Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse-Chapter 429: Black Hole World

Jack awoke groggily. His entire body was in pain. He could not move his limbs, nor could he sense them—as if the only thing awake about him was his brain.

A young woman emerged in the mist of his vision. She seemed human—pale skin, blond hair, blue eyes, soft hands tending to his wounds. She was beautiful, too. As she gazed at him, she smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t need to wake up yet. Rest.”

Jack wanted to protest, but he could barely remember his own name, let alone speak. Just thinking this far made him exhausted. Powerless to resist, he drifted back into sleep.

***

The second time Jack awoke, he did so with full and immediate clarity. Linen beddings, stone walls, unfamiliar yellow robes draped over his body. He was alone in what resembled a bedroom. He instantly jumped upright, ready to tear everything around him to shreds, but it was then that his perception howled outside the room and glimpsed at people.

Mortals.

He restrained himself. If he rampaged now, all those people would die instantly. It was easy to keep his powers in check, but much harder to do the same for his thoughts—the memories of the last few hours were all too clear. He had been chased into a corner, and then Artus Emberheart had killed...

Eric…

Sad emotions warred within Jack. His period of unconsciousness had given them time to recover from the insane state they’d reached before, but it hadn’t made his grief any lighter. His own son had died—the boy he’d given up everything to protect. He had failed—both as a father and a cultivator.

Jack would have liked to roar wildly and vent his feelings. As it was, however, he could not. His anger was hollow. All he could do was bury his face in his palms and weep for the life he had not been able to protect.

“I’m sorry, Eric… Vivi, Ebele, I’m so so sorry…”

When a man was distraught, the world lost its colors. Jack didn’t know how long he spent alone in that room. The weight of his grief was crushing. It was only when he calmed down somewhat that he managed to consider his situation.

Where am I?

The last thing he remembered was that he’d been sucked into the black hole. He should have been dead. He’d stepped past the event horizon, where nothing or nobody could have rescued him.

Yet, here he was, still alive. In inhabited terrain, no less. Could this be the inside of the black hole, the cause of its irregularity? Or had the black hole acted as a wormhole to a completely different place?

Was he even in the same universe?

Now able to think, Jack could sense the distorted spacetime in this environment. It resembled nothing he knew of. Spacetime was supposed to be an endlessly stretching curtain, but here…it felt more like a taut piece of cloth. Small, yet unbelievably sturdy.

If spacetime was the sea, he was on an island.

Archon Green Dragon’s inheritance contained no hint to such a place—not in the part Jack had comprehended, anyway. Therefore, he temporarily suppressed both grief and curiosity to look inward. No matter where he was, his own situation was the most important thing.

It was not good.

His soul felt dry. The Dao density inside him was thin, like the humidity of a desert, and his Dao Tree had almost withered due to the lack of energy. A large crack also ran down the tree’s length, from leaves to root. Jack’s heart throbbed as he saw it.

Such a crack appeared when a cultivator ran into a situation irreconcilable with their Dao. It basically meant their Dao was incomplete—with such a crack, any further progress was difficult, and even the cultivator’s current power level would experience a massive drop.

Jack had long heard about the cracking of one’s Dao. He’d even caused it to some people. However, it was only when he experienced it himself that he realized how painful it really was.

While this crack existed, he was crippled.

Let alone reaching the A-Grade—with such a massive crack in his Dao Tree, even developing the next Dao Fruit would be difficult. Unless he found a solution…but that was easier said than done.

And the grief…

Jack sighed. He had temporarily suppressed those feelings, but they remained vivid in his heart. Pain, fury… A seed of darkness had been planted inside him, one which consumed both himself and others. As if he’d swallowed his very own black hole.

And all this had been caused by Artus Emberheart. The one enemy he’d let roam free.

Emberheart… Jack thought, his eyes flashing with darkness. I will rip out your heart and make you watch as I kill everyone you love. Only then will my hatred be satisfied.

He opened his status screen.

ERROR: PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST AUTHORITIES IMMEDIATELY OR FACE EXTERMINATION.

Name: Jack Rust

Species: Human, Earth-387

Faction: Bare Fist Brotherhood (C)

Grade: C

Class: Gladiator Titan (King) (cracked)

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Level: 303

Strength: 6040 (+)

Dexterity: 6040 (+)

Constitution: 6040 (+)

Mental: 1000

Will: 1000

Free sub-points: 1

Dao Skills: Meteor Punch IV, Iron Fist Style III, Brutalizing Aura III, Neutron Star Body III, Supernova III, Space Mastery III, Fist of Mortality III, Titan Taunt I

Dao Roots: Indomitable Will, Life, Power, Weakness

Dao Fruits: Fist, Space, Life, Death, Battle

Titles: Planetary Frontrunner (10), Planetary Torchbearer (1), Ninth Ring Conqueror, Planetary Leader (1), Grade Defier

The warning remained loud and obnoxious. He’d gained a level when he killed that Animal Kingdom Elder at the start of the battle, but a new word had appeared next to his Class.

Cracked… Does the System’s Class refer to my Dao Tree, then? Or is that position a coincidence?

It was only after Jack had finished taking stock of himself that he once again released his perception. It easily bypassed the walls, finding more and more structures. All were rough and simple, emphasizing space efficiency over appearance. However, they were brightly colored. Looking farther, Jack could see these buildings follow a broad, dark stone floor which curved in the distance like the surface of a tiny planet.

