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

abunai would turn to primordial dust anyone but those in whose veins coursed the blood of the Crow Clan.

I was going to test the veracity of her words.

I had no diamonds on me—the Crow Clan wasn’t so rich as to let a feeble manchild carry precious gemstones in his pocket. But I did have the amulet. A black claw on a string. The eternal companion hanging on my neck, enabling me to subsist in a relatively tolerable state. The moment it got removed, I turned into a helpless vegetable.

And it had to be removed on the regular. For Camai to take it south to the city, where a paid enchanter would apply to it the required effect. A temporary effect, alas. The procedure required chi, which wasn’t cheap, and had to be replenished from time to time. It was one of the clan’s main expenses.

What mattered now wasn’t the magical effect, but rather the amulet’s material. The claw had once belonged to one of the nastiest creatures of the Void. It took a great hero and a fair bit of luck to slay the beast, winning this mighty artifact for his clan. The Crow Clan.

The claw was every bit as hard as a diamond, maybe even more so. I could sense with every fiber of my soul the vibration of the abunai, held close to the chest, the curved claw pressing threateningly against the vulnerable glass. Was it my imagination or was the tempest within really churning and roiling, sensing imminent escape from its age-old prison?

Hang on, it won’t be long now...

True to form, Pence stepped over mother, who reached out with her right hand in a pathetic attempt to grab hold of his ankle.

“No!” she shrieked after the killer as he headed for her darling son.

Pence stopped, turned around and asked, his voice dripping with scorn.

“Maybe now you’ll finally confess the identity of the freak’s father? It remains one of the greatest mysteries of our time. I’m aware of the official version: a secret short-lived marriage with an anonymous noble. There are also the unofficial rumors about your youth, being locked away in a tower of stone, your chastity out of reach for everyone—until it wasn’t. But as I look at Gedar now, I find either scenario equally unbelievable. More likely, his father was some scoundrel, addicted to drink and other substances that violate the structures of Order. And I’m damned sure he wasn’t noble. A total failure like that could only have come from defective stock. So, how about it? The Crow are finished. There’s no sense in keeping the secret any longer. Who was he? A stableboy? A vagrant? Come on, Treya, fess up. Do it, and I promise to make the degenerate’s death quick.”

Gee, thanks, mister. How mighty kind of you. But I’m in no rush!

The bloody glass was still resisting pressure from the sharp claw. Damn that abunai! Damn the Crow and their damned politicking!

Scraping the ground helplessly with her weakening hand, mother hissed at Pence, her eyes burning with hatred.

“If the father of my boy were here, you would be long dead.”

“Right, of course,” Pence nodded archly, then turned back to me. “I’m struggling to remember being foretold that I would die of laughter. So I doubt I’ll get to see the pleb who had managed to worm his way under your skirt... Hey, what are you up to over there?”

“Gedar! Do it now!” mother yelped in a voice I could hardly recognize, with madness in her eyes.

Somehow she had realized why I was holding the abunai before me. And she wasn’t chastising me for careless handling of the relic. No, she was calling on me to follow through with my plan right away.

And I would have done so gladly, only the damned thing wasn’t playing ball. Though already sporting a fairly deep furrow around the middle, it still resisted a proper shattering.

Meanwhile, I was quickly running out of time. Mother’s outburst had pushed Pence to full alertness, his expression suddenly tense. It would appear that he knew the legend of the abunai—and he wasn’t dismissing it outright.

Behind the master, Camai struggled up to his feet and stumbled toward the enemy on unsteady feet, his hand producing a curved dagger from the sheath on his waist. What would that joke of a weapon do against an enemy whose bare neck had stopped a hard blow from a proper sword?

No, Camai wasn’t going to distract Pence from my person.

I had maybe two seconds left to live.

They say that extreme states of despair can push men to perform unnatural feats of strength. I would never know if it was that—or if the glass had gotten sufficiently damaged from my previous infringements—but when I pressed on the claw again with every bit of strength I had, the glass wall of the vessel yielded at last, snapping as the hand-held amulet burst through it.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pence leap into the air. Not in my direction, but away from me, towards Camai.

The next instant, the whole world drowned in an explosion of light so unbearably bright, it instantly incinerated everything around.

Including my consciousness.

Chapter 5 After the Battle

Degrees of Enlightenment: Unknown

Attributes: none

Skills: none

States: none

 

“Asami pae dacto,” said the strange woman in a melodious voice.

I had to mentally stop myself from wolf-whistling as I studied her. A tall woman of indescribable beauty was looking down at me, her expression suggesting that it wasn’t me sprawled out here, but the world’s filthiest hobo, suffering through the final stages of leprosy, syphilis, and gas gangrene. I had never seen a look of such utter contempt.

Nor such utter beauty.

Truly otherworldly beauty.

No creature of Earth could be this beautiful. She was perfection squared, and entirely natural. Not an ounce