Jack took a deep breath. He opened his status screen.

Name: Jack Rust

Species: Human, Earth-387

Faction: Bare Fist Brotherhood (B)

Grade: B

Class: Paragon of Cultivation (Legendary)

Level: 403

Strength: 8730 (+)

Dexterity: 8730 (+)

Constitution: 8730 (+)

Mental: 1200

Will: 1200

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, Death Mastery III, Titan Taunt III, Immortal Commune I

Inner World size: 10,000 miles

Matter Condensation: 6%

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

After their fight against the space octopus, Brock had gotten its core, which he shared with both Jack and Starhair. However, Starhair said he was already at the very peak of the B-Grade, so it was just Brock and Jack. They absorbed the core together. Both rose by three levels. The squid’s Dao was more compatible with Jack’s, so his absorption rate was higher, but his inner world was also wider, so his rate of growth was slower.

Despairingly slow, in fact.

Half the core of an early A-Grade space monster had given him six percent matter condensation, or three levels. Given that the B-Grade comprised of 150 levels, from 400 all the way to 550, it was bound to be extremely slow-going. Unless, of course, he found a den of A-Grade space monsters to hunt.

On the bright side, his stat gain per level was insane. He currently received fifty points every level thanks to his Legendary class. Over the course of the entire B-Grade, that would translate to seven thousand five hundred points, which would almost double his already towering Physical. Given the bits of body tempering he planned to sneak in, it really would double. He would become a monster.

From what he’d heard, most B-Grades received twenty or thirty points per level depending on whether they possessed Common or Elite classes. The super talented ones with King classes, like Min Ling and Sovereign Heavenly Spoon, received forty. His advantage over everyone else would be exponential. And that wasn’t even taking into account the extreme amount of energy he possessed due to his wide inner world.

By now, Jack really was on the path to greatness—and he planned to take the next step today.

He sat cross-legged on the floor. An office room surrounded him—his very own office—but he preferred the floor. The mahogany chair just felt wrong.

A large sack lay between Jack’s feet. The sheer energy radiating from it blinded his senses—if not for the energy-proof material used on the sack, he couldn’t just keep it there. This sack contained the greatest resources he’d been given so far.

Reaching into it, he removed the first item. It was a glowing orb the size of his head, green like mold. Life energy flowed off of it in waves, saturating the room. His Dao resonated, and his inner world yearned to absorb it.

This was a space monster core. According to the small description attached to it, it had come from a peak B-Grade monster called a Mold Worm—a species which took a planet as its shell, carved mountain-sized troughs through it, and eventually consumed it like a regular worm consumed an apple.

Jack placed the orb against his chest. Tendrils of energy leaked out, drawn towards his heart, where his inner world resided. Energy flowed into him. The tendrils widened like water drawn to the waterfall, transferring energy at a faster and faster rate.

Before long, a green vortex hovered before Jack’s chest, rotating so violently it threatened the room’s integrity. Endless energy flowed into his inner world, dispersing without a sign. No matter how vast the energy, his inner world was even vaster. This was just a drop in the sea.

Six hours later, Jack was done absorbing it—two times faster than he’d taken on the octopus core. He opened his eyes from meditation, finding the energy inside him marginally increased.

Level: 404

Matter Condensation: 8%

He groaned. Two percent. That was all he’d gained from a peak B-Grade core, and only because that core was highly compatible with his Dao.

This will take forever, he groaned inwardly.

“Not forever!” The Stone unhelpfully exclaimed. “Just a really really long time! But don’t worry—I’ll be right here keeping you company!”

He groaned again. “Thanks, Stone.”

“No problem.”

Thankfully, he also had some A-Grade cores in the sack. They would give him more meaningful increases. If not for the full support of the Church, he had no idea how or when he’d reach even the middle B-Grade.

For now, he would just get a little bit stronger every day.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

***

The days flowed. Before Jack knew it, he’d lived in the New Cathedral for two weeks, and he’d developed a routine. Sophie came by almost every day to discuss a new marketing approach or take silly pictures and interviews. She, Starhair, and Brock had somehow caught on to the It’s Fisting Time! suggestion for a catchphrase. He rejected it. Yet, it somehow got out, and his fans liked it enough that it had become his unofficial catchphrase.

Whatever Sophie was doing, it was working. He received more looks every time he left the house. People eyed him in the streets, pointing and speaking in hushed tones. He saw interviews of himself playing on big screens, and he cringed every single time. They’d somehow edited his words to give him a brutal, blood-thirsty, warrior-like feel. It wasn’t that he disliked it, nor did he mind the attention. It was just weird. He couldn’t fathom how this enhanced the army’s morale.

“Jack! Jack!” Two E-Grade human girls rushed up to him in the street. “Can we have an autograph?”

He looked at them and shrugged. “Sure. Where do you want it?”

They raised their shirts all the way. Jack bolted out of there.

Another time, he was walking by a clothing store and almost jumped when he saw his face, magnified, stuck against the glass. It was on a t-shirt which also featured the words “It’s fisting time!” on a large font size. Taking a step back, he saw more shirts—himself drawn as a bare-chested superhero, Brock posing with sunglasses and surrounded by female models, a coffee mug with a purple meteor fist… There was even a hoodie portraying him spanking a blushing Artus Emberheart.

“Are people buying those?” he wondered aloud, just as a set of youths left the shop wearing their brand new t-shirts. They froze when they caught sight of him. One of them panicked and muttered, “It’s fisting time?”

Jack sighed and walked away.

