A World in the Palm of my Hands: A LitRPG Apocalypse

“Let’s continue with the cultivation.”

With that, Noah went to his old teenage bed and sat cross-legged. “The packet said that once inside the soul space, I need to start small and fuse bits and pieces of the stuff that makes up my soul space with mana.” He looked down and touched the soft fabric of his bed’s comforter and decided to start with it.

He began by activating his skill [Mana Manipulation] and gathered his mana. Since he was inside his soul space, the mana came from all directions, visibly streaming down in a river of blue light that coalesced in his right palm. He carefully brought his hand down on the comforter and gently laid the ball of mana on it. Noah watched as the orb just rolled around on the bed, not fusing with it at all. “Well, I guess that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

Next, he tried forcefully pressing the mana down into the fabric, but that only made it bounce back. “Okay, this is not working. Let’s try the soft approach.” So, he picked a section of the comforter and placed his hand over it. Mana gathered again, this time not forming a ball but slowly suffusing the fabric with it. Thread by imaginary thread, mana surrounded them. At first, it was as if there was a wall preventing the mana from directly coming into contact with the fabric, but eventually, the wall was worn down and the mana finally got through.

As if the floodgates were opened, mana was siphoned from the surroundings and went on to be absorbed by the small section of fabric that Noah chose. He watched as his mana pool was swiftly declining and thought. “Damn, it’s like a black hole where mana goes to disappear.” A minute of unending absorption of mana later, he finally got the notification, and it only took five hundred points to get it.

Noah whistled as his thoughts were confirmed. He theorized that, like with body cultivation, the first stage of soul cultivation would also grant a ten percent bonus to his mana pool but it actually included his mana regeneration. “Hmmm. Should I focus on soul cultivation then? Something to think about later on.” He thought. “But with my build, soul cultivation would benefit me more… hmmm…” He thought hard but couldn’t come to a decision for now so he threw it to the back of his mind thinking that future Noah would probably be able to decide for him.

With his soul now firmly in the first stage of cultivation, he exited his soul space and brought up the shop. He bought a few pieces of tier two rune paper that he could practice his mana etching on, after all, having the theoretical runic knowledge was vastly different to actually having the practical experience needed for runecrafting. So, he spent a whole medium grade mana stone on buying nothing but rune paper. This enabled him to practice non stop until he was finally too tired and fell asleep on his bed with all his failed and successful runes surrounding him.

Much of the same went on over the next seven days. Dungeon delving twice a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They practically cleared out all the nearby dungeons. Evenings were reserved for practicing runes and visualizing how to scale up the toy, which he got pretty good with owing to the fact that his intelligence kept on increasing and his memory getting better along with it.

All in all, Noah and Mark managed to level up fifty and forty-four times respectively, with Noah’s main class going up thirty-two levels and his subclass up by eighteen. Giving him a total of five hundred and fifty-eight status points to spend. He first brought his regeneration stat up to two hundred, then put everything else into intelligence, making his status screen practically burst at the seams with mana.

Looking at his intelligence and mana proudly. “Just a bit more and I can finally get to one thousand intelligence. There has to be a title for that, right? First one to get there, maybe?” He thought, as he fantasized about what type of title he would get. He hoped that it would give him more intelligence. “A percentage increase would be amazing.” Unbeknownst to him, he started salivating and started staring dumbly into empty space.

Mark, who was beside him, noticed this and clapped his hands near Noah’s ears, almost rupturing his eardrums.

“Hey! I was having such a nice daydream!” He said in mock anger as he wiped the drool from his mouth.

“Not the time man, we’ve got a dungeon to finish.”

“Yeah, but it's only mid tier one.” Noah looked at their old friends with contempt. The orcs were all grouped up in a stone enclosure that was slowly shrinking. He was channeling multiple lightning bolt and chain lightning spells at once, raining hell upon the frightened orcs, trying to raise their levels as fast as possible. “They’re just lambs awaiting slaughter.” He smirked as he saw them fall one by one to the tune of thunder.

“Don’t get too cocky, we don’t want to raise any flags and have a repeat of that elite lesser imp incident. And I’m betting a high tier one orc chieftain elite is going to be much harder to kill than a lesser imp elite. So… just, try not to be too confident, okay?”

“Okaaaaay mom.” He replied as he continued to rain down lightning from the skies and from his staff.

Suddenly…

RUMBLE

“Shit! See! This is what happens when you get cocky!” Mark shouted as he got into a defensive stance.

