Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Unfortunately, the goblin leader was not an idiot. When he learned about Jack, he stopped sending goblins out to be killed. The next day, only one hunting squad left the tribe, and it was made up of three hobgoblins.

They weren’t only hunting prey, but Jack too, and he scrambled to avoid them. He didn’t even dare come close. The hobs were brutally efficient, constantly wary, and fiercely intelligent. Even beating one of them was difficult, let alone three. Moreover, the three hobs were so good at hunting that they secured enough food for the entire tribe—what was left of it, anyway.

In light of those facts, Jack decided that the goblin shaman had outplayed him. He couldn’t fight these goblins, and he was far from able to storm the tribe itself. That left only one option.

And that was how Jack Rust found himself stalking a bear.

Man, I’ve come a long way… he thought, shaking his head. Four days ago, I was looking for slightly brighter caterpillars. Now, I’m trying to kill a bear with my bare hands. That’s life for you.

What happened to that caterpillar, I wonder? Wait—I don’t care. Hah.

Jack’s mind returned to bear hunting.

His fighting style was set in stone by now; he fought with his fists like a boxer on hard drugs. He didn’t have time to learn something else from scratch.

However, his almost-failed ambush on the hobgoblin had taught him that fists, for all their power and versatility, couldn’t easily assassinate someone. Therefore, Jack now carried a big-ass stone hammer, which he planned to smash into a bear head with all his power.

Fisting time would come after that.

He'd channeled all his inventiveness to create that hammer. He'd found a young tree and hacked it into two pieces with a big, sharp rock. Then, he made the lower part into the hammer's handle, and the top part into twine. Another unlucky tree fell at this point, as the twine wasn't enough. He got a rock bigger than his head and used the twine to tie it to the handle. It wasn't too steady, but that was okay; he only needed it to hold for one strike. Then, he could remake it easily.

Armed with resolve and what made humans the planet's apex predators, Jack set to the hunt.

The majestic beast prowled through the undergrowth. Sticks snapped under its heavy paws, and branches bent where they met its head. Its fur was riddled with yellow patches that glinted in the afternoon sun, indicating their rock-like hardness.

Earth Bear, Level 13

Bears are omnivorous creatures that stand at the apex of most food chains. Earth bears, in particular, are a stronger, highly territorial variant. They can use very limited earth magic, and the rocky parts of their fur can be used to craft F-Grade weapons and armor.

Earth Bears are most commonly found in the Ursus Forests of planet Ursi.

Jack had spent the morning scouting the bears from a distance and managed to spot a few. Based on his observations, they ranged from Level 13 to 17, though there could be stronger specimens or variants deeper in their territory.

For now, he’d singled out the single weakest bear he could find, extrapolated its path through the forest, and hid in a branch it would pass under. It was a tried and tested method which hid the risk of missing its mark—bears didn’t follow predictable paths. This was his fourth attempt at ambushing the bear.

However, it remained the best plan Jack could think of, so he stubbornly clung to it. He had already invested all afternoon. He might consider retreating and trying something else if this attempt failed too, but apparently, he was in luck.

The bear walked below him, not looking up. Strangely, Jack had noticed that the bears were constantly wary of their surroundings, scanning left and right for danger, which made his task harder. He didn’t know what they had to be afraid of, but he assumed that the wolf boss liked to hunt in this area. That would explain why he hadn’t met it so far.

Unfortunately for the bear, though it constantly scanned the distance, it didn’t expect a predator from above. Jack fell from a high branch, swinging a stone hammer that he struggled to carry despite his 20 Physical. The bear sniffed the air and looked up, a tendency that, apparently, most things shared when ambushed from above.

The heavy stone hammer, the twelve-foot fall, and Jack’s entire physical strength combined to smash the bear’s head so hard it broke open on the spot.

Level Up! You have reached Level 7.

Level Up! You have reached Level 8.

Just like that, a Level 13 Earth Bear had been slain.

Jack rolled on the ground and got up ready for a fight before realizing what had happened. He stared at the headless corpse for a moment, unable to believe himself, then broke into frenzied laughter. The System thought it was being funny with poop-throwing gymonkeys, but this was funny.

For once, things were going well! His struggles were paying off!

“Hooray for human intelligence!” He laughed out loud, scaring a pair of birds on a nearby branch. “Who needs goblins? Bears are so fucking easy!”

Succeeding so easily on a task that seemed herculean was surreal.

Of course, it hadn’t actually been easy. Jack had gathered information, prepared carefully, and spent a lot of time to set up the perfect ambush. That was the main reason he had succeeded, along with his great strength, which allowed him to use the hammer, and his agility, which let him swing accurately from such a difficult position. Moreover, if he failed in the original strike, the risk was tremendous.

But he had succeeded. Water under the bridge.

Now, Jack had four free points to allocate, and he considered the issue. Physical had been his go-to stat for a while now, and would likely continue being so, but this last battle had reminded him of humanity’s greatest weapon, the one that had allowed them to rise above animals and become the rulers of the world—their intelligence.

He felt pretty smart, anyway, but now that he had points to spare, maybe it was time to test what Mental would do. More brains never hurt anybody, and at this point, one or two points in Physical hardly made a difference. He allocated two points in Mental.