But it wasn’t all stupid. Jack caught projections of himself which were actually pretty strong. He slaughtered leonines, standing against entire swathes of enemies with nothing but his bare chest. “This is for freedom,” he heard himself say. “I might die, but I will never kneel!”

He didn’t remember saying that, but it wasn’t impossible. He slowly began to see just why the Church had done all this. If the cultivators were suffering on the front lines, struggling to persist and believe in their cause despite the difficulties, then seeing someone do the exact same thing would be encouraging.

It just made Jack sad that he wasn’t at the front lines alongside them.

Nevertheless, he understood his place. Right now, the important thing was to grow stronger quickly. That was how he could best help the army. If he succumbed to the pressure and went to fight with them now, he would be throwing their lives away.

His form in the big screen blurred, revealing Brock clad in golden power. “Bros of the world, lend me your power!” he shouted, raising his hands. Inspiring music played. Jack spied multiple people staring at the screen and raising their hands as they laughed. He sighed again.

“I hate war.”

***

Inhabiting two bodies was a disorienting experience. Jack’s way of handling it, which was the same as most people’s, was to isolate the thoughts and perception of each body from the other. It was like closing one of your eyes. Harmless and easy to get used to, while maintaining all the advantages of having a clone. The two bodies could reinstate their communication whenever they wanted and for as long as they wanted.

Souls, it seemed, were something that stood above the constrains of space. Through Jack’s experimentation, he’d come to realize that any communication between the main body and the clone occurred instantly regardless of the distance separating them.

It was a great boon, and it also solved one of his long-standing questions, since the System regularly used faster-than-light communications. It must have relied on a similar principle. Maybe a bunch of tiny soul pieces of…something…scattered across the universe?

While Jack’s main body remained at the New Cathedral, cultivating as fast as humanly possible, the clone was shuttling through space. This Jack was also meditating. His eyes flashed open, and he looked out the window.

“Hey, Captain,” he said. The small, gray-skin alien piloting their starship turned around.

“Yes?”

It was just the two of them here. To travel as quickly and discreetly as possible, they’d used a starship barely large enough for two people. Jack didn’t even have his own room, sharing the ship’s single communal space with the captain, an alien called Druk-Druk. Despite her odd name, she was actually quite competent—as well as a middle B-Grade.

“Is that the Heaven’s Egg galaxy?” Jack asked.

The alien glanced outside the window. “Why?” she asked back.

“I’ve left something there. Do you mind if we make a quick stop to pick it up?”

She raised a brow—or rather, the bony ridge over her eye, as this species had no hair whatsoever. “We cannot enter System space here,” she replied. “Too dangerous.”

“We don’t need System space. This galaxy is not fully Integrated. As long as we can get somewhere close to the edge, it will be fine.”

She hesitated for a moment. “Sure,” she finally replied. “What are you looking for?”

“Oh, just a little separate dimension.” He laughed at her surprise.

Years ago, Jack had entered a hidden realm called the Green Dragon Realm. That was where he received the inheritance of Archon Green Dragon, an ancient dragon specializing in spacetime. He’d also spent three years meditating in the center of the Green Dragon Realm alongside Brock and Min Ling—that was the single longest meditation session he’d ever had.

Green Dragon’s inheritance included the realm’s Realm Heart, the core of that place. Once he reached the B-Grade, Jack could use it to absorb the entire realm into his inner world, strengthening himself and protecting it at the same time. That absorption was something he really looked forward to.

Unfortunately, he’d only reached the B-Grade in the Spiral Stair galaxy, very recently, and he hadn’t had the opportunity to come pick up the Green Dragon Realm yet. Now was a good chance—he knew they’d pass by, so he’d kept an eye on the window.

Their starship angled to the side. Galaxies surrounded them like islands in the sea, and they dove towards one. With Druk-Druk specializing in spacetime, they were extremely fast. The galaxy grew in their sights.

Jack actually suspected he could take the starship even faster, but he didn’t want to offend his captain.

Before long, their entire field of view was occupied by multi-colored stars, arranged as a vast, egg-shaped galaxy. There were no spirals on this one.

The stars look so small, Jack thought, once again admiring the beauty of the universe. Galaxies comprised of billions of stars. Each was humongous, orbited by several planets, each a different world. Most weren’t inhabitable, but so what? There were hundreds of billions of worlds nestled in each galaxy, seeming so small from afar.

And there were a trillion galaxies in the universe. With the cultivation world occupying exactly seventy-three.

Jack would have snickered if he wasn’t so humbled.

The Heaven Egg galaxy wasn’t fully Integrated. Just like the Milky Way, it was one of the newest additions to System space. Still, around eighty percent of it was occupied by the System, leaving only the fringes on one side. It was precisely there that Jack and Druk-Druk headed.

Once upon a time, he’d entered the Green Dragon Realm through an entrance portal situated in System space. That portal had closed, but its location remained the realm’s anchoring point to the universe.

Jack, however, didn’t need to go through there. He possessed the realm heart. If he came anywhere close, meaning anywhere in the entire galaxy, he could just use the heart to create a new connection, accessing the realm directly.

Of course, the heart remained in the inner world of the main body, not the clone, but the two were connected. Using the aura of the heart to open a portal was possible.

“Here should be fine,” Jack said.

Druk-Druk brought the starship to a stop. She looked around questioningly. “Right here?”

“Right here.”

A multi-colored portal ripped open ahead of them. It was egg-shaped and pulsing with dimensional energy. Just behind it, Jack could see a thin tunnel twisting through an expanse of colors—the dimensional sea.

“Can you wait here?” Jack asked. “I’ll need a few hours.”

Druk-Druk just stared. He gave her a thumbs-up, flew into the portal, and disappeared.