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

The third specialization level of the Orientation talent was Apprentice Navigator. Now, I could find my way in the world without a compass, and even call up a very rough map of the places I had visited since I activated the talent. I could even pin up to ten markers to this map. At any time, I could determine which direction they were in. That was a useful function, and it was unfortunate that no more pins could be added.

Now, this swamp would no longer keep us lost. Yet when I tried, I realized that the talent worked poorly, or was affected by the fog.

I told Beko about this. “This is the Grove,” he said.

“Chaos itself once passed through here. This may not even be fog, but the very breath of Chaos himself. That can have a powerful negative effect on the ORDER. Your pathfinding skill is from the ORDER, you know, so it is also affect—wait, look! Dry land! A solid plot of it!”

“You call that solid?”

“At least it’s not filled with water,” the ghoul replied, realizing that his rejoicing had been premature.

It was, indeed, land. Damp, but without any puddles or mud pits. There, our feet finally found some support. I even found it odd, having grown accustomed to the ground attempting to swallow my leg.

The ground was an unnatural shade of red. As if spray-painted. There was no vegetation—even the omnipresent moss had no desire to settle such soil.

Something else was here, though.

I didn’t even know what to call it. They looked like hollow columns, with walls of thin, flexible, translucent plastic. Inside, suspended in muddy liquid, we could see complicated, branching structures among which ghastly blobs glided. The pillars ranged in diameter from one to five feet, and they were either vertical or slightly slanted. They rose to vanish into the fog, their upper ends invisible. This meant they were at least seventy feet tall.

“Those aren’t trees,” I said anxiously.

My instinct said that anything living in such a place must be carnivorous and dangerous.

“Those must be cystos,” Beko wavered.

“Cystos?”

“I’ve only heard of them. See those blobs inside? They burn your skin if you touch them. The liquid inside makes the soil red. Like this.”

“What is holding those pillars up?”

“I don’t know. Something in the fog, I guess,” the ghoul answered.

“Can we walk through there?”

“Yes, but it’s dangerous. Where the cystos live, so do the wisps.”

“Another nonsense word. Wisps?”

“They’re the spawn of Chaos and ORDER both. But more of Chaos. Small, malicious creatures who could kill us easily. It’s best if we don’t go that way.”

“Alright,” I agreed without a hint of protest.

* * *

All attempts to skirt around the disgusting forest failed. To the left, we stumbled into a quagmire which we barely escaped and which left us caked in mud from head to toe. To the right, we made good progress at first, but then ran into an impassible cliff. It ran south to the river, becoming there the precipitous bank. If you followed it north, it took you to the cystos.

There was no safe passage. Either we had to try moving through the red lands, or we had to return to Blackriver and embrace our admittedly unknown prospects of finding a better place to land. My attempts to ascertain from Beko whether or not there were good landings further downriver had led to no success. He kept repeating that no one ever said anything good about the riverlands beyond the shelf.

We had little choice. The red lands were the last place on Rock that we wanted to be, but they were our best option. Beko had remembered that cystos only grew in barren, foggy lowlands. If we could ascend, we would find lands without them.

I tried studying the cliff from every angle, aiming to somehow ascend it without needing to enter the red lands. But it was a smooth wall of granite, sixty or more feet tall. The only way up for us would be to build stairs or a ladder. Not that we had any materials. There were no decent trees in this biome, and river-rotted deadwood was not the best building material. And what would we use to hold such a tall structure together, anyway? I discarded the option.

We had to go directly north. I hoped that was the shortest path out of the red swamp. It couldn’t continue forever. We rested and ate the last of our fish before moving out, so we were still fresh.

Thankfully the ground was solid enough to allow a good speed. It was dry and tamped, like a well-trodden path. Walking it was almost a pleasure.

We’d clear a mile in twenty minutes at this pace No shrubs, no underbrush, and not a single fallen tree impeded our progress. The slimy columns were not numerous enough to interfere, either.

I felt the difficulty of the walk increase. We were beginning to ascend. Soon, we would rise above the level of the fog, and hopefully bid it farewell forever.

* * *

Beko stopped abruptly, as if he had run headlong into a wall.

His voice was tense. “Can you hear that?”

Despite the plethora of noises around us, I knew what he meant. “Yeah, I do. Sounds like buzzing. It’s stronger to our left, and weaker to our right. Hard to tell whether it’s directly ahead of us or not. Are those the wisps?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve seen them before.”

“But you’ve heard of them.”

“Just a little bit. Hunters tell a lot of stupid stories. O, Chaos! Ged! They’re coming!”

“Hide,” I ordered, crouching down behind the nearest cystos.

The blobs flowing inside the column grouped together on one side, right in front of me. As if they were watching me—and with nasty intentions. I tried not