the enemies could not refute him in the slightest. “What bullshit are you spouting?” the bald woman yelled. “What bros? What butchers? The only thing that matters in this world is power!”

“You are not wrong,” Brock replied calmly, “but you are not right, either. Power is the foundation of the world. Brohood is its essence—a different kind of power. To deny brohood is to swim against the current, to try and roll uphill; it is not impossible with enough power, but you are far from reaching that boundary. As for me, while I do not claim to be strong, I represent the world’s heavenly will—the brohood of the bros. How could you hope to stand against me?”

His words made a stark contrast against Salin’s because they sounded equally nonsensical, but they actually weren’t. As Brock spoke, the bald woman sensed the grip of the universe tighten around her, she sensed her powers weakening while his grew stronger. Soon, she was completely unable to resist—just a firefly diving into the sun. “You have been out-bro’d,” a voice echoed from above, sealing her fate, and the woman screamed as the golden sun enveloped her, turning her into dust. The man beside her lasted only a second longer before he, too, disintegrated.

Brock withdrew his powers. He was panting but nowhere close to his limits—as for the two enemies, they had already disappeared, washed away by the powerful flow of brohood. “Good warm-up,” he said. He stretched out a hand—the woman’s steel staff appeared in his palm, but after a deep glance, he discarded it and shook his head.

His Staff of Stone had been destroyed by Baron Longform in the hidden realm. He was looking for a replacement, but unfortunately, this steel weapon was far from meeting his standards.

He then looked down. The Center Moon was already flattened, with the Hand of God outpost completely eradicated. Not a single enemy cultivator remained alive. This place had been thoroughly recaptured.

Only one eyesore remained—the massive flag pole stabbed deep into the earth. Brock wouldn’t let that stand. A massive golden hand appeared, grabbing the pole and ripping it out of the ground. He then threw the pole into the nebula and tore off the Hand of God flag, turning it into a dozen pieces of cloth which he set in orbit around Center Moon.

In war, the flag of an army was their insignia, the heart of their soldiers and the cornerpiece of their morale. To attack one’s flag was a grave insult. What Brock had done, ripping the flag apart and scattering its pieces around the conquered outpost, was equal to spitting in the face of the Hand of God.

But they were already at war. Why would he care about the enemies’ hatred?

Brock then looked towards his two bros, one of whom was wounded but both were beaming. “I am proud of you,” he said. “We restored justice. We took revenge.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you, big bro,” Salin replied with a toothy smile, and Brock’s usually stern face morphed into a bright smile as well.

“We are all bros,” he said. “After so many years…it is nice to see we have all grown.”

“Damn right!” Nauja shouted, still excited. “Hey, Jack! What are you doing? Come here to celebrate!”

Space warped beside them. A bare-chested man appeared, his every muscle perfectly defined as if sculpted from marble. Jack had never been too handsome a guy, but after cultivating for so long, his current appearance would be enough to have most women swooning.

In contrast to the three bros’ victory, however, his face was dark. “I looked through the entire Center Moon and all three planets,” he said, “but I did not find Shol. Not a trace.”

“That sucks,” Salin said. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Me too.”

A moment of silence went by. “So,” Brock said, “what do we do now, big bro?”

“What can we do?” Jack replied. “We try to decipher the hint he left behind and hope it really points somewhere. If that fails, we’ll have to bear the risk and go after more Hand of God cultivators for information. I can only pray that the worst hasn’t occurred.”

There was a reason he was dark-faced. If Shol was missing, there was a chance he had been captured by the Hand of God elsewhere and forced to reveal the frequency of Earth’s teleporter. Jack didn’t believe that Shol would break even under the cruelest of tortures, but if they had a way to read his mind…

If they reached Earth before him…

“We’re going,” he said. “The longer we stay, the higher the chances of reinforcements arriving.”

Just as he said that, he frowned. Then, his face paled. “I can sense fluctuations from the teleporter,” he said quickly. “Someone’s coming. Hurry!”

He waved his hand, instantly taking all three of them to the teleporter. It was already shining—someone would arrive any second. “Nauja!” he shouted, but she was already on it. She poured her energy into the teleporter, forcing it to activate faster than usual. Purple light enveloped them.

“Take us anywhere!” Jack shouted.

Two streams of energy collided. One outgoing, one incoming. For a moment, it felt like the teleporter was about to break. Then, Jack used his Space Dao to twist the two streams around each other, forcefully activating the teleporter at the cost of its structural integrity. They were sucked into space with an explosion—and, almost at the same time, two new people appeared next to the now-destroyed teleporter.

One was a hate-filled leonine—Artus Emberheart—and the other was the late B-Grade tasked with purging the Milky Way galaxy—Eva Solvig.

“Damn it all!” Artus shouted after looking around. “They escaped!” He clenched a small sack hanging by his side, causing whatever was inside it to release a small scream.

Eva did not respond immediately. Her gaze landed on the ruined flag, the flattened outpost, the corpses of her soldiers lying around. Hatred was born inside her heart. “It doesn’t matter if they escaped,” she responded icily. “We know they’re here. In our territory. Jack Rust… Let’s see how long you can keep running.”