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

“Beko has no team,” the man repeated. “Beko is a ghoul.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“Exactly what I say. His mother sinned with a ghoul. Kept running off to the woods until her belly started showing. When the neighbors found out, they burned the entire farmstead. Only she got out, along with her freak of a child. Then she came to the fort and found work here. Heck, it’s not like anyone here gave a hoot who she did it with. Even found herself a man, a bad egg just like her. The two of them moved to the new outpost, which ended up burning down shortly after. No survivors except for Beko. The kid made it back to the fort at night, on his own, squealing at the bridge to let him in. Something shady happened there. They say the grownups sent all their kids out into the woods when it all began, but Beko was the only one to make it to Blackriver. That’s how the rumors started. What happened to all those other kids, eh? Ghouls are known to eat only human flesh, and children’s flesh... It doesn’t get any more tender than that.”

The man concluded by smacking his lips, giving me a start.

He grinned from ear to ear at my reaction, then gestured to his left.

“Oh, relax. Our ghoul chomps down on gruel like nobody’s business. Still... watch yourself around him. Best be on the safe side, you know? Now, go all the way to the end of the main wall and you’ll see a barn. That’s where Beko lives. The area is pretty empty—nobody wants a ghoul for a neighbor. We’re all kind of shocked that no one has bashed his head in yet. We don’t like ghouls around here. And for good reasons.”

I wasn’t an expert on ghouls by any means. And the little knowledge I did have naturally didn’t stem from my first life—I had simply picked the closest applicable term. The reputation of such creatures from the folk tales of my former world seemed to match the negative superstitions I heard in this one. Scary folk tales being super popular among commoners, the clan’s servants had been my main source of information. Yet, having been blessed with enough life experience and critical thinking to filter pure gibberish, I had come to an impression that the creatures weren’t nearly as scary as the folk tales would have you believe.

These weren’t vampires in the classic sense of humans “turned” by the bites of other vampires. Even when I was a child back on Earth, the mythology never really made sense to me. If this was the only way to produce vampires, where had the original vampire come from?

And the local vampires differed greatly from those back on Earth, even in mythology. Putting aside my overly simplistic analogy, the truth of it was that they were simply a different race. Stranger in appearance, sure, but not much stranger than putting a pygmy next to a full grown, pale-skinned Scandinavian and claiming they were of the same race. An ignorant person might not even believe them to be the same species.

Come to think of it, that had been the general consensus for the majority of human history. Skin color alone had been the determining factor in all manner of atrocities, from committing people to a life of slavery to displaying them in menageries like exotic animals. Here, in a world that in many ways resembled a Medieval Earth, it was only natural to observe similar tendencies. The Great Purge, referring to the grandiose slaughter that took place when the Southerners conquered the North, had led to, among other things, near total destruction of local ghoul enclaves. The indigenous tribes were eradicated for no other reason than their appearance. It wasn’t anything they could hide, so there was no salvation. Rumor had it that only a few escaped, having fled beyond Redriver alongside some of the surviving human tribes. True to their human character, the latter had a much easier time adapting to life with other races.

And now it appeared that I would need to find a way to adapt to working alongside the descendant of these very ghouls. I wanted to believe that our differences amounted to only race, and that rumors of the ghouls’ affinity for human flesh were greatly exaggerated.

Dusk was thickening quickly, but the fort wasn’t large, so it didn’t take me long to find the barn by the received verbal directions. But as I stood in front of it, a skeptic with plenty of life experience in a juvenile, sickly body, I couldn’t bring myself to move. My feet were rebelling against my brain—until the latter began to capitulate, submitting to seditious thoughts. Anything is possible in this crazy world. This isn’t Earth. What if the damned ghoul does eat me?

It wasn’t unreasonable to feel apprehensive about shacking up with someone with Beko’s unsavory reputation.

A bolt of lightning flashed down by the river, followed by a peal of thunder a few seconds later. A storm was brewing, the first raindrops already starting to drum on the shingled roofs.

If I didn’t get inside right now, I would be soaking wet. And this was fraught with serious complications for someone with my shaky health.

I pushed through the childish fears and rushed toward the barn. The miniature low structure with a lean-to roof was wedged between two of the fort’s walls. It seemed fitting to store firewood or maybe chickens, but certainly not people. Alas, my only alternative to this place was the outside.

In place of a door, the narrow aperture was screened by a mat of thick reeds. The cold raindrops were smacking my back with enough force that I didn’t need to muster up any additional courage. Pulling up the makeshift barrier, I