Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) Arthur Stone (hardest books to read .txt) 📖

manifesting as a kind of soreness that might follow a month’s worth of exercise condensed into a single high-intensity workout. The sensations were such that I wouldn’t have wished them upon an enemy.

And now, I was “blessed” with three times more attributes. Which meant three times the stress—or more like a year’s worth of exercise. After all, the attributes weren’t just numbers—they were directly linked to their owner’s physical state. In other words, my new attributes had to be reflected in my physique. And they were hard at work doing exactly that, transforming my body with haste and considerable cruelty.

The conditional degree of enlightenment was an entirely new development. And not one, but two of them, technically.

Where had it come from? Probably from the same source. At least I had no other guesses.

And the forty-four-day invisibility? That seemed to involve Treya somehow, rather than the “unknown spellcaster.”

Pushing through the pain-induced brain fog that made it difficult to think and act, I recalled yet another item hanging on my neck.

A pouch of Heirutean silk, decorated with an enchanted crest of the Crow Clan. A tiny reservoir of chi imbued with a snippet of the Crow Clan’s power. Hinders others from noticing the items stored within. Hinders others from detecting itself.

Treya the Enlightened from the Crow Clan

Invisibility (26 days remaining)

You have bonded with this item

The pouch was unique in its own right. Not to the same extent as the black claw, but also not without surprises.

One of those surprises I had half-expected: the invisibility that had something to do with mother.

Or rather, with the mother of the degenerate whose body I had been forced to occupy.

Standing on death’s doorstep, she had grasped at both the pouch and the talisman. This must have been the reason. It would seem that Treya was capable of applying enchantments, albeit with dubious success as far as effect type and potency. No wonder she had had to resort to hiring outside specialists—even at the expense of a lion’s share of the family’s budget.

What was the invisibility part about, though? I could see both the amulet and the pouch quite clearly.

What about the moneybag? I reached for it, but, as suspected, it wasn’t in its usual place. Nor anywhere else that I looked. Either it had gotten lost, or...

Mother hadn’t touched the moneybag. Meaning the mention of invisibility probably hadn’t been applied to it. And assuming that the invisible items had been rendered such for everyone but me, logically, that could mean only one thing.

The moneybag must have been taken off of me. After all, I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. Likely more than enough time to search me and rob me of all my valuables many times over.

All except for the black claw amulet and the pouch, both with quite valuable contents.

The invisibility effect was clearly effective. The thieves might not have even been able to feel the enchanted items on my body.

Now it was time to begin figuring out just where I had ended up.

* * *

Movement came surprisingly easy. Despite the pain wracking my body as if it had been run through a meat grinder a couple of times, with physical exertion only exacerbating the sensation, my arms and legs obeyed my brain’s commands sufficiently well that I was able to accomplish independently what would normally require assistance.

Assuming a seating position, I took a curious look around. My eyes were watery, blurring the picture. Perhaps I’d been looking within a bit too long, which wasn’t something my eyes were accustomed to doing. Thankfully, the discomfort wasn’t so great that it hindered me from surveying my surroundings.

As suspected, I was in a wagon. It was your standard farmer’s cart—a rough wooden trough stuck to a pair of creaking wheel sets. Serving as the engine was a solitary draft horse, driven from the coachbox by a veritable munchkin of a man in his middle years wearing plain homespun clothing. His shoes, woven of bast and hemp, betrayed him as the poorest kind of peasant.

Another man sat next to the coachman, taller and sturdier than his neighbor. His head was covered by a primitive helm of yellowed bone plates, like fish scales stitched to a leather base. A peculiar looking horsehair braid hung from the helm’s back, coming down to almost the tailbone. A simple but effective means of protection against chopping attacks from the back. It wouldn’t help against an enemy slashing directly at the waist, but could certainly prove useful against others. His padded jerkin, though not much to look at, should likewise offer decent protection. But the short boots looked more like house winter slippers than combat equipment. Still, the man’s gear and the axe at his waist left no doubt that this was a soldier, though probably not from the army of a respectable feudal lord. No, the man was either part of some merchant’s security or a lowly merc, the kind too useless to be hired on his own, but only as part of a band of similar fighters of dubious skill.

My eyes glimpsed the shaft of a spear to his right, and I focused on it. It was your standard hunting pole, favored by locals to hunt big game, with a crossbar just beneath a spearhead that looked unnecessarily clipped. The blacksmith must have been far too economical with expensive metal. To the left, on the coachman’s side, the handle of a crudely carved club stuck out of the hay.

The wagon was one of maybe a dozen in a caravan rolling down a narrow broken-down dirt road. I counted the wagons to the front and back of us, and indeed, there were eleven others besides ours. Nearly all were driven by the same duo of a coachman and a poorly equipped soldier.

At the head of the caravan was a solitary