Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 419: Returning to Hell

“Hey,” Salin said. “That was nice. We escaped.”

“Narrowly,” Jack replied, frowning. “Did you sense their aura? That was a B-Grade—and not a weak one. They were here for us.”

“We’re here for them, too. So what?”

“Come on, Salin. We fought for, what, a minute? And they arrived. Not only were they waiting just next to a teleporter, but they even supercharged it to move at extremely high speed. They were looking for us specifically. They know we’re here, and they’re making it their priority to hunt us down.”

“Oh, come on. Not to underestimate myself, but we’re not that important.”

“I hate to say this,” Nauja stepped in, “but I agree with Salin. You may be thinking too much into this. Besides our teleportation into the galaxy, we haven’t shown up anywhere for months. I don’t think they expected we’d come to Field Nebula and had a B-Grade lie in wait next to a teleporter to catch us. It’s much more probable they were just on standby so they could respond to Church attacks anywhere in the galaxy.”

Jack opened his mouth, then closed it again. “That makes sense,” he finally admitted. “But, in any case, they know where we are now. And Artus Emberheart hates me more than anything in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if they devote a B-Grade or two to tracking us down.”

“That, they could do.” Salin nodded. “But what do we say to the God of Death?”

Jack gave a defeated sigh. “Not today?”

“Dog bro right.” Brock nodded as well. “Victory demands celebration.”

Nauja gave Jack an expectant gaze. He sighed. “Fine,” he said. “You’re right. We did win; and they can’t track us down immediately, anyway. Let’s celebrate our victory!”

“That’s more like it!” Salin shouted, drawing a bottle from his little pocket.

“That doesn’t even fit,” Jack replied weakly but Salin was already stuffing him full of alcohol. Everyone else, too. The bromobile shuttled through the vast cosmos accompanied by the sound of laughter and joy.

They had won—and, before considering how to run for their lives, a good night’s celebration was necessary.

It was only a day later that they finally recovered. Brock paced through the bromobile’s living room, thanking the Big Bro Above for their blessed lives, while Jack rested on an armchair. A piece of paper was in his hands—his gaze pierced into it intently as if trying to telepathically set it aflame.

“No progress?” Brock asked, reclining to watch the stars.

“None,” Jack replied, shaking his head. “Endless stars and fire flight, gather where we won the fight… This doesn’t make much sense. Do you think Shol was just trying to write a poem?”

“Hope not. But he seems like a bro who writes poems.”

“That’s what I fear as well.” Jack leaned back, massaging his temples. “I just can’t see anything. What is endless stars and fire flight? If it’s a hint, that part makes no sense. And, gather where we won the fight… That could mean many places.”

“Are you sure?”

“I guess? There was the Integration Tournament, where I won under his tutelage. The Exploding Sun, where I earned many victories in the sparring arena; Hell, where we beat a bunch of people; or Earth again, where we defeated the planetary overseer. But none of those places check out. Earth is obviously useless as a gathering point, since we can’t go without him, and the Exploding Sun was already destroyed. Even if it wasn’t, the sparring arena doesn’t fit the endless stars or fight flight—and, to be honest, I didn’t win any important victories there. As for Hell, it’s right in the middle of enemy territory. Only a suicidal man would go there.”

“Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. It was just a poem.”

Brock returned his gaze to the stars, soon followed by Jack. A few hours passed, while the bromobile toured aimlessly the universe. Suddenly, Jack cupped his chin. “You know…” he said slowly, “I could be called suicidal. Shol, too. And you.”

“Pretty much everyone we know,” Brock agreed.

“And, fire flight… Hell contains fire. As for endless stars, that could be space. The space around Hell.”

“Which leaves only the flight part.”

“Yes… Perhaps it refers to when the Church took us away from Hell, helping us escape the pursuit of both Animal Kingdom and Hand of God. They’d built a portal on a meteor. Do we need to find that meteor?”

“Meteors are fleeting things.”

“True. I have no idea how we could locate it now. Unless the Kingdom took it in to scavenge the teleporter materials, but still, I have no idea where or how they would do that.”

“Wisdom comes at its time.”

“You’re right. Maybe we’ll figure it out when we get there. I mean, since there is a chance, we might as well go.”

“You’re so bright today, big bro.”

“Thanks, Brock. I try my best.”

***

Once upon a time, traveling across the galaxy had been a major hurdle for Jack. He’d needed to disguise himself and board a roaming starship—the Trampling Ram—as a sailor while watching out for enemies at every step.

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Now, though the enemies he faced had gotten much stronger, the journey was smoother. He had his own starship. What were they going to do, locate him in quadrillions of miles of empty space?

Therefore, for the second time in his life, Jack traveled from Field Nebula towards Hell.

Since they had been almost caught, they avoided all teleporters as much as possible. When a stop was unavoidable, they used the disguise pills Min Ling had left them. Another month passed.

The galaxy remained broken. Several factions had been uprooted, including the Exploding Sun. That had created a power vacuum which smaller factions were eager to fill, recklessly warring against each other. And, given the general uproar in the universe, nobody had the energy to stop them.

It wasn’t just one war—not just the Crusade. Changes rippled, and slowly but surely, the entire universe was submerged in the flames of war.

The bromobile crew appeared on another planet Jack had visited in the past—the Eternal Gate. Once upon a time, a merchant had snuck him and Shol from here into Hell. Now, they couldn’t have that liberty. They would just fly.

As soon as they appeared, multiple Dao perceptions scanned over them. Jack remained cool. His disguise couldn’t be seen through unless he used his Dao or a B-Grade personally arrived—and he doubted the Animal Kingdom could afford using B-Grades as guards.

