Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Jack crossed the woods, feeling like Christopher Colombus discovering America. Everything he saw was the same as he remembered, but different. Being outside the nature reserve—the Forest of the Strong dungeon—felt like a dream.

What had changed? How had the System impacted humanity? What was the world like?

Was it all real?

Everything was exactly as he remembered. The trees, the broken branches, that fat bush he’d stepped over once upon a time… It made him doubt whether this was all a hallucination induced by some gas in the cave.

He grabbed a thick branch from the ground and easily snapped it in two. Shrugging, he threw it away.

“What do you think, Brock?” he asked the monkey on his shoulder—its short legs made walking side by side annoying. “Will we like what we find?”

Brock made monkey sounds. There was undeniable excitement there, though he clearly missed his home, too. He’d looked back multiple times on the way and almost ran away once but stopped himself. He was a brave little monkey.

“Yeah, I think so too,” Jack said with a smile.

The System’s arrival had breathed life into his world. He was strong. Whatever happened, he could take it.

He was just worried about the state of his loved ones, especially the professor, whose old age wasn’t suitable for punching monsters.

Jack stepped out of the trees and onto a dirt trail. He looked down. For the first time, he realized what he looked like: a wild, dirty, bare-chested dude. He was ripped, too. He must have seemed like a savage.

He shrugged again and went on his way.

The dirt trail snaked through the forest before ending at a wider trail, where a gray jeep was parked. Seeing a car was completely disorienting. It made such a hard contrast against last week’s primal lifestyle that Jack had to stop and stare for a moment, unable to reconcile the two worlds.

With a low chuckle, he fished the keys from his pocket—he’d retrieved them from their hiding place in the cave before leaving—unlocked the door, and sat in the vehicle. It groaned under his weight. Constitution made him heavier; not too much, but noticeably.

Brock jumped in the co-driver’s seat like the experienced monkey he wasn’t. He then realized he couldn’t see anything from there, so he jumped behind the steering wheel. The windshield was a shock—the poor thing hadn’t seen glass before. Thankfully, it was dirty, or he would have headbutted it for sure. It took three swipes of the wipers to make out the road beyond through a green-brown smug.

Jack revved up the engine, welcoming the familiar rumbling of the car below him. The seat was soft on his back and a bit scratchy, while the wheel felt like a toy in his hands.

The car jumped a bit as it started, then rolled on slowly. Jack lowered the windows and let his arm hang outside, while Brock was quick to stick out his head and enjoy the faint breeze. He even occasionally put his hand out and tried to resist the breeze. It was nice.

The dirt trail quickly ended on a snaking asphalt road that crossed the forest, and Jack could finally pick up some speed. He stepped on the pedal, eager to feel the acceleration; the wind buffeting his face. The trees zoomed past him, the occasional stone crunched under the wheels, his body leaned on the turns.

It was fun for a moment. Then, the acceleration stopped, and Jack got bored. He could run faster than this.

Poor car companies…

At least it was comfortable.

The snaking road gave way to a larger one, where the speed still wasn’t up to Jack’s standards, until small houses began to pepper the countryside. It was Jack’s first contact with civilization in over a week. He kept his eyes wide.

By the side, Brock had climbed on the co-driver’s seat and couldn’t pull his eyes from the forest behind them. His tail curled up in sadness. Eventually, the forest drifted out of sight, and the little monkey fell on the seat defeated, staring at the empty road ahead.

Theirs was the only car on the road.

The houses were mostly abandoned. The few people Jack saw stared hard at him until he made some distance. They held guns, bread knives, or anything dangerous they could get their hands on and protected their homes. Many were injured. Some wore armor, though he couldn't make out details from here.

He also saw a few monsters. There were small packs of goblins roaming the countryside, along with feral wolves, oversized wild dogs, small scaly people, walking mushrooms, and all sorts of nasty things. There were even large maneater plants in the middle of nowhere, where it would take tremendous amounts of idiocy to fall for them. Right on cue, he saw a goblin stumble into one of the plants and get summarily swallowed. He chuckled, turning back to the road.

