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

be more than just another step, but an outright leap into the abyss. We will lose everything we have left.”

Though mother was prone to hovering in the clouds much of the time, she would occasionally enjoy stretches of enlightenment. Too bad those were as infrequent as they were short-lived.

Staying her nascent demand to rouse in the middle of the night the entire population of the only village under her rule turned out to be one of them. She bit her lip nervously instead.

“Are you certain that all the men are involved?”

Camai nodded.

“After thoroughly interrogating two different sources, I am. I bound them by the blood oath, and their accounts were identical. Everyone is involved, including the steward and both of your guards. I must admit, I too deserve punishment for being ignorant of all this until now.”

“We cannot allow it,” Treya drawled musingly. “Stealing from the clan is still stealing from the clan. There’s only one punishment that fits the crime, and there cannot be any other.”

“The entire Crow Clan is just you and your son,” Camai said. “There’s no one else—only the two of you are left. And your son’s life is contingent on the amulet that requires constant recharging by the master of the artifactory. I cannot imagine how we can keep doing it without spices, but let’s say we find a way. Without the harvest, though? Not a chance. Rye may be cheap, but it’s still income. Our only source of income. This land is too poor—the shudras are barely making ends meet even without having a clan to support. Think of how things were before, Mistress. We struggled to live within our means, each new year more difficult than the last. Farmers dying, harvests failing. By ordering to kill all the men, you’ll be setting the clan up for a blow from which it will not recover. Think of your son’s life. We barely have enough funds to cover the next charging of the amulet. If you still have some personal treasures, that might be enough for two. That is all. After that, I have no idea what we’re going to do. Forgive me, Mistress. I’m ready to die for you and for your clan, but I cannot replace all of your shudras.”

Rising silently, Treya headed into her private quarters. There was a rattle of both of her chest lids opening and closing, and then she was back to place three things on the table: a silk pouch, a nephrite-encrusted coffer, and a third object resembling a miniature vase made of murky reddish glass with a sealed mouth. Looking at it from the corner of your eye, you might think you were seeing red-hot embers smoldering behind opaque walls. There was one other thing I knew about this item: no matter how cold it might get in the house, you could always touch it and feel warmth.

When encountering strange things—which were in abundance in my new life—I’d gotten into the habit of assigning them familiar names from my native Earth. Though I made exceptions in certain cases—when the new words made particularly strong impact.

And then there were those instances when I simply couldn’t think of an appropriate association.

And this item, known among the locals as abunai, fell squarely into the latter category. Try as I might, I just couldn’t come up with  a similar word from normal human vocabulary. It was so bloody complicated that a sentence wouldn’t be enough.

Hell, a sentence wouldn’t elucidate even ten percent. You’d need a short story explaining numerous aspects of the local society as a whole, and of each individual comprising it in particular.

The society aspect was simple enough. Absolute feudalism with aristocratic clans perpetually vying for a larger piece of the pie, meaning power and resources. The emperor was far from a figurehead, but carried his own distinctive features that would take a while to explain, only I was admittedly ignorant of most of them.

The abunai was the shine of the Crow Clan. If you were to believe all of mother’s ravings, this hideous excuse for a vase was as old as the Universe itself. And throughout all this time, at some point in their life, every distinguished representative of this inbred feudal posse would perform a ritual here that I couldn’t hope to describe using familiar Earthly analogues if I tried.

An itay was a hara-kiri of sorts, only not physical and not quite as radical. More like taking a ritual Samurai knife, sticking the knife into your belly one inch deep, and stopping there. Then donating the resulting blood to a blood bank.

No sense wasting resources.

Except, in this case, the blood bank was the abunai, and in place of blood, one’s chi energy was sacrificed. Needless to say, there was no such word in the local language, but that was the closest equivalent I could think of. Probably not optimal, but oh well.

In this world, chi wasn’t some theoretical substance to be derided as fantasy, but as real and measurable as electricity. The phenomenon had been thoroughly studied and conscripted to serving the common good. And not by people, either, but by the very higher powers to which the locals were known to attribute everything under the sun.

And whose existence even I—an erstwhile hardened skeptic in my own right—could no longer deny.

Here, even the worst degenerate tried their best to follow the path of enlightenment. Again, that was my own terminology. The locals called it something else, but the meaning is similar.

There was simply no other way, as the path combined both physical training and an education in one package. And an internship of sorts, as it enabled learning many professions sans instructors or prolonged field work. Of course, it was still better with an instructor, sometimes by orders of magnitude. Still, it was sufficient to achieve a fundamental understanding and independence. All you needed was the