He was accompanied by a tanned woman with long legs wrapped in a cloak and what seemed like the love child of an 80s gangster with a cyberpunk playboy. Both wore sunglasses. These were Nauja and Gan Salin, impeccably disguised. Behind them Brock, in the form of a hard-faced dwarf with a beard which reached his ankles and a pointy pink hat.

Gan Salin had insisted that hiding in plain sight would work—and that being chased was no excuse for dullness. Even Jack had been convinced to wear a mustache and beret.

“Can the circus come to the side, please?” a D-Grade guard motioned them over. They complied. “This is standard procedure,” continued the guard. “I’ll just ask you some questions. Failure to give a complete and true reply will result in up to a hundred years of imprisonment. Is that okay?”

“Shoot, loverboy,” replied Salin, much to Jack’s chagrin.

“Place of origin?”

“Belarian Outpost.”

“Reason for arrival?”

“We’re visiting some friends in Escaddil.” Escadril was a planet near Eternal Gate.

“Can I have the names of your friends?”

“Of course. They are Bobidi Doo and Plipiti Yap.” Seeing the guard’s raised brow, Salin added, “Djinns. You know what they’re like.”

“I’ll note it down. Keep in mind that this information will be cross-checked before you are allowed to teleport out of Eternal Gate. And your names?”

Salin blurted out four slightly more coherent names, and the guard finally let them go.

“It’s much stricter than I remember,” Jack muttered.

“They’re at war,” Nauja replied, shaking her head. “No wonder they treat everyone like a potential criminal.”

“Yeah…”

The information Salin gave out would soon be cross-checked and proven false. However, that didn’t matter because they didn’t plan to teleport out of this planet. After flying a thousand miles away, they simply took out the bromobile and launched themselves deep into space.

“Hell is a week away,” Nauja explained after consulting her star chart. “However, I recommend taking a detour around the Animal Abyss. We can spare the extra day.”

“Animal Abyss? What’s that?” Jack asked.

Both Nauja and Gan Salin gave him an odd look. “You never did any research on the Animal Kingdom?”

“I was busy killing them.”

Salin sighed. “Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack. The Animal Abyss is an important location of the Animal Kingdom. It’s a small black hole, basically, but with the caveat that it occasionally spits out treasures.”

Jack frowned. “Black holes do that?”

“No. But this one does. Nobody really knows why, but then again, nobody knows much about black holes.”

“Okay. So it’s a black hole which conveniently spits out treasures?”

“That’s the idea! It’s also surrounded by a spatial field which is hard to detect and even harder to escape, so the working theory is that various cultivators have passed by this place in the last few billions of years, accidentally getting sucked inside. Then, after being forced to orbit the hole for incredibly long periods of time, their bodies dissolve but their treasures don’t, and they are somehow spat out in random intervals.”

“That makes no sense.”

“What can I say? Even the Kingdom’s B-Grades are helpless before the abyss. As long as it keeps spitting out treasures, they’re happy.”

“Hmm.” Jack cupped his chin. “What kind of treasures are we talking about?”

“All sorts of things. This Animal Abyss is actually a cornerstone of the Animal Kingdom. Various precious items have been discovered, including the cultivation manuals of the Emberheart and Lonihor families—the origin of their special battle forms.”

“I thought those came from their bloodlines.”

“Of course not. That’s just propaganda. Did you also think Santa was real?”

Jack remembered those battle forms very clearly. The Emberheart family could clad their body in electricity, vastly increasing their speed and power. As for the Lonihor family, they could give themselves wings and summon spectral soldiers from the skies to fight for them.

He’d always chucked it up to magic, but actually, having such power contained in one’s bloodline was pretty impossible.

“I see,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “So there is a black hole which conveniently spits out extremely high quality treasures.”

“Right. It’s part of the reason why the four ancestors of the Animal Kingdom could reach the B-Grade and rule over a constellation.”

“So why should we take a detour around it?”

From the side, Nauja smirked. “Are you interested?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

A black hole was the endpoint of space and time. Jack had long wanted to visit one, but he never had the chance—now was as good an opportunity as ever. Plus, the special properties of this Animal Abyss intrigued him. Based on what he knew, both from Earth physics and from the Dao of Spacetime, a black hole which regularly spat out things wasn’t normal. There had to be a secret behind it.

And just because the B-Grades of the Animal Kingdom couldn’t unravel such a secret didn’t mean that Jack couldn’t either. He had inherited the legacy of an Archon. He was confident that his understanding of spacetime was solidly in the B-Grade by now, and his reference material was far superior to what the random B-Grades of a newly-developed galaxy had access to.

“I’m just interested,” he replied. “Even if there’s only a tiny chance I can get anything out of it, it’s worth a look.”

“As long as you don’t get your hopes up,” Salin said. “But…the reason Nauja suggests a detour is that there’s always a B-Grade stationed there. A few years ago—and I don’t know if that has changed—it was the High Elder of the Emberheart family. He was responsible for looking after the abyss and gathering any treasure it happened to spit out. Plus, there are all sorts of space formations surrounding the abyss. If we fly too close, there’s a chance we’ll be discovered.”

“Hmm.”

Jack considered it. He really was interested in that Animal Abyss—even the chance of getting more insights into spacetime was something he was unwilling to pass on. However, it could ruin them all. Was it worth the risk?

Brock suddenly spoke up after being silent all this time. “A good cultivator must adventure, and a good bro must walk the tightrope. Let’s seek balance. We can pass some distance away, take a look, and escape if things get dangerous. Big Bro can discover space formations before they activate.”

Jack nodded. “I can. Unless they’ve been laid down by a peak B-Grade excelling in spacetime, I can at least detect them ahead of time.”

“The Kingdom has never had a peak B-Grade,” Salin informed them. “Alright then! Let’s go!”