The wind buffeted his arm outside the window, making the little hairs wave. His right hand felt the hard leather of the wheel, while his bare foot stepped on the pedal. Brock screamed in joy as they accelerated, maneuvering around the occasional goblin that littered the road. The poor little fuckers were dumb enough to simply stare at his car as it approached, and a few even dared each other to jump in front of it. One tried, but thankfully chickened out at the last moment.

Jack only scanned a few of those monsters, but they all seemed weak. Only a distant stag with vines on its antlers was somewhat threatening, and that’s because everything else avoided it. The monsters were pretty sparse overall and didn’t seem to group together, letting the few farmhouses survive.

With the notable exception of the goblins, they also had the good idea of keeping their distance from the road, which let Jack simply drive through.

Soon, the houses grew denser and the monsters thinner. Neighborhoods appeared, which soon gave way to wide streets and dense infrastructure. Jack saw an upturned bus by the side of the street, along with a few burned or violently ruined houses. Most cars were just sitting there.

The System’s coming had not been easy, but at the very least, the scenery reaffirmed that Jack wasn’t hallucinating.

There were more people, too. Jack spotted them roving in large bands, upwards of ten members each, and attacking any monsters that came within sight. A twelve-person group armed with bread knives fell on a pack of five goblins. After a fierce fight where three of them were injured, they managed to take the goblins down.

Jack shook his head. Their weakness would have been funny if it wasn’t sad—or even expected. The leveling speed of such large groups would be atrocious, but who in their right mind would go against the odds to hunt alone?

He didn’t stop the car.

As he rode deeper, the people had been growing denser, too. There were guards where the town began, holding handguns. They flagged him down.

“Halt,” said one of them, a woman with sharp eyes and a ponytail. “You are approaching Valville, the territory of Henry’s Fang. Please enter on foot and surrender any firearms you’re carrying.”

Brock narrowed his eyes at them, and Jack saw him clenching his little fists. He was already getting a headache; maybe that’s why Harambe dumped the little menace on him like that.

“No attacking,” he told Brock strictly. “Everyone here is a friend by default. You won’t touch anybody unless I say so. Understood?”

Brock released a small holler of protest but eventually buckled under Jack’s gaze. He was in an unknown place, surrounded by unknown people, and his only connection to his home was this weird big bro next to him. He would listen.

Jack parked at the side of the road and got out of the jeep. Their eyes widened. Whether that was due to Brock on his shoulder or his barbaric appearance, he didn’t know.

“I have no firearms, as you can see,” he said, approaching carefully, “and I don’t mind leaving my car here.”

He didn’t intend to cause trouble, though he was pretty sure he could survive gunshots. His close to 100 Constitution wasn’t for show. As he approached, he scanned them.

Human (Earth-387), Level 5

Faction: Henry’s Fang (F-Grade)

The System wasn’t too talkative about sapients, it seemed. Still, Jack got a bunch of information.

The head guard here, on a major road artery, was only Level 5. The other four were even lower. Moreover, what kind of stupid name was Henry’s Fang? Jack finally felt better for naming his faction Bare Fist Brotherhood.

As he willed the screens away, he saw the five guards look at him like they saw a ghost—they’d obviously scanned him back.

“Welcome to Valville, sir.” The head guard suddenly got way politer. “If I may ask, what is the purpose of your visit? Are you here as a representative of the Bare Fist Brotherhood?”

“Not sure yet. For now, I’m just making sure my family is okay.”

“Would you like to arrange an audience with Henry’s Fang?”

“Not yet.”

“Very well. Please go on, sir.”

“Thank you.”

For the first time, Jack felt like a VIP. Life was easy when you were strong.

He didn’t spare the guards another glance as he entered the town, walking through streets he knew.

