Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse
Chapter 137: The Tri Lake Tribe

Nauja led Jack and Brock through the jungle, ducking under long leaves and parting bushes. The path was easy to follow. After some point, Brock abandoned the ground and began swinging across branches, making excited monkey cries all the while.

“He’s cute,” Nauja said, a smile playing at the ends of her lips.

“Yes, but don’t let him hear that or he’ll be grumpy forever,” Jack replied, laughing. “He’s a big, strong warrior!”

Nauja laughed back. Perhaps it was a trait of all barbarians, or just her, but her mood could change in a heartbeat. Her original distrust had already faded. Now, she laughed and joked with him like they were old friends. Once again, Jack wondered if this was why her people were exploited by cultivators. Were they too pure-hearted?

“Allosauruses are handy prey,” she explained as they walked. “They are loners, easy to ambush. We usually send our lower-leveled hunters to train against them.”

“And what if they die?” Jack wondered.

“They don’t. Not often, in any case. The inexperienced ones have someone looking out for them, and the experienced ones… Well, they’re just good.”

“So you’re one of the experienced ones?” Jack asked, looking around for a grisly barbarian veteran.

“Hah! Of course!” She flashed him a bright smile, revealing perfect white teeth. “I am the chief’s daughter! Of course I’m good!”

“Really? That sounds awesome.”

“I know, right? I once hunted an adult allosaurus all by myself! They’re much bigger than the one you saw, and almost level 100. We usually send peak Hill Breakers to handle them.”

“Hill Breakers?”

“Yes.” She gave him an odd look. “You know. Between levels 50 and 125.”

“Oh. The E-Grade.”

“That’s what the System says, but we just call them Hill Breakers. Because they can break hills. Well, the strongest ones, in any case. E-Grade is just words. It means nothing.”

“I suppose.” Jack scratched his head. This was an interesting naming scheme. Could he break hills?

If I Meteor Showered them, probably, he concluded.

“What do you call the other Grades?” he asked, suddenly intrigued. He’d never had a good frame of reference for the strength of immortals.

Nauja seemed all too happy to explain. “Well, there’s Tree Snapper and Hill Breaker,” she said, lowering her fingers one-by-one. “Then come Mountain Cutters. They are extremely strong, so much that they can even destroy entire mountains!”

“Entire mountains?” Mountains were large. They dominated landscapes and weighed millions or billions of tons. D-Grades could break those!?

“Of course.” She puffed out her chest in pride. “My dad is a Mountain Cutter. I once saw him topple a small mountain peak with one swing of his spear.”

So, there is a D-Grade in her tribe. I should be careful.

“And then, there’s Continent Crushers,” Nauja continued, losing some of her enthusiasm, “though we never had one of those.”

“So how do you know they can crush entire continents?”

“It’s a legend. Supposedly, long, long ago, there were Continent Crushers and Mountain Cutters all over the place. Even Planet Crackers. The sky used to be blue, not gray, and our people lived in harmony with nature, creating new life everywhere they went…” She shook her head. “But that’s just legends. I know the sky is blue outside this planet, but I believe the rest is just made-up. I mean, continents and planets are enormous things, right? It could take months to walk across them. There’s no way anyone can crack such a thing.”

“I guess.” Jack nodded. He certainly hoped that was the case. If the planetary overseer could just vanquish North America, he would be in for a treat. “Say, if you don’t mind me asking, what is life like here? In the Barbarian Ring?”

“It’s nice. Beautiful. We have our tribe, our family, our friends, our animals… We give to the land, and the land gives back. It is a blessed life, barring the occasional delver,” she replied quickly. Then, she hesitated for a moment. It looked like she wanted to add something, but in the end, she stayed silent.

“But?” Jack helped her out.

“But, if I wanted to say something more, I would say it myself.”

She flashed him a glare, taking him aback. She looked ready to go. Jack had to remind himself that this girl was level 99, a full thirty-five levels above him. That was almost two hundred stat points.

“Woah, sorry,” he said, “I was just making conversation.”

