Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 437: Repairing the Crack

Jack sank into his soul world, completely isolating the outside world. Even if someone attacked him, he wouldn’t know. He needed absolute focus.

Starry light welcomed him from all directions. Purple stars twinkled. In the void, a lone tree stood there, rooted into a floating, multi-colored fist.

This fist was large, around three feet wide. Each of its fingers was a different color—purple, silver, green, red, black—representing the Dao Roots he’d established in the E-Grade, while the fist itself was pointed downward. Where the wrist would be on a normal fist, this one simply ended, with a glowing green gem embedded into its base. This was the Life Drop, a drop of blood from Enas that Jack had acquired in Trial Planet.

On top of that wrist was where Jack’s Dao Tree had grown: A sturdy and solid specimen, with roots powerfully drilling into the fist below and branches spreading out uninhibited. With its ten feet of height, it was almost comically large when placed on the three-feet-wide fist, yet its size paled in comparison to the soul world itself.

Atop the tree branches, purple flowers bloomed, twinkling like the stars which decorated Jack’s soul space. There were also five fruits—Fist, Space, Life, Death, Battle.

Finally, there was the realm heart he’d inherited from Archon Green Dragon; a pulsating mass of crystal inlaid with innumerable spacetime runes, currently orbiting the crown of his tree.

Jack was emotional as he gazed at his Dao. This was all the result of his cultivation. He’d built it up, piece by piece, over many years of effort.

How long has it been since the Integration? he suddenly wondered. Seven years? Eight? I’ve lost count…but it doesn’t really matter.

To most C-Grade cultivators, seven years were nothing. Just the blink of an eye. Jack, however, had only lived for twenty-seven before embarking on the path of cultivation. Those seven-odd years were important. Without realizing it, he’d already turned thirty-five.

Unfortunately, a massive crack covered the trunk of his Dao Tree. If he failed to repair it, he would remain stranded in the Black Hole World forever.

It wouldn’t be too bad. He could start a new life here, embrace the peaceful happiness of these people, live it out.

But that wouldn’t be him. The bird cannot thrive in a cage—the Fist cannot survive in peace. Jack had to return to the universe, see his family again, discover the secrets of the Immortals and the Old Ones, battle in the Second Crusade, and reach the peak of cultivation. He wanted to fight to his heart’s content—make sure the people he cared about were safe.

And get revenge.

The world was waiting for him, and he’d already rested here for a year. That was more than enough. His mind had stabilized. It was time to go.

Jack cut away all distractions, focusing on the task at hand. He first inspected his soul space, touching on each of the dubious points.

The door on his Dao Tree remained sealed. The crack had split it down in half, making it unable to open, and the turtle was still asleep. Jack tried knocking, but nothing happened. As for the Life Drop itself, it remained just an ocean of green power he could draw on to enhance his body—useless at present. He would have to get through this alone.

The Green Dragon realm heart was suspended in the void, orbiting his Dao Tree. It was a powerful object, but one he couldn’t use freely. Besides some assistance it offered in comprehending spacetime, its other functions would only come into effect once he reached the B-Grade and formed his inner world.

Finally, Jack flew through the void, approaching a body which rested in a corner of his world. It seemed to be peacefully sleeping—but it looked exactly like Jack.

This was Copy Jack—and Copy Jack had somehow turned into a mystery Jack couldn’t unravel. When he first absorbed the Dao Soul after the Integration Tournament, it had evolved into a clone of himself with a simple mind. The two of them often sparred in his soul world, and it had helped Jack make progress in various aspects. Copy Jack slowly developed himself, just like a child. He even seemed willing to visit the outside world, and Jack had considered looking for ways to make it happen.

At some point, however, everything changed. When Jack absorbed the Life Drop, Copy Jack’s childlike curiosity drove him to touch it. A tendril of green energy had zapped him, possibly frying something inside him—and changing him in a seemingly permanent way.

Ever since then, Copy Jack’s personality had shifted. His desire to leave had vanished. He was perfectly content relaxing in Jack’s soul world, occasionally interacting with his host but mostly flying around, absorbed in thoughts only he knew. That change had saddened Jack, but though he’d asked around, nobody had any idea. There was nothing he could do. Besides, Copy Jack seemed happy.

Now, however, Copy Jack had fallen into a deep slumber. He had been like this ever since Jack awoke in the Black Hole World—he guessed it was due to overdrawing his Dao to escape Eva Solvig, or maybe the Dao crack had impacted him in an unforeseen way. Regardless, Jack had been unable to wake up Copy Jack no matter what he did, which worried him greatly. Both for Copy Jack’s own safety, and also for Jack’s—he did not enjoy enigmas buried inside his soul.

