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

“Winners don’t get scared. But yeah—it is a little scary. If anything crazy happens, we’ll regroup on the left bank, remember?”

“If our raft splinters on the rocks, no one will be making it to the left bank,” Beko sighed. “Why don’t we stay one more day? There are lots of fish. We could get a bunch of good stuff and cook it up.”

“We’re out of salt.”

“Fish still tastes good without it. Plus, you can salt it with ashes. I’ll teach you how.”

I shook my head firmly. “No. Winners do not avoid what must be done. And that rain was not encouraging. If it moves upriver, the water level may start rising, like you said. That sandbar doesn’t have any wild leeks growing on it—do you know what that means?”

Beko nodded. “It’s almost always underwater. Lousy sandbar.”

“Right. We were lucky to arrive here with water levels low. The water might go up at any time. So far, it hasn’t. It’s even dropped a little. But that is no reason for us to delay. Things can change rapidly.”

We had to heave the raft from the rocks with brute force and a deadwood lever. Once we were out on the water, we picked up an uncomfortable amount of speed. This was just the beginning of the shelf. Perhaps it was not quite an area deserving of the name. Not yet. The water was moving fast, but the loud noise we had grown accustomed to was still up ahead. There, the canyon walls pressed their embrace of the river even tighter. Even from here, we could see foam spraying into the sky.

Perhaps splinters of our raft would join the foam in not too long.

We surged right into the corridor between boulders which I had targeted in advance.

The final few yards of water before the foamy rush began to slow, it seemed. As if even it was terrified of what lay beyond. It slowed and rose, our raft with it, as everyone prepared for the main event.

Then, it cast us down, into the roaring, foamy maw of hell.

I screamed with all the force my lungs could muster. Beko’s mouth was open, too. But neither of us could hear the other.

Here, our voices meant nothing. A yelling man was as loud as a mute. One sound ruled all. The sound of rushing water.

The sound of rushing death. A sound with no hesitation about shattering the raft, and us with it.

* * *

I don’t think the adventure lasted very long. The entire stretch of rapids probably took us about three minutes to clear. But every second in those three minutes felt like an hour.

When it was over, I didn’t even realize it right away.

Over for now, at least.

Our raft was moving quickly again, but it was just a strong river current bearing us along, not another deadly micro-waterfall trying to throw us into a boulder. The water was obscured by an impenetrable layer of foam. The whitish gray  swirled as though hordes of krakens and crocodiles roamed beneath, ready to break out upon us at any instant. But there was no nightmare causing this foam but the one we had already passed through.

We.

I turned—and smiled wearily to see Beko in place. Pole at the ready. His eyes had widened to the size of record pinecones. I was sure that mine had, too.

Beko was also realizing I was alive—but he looked in horror at the place where, a few minutes ago, the empty baskets had been stored. It was gone. He pushed his pole into the water and began to pull the tarp back on board.

Shouting over the water in a voice that was almost sane, he said, “Good thing we didn’t lose this. It might rain again.”

We were, of course, drenched more than any rain could make us, but neither of us mentioned that. We would dry our clothes and the tarpaulin, and it would indeed come in handy if we encountered bad weather. Everything but the cargo area could be restored to normal quickly.

Perhaps even our shattered nerves. Beko roaring in my face, without me hearing a bit of it. Our solid poles bending nearly into horseshoe shape as we feverishly used them to ward off the massive, stationary bringers of death.

I’ll never be doing that again.

Not for anything in this world.

If I found myself back on that stony sandbar before it all began, I would stay there.

All my life long, until old age took me.

What’s that? The water level you say? Pfft! I’ll climb atop the boulder and wait it out. After all, the largest rock jutted at least ten feet above the water’s surface.

It would have been a happy life, full of fish and friendship and fearlessness. Much better than rushing down a rain drainage pipe in the middle of a tropical storm.

As my mind recovered its ability to perceive the world, I realized with some horror that our torment had not yet concluded. The river was still squeezed tightly by the walls on either side, and somewhere further downriver, the water once again roared.

This roar was louder than before. I knew that what we had just experienced had only been a warmup.

We rounded a corner, and my heart skipped a beat. A waterfall descended from the vertical cliff lining the right bank. It was the rumble of its meeting the river that had so terrified me.

We were heading straight for the waterfall. No paddles remained to us to stop this movement. Our makeshift scooping net oar had been swept away.

Halfway, though, the currents of the river took pity on us and pushed us away from the plummeting torrent. Then, in an instant, we were shrouded in fog. We could see only a few feet ahead of us, and all sounds were fatally distorted. Or perhaps