Valville wasn’t large. With a population of only twenty thousand, its area was even smaller than the Greenway nature reserve. Its only notable quality was the nearby town of Tahlequah which housed the Northeastern State University’s Department of Natural Science. It was where Jack studied, and where his foster parents used to teach before retiring.

Valville itself was a dot that didn’t even appear on most maps, but it was a nice place. The scenery from above the mountain was beautiful, and the streets well-maintained.

Jack liked it here. It was peaceful and pretty—or, at least, it used to be.

Now, rubble and trash was everywhere. Jack saw no monster corpses, but he did spot some human bodies haphazardly thrown in alleys. There was no sign of the police.

At the same time, there was new energy suffusing the town. Muscular men and fit women walked around with intensity, doing this or shouting that. The weather was still good, so everyone wore short sleeves—or makeshift armor.

It had only been a week since he'd last seen Valville, but it had changed drastically. Many shops were closed and new ones were springing up like mushrooms. Jack saw a smithie next to a torn-down McDonalds, manned by an older man in a yellow mustache that wouldn't stop grinning through his sweat. He found a tannery on the very edge of the town, where three men worked on the skin of what looked like a deer. He spotted people pulling carts through the streets, as well as merchants loudly proclaiming their wares in a way that wasn't common before the apocalypse.

Jack had to stop and do a double-take. Is this really Valville?

The buildings were similar, but the town felt like a mixture between reality and fantasy. It was like someone planted a medieval society in the ruins of modern civilization. With their lives on the line and monsters to hunt, people were regressing so fast it was mind-blowing.

Jack got drowned by laughter, cries, shouts, the loud clang of the smith's hammer, the shouting peddlers, children wielding sticks and playing humans versus goblins, the fragrance of food carts, and the heavy odor of blood. The entire street stank of sweat and death, too, but nobody seemed to care. In fact, Jack caught people smiling all around.

That's odd. Are they all like me?

Taking a closer look, he observed a clear dichotomy. On one side, there were people huddling behind windows and shivering, as well as some darting from pedestrian to pedestrian and begging with tears in their eyes. There were crazies shouting incoherently to each other in alleys.

On the other side of the dichotomy were the warriors. Armed with bread knives and armored in pans, they moved with energy and sported clear, smiling eyes. For the first time in his life, Jack realized that people didn't smile on the street before the apocalypse. They were just rushing from place to place full of stress, like zombies. But not anymore.

Jack doubted they all shared his love for battle. However, level-ups and getting stronger had a way to bring euphoria, and life-or-death struggles had a way to make people feel alive.

Jack was stunned. He stood in the middle of street, still for a moment, gawking at everything. The world had turned upside down. It felt like home. He loved this.

A moment later, he shook himself awake. His feet moved by themselves as he approached the smithie; a wide wooden shack with a heavy anvil and a burning oven in the middle, which looked like an electric kitchen adapted to work with wood or coal. The walls were decorated with shitty-looking, uneven swords, as everything better had no doubt been taken already.

Though, to be fair, perhaps proper swords were too much for a week-old blacksmith. Said man was currently hammering away at a glowing lump of metal on his anvil, so focused on the task he didn’t notice Jack’s approach.

“Hey,” Jack said, scanning the man.

Human (Earth-387), Level 7

Faction: -

The blacksmith frowned, then raised his gaze and scanned him top to bottom. His eyes shuddered as he took in Jack’s Level.

“How can I help you?” he said, immediately abandoning the rapidly cooling metal on his anvil.

Jack raised a brow. “You don’t need to do that. I can wait.”

The blacksmith smiled under his thick blond mustache, then started hammering again, the metal quickly bending under his System-augmented strength. The clangs were loud enough to be annoying, and the heat of the open oven could be felt all the way to where Jack was standing, but he wasn’t annoyed. He simply admired the work.

“I can speak while hammering,” the blacksmith said, eliciting Jack’s chuckle.

“You seem pretty good at this,” he observed.

“Been doing it for years. Never imagined my hobby would come in handy, but here we are.”

