Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Edgar stepped into the arena under the deafening cheers of thousands of people. System-enhanced lungs thundered with roars, feet stomped on the wooden stands, and the constant din of conversation flowed underneath the rest of the noise, difficult to perceive but always there.

The cheers hit Edgar like a warm wall of humidity, like entering a marsh. The sun came immediately afterward, shining on his eyes and making him shield them, while the sweat-filled breeze of the arena blew into him along with grains of sand.

Two weeks ago, Edgar would have been overwhelmed. Now, he just gulped.

This pressure wasn’t something you could get used to this quickly. You either had it in you or you didn’t, and Edgar didn’t, but he tried his hardest anyway. By now, he could stand it.

He walked deeper into the sands, approaching the center of the arena. The cheers intensified as he conjured two mana birds and sent them spinning through the air in recognition of the crowd’s fondness.

Jack Rust stood opposite him. His bare chest glinted in the sun, his wild eyes stared Edgar down like a beast of prey, and his nonchalant hands were ready to smash Edgar’s face apart. As he stood there, under the cheers of thousands of people and the eyes of billions, Jack seemed nonplussed, like this was another day in the park.

He smiled and nodded. Edgar did the same.

“We finally meet on the sand,” Jack said. “Are you nervous, Edgar?”

His voice shouldn’t have reached through the clamor, but the arena had some magical sound enhancement going on. Not only could Edgar hear him, but so could everyone in the audience.

“A bit,” Edgar admitted, chuckling. His glasses shone under the rays of light, and his messy dark hair were ruffled by the breeze, as were the cyan wizard robes he wore. He tightened his grip on the crystal-topped staff. “But don’t let your guard down, Jack. I am here to win.”

That was meant more to himself than Jack, but the crowd didn’t know it. They cheered in response to his taunting—though it wasn’t anything spectacular—and watched as the two fighters prepared for battle.

Edgar waved his staff around and summoned three balls of condensed mana around him. At the same time, he let his inner mana spread out of his body and into his surroundings, imbuing the air and sand and making it easier to manipulate later. His master, the lizardman archmage, had taught him many tricks. Edgar’s strength had risen meteorically.

And yet, Jack remained as tall as ever. He simply cracked his knuckles. Suddenly, Edgar felt an aura of brutality blanketing the entire arena and suffocating him. He had seen Jack fight; he was a beast in man form, a relentless, unstoppable machine of pain, a towering, invincible behemoth.

There was a mental component to Jack’s fighting style. Anyone who saw him fight shivered at the thought of facing him. His last battle against Shard Presht, that brutal, merciless beatdown, had especially driven the point home.

Edgar felt his knees go weak and his breath quicken. His concentration faltered momentarily.

Jack Rust was a monster.

A monster that Edgar would tame.

“Come, Jack!” he shouted to embolden himself. His entire body flared with blue light. The air around him warped from power as reality bent to his will. His eyes and mouth spilled magic.

Opposite him, Jack grinned. “Oh, I will,” he said, then dashed forth. His legs hammered at the sand. Edgar suppressed a pang of fear as he sent an opening salvo Jack’s way. A flock of two dozen birds materialized mid-air—pigeons with sharp talons, made of blue wind. Each of these was equivalent to a Level 15 beast.

They fell into formation and charged at Jack. Their flight patterns interweaved, making them unpredictable.

Jack grinned as he stopped and adopted a boxing stance. His left fist darted out faster than Edgar’s eyes could perceive, unleashing a series of jabs that blew birds apart like they were made of foam. His punches reached beyond the physical length of his arms, shooting down birds from a couple feet away.

Edgar gritted his teeth. He knew about Drill, but he didn’t expect that Jack could use it so well. His birds had attempted to surround Jack, but only half of them were left by now. He sent them into a kamikaze attack, diving at Jack with talons extended. Both his arms blurred into strong punches, annihilating the swarm with ease.

Two birds managed to reach him, but their talons only left superficial scratches that closed before Edgar’s eyes.

His opening salvo had been destroyed, but he never intended to defeat Jack with it, anyway. Its role was to gather information and scout out his opponent’s current capabilities.

This was how a wizard battled. Efficient utilization of resources backed by higher intellect. Scouting, feints, defense, analysis, attacks, and killing blow. To a wizard, a battle was a highly intellectual affair; like chess.