Even now, as Jack was about to begin repairing his Dao crack, Copy Jack could not awaken. Jack tried for a while, then shook his head and flew away. At least, he could sense that his copy was stable. He would be better equipped to look into this issue later.

Done with all other variables, Jack reached his Dao Tree again. The crack stared at him like the maw of a hungry beast. Dao constantly flowed out—his Dao—rendering his tree basically incapable of holding any. Due to this crack, the fruits were pale, the flowers were sagging, the trunk was spongy, and the roots were weak. Attempting to muster his Dao was like drawing water with a net—most dispersed, and only an insignificant amount remained.

The only reason Jack had a half-decent level of battle prowess was his formidable body, as well as the trace amounts of energy contained in the tree’s roots.

This had to change.

Jack stared at the large crack, then took a deep breath. Slowly, his mind entered its battle state. He hadn’t experienced this feeling in a while—he felt rusted, nervous, yet excited, like a former champion returning to the ring of glory.

The crack was daunting. It stared him in the face, taking up his whole world. It was filled with his own darkness—the demons he’d never been able to defeat.

Yet, this time, Jack had come prepared. He’d taken his time. He’d worked out his complex feelings and come to terms with himself. One entire year, he’d spent recovering and preparing for this moment, letting the rest of the world unfold as it will.

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He was ready.

His mind blasted outward. The walls and barriers he’d set up shattered. Torrents of darkness flooded towards him as if from a broken dam, and Jack stood tall in their path, accepting them all.

The impact was almost physical. He was shaken, his thoughts growing blurry. Grief and anger filled him in prodigious amounts, submerging his mind completely, and Jack was a drowning man struggling to find the way up. Panic welled up inside his heart—an intense desire to bottle everything up again. He pushed it down. Ignoring these feelings wouldn’t repair his Dao crack. He had to face them.

They were fiercer than he remembered. The grief, the pain, the self-blame. How could a man survive this? How could he persist?

“DAD!” Eric screamed, his throat crushed by a laughing leonine. Jack almost lost control. He didn’t want to relive this scene, but he didn’t have a choice. There was no avoiding it. The only way out was through.

Everything Jack had prepared for a year came under test. His temperance, his discipline, his clarity. This was a war against his emotions, a war which his every instinct pushed him to avoid, but a war he faced regardless. He bit his tongue until it bled, using the pain to remain awake. The heartache was insufferable.

“Hahaha!” The leonine laughed. “I killed your son, Jack Rust! What are you going to do about it? What? Come on, you useless coward!”

Jack’s heart was made of coal. Dark tears rolled down his cheeks, and he was clenching his fists so hard that his nails dug into his palms and drew blood.

This was a heart demon. The emotions he’d felt at the time had been so intense, so unresolved, that they still lurked in a corner of his mind, waiting to assault him at the worst possible moment. Jack knew it, but resisting was so hard. He would rather split his soul in two than be forced to face this.

It wasn’t a test meant for humans to endure. But Jack had to.

The laughing leonine was nothing. It was smoke and dust, just a prop to hide the real meaning of this vision. Anger was just an escape—what he really felt was helplessness, defeat. Despair.

“I’m sorry,” Jack told the lifeless Eric. “I’m so, so sorry…but I cannot turn back time. I cannot save you.”

The words hurt him more than the vision had. He’d just taken a wall inside his mind and ripped it apart—but that wall was made of himself, and the pain was staggering.

The vision dispersed. A new one appeared. This time, the leonine was alone, pointing a finger at Jack and raving with rage. “You deserve this!” he shouted. “You caused this! It is all your fault!”

Jack wanted to punch out and fight to the death. It took every ounce of willpower he could muster to resist the temptation, the desperate desire to escape. Instead, he saw things for what they really were. Artus Emberheart blurred, and a new form slowly took his place.

It was Jack. Still pointing, still raving, still shouting in anger. This was the guilt and self-blame, the anger he felt at himself for being unable to save Eric. For being the reason this happened in the first place.

Jack forced himself to take a deep breath, his entire body trembling. He did not reply. He let the angry Jack’s words wash over him, dying him red in his son’s blood. He didn’t know how long this went on for. Finally, when angry Jack ran out of steam, only then did Jack reply.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice fuzzy from angry tears. “I…am not perfect. I made a mistake. I swear I will be better next time, so please…forgive me.”

“NO!” Angry Jack shouted. “NO! NO! NO!”