“Yes, not a problem. I just made sure you knew my limit.”

She returned to her jovial mood. She named a couple trees as they were walking, then started talking about triceratopses. Jack hated himself for not listening intently, but his thoughts were talking amongst themselves.

Not exactly naive, he corrected his previous assessment of Nauja. Just wearing her heart on her sleeve. Erratic. Like she only has one layer of thoughts. What an odd way to live.

And yet, he found himself nodding along. This way of thinking fit his Dao of the Fist. He suspected he would like these barbarians.

Just as he got himself to focus on the undoubtedly priceless information she was dumping on him, the trees began to open up. “Ah!” Nauja shouted. “We’ve arrived! Look!”

She rushed forward, followed by Jack and a confused Brock swinging from vines overhead. Soon after, they crossed some bushes, and a small valley presented itself.

Palm trees—their ancestors, to be precise—dotted a shallow, bowl-shaped dent on the jungle ground. Lush grass reached down from the edges of the jungle, making it all the way to the shores of a crystal clear, blue lake. The mushroom light shimmered on its surface, making its waters glitter. The heat of this ring made the lake seem all the more appealing.

A small village rested by the waters. They had rough huts of wood and mud, a few dozens of them, each was decorated with an abundance of colored feathers.

Pale-skinned people wearing only the barest garments of fur lounged on the grass or bathed in the lake. Some were practicing with weapons at the side of the village. Jack spotted a small group on the opposite side of the lake, tending to a pen containing roughly eleven triceratopses. A kid had climbed on the horns of one, laughing as the dinosaur’s head under its butt dived into a basket of herbs. Everyone else seemed unconcerned.

The valley itself must have been only a few thousand feet long, roughly circular, while the lake was the size of an olympic pool back on Earth, except wider. Colorful birds—dinosaurs, Jack corrected himself—flew overhead, shining in all colors of the rainbow.

It was like seeing a patch of heaven dropped in the middle of jurassic nothingness.

“It’s beautiful,” Jack said, losing his breath. Next to him, Brock gaped too.

Nauja laughed. “Of course it is. I told you. It’s a blessed life. Follow me!”

The jungle ended where the valley started. They walked out of the trees and into the grass, immediately feeling the heat and humidity lessening. The valley’s shape protected them, somehow.

As soon as they started walking down—the descent wasn’t too steep—the tribespeople noticed them. A few waved, but most stared warily. Jack felt unwanted.

“I’m back, everyone!” Nauja shouted as she reached the base of the valley, near the start of the village. “And I brought a friend!”

“That’s a delver, Nauja,” a man replied, stepping out of the small crowd. He was tall, broad, and completely bald.

“I am not blind,” she retorted with a smile. “Don’t worry. His heart is louder than his thoughts.”

At this, most of the tribespeople eased up, as if she’d said something profoundly calming.

“Hello,” Jack said, approaching them. “My name is Jack Rust, and this is Brock. We have no ill intent towards anyone. In fact, your tribe looks beautiful.”

“Welcome, Jack and Brock.” The same man replied. “If Nauja vouches for you, we have nothing else to say. My name is Muka, a veteran hunter of the tribe. I look forward to hunting alongside you, my new friends.”

Jack smiled. “The pleasure is all ours.”

At the same time, he scanned most people present. None belonged to a faction, and they all shared Nauja’s Direct Descendant title. He was very curious about it, actually, but titles were personal information, so he hadn’t asked.

Most of the people he scanned were at the low E-Grade. A few were at the high F-Grade or middle E-Grade. Only Muka and an older woman were at the high E-Grade—at levels 124 and 119 respectively. The children were all in the F-Grade.

Half the people here could steamroll anyone on planet Earth.

“Take your friend for a stroll, Nauja,” Muka said. “Show him around the tribe. Your father will meet him at night.”

“Yes, Muka,” she replied, turning to Jack. “Come. You will meet everyone else later.”

“There is a night here? I thought the mushrooms never went off.”