Edgar’s flock had completed its assignment. His mind took in the skills Jack had revealed, analyzed his movements, and formed a simulation in his mind. A dozen different scenarios played out in the blink of an eye, analyzing how Jack would fare against a combination of different attacks.

The solution was clear: he had to limit Jack’s mobility and attack from below, where his fists would struggle most to reach.

Fortunately, Edgar had many weapons in his arsenal, including the perfect one for this situation.

As Jack charged again, his face still brimming with confidence, Edgar’s mana flowed into the sand. In the blink of an eye, fifty small sandstorms—sand devils—danced around Jack’s feet.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. Edgar saw the calculations running behind his mind. Stepping hard into the sand, Jack jumped, only to smash head-first into a blue wall Edgar had already conjured over his head. It had been small enough that it was outside the range of Jack’s eyesight.

Jack collapsed to the ground as the sand devils swarmed him. The arena’s sand was already harder than normal, and Edgar’s magic enhanced this property. The sandstorms rotated at high speed, grating their caltrop-like grains against Jack’s exposed skin.

Jack shouted in pain and fury. His arms blurred as he punched down faster than the eye could see, but the sandstorms were resistant to blunt damage by nature. They were a great counter for his skills.

Edgar saw Jack’s body tighten. A renewed aura of violence erupted, sensed only by the Dao. His two Dao Roots pulsed together, revving harder, like train engines, as Jack embraced the deadly juggernaut that he was.

Edgar buckled down. The real fight was starting.

Jack ignored the sandstorms and rushed forward. He wisely didn’t leap through the air, as that would make him an easy target. His legs were bleeding as the skin was flayed off them, revealing red muscle tissue underneath. His speed was noticeably impacted, but he was nowhere near falling.

Edgar felt a shot of guilt at the pain he was inflicting on his friend, but it was part of the battle.

He tried to conjure energy walls before Jack, but they took time to form, and a well-placed punch was enough to rip through them. This tactic could only work in Jack’s blind spot.

The sandstorms were slower than Jack, but they were many, and Edgar had placed them between himself and his opponent. Jack had to wade through a field of pain. Hopefully, his muscles would be injured enough to overwhelm his regeneration. If that happened, Edgar would win.

Unfortunately, Jack’s skin was beyond tough. It was like trying to cut a tree with a razor.

Jack fell into a full-on sprint. He was like a bull; red eyes, manic fury, and the promise of excessive violence once he caught up. Edgar retreated as fast as his legs could carry him, but he was nowhere near fast enough.

Thankfully, he never planned to rely on his speed. Blue light reflected off his glasses, and his dark hair rose as a torrent of mana left his body—he was already down to 50%, but this could be the end.

The arena’s rock floor rose vertically before Jack, forming a thick wall and tossing a few sand devils on his upper body. The wall blocked Edgar’s sight. At the same time, a tightly-packed formation of wind birds appeared in front of the wall, ready to ambush Jack the moment he broke through.

Edgar couldn’t see it, but he felt a meteor appear on the other side of his wall. The colors and sounds disappeared, like the final moments of life before a natural disaster strikes you head-on. Purple flared around the wall’s edges.

An explosion rocked the arena. The rock wall shattered on impact, sending fist-sized stones flying everywhere. Edgar cursed and hastily conjured a shield to block, but his birds weren’t so lucky. The stone fragments tore them apart. All sand devils near the point of impact were blown away.

Jack flew through the destruction, his legs deeply wounded but slowly healing. Edgar’s killing blow had been utterly annihilated.

Seeing Meteor Punch used on someone else was a grave underestimation of its power. When Edgar faced it directly, even by proxy of his magic, it felt like a true natural disaster. A meteor crashed down from orbit. What was he supposed to do against that?!

Before Edgar could realize what had happened, Jack was already closing in. One Edgar instantly became nine—eight were illusions—and they scattered in all directions. Rock rose, sand flew, the wind formed into birds. Fireballs flew out of every Edgar in rapid succession as glimmering dots of multi-colored light brewed in their hands.

Edgar threw a menagerie of attacks at Jack. Jack roared and crashed into them like a freight train. He was going all-out now. Birds disintegrated, sand scattered, rock shattered. Jack was a flurry of blows tearing through a flood of magical attacks like an unstoppable, invincible fist.

Jack was a monster, and Edgar could only delay the inevitable. Terror clawed at his chest, but he pushed it down.