His words shook the world, his fury so deeply nestled it seemed it would never abate. But Jack and Angry Jack were the same person. He was Angry Jack. He opened his mouth and broke through himself to say, “I forgive you.”

Angry Jack tried to disagree but he could not. His open mouth released no voice. He dissipated.

By now, Jack felt empty. Like his insides had been removed and he was just a hollow statue of himself. His heart was entirely colored black. He was bleeding from the soul. This was already more than any human should have to bear, but it wasn’t over.

Eric’s death had caused three knots inside Jack’s heart. The first was despair and helplessness. The second was guilt, anger, and self-blame. The third and greatest knot was grief—and this was the most difficult one to untangle, because it did not originate from Jack’s heart alone.

A third vision faced Jack. This time, it was not a leonine, not himself, but Eric. The little boy seemed alive and well, just as Jack had seen him at first, but his eyes were sad and his voice heavy, speaking directly from the world of the dead. Jack remembered the boy with whom he’d built a treehouse, the always smiling boy he’d taken on a tour around Earth and with whom he’d shared his planet’s wonders.

“What about me, dad?” Eric asked. “Should I forgive you?”

Jack would have liked to say yes. He would have liked for that answer to be true. But it wasn’t. There was nothing he could do about it.

Eric had lost everything. His life, his future, everything he’d ever be, he’d lost…and it was Jack’s fault. That much was undeniable. Even if some of the causal connections were unclear, it couldn’t be the fault of anybody else, nor would Jack dare to assume such a thing. He took the blame and placed it squarely on his shoulders, then collapsed under its weight. His knees slammed into the ground. He took his forehead and smashed it down.

“I’M SORRY, ERIC!” he yelled. “I LET YOU DOWN! THIS IS ALL MY FAULT! I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY!”

No matter how Jack apologized, no matter how he cried, this Eric was only a figment of his imagination. He remained unmoved.

“So what if you’re sorry?” he asked. “Should I forgive you?”

“I can never deserve your forgiveness,” Jack replied. “The things you lost, I can never return to you. But I can be better. For your mother, your sister. I swear I will never fail again. Please, let me protect them!”

Eric smiled coldly. “So I should just disappear?”

A knife was stabbed and twisted into Jack’s heart. He lost his words, dropped his train of thought. For a moment, he lost himself—then realized this knot could never be untied. This grief could never be resolved. Maybe it would mellow down in the future, retreat from his conscious thoughts, but it was something he would have to live with forever.

Therefore, Jack did the only thing he could. He transmuted it. His grief was siphoned into a darker feeling. Only like that could he temporarily live past this.

“You should never disappear, and you should never forgive me,” he said. “I cannot recover what you have lost. I cannot right this wrong. However, there is one thing I can do for you, and that is to get revenge. I will kill the man who killed you and make him suffer. Everyone involved will die. I will paint this galaxy red with the blood of leonines, and when I’m done, the name Emberheart will no longer exist!”

Eric only watched on. Jack’s voice grew weaker by the end.

“I know it’s nothing,” he said, “but it’s the only thing I can do. I hope that…perhaps…it will satisfy you.”

Eric stared at Jack for a long time. He did not speak, nor did he express anything. Then, finally, the little boy faded away. His silence was puzzling to Jack, as well as torture, but he didn’t dare continue. He just couldn’t. This had already wrung him dry.

The third knot hadn’t been resolved. It had only been temporarily bypassed in return for Jack embracing a darkness he would rather not have. But that darkness gave him power—and, for now, it was the best he could do. The only way forward.

The three knots were past. Jack opened his eyes in the soul world, facing his cracked Dao Tree again, and for a moment, he could stare at the crack directly. He saw it for what it really was—a gap in his Dao, a flaw in his life’s mindset.

Jack had long become one with the Fist. He knew it well, and it knew him. In truth, the way to repairing the crack had become evident after experiencing the three visions. He knew how to fix his Dao.

It was the simplest thing, yet a difficult one.

He smiled sadly. “The Fist can make mistakes,” he uttered slowly. “It can miss, it can hit the wrong target, and it can be defeated. It is not perfect, and neither am I. But…that’s fine. We make mistakes and live on. We carry ourselves forward. We keep believing, never giving up. That is the way of the Fist. That is me.”

The bark around the crack wriggled. New offshoots appeared, wrapping around each other. Jack watched his Dao and soul repair itself. On the inside, some warmth peeked out from underneath the darkness like the rainbow after the rain. He forced himself to feel happy, even for a moment, even as his grief told him he didn’t deserve it.

It was not over. His path stretched through the darkness. The world would keep rolling, and he would be there, still fighting.

Jack Rust was back.