“I know, I know! I’m sorry!” Noah replied as he cast [Stone Armor] and [Enhance] on both of them. They then waited for the so-called orc champion candidate to appear out of the ground, much like how that elite imp did, but nothing happened. When suddenly, a large pillar of red light burst out of the ground and shot up to the sky. A moment later, it arrived. It fell from the sky like a falling star, but instead of fire surrounding it, a familiar red aura enveloped its body.

THUD

It landed in the center of the killing enclosure that Noah had made, left knee first and fist to the ground.

“Did it just do a superhero landing?” Noah asked. “You know what? Don’t even answer that. Let’s focus on killing it first.” He then looked at the orc from top to bottom and couldn’t help but shiver. It wasn’t massive by any stretch of the word. It was actually just about his height. But it was densely packed with muscles from head to toe, and if that wasn’t intimidating enough, it wielded a massive great sword much larger than its body in both length and width. “Jesus Christ.” He exclaimed.

Mark stepped forward as he always did and prepared to face off against the orc. Sweat dripped down his forehead and his knees were shaking, but he still went on and prepared to face it, trusting in the skills and spells that they’d gained when they hit level fifty. Because instead of the evolution or what the information packets called “attunement” that happens to creatures like Talal and Aurora at level fifty, a similar thing happens to humans and the other more versatile races only in a more diminutive way in the form of skills and spells.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva and slapped himself with his shield hand. “You can fucking do this! Fuck him up!” He thought to himself in a bid to psych himself up for the faceoff with their toughest opponent yet.

Noah looked at his cousin and at the red, glowing orc calmly walking toward them with its sword resting on its shoulders and steeled himself. Using his new skill [Parallel Thinking], he dedicated half his mind to channeling an explosive spear worth five hundred points of mana and the other half to pumping mana into his spell [Chill] hoping that it will slow the orc down somewhat.

When the champion candidate was a hundred meters away, it suddenly exploded into motion and charged at Mark, bringing its sword in for a wide swing, threatening to slice him into two pieces. With his heart beating wildly, Mark used his spell [Parry] along with his shield’s enchantment, doubling its size and ability to take damage. But instead of a clean parry that should’ve deflected the great sword, it sunk an inch deep into his shield. “That’s not a good sign.” He thought, as he went in for a stab at the orc's chest. The orc just sneered as it let the human stab it. Mark watched with wide eyes as the red aura stopped his sword from even touching the orc’s skin. “Oh crap.”

The orc lifted its sword with Mark’s shield still attached to it along with his whole body, bringing him close and punched him in the gut so hard that he shot off and flew past Noah. Seeing this, Noah immediately threw his spear with all his mental might, which the orc promptly blocked with its massive sword. The spear pierced into the sword not more than a centimeter, making Noah rush to detonate it before the orc threw it away.

BOOM

The spear took the sword along with it as it exploded, leaving the orc weaponless. It stared dumbly at its sword, now only half its original length, and got angry. The red aura around it intensified and part of it gathered at the sword and extended out, remaking the broken half. The orc then rushed at Noah, bringing its aura sword down on him. Noah panicked and erected stone pillars between him and the sword, but the glowing aura blade cut right through them like a hot knife through butter.

He reflexively raised his left arm, futilely trying to block the sword and at the last second, released a burst of wind from his hand, narrowly avoiding getting his whole hand cut off, mitigating the damage to just half of it being sliced in two but at the price of falling on the ground. He screamed at the pain but had more pressing issues as the orc rode the momentum of its great sword and swung it back down again. Thinking fast, Noah summoned a pillar of earth underneath him, launching himself into the air. Making the sword miss him completely.

Tumbling through the air, Noah had a few seconds to breathe and, with a few well placed and well timed bursts of air, he stopped his tumbling with the added bonus of slowing his fall back to the ground where that monster was chasing him as he flew through the air. “How the fuck do I do this? That red aura makes him pretty much impervious to my magic.” He thought. Then he had an idea he’d never tried before.

He conjured a spear made of pure, unadulterated mana. He looked down and saw the orc still chasing him on the ground and waited. A moment later, the orc got impatient and jumped at him. He immediately shot the spear at it while it was mid air and unable to dodge. Confident in its aura armor, the orc didn’t even try to block it and just focused on timing its swing to meet Noah’s body.

CRACK

Surprised at the sound and the sudden pain that came with it, the orc looked down at its stomach and saw the mana spear had pierced its skin a few centimeters. This only made it angrier and vow to split the human in two. But as it was about to do so, it heard a voice coming from behind it that magically compelled it to turn around.

“[DUEL]” Mark shouted