Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 428: Ripples Across the Universe

Inside a starship sailing at full speed, a brorilla suddenly opened his eyes. “No…” he muttered. For the first time since he was born, his voice held pain. “Big bro…”

Their souls were connected. The moment Jack’s Dao cracked, Brock felt it like a spike of burning pain through his own heart, accompanied by deep, wrathful grief. Then, when Jack flew into the black hole, Brock’s connection to him was abruptly…severed!

In Brock’s understanding, this severing could only mean one thing.

A mournful wail filled the bromobile. The lights dimmed, and the entire vessel shook. Gan Salin and Nauja covered their ears with tears in their eyes. Brock’s grief rippled out—across the universe, every bro wept.

“BIG BRO!”

***

Jack’s disappearance into the black hole affected even the world outside System space. On an asteroid shuttling through the void, a man sat alone. He was dressed in rags, while his teeth were yellowed from years of poor hygiene. Despite his rough exterior, however, his aura was dignified.

Everywhere the asteroid passed, large groups of Dao particles were absorbed, sent into this man’s body, letting him cultivate at prodigious speed.

Suddenly, his meditation was interrupted. “Hmm?” he muttered. His eyes snapped open, gazing in the direction of System space. He remained puzzled for a moment. His hands moved, piercing through reality to grasp at an invisible tether, a net encompassing the entire universe in which every change was clearly written.

He looked towards System space again. His gaze crossed trillions of miles, landing on a small, isolated planet filled with energy and brotherhood. He saw a dark-skinned woman, diligently cultivating, and a girl enduring an icy pond with a stubborn pout. His gaze pierced further, coming to rest on a wailing brorilla who seemed to have lost his mind. Finally, it settled on a black hole wrapped in an odd spatial field. No life came from inside it.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” the Sage finally whispered. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this…”

***

After the Purging began a year ago, the Elders of the Black Hole Church had not stayed put. There were dozens of them—as they received the summons of the Arch Priestess, almost all of them left seclusion, brimming with the intent to fight.

The Church was weaker than the Hand, but they could still fight back.

Tons of battles had erupted since then. A year was nothing to these organizations, but the war was kicking off. Each side possessed hundreds of B-Grades, tens of thousands of C-Grades. Planets and solar systems collapsed everywhere they fought. The rivers of stars inside and outside System space were disrupted.

The Church had once hidden many of their forces in inhabited planets. The Hand did not care—great battles erupted, vanquishing planets and ruining billions of innocent lives. And this was just the beginning.

The Church had been slowly pushed outside System space, forced to hide in distant galaxies. The powers of the Hand cultivators were limited there, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t pursue—cataclysmic battles often washed away the cosmos, and even A-Grades clashed occasionally.

Finding the hidden Church forces in a vast Systemless galaxy was easier said than done, giving the weaker party opportunities to conduct guerilla warfare. That was the current state of the war, and it had reached a temporary stalemate with each side bleeding out the other.

However, the real powerhouses of each faction—the Archons—had yet to move. The Church had no desire to accelerate things, and as for the Hand, their true opponents were the Old Gods. The Church was only a prelude, thus they wanted to preserve their powers.

To better hide themselves, the Church had divided their forces in several parts, giving command of each of them to a high-level figure and having them hide separately.

In a Systemless galaxy called Great Divide, Elder Boatman commanded a heated battlefield. Though it was called as such, it actually spanned an area of tens of thousands of cubic light years. The forces he was responsible for were hidden in a dense nebula. Given they were only a few thousand people, finding them in such a large area was like searching for a needle in a haystalk.

But that didn’t mean he would underestimate the Hand Elders. Powerful formations were arranged around their temporary residence, concealing them from divination and other detection magic.

Elder Boatman himself was standing on the bridge of a massive starship, surrounded by his peak B-Grade lieutenants. A star map projection hovered before them. Their position was indicated as a blue dot, while the enemy forces they were aware of were shown as red triangles. In the past few months, through using various means, the enemy had pinpointed their location to within a range of a thousand light years. A carpet search was carried out. They couldn’t hide forever, nor could the Church’s other forces afford to send them back-up.

The situation was dire.

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As the lieutenants discussed battle plans, Elder Boatman’s ominous figure stood silent. He wore a dark cloak with a hood which covered his face, revealing only two red dots where his eyes should be, while a scythe hung on his back. Just from being there, a powerful aura rippled out, reminding the peak B-Grades not to slack off.

This discussion had already gone on for days, but Elder Boatman had yet to say a single word. Suddenly, however, he moved. His head swiveled to the side, his urgency clear. Everyone shut their mouths.

Elder Boatman’s heart shook. He’d sensed it when Jack had returned from the hidden realm—it was just that he was trapped here, so he couldn’t rush over. Even if he managed it, he would be in great danger once he entered System space. The Immortals could pay a certain price to track him down. It was a high price, of course, but it was worth it for a late A-Grade like himself.

Ever since Jack and the death cube had reappeared, Elder Boatman could only hope for the best, unable to help. Now, however, he sensed the connection severed again. And not just that—unlike when Jack was trapped in a separate dimension, the severing this time was complete. It was highly likely the death cube had been destroyed—and anything that could destroy such an object was enough to kill Jack ten times over.

