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

very particular diet that included special substances extracted from plants, animals, mushrooms and certain minerals. I had dubbed all those extracts “spices,” but only to myself, as Rock’s residents were adamantly against generalizing or abridging anything in such an important field.

Spices came in great varieties. And our caravan was transporting dozens of sacks, each wagon carrying a portion of the total load. Kashik’s wagon held the most valuable ones, while the cheaper ones were distributed among the others. Of course, “cheaper” almost never meant “cheap.” Generally speaking, the prices of spices ranged from expensive to very expensive to “king’s ransom” expensive.

The sack I was tasked with recovering held the cheapest kind. Something along the lines of sprouted shalecrust seeds, which had been Teshimi’s specialty. He had been the clan’s only harvester to successfully grow the capricious plant on the local soil without detriment to its potency. Or lily mushroom pollen, harvested in the woods and groves along the relatively safe right bank of Redriver. Though slightly more expensive, it was nonetheless within the means of most farmers.

All that is to say, the value of the bloody sack was negligible, yet far higher than the value of my life. Kashik wouldn’t feel even a pang of regret at the sight of me being torn to pieces by kote. Or rather, he would regret only the fact that the simplest method of salvaging the caravan’s property had failed.

I couldn’t care less for his spices, but I did care for my life. And so I was exercising caution from the start, taking care with each step to avoid drawing attention to myself with splashes.

Mother had tried raising me like a normal child. And that implied giving me an education. Lacking the means to hire teachers, she had taken my education into her own hands, only occasionally inviting specialists she deemed particularly knowledgeable to supplement her teachings. I had been too busy playing the dimwit to risk asking them clever questions, but one particular story about a rider being attacked by kote while crossing Redriver had caught my attention. Assuming the creatures to be similar to piranhas, I later asked others to tell me what they knew, and a couple of more stories cleared up the misconception. The kote weren’t anything like piranhas, after all.

They were more like sharks.

Kote were drawn by movement and smell. As long as I didn’t expose myself with either, the monsters might not sense my presence even a few feet away. Of course, these were only conjectures, but none of the stories I’d heard contradicted them. In fact, they only supported the hypothesis.

My body may be scrawny, but it wasn’t small for my years. As I neared the wagon, the water level reached just below my midsection. The current had cleared the waters of murk, and despite my being on full alert as I scanned the area, I couldn’t detect any kote presence.

Until the very end.

The bloody sack was almost within reach when, suddenly, an enormous dark torpedo shape of the river predator splashed some thirty feet to my right. Startled, I glimpsed a bloodied ribcage in its jaws. More like half a ribcage by now. Somewhere around here raged the feast over the remains of the caravan’s unluckiest members. No, the feast is ending. There’s barely any meat left on those bones.

The coachman had been able to free the horse, after all. The harness floated on the surface not far from here, all cut up. Good news for the horse, but bad news for me—I would have preferred for the ravenous fish to get more of a haul, not less. Otherwise, they were more likely to keep scouring the waters for seconds.

And I didn’t want to still be here when that happened.

Was that my imagination or had a subsurface wave hit my legs from a monster swimming nearby? Fear was a superb stimulant for the mind’s eye. Suddenly I thought I saw all of the Redriver kote swarming around me, occupying every inch of space of this body of water.

Grabbing the sack in these conditions would be way too dangerous. I didn’t even know what kind of spices it held. In case of mineral dust from bitter lakes, I wouldn’t even be able to pick it up; in case of something lighter, I might still only move it a few feet before toppling over.

So I tried to distract the kote the only way I could. Holding my hand out carefully, I lowered into the water the rags caked with blood, one by one. The current picked them up and began carrying them away, forming halos that exuded a very particular smell that many of Redriver’s smaller dwellers found very compelling. Insects and their larvae, midges, even freshwater shrimp. These were everywhere, and they weren’t about to let such goodness pass by unmolested. I counted on them making a commotion that might attract larger and deadlier creatures, leading them away from me.

One of the rags was pulled underwater with a soft splash. A large back crested with black paired fins broke the surface next to another one. All of the nearby kote would hopefully join the party. Excellent. Now let’s see if my trick with the blueleaf stalk will work. Stories claimed that the beasts could sense poison, but they shouldn’t ignore rags soaked in blood. And I hoped to be far away from here by the time they realized the rags didn’t contain any edible treats.

The sack wasn’t heavy at all. In fact, it was more of a pouch than a sack. In terms of volume, it couldn’t hold even twenty pounds of flour, and its current contents were similar to flour in density. The load would be a trifle to a normal person; alas, I was anything but normal. Before the attack on the homestead, I would have collapsed immediately upon taking the sack. Thankfully, having grown sufficiently accustomed to