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

The seizures were but a bonus ingredient to a cocktail of pains plaguing my daily existence. For me, debility was a state dreams were made of. Without the amulet, I was a vegetable barely capable of breath, let alone movement. Managing to walk a few dozen paces with the gait of a blink drunk sailor was a feat to be celebrated. In normal times, I might have gone weeks taking fewer steps than that.

Yet, I was still walking.

Walking away. Didn’t matter where, but simply forward. As far from the burgeoning blaze as I could get.

The killers that had come to the homestead were dead, though one of them might have escaped their fate. Using some sort of local magic, perhaps, like Camai. I should have seen their bodies otherwise, blackened like the rest from the release of power accumulated by the Crow over many centuries. Yet, their remains were nowhere in sight, and they hadn’t had enough time to get away from the blast in time.

The emission of energy that nourished this whole world had spared only mother.

Mother and me.

The shell of the last of the Crow, occupied by an outlander.

And this outlander’s mind kept working even under these difficult circumstances. I remembered that it wasn’t just our homestead that was burning, but also the windmill. That could have been the handiwork of the killers’ accomplices, some of whom may have escaped their common fate and, upon getting to the scene, would discover the demise of their comrades. Worse yet, the one who had slain Treya could come back.

I had bittersweet feelings about that one. Sweet about her dying; bitter about it being done by his hand, and not mine.

The further from here I would get, the higher my chances of surviving.

Then again, with this life, why did I even care if I lived or died?

Chapter 6 A Look Within

Degrees of Enlightenment: Unknown

Attributes: none

Skills: none

States: none

I woke up from a nightmare of all nightmares. I was burning alive in the homestead because my amulet had been taken by Camai, and without it I couldn’t hope to get out of bed, much less walk. Pence was at my bedside, breaking bone by bone with his bare hands, and mother was standing nearby, applauding every crunch and snap. Teshimi, having risen from his grave, was telling me about the peculiarities of feeding behavior among a variety of worms, and what happens to a decomposing corpse when being devoured by the little monsters.

Oh, and my heart kept getting extracted from my rib cage. At least a dozen times. Sometimes using a red-hot knife, other times an ice-cold one, and once without any tools at all, but bare human hands.

Child’s play for those of Pence’s and Camai’s ilk.

The worst part about it was that I couldn’t get myself to wake up. I tried and tried, but kept failing time and again. I was even starting to suspect it was all real. That I had made it to hell at last, rightfully earned for my wicked wish to brutally murder mother and Traco Darce. Perhaps the higher powers of this realm considered even thoughts of such deeds to be a deadly sin.

Until, after countless attempts, I reemerged into reality at last.

An unusual kind of reality. I vaguely remembered losing my strength and collapsing somewhere. I hoped that a few minutes of rest would help me recover, but the fit of seizures that swiftly followed was too painful even for me.

I passed out.

I expected to come to on the ground. Instead, I found myself lying on dry hay, or rather in dry hay—almost fully buried in it. My bed shook and jolted in irregular intervals as something creaked monotonously underneath. My ears registered unintelligible mutterings of human voices, and my nostrils were assaulted by a pungent smell of dung.

The clues were overwhelming. I was lying not on the ground but in a moving wagon. My immediate neighbors were sacks, barrels and crates, having been dutifully separated to make space for a prone passenger precisely my size. How very thoughtful of them.

And reassuring for me. Still, true to my mistrustful self, I was in no hurry to reveal that I had regained consciousness.

Instead, I thought to analyze my current state. Mainly, I wanted to focus on figuring out certain things about the dream from which I had just barely escaped. Things that had felt too real and too specific to this world to fit the mold of a regular nightmare.

I squeezed my left hand. Then my right one. No issues there. I might even be able to grip something with decent force. Or hold a bowl full of soup while I ate, which would be quite an achievement for me.

Careful not to give myself away with sudden movements, I tested the other parts of my body. Everything seemed to be in order, though I could only experiment so far while in a lying position.

All in all, the tests of my muscles and joints were a success.

Next came my senses, which were at once simpler and more difficult to test. Taste would have to wait, but every other sense appeared to be working just fine.

In fact, they were more than fine. Nothing had ever sounded so clear to me. Every individual sound felt almost three-dimensional and unique, easily traceable to its source. And the same went for my vision. I was seeing dozens of different shades in my bed of common hay, which was totally unprecedented. My fingers felt so agile, I felt confident enough to become a card shark, and my nose was picking up incredibly nuance in the stench of dung. Not only was I certain that it came from several horses, I could wager that one of them was dealing with a problem affecting