Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) Arthur Stone (hardest books to read .txt) đ
- Author: Arthur Stone
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âWait!â I nearly screamed, though a second ago I wasnât even going to open my mouth.
Krol, who was about to grab the arrowâs tail, turned toward me.
âWhat is it?!â he barked viciously.
I raised my hand, displaying a broken piece of arrow found in the sand. One of the many that the archer had shot at Atami.
I proceeded to explain, picking my words carefully.
âSee the tip? Itâs not held by glue, but rather mounted on the shaft. And mounted well. The arrow nearly made it to the templeâsee the bump from it pressing from inside the skull? Itâs wedged tight in there. If you pull on it, the tip will remain. And that means death.â
âThe kid is right,â Rycer drawled with resignation. âI wonât make it with a piece of metal in my head.â
âThe trading station has a healer, heâll take care of you,â Krol reassured him, though his own tone was far less than certain.
âThe arrow is enchanted. Itâs doing something to me, I can feel it. The magic is ruinous, itâs draining the life right out of me.â
âBut the healerââ
âShut your trap already!â Rycer blew up, then groaned from the flash of pain punishing him for the sudden stress to his vocal organs. âI told you, itâs draining the life out of me. And itâll keep draining for as long as the tip is inside. Even if I make it to the station, what then? There ainât no healers there, thatâs why they use potions. And potions are expensive. Treatment there would cost me more than what I earn in a year. And, again, the metal is enchantedâit ainât some rusty nail in my backside. I ainât got many options. Iâm too far from my home village and our healer. So, itâs either death or bondage...â
âSo what are we going to do...â Krol threw up his arms in frustration.
At that, I offered a suggestion. âTake the tip out from the other end.â
âWhat? How?â
âEasy. The arrow went into the eye-socket and through to the temple. It must have missed the brain, considering that Rycer is still alive. The temple bone is broken, I can see the tip from here. If you push on the arrow, the tip should pop out of the temple. Once you remove or saw off the tip, you can pull it out like you were going to before.â
âPush it further into his head? Are you nuts?!â Krol gasped.
Cursing mentally at the dunderhead, I tapped into my reserves of patience and explained again.
âHis head is already pierced through. You merely need to finish the job. A new hole in the temple beats an arrowhead stuck in the skull, every time. But Iâm not here to argue. Itâs just a suggestion, do with it what you will.â
âGrow a pecker first before you start spewing suggestions!â
âI was born with one thatâs bigger than yours.â
Another gasp, this one more from rage than surprise. âWhat did you say?! Why, Iâm gonna...â
âShut up!â Rycer barked anxiously. âBefore you start measuring. Both of you are assholes!â
âBut heââ the coachman persisted, still aghast.
âI said shut up!â Turning his surviving eye my way, Rycer added firmly. âGo on, kid!â
âWhat?â
âDo as you said. Take out the tip. Krol canât do it, his hands are shaking. Yours ainât shaking, so you do it.â
âIâm no healer.â
âSo what? Go on.â
âMy hands are about to start shaking, too.â
âWhy? They ainât shaking now, so keepâem still.â
âThey always shake when I remember about my âmisplacedâ coin purse.â
âListen, kid. If you donât take out this arrowhead, Iâm going to take out your eye with my free hand. Youâll end up just like me. Now hurry up, I ainât got much patience!â
The soldier was indeed on edgeâthat much was clear. And with his size, one hand would be more than enough to make me a cripple.
I didnât have much choice in the matter.
Surgery was not my strong suit. The only operation I had ever borne witness to, in which my own heart was cut open and extracted, hadnât afforded me much practical knowledge. Nothing that I could apply to this situation, anyway.
The one thing I had going was that I wasnât afraid of blood. My hands werenât shaking, though that alone wouldnât do the job. Weak as I was, the force that I was able to apply wasnât enough to push the arrowhead through the temporal bone. I pushed and pushed, Rycer groaned and gritted his teeth, but nothing was happening.
It was time to change tactics. Shifting my position a bit, I pressed my full body weight into the warriorâs arm, only using my hands to hold on to him. He began to yell about being shredded aliveâwhich wasnât an unfair assertionâbut we were finally making progress. The temple began to swell until the skin broke and blood streamed from the open wound.
I kept pushing until, at last, the arrowhead popped out all the way with one final crunch of the temporal bone. I pulled on it, but it held firm to the shaft, so I turned to Krol.
âI canât pull it off. You tryâor saw it off, if you want.â
Watching the proceedings with wild eyes, he handed me a knife.
âChaos take me! You saw...â he muttered hoarsely.
The caravannerâs hands shook so badly that I nearly cut myself taking the weapon from him. But there was more to it than that. In this absurd world, any item you wanted to handle had to conform to you. A degenerate like me could use only the plainest items, and in limited ways. And so this blade with an ugly wooden handle objected to being defiled by the touch of my hand, making it hard to operate.
But there was even more to
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