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

ask? We’ll take it to the tavern, obviously. We’ll sell the meat and the scales, and eat the spices. You said yourself that we need them.”

“That’s true!” Beko said, suddenly happy. “We’ll have a tasty meal. And we won’t even need to dress the fish. We’ll deliver it whole.”

“Agreed,” I nodded. “And I wouldn’t mind running into Romris and Bargo along the way. The expressions on their faces would be the sweetest dessert.”

Chapter 21 Advanced Fishing

No Stat Changes

The Fishing Instinct talent mark netted two lesser symbols of chi. The process also taught me how to dismantle trophies, transferring everything into energy. And though I might criticize the Order for the somewhat inconvenient user interface, I couldn’t fault the conceptual simplicity of it all.

Simple enough for small children to master early in life.

I also learned the reverse process of turning chi into talents. Unfortunately, the math in this direction was truly usurious, as the Order considered these two actions too unequal in value.

The couple of extra chi came in handy when haggling with Guppy for a new knife. I had decided to invest in a better tool, as I shuddered to imagine having to dress the fish with the old one.

My new acquisition wasn’t that much different than the old. Unfortunately, metal things were quite valuable in the fort, so I had to part with all my symbols plus a fun little trinket received from the innkeeper: a double-squared piece of hard leather boasting a relief of the three sevens on one side and an oval seal on the other. The invention was meant to represent money, intended for settlement exclusively on the fort’s territory. Any worker leaving the fort could trade these for resources at the main warehouse. People in the fort rarely accepted any other currency, opting instead to use these, which they simply called “squares,” as means of payment.

On our way down, we passed by a couple of fishermen lugging a basket up towards the fort. Their haul was a modest one, and the two glowered at us as though we were the enemy of the working class. Not much happened in these parts, so the news of us catching yet another kote yesterday had spread like wildfire. And I could only imagine how these guys must feel to have a crippled teenager and a ghoul upstaging them, actual fishermen.

My plans for today were to seriously bolster their inferiority complex, but I had other business to attend to first.

Tossing the pole with the block into the bushes, I said.

“Get ready, Beko. We’re going to do some sports.”

“Some what?” my companion blinked.

“Sports. You know, some jogging, push-ups, jumping jacks. We’re being fed well, and our muscles need some action. We’ve winners, you and I. And winners ought to be strong.”

“We’re strong enough to catch kote,” Beko countered logically.

With the hearty dinner still warming his belly, the ghoul couldn’t stand the thought of physical activity. But I remembered what mother and Camai used to drill into me almost daily, that the body must develop harmoniously. The warrior had trained for hours each and every day, whenever time allowed, and Treya hadn’t been far behind.

So, despite my eagerness to get back into the action, I was resolved to dedicate half an hour to physical training. Nothing too intense—I could always go harder at night, before bed.

And I would still need my strength for the day of fishing ahead.

* * *

Without any spies around, we didn’t need to waste time on fooling around with a rock instead of a spoonbait, so the day began brilliantly. My shadow chi had recovered fully overnight, and I used it sparingly, activating Fishing Instinct for one-two seconds at a time.

We caught our first fish on the fourth drag. It ended up being roughly the same size as yesterday, but I wasn’t distressed by that at all, having deliberately chosen the prey due to its size. I wanted something I could handle without much difficulty. It would take more time, strength and experience to take a proper shot at the living torpedoes further out in the river.

The reward from ORDER was practically the same as yesterday. And though it was monstrously generous by Rock’s standards, I accepted it as a given.

I was as empty as empty could be. And emptiness ought to be filled to the brim. I was merely being compensated for thirteen years of total disability.

And I was content to let the higher powers continue doing just that.

It wasn’t even noon and I had already caught a total of six fish in the same size range. But then our streak of fortune ended sharply. The kote moved away from shore for some reason—I was seeing them swarm the middle of the river branch, terrorizing schools of smaller fish. Too far for the spoonbait to reach given the crude design of my tackle.

Oh, if only I had a spinning rod with a thin cord and a decent reel. I would be stacking these beasts up by the dozen.

Hang on just a second... Why not make a spinning rod?! Indeed, I knew the general mechanism, and had a decent grasp of construction. I could try and craft one, or at least inquire in the fort about the possibility of making the cord out of something other than wild leek, which was too fat and wavy, twisting way too easily. And not nearly durable enough—I’d been forced to knit a new one every day.

Done with the fishing, I forced myself and Beko into another session of low-intensity physical exercises, then challenged him to a wrestling match. The rules were simple: whoever ends up on his back, loses the match. And no striking—we lacked the proper equipment to do it without risk of injury.

In the ensuing two minutes, Beko put me on my back three times.