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

taste is so bitter, it hurts. Not even pigs eat them. The young ones are bitter, too, but you can chew them, at least. I snack on them while picking.”

“You use your bare hands?”

Beko opened his palms, streaked with cuts.

“That’s what wild leek does.”

“Why use your hands?” I asked, incredulous. “You should use a knife.”

“I should use a knife,” Beko agreed. “But I don’t have one.”

“You managed to slice lard at night without one. Couldn’t you think of something similar?”

“Splinters can’t cut leek. Even the young stalks are too tough for that. And the old ones you can use as hanging rope. Rogalos used one last year to hang himself, right from the fishing awning. Picked some wild leeks, made a noose, and strung himself up. They found him with a crow perched on his head. It was pretty.”

“You have an odd sense of beauty, bud. Why did he hang himself? Was he testing the strength of the stalks or something?”

“Why test? He knew it would hold him. Everyone knows. His wife had given birth to a redheaded baby with a square jaw. The same one as Fiery Pag. Rogalos went to beat up Pag, but Pag beat him up instead. So Rogalos came down the mountain and hanged himself. He was always strange.”

“Strange indeed,” I agreed, stopping and taking a seat on the ground, fatigue catching up to me.

“Why are you sitting?” Beko asked, surprised. “The wild leek is further ahead.”

“You said the ground gets pebbly there, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I need big rocks. We need them.”

“Why do we need rocks.”

“To make knives out of them.”

“Knives? How can you make knives out of rock?”

“They won’t be top-notch by any means, but it beats cutting your hands on grass your cuckolds use to kill themselves. Look for rocks like this one.”

“Why like this?”

“Because it’s the right kind. Our ancestors used rocks very much like this one to fashion knives and axes.”

“Really? Nobody ever told me that,” Beko said, incredulous.

“There’s lots of stuff you weren’t told. Be happy that you’re on my team, now you’ll get to learn all sorts of interesting things. By the way, can you read?”

“Read?!” Beko exclaimed in a tone suggesting I had just asked him if he could fly to the Moon without a spaceship or a spacesuit.

I sighed. “Quite a severe case. Treatment will take a while.”

* * *

You have crafted a knife with a flint blade and a handle of interwoven wild leek stalks.

You receive:

Lesser Symbol of Chi x2

Personal Attribute Embodiment, Strength x1

Personal Talent Mark, Novice Stonecutter x1

I stared at the message from ORDER, befuddled, then looked back to the culprit of this new development.

Calling this wretchedness a knife would be as accurate as dubbing a ragged felt boot Cinderella’s glass slipper. The blade was more of a wedge, pricked out of flint with nothing short of monumental effort. Ugly as it was, it had taken smashing several blocks, the exertion pushing me to the brink of consciousness, resulting in only one fragment suitable for my plan. I chipped away at one end, shaping it into a handle, then wrapped it with knotted wild leek stalks. The plants resembled onion shoots, only bigger, some towering over three feet. And the older the shoot, the stronger the veins. Impossible to tear with bare hands, those had to be sawed with rocks.

And here was the end result. An absurd parody on a knife with a three-inch blade. The rock’s natural quality granted it decent sharpness, but hardly razor-like. Using it to cut old wild leek stalks wouldn’t be easy.

But it wasn’t the knife that was the cause of my befuddlement. It was the way the higher forces of Rock had reacted to this pitiful forgery.

They had bestowed upon me the honor of recognizing my mastery, deeming this travesty an act of craftsmanship. Renowned artisans received chi and other boons for crafting masterpieces, so how did I get several prizes for this wretched thing?

And what was I supposed to do now?

At least that much was clear: find more rocks to sculpt.

I handed the knife to Beko.

“Here.”

“For me?”

“For you. It’s your knife now, so take good care of it.”

The present literally vanished from my hand given the speed with which Beko snatched it from me.

Glancing behind him furtively, my companion declared in a tone of unctuous triumph.

“Mine!”

“It’s yours, it’s yours,” I assured him. “Start cutting stalks with it while I make another one like it for myself. Two knives for two workers.”

Armed with experience, I focused my attention on selecting the most irregularly shaped pieces of flint, as those had a higher probability of breaking into the shape of shard I needed. Finding the right combination of shape and size was a challenge, and it took another half-hour before I ended up with a workable billet. Not as good as the first, but not terrible, either. There wasn’t any time to spare on further experiments.

It took another half-hour to finish the job, and now my hand held a new knife. Perhaps a third of an inch shorter than Beko’s, but with a more comfortable grip and a better aesthetic. A troglodyte like myself crafting such an item ought to fetch a reward at least as good as the first iteration had merited.

Only the Order thoroughly ignored my feat of labor. No hint of a reward—not even an empty congratulatory message.

My swirling thoughts were starting to arrive at an ingenious answer, but I lacked evidence to be certain of it.

A glance toward Beko confirmed that he was wholly engrossed in the process of cutting down wild leek stalks. With one basket already full, he was working on the second. The ghoul was clearly enamored with the tool, and it would