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

But I did what had to be done. At the end of it all, I even began to feel some regret.

I had come to this land. I had invaded their home. I killed their master, and without him, their lives were meaningless. And then, I had wiped them out, one after the other.

They were peaceful, making not even the least attempt to resist or to flee. I was merciless...

As I had to be. The laws of Rock were cruel.

I stared at my hands and found it suddenly hard to breathe. Beko approached and placed a hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright, Ged. We won. Just like you said we would.”

I nodded. “Right. We’re winners. Legendary winners. We just took out a rukh.”

“No one at the trading post will believe us,” Beko complained. “But I doubt we’ll ever see that place again.”

“You still doubt our strength?” I wondered as I wiped the sweat from my brow.

“We haven’t even started our journey yet, and already we’ve killed a rukh. I bet there are scarier things to come.”

“There’s another rukh, at the least.”

“What!?” Beko exclaimed.

“Calm down. We killed one, and we can kill another. And perhaps a third. No matter how many are in our way, we’ll get through.”

“Then what? What if things get worse after that?”

“Then we’ll kill anyone who stands in our way. We’re the winners here, after all. We’ll line the road from here to the post with corpses, if we have too. It’ll be okay, Beko.”

“You really think that lining the road with corpses is OK?”

“If they’re the corpses of our enemies.”

Without taking my eyes off the scene of the battle, I thought about the tasks awaiting us in the future, near and far. My mind cleared, and I gazed years ahead.

First, I needed to examine the corpse. Perhaps it held something of value. Then, we would have to rest—we were both badly shaken.

There was still a lot of work to be done. Sometimes it would be boring, monotonous. Other times, it would be exciting, invigorating.

At some point, I would reach the goal which seemed most important of all to me.

I mentally crossed Treya out of my mind. She was gone. In the past. The first name on my blacklist had been struck.

How I might find the rest, I had no idea.

Epilogue

The human body decomposes rapidly. It takes a lot of work to make it last a long time. There are hundreds of types of embalming, including the most complex, which can preserve a corpse for millennia. The best masters can even make a dead body look like it’s practically alive.

There are other options too. One can, for example, burn the body to ashes and use special magic abilities to convert those ashes to crystals. If this is done by a specialist with enough skill and the help of some expensive materials, an amulet can even be created containing a particle of the ancestor who has passed on. But especially perceptive experts will still be able to determine that they are viewing not just a powerful item but one made of your ancestor’s ashes.

Such perceptive experts were now halfway to Crow Estate. Once they arrived, they would dig everywhere, three feet deep, looking for any remains of the last clan member.

A man is a filthy creature. He leaves all kinds of traces behind. The people send there by Lord Resai would be able to find much. Nails, hair, feces, and even the skin cells lost over the course of life.

But they would not find the most important thing: the body itself. Nor evidence that it was destroyed.

Master Pence was sure of that. He also knew that looking for these remains outside of the estate would be a pointless exercise. They would not be found, not in this world nor in any other.

They were nowhere.

His confidence was not unfounded. Pence had a method of determining whether all of the Crows were dead or someone were left. Once, when he had come to visit, covered by the dark wing of night, he had seen that there were exactly two remaining.

Treya and her bastard.

Now, the mother of the Last Crow was dead. He had no doubt in this. The master had killed her himself, ensuring that death did not take her too quickly.

But there was a good deal of confusion regarding the Last Crow.

There was, however, one point that was crystal clear: the little monster was still alive. For thirteen years, with the help of his mother and her shudras, he had cheated the ORDER. Now, he continued that practice.

Once Lord Resai found this out, he and Master Pence would need to have quite a difficult conversation.

The latter would be very lucky to even have an audience with Resai himself.

There was only one way to avoid this unpleasant conversation, be it with Resai or a minion of his. He had to finish the job. Then, he could honestly look into the eyes of the man who had given the order—and nod quietly. A humble gesture that was more than sufficient, coming from a man bound by so many vows. They would believe him—and the storm would pass. He would not have to writhe his way out of trouble by means of ambiguous answers. Resai was not a very trusting man, and those above him were even less so.

Those people were above many others, not just Lord Resai. They had reached a level of power that was nearly beyond deception. Only Chaos itself would be able to trick them, and not even on the first attempt.

He had to find the boy himself. Pence was already looking.

And the longer it was until he found something, the more annoyed he became.

Reality was clearly different than the picture