He used a pair of long pliers to pick up the lump of metal—it looked like a sword—and stuck it in a water barrel nearby. Steam filled his hut. Brock screamed at the hissing sounds.

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?” Jack shouted over the hissing.

“As much as everyone,” the blacksmith replied, wiping his brow. His gaze remained with the blade, weighing it. “I didn’t enjoy seeing my best friend murdered before my eyes, but the apocalypse has its bright sides. This is one of them.”

He took out the blade, inspecting it through the steam. Jack did, too, and he realized that this thing actually looked like a sword. There was an iron handle and a long, straight blade. He could see tiny bumps on its surface, but it looked at least serviceable.

“That’s pretty good!” Jack said.

“A piece of shit,” the blacksmith replied. “Don’t judge by the garbage on my walls, friend. That’s just decor.”

“Oh,” Jack said, looking around. “Don’t you think your decor is bad marketing?”

“It doesn’t matter. All my blades are bought instantly. The ones I’ve hung up are unusable, but they were my first efforts. Helps me remember where I came from.”

Jack nodded. “Why the iron handle, though?” he asked, pointing at the newly-made sword.

“It just came out of the oven. I’ll wrap the leather later.”

He left the newborn sword on a counter and turned to Jack, removing his gloves. He stretched a hand.

“George,” he said.

“Jack.”

His hand was sweaty and hard, but Jack didn’t mind. They smiled at each other.

“So?” George the blacksmith asked, wiping some sweat off his forehead again. “How can I help you?”

“I’m just looking, if you don’t mind.”

George gave him an odd look. “Not with your Level, I don’t.”

“What happened to Valville?”

Another odd look. George grabbed a chair and took a seat. “You weren’t in town?”

“Forest.”

“Lucky you. Things went to shit at first. Many died before the strong people banded together to drive the monsters out of Valville. They were goblins, mostly, so easy opponents, but it still took four days. Then, we rebuilt with monsters in mind. Most people are warriors or losers now, so we don’t need accounting and all that shit. We have plenty of food and water, thankfully, what with many dying and the town’s food storage. We also have the farms.”

“Losers?” Jack raised a brow. “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“Everything is harsh now.” George shook his head.

Jack nodded slowly. He didn’t quite agree, but he could see where the sentiment was coming from.

“And Henry’s Fang?” he asked.

At this, the blacksmith raised his eyes. He deliberated his next words for a moment, then said, “They’re okay,” in a way that clearly implied the opposite. After all, Jack could have been an ally of Henry’s Fang.

A bad omen, Jack thought, nodding again. I hope the professor is okay.

Realizing he had nothing else to offer and was just taking up the man’s time, he stood up. “Thank you, George. Happy smithing.”

“Anytime, Jack. Come find me if you ever need a new weapon.” He eyed Jack’s empty hands. “I reckon it will be soon.”

Jack smiled and didn’t reply. He walked away, hearing metallic clangs again the moment he turned his head. At least he wasn’t the only one enjoying the apocalypse. Enjoying? When did I become like that… He shook his head. Enough sight-seeing. Now; the professor. He ventured deeper into Valville.

Stares fell on him as he walked. He stood out, what with his bare-chested musculature and monkey on his shoulder, so it was natural. He even felt kind of proud when a wave of whispers followed his path through the town as people noticed his Level.

He was quite an outlier. Jack scanned dozens of people and only saw one person above Level 7; everyone else ranged between 1 and 5. The members of Henry’s Fang were rare—most people were factionless—but when he found one, they usually walked around with a swag that resembled his. Other people took their distance from them, looking over with a mixture of fear and disgust.

All members of Henry's Fang also glared at Jack before noticing his Level, at which point they instantly became subservient. He shook his head and ignored them.

Brock was clearly excited, too. He tried to jump off once or twice and explore or play with something, but Jack held him back—any random accident could get him sliced to pieces. He was just a monster monkey, after all, and the people of Valville were now warriors. A clear edge shone under their jovialty; Jack had no doubt they would have cut Brock into pieces if he came here alone.