Elder Boatman had long been sunken in grief and helplessness. Now at his weakest, the news of Jack’s death and the death cube’s destruction left him hopeless. He shook his head, sighing deeply. “Have the heavens truly abandoned us?” he wondered. “Everything has an end. Death always comes. I thought this might not be the time for us, that we might have some hope left, but it seems our era has indeed come to an end. Without geniuses, we have no future—without future, our present is worthless.”

Of course, those words were only spoken to himself. No matter how ugly things got, no matter how discouraged he was by these twin terrible news, he remained a war commander. He would never bring down the morale of his troops.

Even if fate seemed inescapable, he would still fight. He was Elder Boatman—and, in his long life, he had never once surrendered.

***

Silence reigned outside the Animal Abyss. Eva Solvig, Artus Emberheart, and the two Animal Kingdom Ancestors gazed at the darkness where Jack had just disappeared. Their perceptions couldn’t pierce it—they would never have imagined he’d willingly thrown himself into the actual black hole.

“That was unfortunate,” Eva said, glancing at Artus. “If he loses his composure and stays inside until the space storms kill him, we’ll have lost the opportunity to capture him alive. In fact, given his injuries, it’s highly likely he’s already dead.”

She clearly blamed Artus—if he hadn’t killed Jack’s son and pushed him to the edge, Jack would have just surrendered. However, she couldn’t express those things aloud. At the end of the day, she was a Grade and a half above Jack, and she’d let him escape from within her grasp. No matter what desperate means he’d used, this was still a stain on her honor.

Artus Emberheart, however, didn’t seem to care. A wide smile hung on his lips, and he was absorbed in his own thoughts.

“Good riddance,” he finally replied. “Jack Rust was my life’s most hated enemy. I feel better now. I only wish I could kill his son again, just to rub it in.”

The two Ancestors glanced at each other. They were glad they’d exiled Artus—he was clearly insane.

If Eva shared the thought, she didn’t show it. “We’ll stand guard here for two days, then return.”

“We can handle it, Envoy,” one of the Ancestors stepped forward to say. “If Jack Rust emerges from the Animal Abyss, he’ll be extremely weakened. We can easily subdue him.”

Eva shook her head. “He has already given us too many surprises. Even if I have other responsibilities, I will not give that man a single chance to recover, no matter how impossible it seems. With his injuries and regenerative powers, I estimate he can last at most an hour inside the Abyss. I will personally stand guard for two days, and you will all join me. No matter what, he must not be allowed the slightest chance of recovering!”

The Ancestors glanced at each other again.

“What’s her problem?” one of them asked telepathically. “It’s just a C-Grade. No matter how strong he is, there is no way he can last an hour at his current state, let alone two days. He’s just gotten into her head.”

“Does it matter?” the other replied. “I agree she’s afraid for no reason, but two days mean nothing. Let’s do as she says.”

The two Ancestors bowed, then spread out to surround the Animal Abyss from all directions. Artus and Eva Solvig did the same. Two days passed. As expected, Jack did not emerge.

And yet, Eva just couldn’t rid herself of the unreasonable feeling that Jack Rust was still alive. He had survived too many impossible situations. Moreover, he was far too talented. If she made the slightest miscalculation here and let him grow just a little bit more, maybe they’d need to mobilize an A-Grade to hunt him down next time, which was just a joke.

She knew it was pointless. Jack Rust was dead beyond the shadow of a doubt. Yet, she couldn’t help herself.

“You, keep watching over the Abyss as you were doing,” she told the middle B-Grade Ancestor of the Animal Kingdom. “I will summon an Envoy of the Hand specializing in space and have him personally search the Abyss. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong.”

Nobody dared to disagree. Three days later, a middle B-Grade Envoy who cultivated the Dao of Space arrived and spent a week to personally scan the entire Abyss. No trace of Jack was found. He had certainly not exited either because they’d constantly kept watch. After all this time, there was no scenario in which he still survived.

“We still haven’t found a body,” Eva told the other Envoy. “If he really had died to the spatial storms, shouldn’t you have found some clues?”

However, this other Envoy wasn’t much lower in rank than her. He possessed the qualifications to argue. “With all due respect, Eva,” he said, “you’re thinking too much into this. Jack Rust has gotten inside your head. I personally scanned the entire Abyss—even though I found no residue of his life force, that means nothing. It’s a black hole—anything would get sucked in eventually. He is dead, dead beyond the shadow of a doubt. I guarantee it.”

“Alright,” she replied after a moment of thought. “Perhaps I’ve been affected by the past. You’re right. He cannot be alive. Thanks for coming, Sylvan—I will return and meditate to clear my mind of all prejudice.”

The other Envoy nodded, and the two of them departed alongside a euphoric Artus Emberheart. It was only Eva who spared a final glance at the Abyss—then, she shook her head and teleported away. One of the Kingdom’s Ancestors also left, returning to his duties.

Two weeks after Jack’s disappearance, the Abyss finally returned to tranquility. The only one left behind was the middle B-Grade Ancestor who’d guarded this place to begin with.

Three days later, a new war merit of the Hand of God was proclaimed across the universe:

Jack Rust, the troublemaker hero of the Milky Way, had perished.