The ground was made of stone, and so was the sky. As Jack’s perception spread up and down, he could sense that the place he was in was divided into manmade layers separated by floors of stone, each layer further crowded with structures. It was like the inside of a beehive—or like the dwellings of an underground society. There were no streets in the traditional sense. Jack was in a three-dimensional city, a network of manmade tunnels interspersed with large rooms which served as houses, shops, gardens…

His first thought was that he was underground. To his surprise, however, he realized there was no dirt or stone surrounding all these rooms and tunnels. The empty space between them was hollow, as if this place hadn’t been dug out but constructed.

It was almost magical.

Even Jack’s downcast mind forgot about its troubles for a moment to enjoy this otherworldly scenery.

“Where am I?” he couldn’t help wondering. He shot his perception outward, spreading it in all directions, as far as he could reach. The odd space here hindered him, but even crippled and restrained, Jack could easily scan a radius of several miles.

The place he was in wasn’t a city—or, if it was, he couldn’t reach its limits. In his perception, the buildings and tunnels stretched endlessly in all directions, whether in this layer or the ones around it.

The layer he was in was neither the bottom nor the topmost one—there were layers above and below him, all occupied by the same people as the ones surrounding his room.

As for those people… The truth was, Jack hadn’t paid much attention to them. They were weak—either mortals or low-level cultivators barely reaching the E-Grade. Their clothing was bright and colorful, designed for a good mood, though their features were all kind of similar. In fact, the lack of diversity there was almost alarming—as if Jack had stumbled into a city of clones. At least they seemed joyful.

Nobody had sensed his perception or his awakening. They went on about their menial jobs, occasionally glancing at his nondescript room with a mix of worry and intrigue. The room he was in was just one of many—as it turned out, what he thought of as a bedroom was in fact the entire house.

This place, wherever it was, was certainly overpopulated.

Jack did not disturb these people. The more information he had before he made his move, the better—he was content just watching them go about their everyday lives. It was only an hour later that someone special appeared—a D-Grade cultivator, hunched by age and with a beard almost reaching his ankles, accompanied by a young F-Grade woman.

The moment Jack saw this woman, a new memory flashed into his brain. He’d seen her before. She had been the one tending to his wounds when he briefly woke up before.

Everyone else made respectful way to the woman and old man as they approached his room. It was only when they arrived within a few hundred feet that the old man’s perception pass over Jack. Those old eyes faintly shone. “He’s awake!” he exclaimed, not realizing Jack was listening in. “What do you say, Mia? Should we check in?”

“Yes!” she replied, her smile pure and dazzling.

Jack sensed no bad intentions from either of them. He let them approach, and when they knocked on his door, he politely replied, “Come in.” The door swung open.

It was only then that he could observe them with his two eyes. The old man walking ahead seemed even more decrepit from up-close—his eyes were misty, as if clouded by the approach of death, while his body leaned almost entirely on an unadorned wooden staff. Though a D-Grade, Jack doubted this man even had the combat efficiency of a normal peak E-Grade.

Despite that, his gaze was pure and excited.

As for the woman, she was like a gentle breeze on a prairie. She must have been in her twenties, but innocence wafted off of her like the fragrance of a flower. Her blue eyes gazed at him without a hint of fear, only excitement, and her posture confirmed she didn’t fear him in the slightest.

To Jack’s surprise, he could inspect them.

Human (??), Level 161 (D-Grade)

Faction: Black Hole World (B-Grade)

Title: Direct Descendant

Human (??), Level 23 (F-Grade)

Title: Direct Descendant

The fact that he could use System inspection proved he was still in System space. How is that possible? he wondered. Was the black hole a wormhole leading me somewhere close-by? But the faction name… Black Hole World. What is going on?

And that title… It’s the same one Nauja’s tribe had. Are these people connected to the Ancients?

“Greetings, stranger,” said the old man. If he’d inspected Jack and saw the red, strongly-worded System warning, he did not react. “My name is Vermont Crest the 2,376th. Most people call me Elder Vermont—and this Mia.”

“Nice to meet you,” the girl said, bowing lightly.

Jack nodded in return. “I’m Jack. The pleasure is all mine. If it’s not too much of a bother, could you tell me where I am?”

“This is the Black Hole World,” Elder Vermolt explained, gesturing all around. “A world created by our ancestor, Archon Black Hole, one billion, thirty-seven million, eighty-six thousand and twenty-one years ago. We are the Black Hole people—and you, my good friend, are the first outsider we meet since our ancestor sealed us here.”

Jack raised his brows. “A billion years ago? Are you telling me you’ve been sealed here for a billion years?”

“That’s right. To be precise, it was one billion, thirty-seven—”

“A really long time,” Mia spoke up, eager to participate. “Our ancestor sealed us here to save us from the Immortal Crusade. We were meant to exit after a million years, but unfortunately, the power of our clansmen declined in isolation. When the million-year deadline came, we had no B-Grade clansmen proficient in the Dao of Spacetime to help us escape. Afterwards, even our C-Grades perished. We have been trapped here for a thousand times longer than intended, and with our clansmen unable to reach high enough levels of powers, escaping by ourselves has become impossible.”

A sad smile adorned her face as she finished. Jack took some time to process this information, but he soon realized why they were so excited to see him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I cannot help you. I was strong once, but I am now weak. No matter the method to escape this place, I cannot achieve it. Not right now.”

Their gazes turned cloudy. “Is there any way we can help?” the old man asked.

Jack shook his head. “I fought my enemies and became crippled. The only one who can help me now is myself.”

Mia glanced at the old man, who kept his helpless gaze glued on Jack. A moment later, he said, “It looks like the outside world is not yet safe.”

“Never was, never will be.”

“Hmm.” Elder Vermont released a long sigh. “Let us not rouse your past grievances,” he said, trying but failing to hide his immense disappointment. “If you must be stuck here with us for the foreseeable future...should we show you around?”