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

The fact that the enemy’s archers were this accurate caused me to crouch even more, giving them absolutely nothing. They shouldn’t even see me behind the wagon.

Just as long as I kept up... The wave of stress-induced energy had come suddenly, and might evaporate just as quickly, leaving me defenseless.

And with my degree of enlightenment totaling a big fat zero, the tiniest scrape could be fraught with serious consequences. So I would do well to become “one with the wagon” until things settled down.

I glanced back to gauge the situation behind us. All of the wagons except for one—lopsided and mired in the water for some reason—were hurriedly moving ashore. Those caravanners who weren’t pushing the wagons, were fighting instead, swinging and stabbing with their clubs, axes and spears, though with dubious results. The dark armored shapes weren’t breaking the surface near the convoy any longer, but only in two distinct circular spots downstream, where the water boiled as if in a cauldron. Something over there must have captured the strange creatures’ attention far better than the distancing caravan.

I looked harder as the water in those spots grew muddier. And changed color.

Now I knew why they called it Redriver.

Chapter 9 Wonders of Medicine

Degrees of Enlightenment: Unknown

Attributes: none

Skills: none

States: none

The caravan got off easy. I had been certain that our fates were hanging by a thread, that we were all about to get an arrow in the eye and become fish food. Yet, the danger had passed surprisingly quickly.

The attackers had somehow lured to the ford a group of full-grown kote—the big fish from before. I had only heard of the creatures until today. They were known to be as delicious in their cooked form as they were dangerous while living. Even the smallest specimen required careful handling once caught, lest it snap its jaw and snatch the flesh off the fingerbone. A larger kote could bite off the whole finger, while a fully mature monster could get the whole hand. But one would need to have the worst kind of luck for that to happen.

Indeed, Redriver was hardly rich with monsters that grew to a size of six or more feet. I had heard this from people whose word could be trusted. And the beasts rarely ventured outside of the river’s deepest sections. How, then, did a group of them end up in the shallows? That was an anomaly. And the fact that it was a group was an anomaly twice over. Kotes were known to be solitary creatures—even a few of them working together was a rare phenomenon, let alone a dozen.

Someone had somehow gathered over a dozen of these armored sharks in one place, then set them on the convoy at just the right time. The folks in the front section were already safe, but they had naturally turned toward the commotion, and that was when the main assault was launched. Several bandits leaped out from the bushes and engaged the coachman and the merc from the front wagon, while another one stayed out of view, taking a position on the hillside to rain down arrows with remarkable accuracy. The archer ended up killing two, striking both squarely in the eye, and wounding Rycer in much the same manner, while his accomplices were finishing off their opponents.

And the battle might have ended very differently if it hadn’t been for Atami, our mounted warrior. The eagle-eyed archer had failed to strike him down, despite many attempts, while the rider himself killed two enemy combatants and drove the rest back into the bushes. The attackers didn’t reappear but retreated, along with the archer.

Having pulled the eleven surviving wagons ashore, the caravanners set to counting their losses and licking their wounds.

Two had been killed by the archer, and two more had fallen from axes, clubs and spears. The kote had torn up two small children and one infant after snatching them away, and injured several grownups. One woman that had suffered particularly grave wounds bled to death shortly after making it to the bank. An elderly man who hadn’t been bitten once outlived her by only a few minutes. Once on land, he grabbed his chest and sat down, then collapsed on his side—it appeared that his heart couldn’t handle the stress.

The wounds inflicted by kote teeth looked gruesome. These creatures were indeed similar to sharks, as whole chunks of flesh had been torn out. A tremendous amount of rags was utilized to stanch bleeding wounds, much of it ill-fitted for the purpose. Bandages were either unknown technology or used entirely too rarely in this world.

Feeble thing that I was, I didn’t participate in the fuss, still sitting behind the wagon, content to stay out of sight. Though sentries had been placed up on a hill, I still didn’t trust those woods. My ears were still ringing with the thumping, squelching sounds of arrows smashing into eyeballs before Atami rode in to the rescue.

Turning to a groan nearby, I saw Rycer sitting down clumsily, holding on to the wagon’s side while slowly bending his legs. Each movement was a struggle for the wounded man, forced to keep his skewered hand suspended in the air. The smallest shift of weight in relation to the body reverberated with pain in his forearm and eyelid.

Krol waited for the warrior to sit, then said with uncertainty in his voice.

“If I pull on the arrow, it should exit the head. Then I’ll cut the shaft and pull it out of your arm. Can you... handle that?”

The warrior moaned. “Give me something for the pain, at least, before you torture me!”

“You drank it all...” Krol bleated. “I ain’t got no more swill left, that was the last of it.”

“We’re transporting wine. I’m sure they could spare a barrel