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

the waterfall had us spinning so quickly that they seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

“You didn’t mention that, Beko,” I complained.

“Mention what?”

“The waterfall.”

“Oh, I forgot. It’s not even called the waterfall. It’s called Shelves’ End.”

“So that’s the end of the rapids?”

“Should be. That means we’re past it.”

“Great. But in fog this thick, we’ll be all the way to Redriver before we can get our bearings.”

Beko shook his head. “This isn’t fog. This is bad. We’ve arrived in the swampways.”

“Swampways?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been here. I’ve only heard about it. The waterfall dumps into the river and runs to another big waterfall. That second fall, of course, is on Blackriver itself. There’s no way past it except to go ashore and carry the boats. From the first waterfall, you have to keep to the right. If you go left, you encounter the swampways. A labyrinth of them. I don’t know whether getting out of the swampways is hard or not.”

This prospect of a maze of waterways didn’t scare me. “Let’s find the shore. Is there a decent shore along these ‘swampways’?”

“The shore is right there,” Beko pointed to the left.

I could barely make out an outline through the white mists.

It was of a huge, flat-topped stone covered in rich moss. Attempting to mount it on foot plunged our legs into sticky mud, nearly to our knees. Thankfully, we were barefoot and had rolled up our pant legs.

We parked the raft in the shallows, collected our scarce belongings, and attempted to find a decent stretch of land.

Wherever we went, we encountered only puddles and mud. The mossy mounds were the only islands of dry. But they could not hold our weight—immediately giving way, they plunged us back into the muck.

There were no landmarks to help us orient ourselves. The fog was a little thinner, but there was still no way of seeing beyond twenty paces. Trying to move with the waterfall’s sound at our back was unproductive. Here, sound bounced around and was absorbed in odd patterns, and we could once again hear everything from all directions at once. No acoustic beacon would come to our rescue.

In the end, we returned to the raft. That familiar flat stone was the only solid object here in the kingdom of mud, moss, and muck. We were glad to see it at first, but immediately saddened by the realization that we had just wasted hours wandering in circles.

Not to mention the energy we had burned.

Beko sat on the edge of the raft and stared up in melancholy. “I doubt we’ll ever see the sun here. This is an evil fog. Unnatural. It smells something like the slag in a forge.”

“You’re right. Have you heard anything about this swamp before?”

The ghoul shook his head. “Here, the Grove runs on the left bank, and on the right bank, too. It runs all the way to the big waterfall. The land beyond is dangerous, too. If we survive this swamp, we’ll be eaten further down.”

“Eaten? By whom?”

“I don’t know. This is the Grove. There’s always someone here waiting to eat you.”

“I’d like to see them try. We’re the winners here, after all.”

“Ged, we cannot find our way out of this swamp. We’re not winners. We’re lost.”

“Lost? We’ll see about that.”

“How?”

“I bet you I can get us out of here right now.”

“How?”

“I have an idea. I hope it works.”

Chapter 36 The Breath of Chaos

Degrees of Enlightenment: 0 (347/888)

Shadow: 347

Attributes:

Stamina: level 7, 350 points

Strength: level 4, 200 points

Agility: level 5, 250 points

Perception: level 3, 150 points

Spirit: level 2, 100 points

Energy:

Warrior Energy: 150 points

Mage Energy: 100 points

Talents:

Extreme Boatman (tier 3): 10/10

Fishing Connoisseur (tier 3): 10/10

Cure Wounds (tier 3): 10/10

Throwing Knives (tier 3): 10/10

Apprentice Navigator (tier 3): 10/10

Free Talents:

Spinning Rod Master (tier 3): 10/10

States:

Equilibrium (15.21): level 15

Enhanced Enlightenment (0.50): level 0

Shadow of Chi (0.50): level 0

Measure of Order (3.00): level 3

I was wrong to doubt my idea. It worked even better than I had hoped. Or at least I thought so at first.

A vague memory from eons back, in my past life, reminded me of a way to make a compass in the wild. A steel hand from a watch, or a paper clip, or a nail was enough to pull it off. After gently placing the item on a leaf that was floating on the water, you could watch it spin—and then align with the Earth’s magnetic field. One point should be magnetic north, the other magnetic south.

I was only a child then, and I remember asking how to distinguish the north from the south, if there was no information available other than the nail. The adults I asked had been confused, unable to answer.

I was not about to waste time making a water compass. After all, this world might not have even had a magnetic field.

Perhaps it wasn’t even a planet, in the usual meaning. My mother, a very educated woman here, had never mentioned anything about the world being spherical in shape. I did know that it was considered gigantic—and not hanging in space, but anchored to some axis that the higher powers held in place in the great void. That’s all I remembered from her lessons.

I would try the compass another time. Perhaps I’d make a great navigational discovery that would be rewarded by the ORDER.

This time, though, I asked for the ORDER’s help directly. I activated all of the talent marks for Orientation and used reward drops to boost it to levels 2 and 3. To achieve the chi necessary, I had to melt down some attribute marks, which was