Warriors.. He focused on this feeling, looking at individual people rather than the general image.

They were different than he remembered; hardened. Hushed whispers and commanding voices were everywhere under the clamor. When he crossed gazes with someone, most held his gaze for a moment. Groups of people were either going out to hunt monsters or returning, carrying their wounded and seemingly random monster parts—from goblin eyes to brown hearts. The former had clenched fists and set jaws; the latter, empty eyes and palpable relief that they were still whole.

They had also tried to armor themselves. Jack saw people wearing several thick coats, with pans and pots tied in front of their vulnerable parts as armor, or even holding thin iron plates with jagged sides like shields—maybe that’s why most cars lacked a roof. When it rained, they would quickly begin to stink of rot.

Overall, the weapons and armor of these monster hunters were makeshift, and their tactics ineffective, but they were clearly doing their best. Jack could respect them.

The exception to that was the members of Henry’s Fang. They held actual swords or handguns as they went out hunting in groups of three to five people, and they wore what looked like real leather armor. They must have had leatherworkers and blacksmiths—like George—working for them.

Moreover, they were relaxed, even cracking jokes as they strutted through the town, shooting mocking glances and pointed comments at those who weren’t as well-equipped. Despite their overt mockery of others’ misfortune, nobody dared retort. No doubt there would be consequences. This disharmony really ruined Jack's image of the new Valville.

The people of Henry’s Fang seemed like dickheads, but he didn’t want to judge too quickly.

After all, he stood out himself. His steps carried confidence, and his gait was wide. His Level sent everyone out of his way, including the members of Henry’s Fang.

It felt good.

Jack made a beeline for the town’s west side. His first priority was making sure the professor was okay—most of his friends were in other towns, and telecommunications were down, so he couldn’t contact them. Then, he’d speak to Henry of Henry’s Fang. If they were good guys, Jack could work with them to ensure the town’s safety. He had much to offer. If not...

His walk through the town took the better part of an hour. He didn’t hurry, taking the time to observe the situation.

The areas near the town entrances and close to downtown were as lively as he'd seen them. Everywhere else was abandoned, highlighting the previous dichotomy. There were destroyed buildings and injured people everywhere. Many were obviously sick, too, probably from the dust and grime they carried. Nobody was cleaning or working for the benefit of the town, only hustling from place to place to hunt monsters or procure necessities. There were no ambulances or electricity, either, though the hospital would certainly be filled to the brim.

It seemed like nobody cared for the townspeople, but again, Jack didn’t want to judge too quickly. This was a ton of work, and it was the apocalypse. Maybe Henry’s Fang was just doing their best—though their many hunting groups indicated otherwise.

At least the town seemed safe from monsters.

A small white house entered Jack’s vision as the sun reached its peak. It had a single story and a pink chimney rising from its tiled roof, while the windows were clean. It would have been a picturesque image if not for the patches of blood where the walls met the floor.

Jack’s worry mounted as he approached. A stubborn knot was in his throat, like when he had been about to fight the rock bear. There were no sounds coming from the house, and no lights were on, either—but why would they? It was noon.

Jack reached the door, mustered his resolve, and knocked.

“Coming!”

His worry deflated instantly. “Oh, thank God,” he whispered.

The door opened to reveal a woman in casual clothing. She was short and slim, while her brown eyes remained sharp despite their wrinkles. Jack used to joke that her mind was filled with firecrackers. She kept her white hair short, above shoulder-length, and always spoke and moved around with an energy that belied her old age.

When her gaze met Jack’s barbaric form and monkey, she gasped in fear. Then, she scoured his face and recognized the lines. She shivered.

“Jack!” she exclaimed in joyful disbelief.

“Professor!” Jack shouted back, rushing in to hug her—carefully. Besides a suspicious swelling on her cheek, she was not injured. Everything was okay.

Except for the unknown burly man standing with crossed arms behind her. That one was not okay.