Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) by Arthur Stone (top 5 books to read TXT) 📕

curved sword to slice right through a brigand wearing a quilted jerkin reinforced with plates fashioned from cow hooves. Hardly the finest armor available, but it still offered decent protection.

The blade had cut through the armor, the body, and the handle of a massive cleaver, used one day earlier by the brigand to ruthlessly cut down Quisse, our blacksmith, who had been carrying home a sack filled with swamp ore he’d mined that day. The killer must have assumed the sack held a far more valuable bounty.

The assumption had proved fatal for him. Camai knew the worth of capable people, and couldn’t forgive the demise of our finest blacksmith.

Now that same sword slid out of its scabbard too quickly for the eyes to register, the blade a blur in the air approaching Pence’s neck.

And upon striking the neck, it bounced back as if it had hit a concrete wall.

Spinning around to face the warrior, Pence returned the attack for the first time in the fight. It was a lax backhand, like a pimp slapping one of his hoes for stepping out of line.

The blow knocked Camai back a good dozen yards, as if he’d been smashed into by a car going eighty miles an hour on a freeway. His sword gone from his hand, his face buried deep in the mix of dirt and hay that covered the ground of the entire yard. He kept lying there, unmoving.

Was he dead? Possibly. I would certainly be dead if it had been me. But Camai was made of harder material.

But would that matter? This was the first time I was seeing a master at work, and I had no idea what he was capable of. If Pence’s nonchalant attitude, the power of the blow, and the fact that his henchmen were happy to remain silent spectators through the fight were any indication, fighters of Camai’s caliber were tantamount to dirt for him to wipe off his shoes.

Still rebuffing mother’s constant stream of attacks, Pence grinned, then proceeded to inform mother of his plans concerning her immediate future. His tone was as relaxed as ever, but at least he took the pathos down a notch.

“Lady Treya, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you. Of course, you won’t die right away. Before the Order rewards me for this victory, you’re going to watch the death of your degenerate spawn. Lord Resai insisted that he die first, and that you watch it happen.”

Again with the insults. Enraged, mother skipped a beat in her dance of death—the blunder was obvious even to an ignoramus like me.

As if weaving the missing element into her dance pattern, Pence let the blade of the naginata pass overhead as he stepped forward and threw up the same left hand.

Mother screamed as she flew back several feet, falling and skidding on the ground. She tried to get up, faltered and collapsed again, then crawled on one side towards her halberd. Having spun a few times through the air, the weapon had plunged point first into the ground halfway to the terrace.

I couldn’t tell what the master had done, only that Treya was in serious trouble. She seemed to no longer control the left half of her body, her arm and leg limp as she dragged them along. Even if she made it to the weapon, what would she do in such a sorry state?

Pence’s actions, on the other hand, seemed obvious. He wouldn’t bother with mother any longer, but would simply pass her, maybe even step over her crippled body.

Then he would ascend the terrace and snuff me out.

As he had promised.

I had already decided that I wasn’t afraid of death. And I didn’t mind the accompanying pain if it would free me from this vegetative state, which would be prolonged in the event I were spared.

There was just one thought that kept nagging at me. Nay, not nagging—it was making my blood boil: the fact that my murder would go unpunished.

That would be the second time I allowed such a thing.

I didn’t want to start a bad trend.

The abunai was the shrine of the Crow Clan. Generation after generation they had poured their chi into it. Their offerings might have even been too generous, weakening the clan and potentially becoming one of the causes behind the dynasty’s extinction. In the end, nothing remained but a power-hungry bitch and her defective offspring. And the latter was anything but pureblooded, for the shell that was his body presently contained the same man his mother had sacrificed in vain hopes that this would turn her wretched progeny into a functional human being.

Legend had it there would come a time when the Crow Clan gave birth to a unique child, capable of harnessing the abunai’s hidden reserves of chi in a way that would bring glory to the clan for all eternity, elevating it above the firmament itself. And until then, the standing mandate was to keep filling it at every opportunity. The vessel had been fashioned from enchanted dragonglass by a craftsman who took the secret of its fabrication to the grave. Still, though the technology was lost, it was a known fact that the vessel could hold unlimited amounts of the ubiquitous energy poured into it.

As long as the abunai was handled with care. That meant no throwing it into a pit or drilling it with a diamond bit. Dragonglass wasn’t impervious to hard impact or friction against a hard enough material, and any damage to the walls could disrupt the structural integrity of the vessel and instantly unleash all of the energy stored within.

Now, chi wasn’t exactly trinitrotoluene in terms of explosiveness, but discounting its potential for destruction would be foolish. In my hand I held the equivalent of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound aerial bomb. Mother had let slip once that the power stored in the