The world brightened before his eyes. He looked at the floating leaves and saw patterns in their movements, fibonacci sequences everywhere. For a moment, he felt like the God of Math—or maybe Albert Einstein.

At the same time, his grasp over the world’s workings solidified a bit. He was more aware of himself and others, could decipher and use the patterns that his heightened intelligence unearthed.

In short, he felt smarter and wiser—but, while the difference was clear, it felt a bit useless right now.

Jack was a smart person to begin with—his starting Mental was 7. He’d also spent a lifetime studying and polishing his mind. He already had the foundation to navigate this dungeon situation and come up with plans that were close to optimal.

The Mental increase was welcome, of course, but it would only be useful if he returned to his lab. It was unnecessary to the current him, in the same way that extra Physical would be unnecessary to a scientist—how much strength did it take to turn doorknobs and open jars?

The only useful thing was his increased insight into himself, which helped him deal with this ongoing modern-to-primal transition, but mental health paled in importance when compared to not being eaten by wolves.

In the end, Jack had done his experiment, as he should, and concluded that he should focus on Physical for now. Better a master of one than a jack of all trades—even though his name was Jack.

He allocated the remaining two points in Physical and inspected his status screen.

Name: Jack Rust

Species: Human, Earth-387

Faction: -

Grade: F

Level: 8

Physical: 22

Mental: 9

Will: 7

Skills: Fistfighting (I)

Not bad, not bad at all.

He had stopped looking for a normal-world equivalent of himself. He was at least four and a half times fitter than a pre-System normal person across the table. He was roughly as strong as a professional weight-lifter and as fast as a professional sprinter, while also having the endurance of a professional marathon runner and the durability of… Well, he wasn’t sure there was an equivalent for that. A brick wall, maybe?

In any case, Jack was pretty sure that, if the current him was in the pre-System world, he could steamroll any decathlon competition to ever exist.

Presently, he was using his power to steamroll bears and goblins, but to each their own.

The takeaway was that Jack was a total badass, and that felt damn good after twenty-seven years of barely making ends meet in a life he didn’t like much. He even seemed better—muscles were beginning to bulge under his bare chest and arms, and he even had hints of a six-pack.

Physical was great.

Snapping back to the present, Jack looked at the bear corpse, then at the sky. Hunting monster bears was his new shortcut to Levels—unfortunately, it was a time-consuming hobby, and the sun was already setting.

Though he was uninjured, he had to retreat and come back tomorrow—but, on the bright side, he was uninjured. With his recent level-ups, it was time to get an extra stat point or two from the ice pond. So what if there was hellish pain?

Could it be worse than death or losing the one opportunity he ever had to shine?

***

Night came and passed. Jack managed to go one step further into the pond, but not more. The difficulty wasn’t linear; it rose exponentially the deeper he went. The waterfall was less than ten steps away now, but he estimated that he’d need to reach the twenties in Level before getting there, maybe even more.

Not that he could complain; the pond had already granted him the equivalent of three Levels in points, and it wouldn’t stop anytime soon. It was the gift that kept on giving. Jack’s lucky star.

Come morning, the hobgoblins were scouring their territory again, and Jack considered attacking them but didn’t. He might have, if they were only two, but they were three. The goblin shaman was clearly intelligent; it would rather go hungry for a bit than lose more of its people. It had ramped up the difficulty too much at once, and Jack’s leveling speed couldn’t cope—for now.

Fortunately, the bears weren’t as smart. They probably hadn’t even noticed yesterday’s assassinations. Therefore, Jack, in his endless generosity, would give them more opportunities to notice.

Morning found him hiding in branches and hoping for his target bear, at Level 14 this time, as he hadn’t found a weaker one, to pass under. It didn’t. And after four such failures, Jack got irritated.

However, he kept himself in check. Arrogance could get him killed. He didn’t have the strength to fight bears head-on yet, so he could only take things slow.

Eventually, after five hours of stalking the same bear, he finally managed to pull off his ambush.

Bonk.

Level Up! You have reached Level 9.

Level Up! You have reached Level 10.

Jack smiled. He put all four points into Physical, raising it to twenty-seven, and kept on his merry hunting. His progression was so fast these days that he’d gotten almost addicted to the dings that accompanied level-ups.

He carried his bloody hammer through the forest until he spotted another bear, this one at Level 14, too. He then employed his signature move, hiding in branches and waiting for the unsuspecting bear to cross underneath.

However, the moment it appeared under him, the bear stopped and sniffed the air. Suddenly, its head whipped up, its eyes meeting Jack, who was only starting his fall. He froze in mid-air. Panic took him over. He hadn’t realized this, but he was looking a fucking bear in the face.

What gave me away? he thought, and instantly, he knew. The hammer! I never cleaned the blood!

But it was too late for regrets. At this point, Jack had to go all-in. He fell, swung, and gloriously missed as the bear moved its head.

Its yellow eyes now glared at Jack from only a few feet away, and its entire body tensed up to attack. It growled, spitting on him and exposing large, sharp teeth. The yellow patches on its fur glowed.

Jack paled. Shit!