The fireballs smashed into Jack and burned his skin, they entered his lungs and blistered his insides, but even that wasn’t enough to stop him. He stampeded forward with his fists held high and his eyes staring straight at Edgar. Two fists tore through the faces of two mirror images, a sign of what would soon happen to the real one, amplifying his terror.

For the first time, Edgar realized that Jack might not be wholly conscious of the mental warfare he was waging.

However, Edgar hadn’t reached this point by being a coward. He had entered the tournament as one of the weakest participants. His every battle had been an uphill struggle. He worked harder and more efficiently than others, he spent the entire day watching fights and taking notes to form counter strategies against every opponent.

He pushed on through the tournament, capitalizing on every advantage he could get. He refined his magic again and again, maximizing his power. He surpassed others every day, clawing his way up the ladder of power. Every bit of his soul had been devoted to this task since the System’s arrival, and he only barely made it through every choke point.

Meanwhile, Jack just steamrolled through without a care in the world.

Why couldn’t it be me?

The thought had been bouncing around in Edgar’s head since the very start. Jack deserved what he had, but so did Edgar. He just hadn’t been as lucky. Everything he had came from sheer hard work.

He felt bitter.

However, Edgar was the master of himself. The world was unfair. He wouldn’t envy his friend.

But he sure as hell would try his hardest to win, no matter how invincible or terrifying Jack was. Fate was in his hands. He would just beat the odds again.

Jack plowed through Edgar’s attacks. He was unstoppable. Attacking like this was a waste of Edgar’s mana, so he simply stopped. Jack tore through two more mirror images in an instant.

The remaining five Edgars tossed their dots of condensed, multi-colored mana that had just finished forming. He thought Jack would dodge. The madman just grinned and punched one of them—the right one. Edgar hurried to jump back, but it was too late.

An explosion rocked his world, breaking his glasses and making his ears ring. He was plastered against the ground, all mirror images broken. Without his glasses, he could just barely make out Jack’s mangled hand and blackened wrist. Jack roared through the pain, but his eyes remained clear. He still had another hand, and Edgar was out of options.

“Game over,” Jack said. Edgar noticed that his opponent’s hand wasn’t regenerating—was it because he’d used a Skill containing his Dao? A Dao Skill? Did that interfere with anything?

If only he knew sooner…

Edgar crawled backward and to the side as Jack approached and loomed over him. “Resign,” he commanded. “You fought bravely, but this is over.”

“I—” Edgar gritted his teeth. His remaining 20% of mana evaporated. His fake despair receded, revealing triumphant eyes. “Quintus Convergius.”

Jack instantly realized he’d fallen into a trap. His entire body tensed. Mana filled the air. The dispersed wind and sand glowed, the hints of fire shimmered, the broken rock rumbled, and the large bottles of water Edgar carried under his robes trembled.

Elemental mana traveled all over.

The crystal atop his fallen staff shone with ethereal light and launched a beam at Jack. It was fire, water, earth, wind, and sand, all at once. It carried the strengths of all five elements simultaneously, all combined into a beam of elemental power that could blast through steel walls.

The laws of physics protested. You couldn’t just combine different things like that. It was illogical. It made no sense.

It was Magic.

Jack had been caught prepared. There was no time to dodge. His good hand was ruined. The cyan beam flew over the fallen Edgar and reached him in an instant.

All colors disappeared, but the beam remained cyan. A purple meteor fell from orbit and met it head-on.

A blinding explosion rocked Edgar harder than before. His vision swam. His ears bled. The shockwave pushed him into the ground until his bones cracked. The elemental particles in the air danced in disarray.

Jack had been sent flying. He skipped off the ground twice, then smashed into the back wall. From where he lay on the ground, Edgar could only hope it had been enough. That Jack was unconscious.

But it just wasn’t meant to be.

Through the dust and sand, Jack rose. He was wobbling a bit. Both his hands were mangled now—he couldn’t punch if he wanted to. But he was standing, and Edgar was not.

“Fuck,” Edgar whispered, letting his upper body fall again. He faced the bright blue sky. He had lost, but he’d challenged and held his ground against Jack Rust. The strongest human of Earth.

A grin formed on his lips. He had proven himself worthy. He wasn’t just another loser. He had done his best, and that was enough.

“I resign,” he croaked out.

The crowd erupted into the loudest cheers he’d ever heard, and Edgar lost consciousness with a smile.