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

up—not even now. However, this talent at tier 1 did not allow me to recharge an artifact—and I didn’t have any chi to even get started towards tier 2. Collecting enough would take several days of fishing.

As sick and tired as I was of catching kotes and garpikes, I had no other choice. After all, I had seen one very promising option in the development path. Boosting tier 2 to level 10 would unlock a bonus: the ability to use amulet properties that increased states and Degrees of Enlightenment.

Meaning that my provisional +2 would do more for me than just let me mess with people’s heads. The ORDER would allow me to boost talent tiers that required 1st or 2nd Degree Enlightenment. Currently, tier 3 was the ceiling for all of my talents. I could not go beyond that unless I upped my talent levels.

But unlocking this amulet property would let me develop my talents further without ending the good times. Or so I assumed. I could even boost my healing talent high enough to handle serious wounds. Or, I could choose a branch that healed poisons, preventing Beko’s prolonged paralysis from recurring.

I began to wonder what Tier 3 Artificer would give me. I couldn’t figure that out, but I could dream.

Now, do I really have to spend two more days decimating the local aquatic populations? At this rate, I risked bringing ecological disaster to the whole of Blackriver. Kotes and garpikes alike hurled themselves at my shiny lure. They had no defense against my fishing methods, and they might never acquire one at all.

Perhaps I could come up with a better plan. We did hope to get out of this area as quickly as possible, after all. Extending my time meant nothing if it was just burned away in a swamp filled with monsters.

* * *

From atop the flat rock, Beko watched me start a fire in the raft’s hearth. “No, Ged, don’t. The monsters will smell the smoke. Put it out, quick!”

“Hush,” I reassured him, “they won’t. They have a terrible sense of smell. But they have excellent hearing, so I wouldn’t yell if I were you.”

“I wasn’t yelling, but how do you know that?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot. And I’ve killed a lot of them. Along the way, I learned some new things—you know how it goes. Well, today is full stomach day!”

“What?”

“We’re going to have a hot meal. Water and fish! No salt, no breading, not even wild leeks. But it’s the best fish you can catch in all of Blackriver, let me tell you. Rich garpike bellies! I’m tired of eating raw, aren’t you? It’s time to eat like decent people. Almost, anyway.”

“Are you sure they won’t smell our fire?” Beko worried.

“I’m sure that the wisps and rukhs won’t. They won’t let anything else through their land. This is like a safe little island! Probably.”

“Probably?!”

“I don’t know everything, you know. Nobody knows everything. There are always risks. But this is just a tiny little fire. I have here the thinnest branches from the driest trees. They haven’t been so much as splashed on. There will hardly be any smoke or smell.”

“Did you find your knives?”

“No. But I know where they are—I’ll get them later.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go back there. I was worried.”

“Don’t worry about me, Beko. We’re going back there, for certain. Together.”

“You think I want that, do you?”

“I doubt it. But I wasn’t asking, in case you didn’t notice. Sometimes, my friend, life makes us do things we don’t want to do. We can’t go up the river. We can’t go down the river, unless we want to face a whole new class of rapids. Or even the waterfall. You don’t know how to avoid it for sure, do you? So we have two options: either we live here, waiting for someone to decide to come this far down the Blackriver, or we cross the lowlands infested with wisps.”

Beko shook his head. “No one’s coming down. There was just that one time. Merchants of the Sevens hired the best rivermen. They wanted to see the whole of Blackriver. Of the three boats they took, only one reached Redriver. Nine of the twelve perished. After that, no one attempted it again. Plus, they saw nothing of interest down there.”

“See? You just admitted that we have only one option.”

“The wisps will kill us,” Beko muttered.

I gave him a sinister smile. “I’ve already killed about a hundred of them, if you are counting the ones we killed together.”

“You’re lying!”

“Now why would I do that? I’m going to kill more. And so will you. I have a plan. It’s a good plan, a plan for winners like us.”

“What kind of plan?”

I suspended the pot over the fire before climbing up onto the rock and arranging pieces of moss into two intersecting circles on the tarp. “See these circles, Beko?”

“I see you getting the tarp dirty. Also, the circles.”

“I’ve been watching the wisps. Plus, I found out a few things about them. That led me to realize something. This—” I pointed in the center of the circle on the left—“is where the rukh resides. Like an emperor on his throne. He only leaves for the most important of campaigns. The wisps he commands scout the territory around him. Some stay closer to their master, others venture farther away. They listen, and they feel vibrations in the soil. If they detect anything, they quickly fly in and paralyze it—leaving it there for their masters. It is very difficult to pass these small creatures without being noticed. Here,” I pointed to the center of the other circle, “is another rukh. The neighbor of the first. He has his own wisps in circles all around him, too. You and I were lucky to enter here,” I said as