“Of course they do. It just takes a while.”

Suddenly, Jack was very happy he’d left the giant insect forest. Who knows what horrors would infest it in the darkness.

Nauja led him and Brock around the lake, pointing things out all the while. “Our tribe is called Tri Lake because of two things: this lake, and the triceratopses we raise. They are wonderful animals.”

“I can imagine,” Jack said, staring at the swiftly approaching pen. “I’m so glad they don’t have feathers.”

“Why would they? They aren’t birds.”

“I have some colleagues who’d tear their hair out at this.”

“Okay… Well, triceratopses are our friends. If you meet a stray one in the jungle, never attack it. And I mean never. We’ll have to kill you if you do.”

Jack glanced at her, expecting to find her smiling, but she wasn’t. She looked dead serious. The contrast between her enthusiasm and deeply nested violence was impressive. If Master Shol and Vlossana made a baby, this is what it would feel like.

Like a happy maniac… he thought, realizing he was of similar make.

“And this is the pen,” the happy maniac explained as they reached it. A sturdy-looking wooden fence surrounded a large area that included part of the lake. Eleven triceratopses of various sizes were currently gathered next to the fence—rhino-like creatures with stocky bodies, three horns, and a hard crest around their heads—where two tribespeople had emptied five large buckets of herbs. They nodded as Jack approached, and he returned the gesture.

“They eat a lot,” Nauja said, gesturing at the triceratops. “Thankfully, the jungle has plenty of food. We offer them food, water, and protection, and they offer us their milk and meat.”

“Protection from what?” Jack asked. “And what do you mean milk? They’re reptiles.”

“Yes?” She looked at him weird.

“Reptiles don’t make milk.”

“Sure they do. Look.” She pointed at a nearby bucket filled to the brim with a white liquid.

“That’s—” Jack wanted to retort, but found himself unable to. With a sigh of resignation, he waved the issue away. “Nevermind… I guess professor Else was right. Ugh. You mentioned that you offer them protection.”

“They need it,” she explained. “Triceratopses are strong, but there are many larger predators in the jungle. Tyrannosauruses, gorillodinosaurs, pteranodons… The strongest dinosaurs are at the very peak of Hill Breakers, and there are even some Mountain Crushers deeper in the jungle… Not that I’ve ever seen one. They would flatten me with a single breath.”

“Really? I didn’t expect D-Grade monsters in Trial Planet,” Jack replied, still observing the triceratopses and committing everything about them to memory. Earth’s biologists had gotten them right, impressively. “Though I guess we aren’t expected to fight them.”

“Well…”

He glanced over in surprise. “Well?”

“There are rumors of delvers fighting the strongest dinosaurs,” Nauja said hesitantly. “I don’t know how that could be true, since all delvers are Hill Breakers, but we can sometimes sense the ground shudder and hear the echo of faraway battles. Father says it’s delvers. Such fights are very rare, but there are many delvers around these days, so…”

Jack remained glued to the first part of her words. Every cultivator that reached Trial Planet was highly talented. However, the gap between Grades was enormous. If there were people around who could even fight D-Grades…

Nah. They probably attacked in large numbers, he pacified himself. If there were ten cultivators like those three I saw in the insect forest, maybe they could deal with a D-Grade.

Then again, Jack could already fight people one stage above him. When he reached the middle E-Grade, he could fight monsters at the high E-Grade. If he also developed more Dao Skills and connected his Dao Roots to his Dao Seed, his strength would rise even further. If he then reached the peak of the E-Grade…

Just how large could the gap be? he wondered.

Suddenly, Jack noticed the colors of the world changing. He looked up. The mushrooms were slightly dimmer now, and their light was slowly but steadily fading.

“Night is approaching,” he said.

“Yes,” Nauja agreed. “But don’t worry about it. With Father here, you are safe. Everyone is. Come on! It’s time to meet him. I hope he doesn’t kill you.”

“You hope he what?” Jack asked, but Nauja was already walking towards the tribe. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Well? Are you coming?”