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

bodies down and wrap them up, then bring them back up. No one is to see this display. Once you’re done, push the raft off and let it float freely down, all the way to Redriver. Not a word to anyone, you understand? If our people start filling their ears with rumors about the emperor of pain and hornflower harvester hunters and whatnot, I’ll know whose tongue to come and cut out. Hey, Ged! Where are you off to?”

“I don’t have any orders, and we’ve still got time until evenfall. So I’m off to try and catch a few fat kotes.”

“You hear that, Maddox? He’s going to try catching a kote! You’ve got some bollocks, kid, fishing in waters bearing bad omens like this.”

I shrugged. “The dead don’t attack the living. The ones who killed them can’t reach us, either. They’d have to reach this sandbar somehow, so we’d see them in the water. Even when they come up on the sand, they’d be in plain sight. Unless they’re small enough to use the wild leek for cover.”

“You’re too smart for your own good.”

“Thanks. I always try to learn.”

“Then learn this: You’re not in the South anymore. This is Blackriver. They named this stretch of water Blackriver because it’s always full of black blood. Always. Also, the dead in this land are not always as peaceful as they are in the South. Anything can happen here. Everything is to be feared, unless you want to die young. Now head back up, right away, and down into your cellar. Keep out of sight until dinner. They say you’re sick—you’re not out harvesting hornflower, after all. So go and recover. I don’t want to see you down here again for the rest of the day.”

Chapter 24 Magical Skills and Sundries

No Stat Changes

Ash’s orders put me in a strange situation. There was plenty of time before dinner—and nothing for me to do. Yet I was not lazy. I absolutely had to occupy myself with something.

To start, I climbed up the northern wall, which gave me a wonderful view of the left riverbank. The bank to which most of the inhabitants of the trading post had gone.

No matter how much I looked, I didn’t see a single person. The forest was gloomy and dense on that side. Only in a few places was it interrupted by tiny elliptical floodplain lakes mostly covered with reeds and cattails. Even with good binoculars, I would have probably been unable to spot people through the dense thickets.

If they were even near the water. The terrain began to rise about half a mile inland. The rare deciduous trees and spruces gradually gave way to pines and cedars as the land climbed towards the sky. Low hills rose in the distance, checkered with large open spaces. Just below the horizon, the hills grew into the peaks of a mountain range running from east to west.

Beko and the others would not reach the ridge, of course. That would require a journey of several days, at least. However, the start of the hills was only an hour away. I had no idea what biomes hornflower preferred to inhabit. Perhaps it hated damp lowlands, and so the harvesters had to climb far away from the river.

None of them had any idea as of now that their numbers had been reduced. Two of them had perished, at the hand of a mighty and malicious enemy.

Was that enemy approaching the others now? I felt unsafe, even here, surrounded by walls. Ash had pushed for the maximum number of harvesters today, to take advantage of the advent of hornflower blooming season. Hardly anyone remained in the trading post. Even the raft bearing its bloated bodies had not been noticed immediately, despite the sentries’ duties of keeping watch on the river.

If the enemy assassins are strong enough in number, they could swim to the sandbar and charge up an entirely unprotected approach. They might not even be noticed until the end. From my vantage point, I could only see one watchman in the tower. The other had descended to help with the bodies. Any attackers might have been able to enter the trading post without any trouble.

Ash certainly understood this as well as I do—so he had ordered me to stay up here. Once the bodies were dealt with, the guards would close the main gate.

That thought settled my nerves. As long as the imaginary approaching force was a small band, not an army, they would be unable to overcome us.

Or at least that was what I wanted to believe. I did not entertain the thought that the villains might have warriors as strong as Camai. For men like Camai, a wall two human-heights tall was no real obstacle.

In the world of Rock, even a solitary warrior could accomplish much. As long as you sufficiently developed the gifts the ORDER gave you.

And so, those gifts would occupy my time now. I would figure out the state of things, what I needed to improve, and in what priority.

My base chi reservoir was at 888, with 3 attributes filled to the max, one talent, and 6 Equilibrium levels. Everything else was inactive and thus had no effect on me whatsoever.

The 888 units was excellent. Most of the natives only had a few hundred, and expanding that reservoir was very difficult—and for some, downright impossible. I didn’t have to worry about my chi reservoir.

The leakage, though, was a different story. The powers that be were stealing several points of chi from me every day. Was there any way for me to stop this drain? I only knew of one possible way, and I wasn’t sure that it would work in my case.

This way was to fill the reservoir to the max so that I could advance to the next degree. None of