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

ORDER, kote amassed attributes and a certain set of talents. It was those talents that kept them out of fishing nets and traps, ignoring delicious baits concealing treacherous hooks. Coupled with an excellent scent for poisons, kote were a near-perfect blend of caution and aggression that made them dangerous yet damned difficult to kill.

My one encounter with kote had been an exception to the rule, as the group had swarmed the bloodied rags intended to entice them. Those had been an ineffective trap—merely sufficient to deal non-fatal damage to the mouth of one specimen. And it would have survived the big “splinter” if not for its numerous agitated brethren. It was still unclear how creatures that were solitary by nature had been driven there in such numbers. That could have contributed to their erratic behavior, resulting in the victim’s demise.

At any rate, ORDER had recognized my mite in the fish’s killing, netting the corresponding reward.

I had also taken note of how kote reacted to movement, which confirmed reports of their behavioral patterns.

I had also discussed the matter at length at the fort, primarily with Megaera. Strange as it was, she seemed to know a great deal about Blackriver and its wildlife. She had even recalled dropping a ring in the river once. The plain copper ring  should have been easily recoverable from shallow waters, but the river had other plans. A long shadow appeared out of nowhere and swallowed the ornament before it hit the river floor.

The story had helped me put all the pieces together.

A brightly polished spoon without a handle. One end tethered to a massive hook, the other to a ring of wire, tied to which was a thin string of frayed stalks of old wild leek, individually secured. Fresh stalks were strong enough to use as hanging rope, as poor old Rogalos could attest. Beko and I had tried pulling on them with all our might, but that had only made the knots stronger.

I tied the other end of the tackle around my waist to keep it secure. I had a backup kit just in case, but that would be the last one—we had no money to buy any more. And it would take additional time to prep, which we had little of. Noon would come sooner than expected, and cleaning out cesspits, especially with my bare hands, was an item I desperately wanted to remove from today’s agenda.

Watching me stray into the water, Beko asked in a crestfallen tone.

“Your plan is to hunt kote with that?”

“Got any other ideas?”

“Yes. Let’s go start cleaning latrines. Ash was right: the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”

“Hunters don’t clean latrines. Watch, all these kote are going to be ours.”

My calculations were simple. In this area—and perhaps in all of Rock—trolling predatory fish wasn’t a thing. Float and ledger fishing were ubiquitous, but not trolling. Hooked bait fish was tried, but the clever kote avoided the cunning offering like the plague, while other prey that might normally jump on the tasty morsel avoided these waters for fear of themselves getting gobbled up by the river’s deadliest predators.

My first attempts at casting didn’t amount to anything. I wound the super-heavy spoonbait overhead, then sent it on its way, away from the bank. Alas, it wouldn’t fly as far out as I wanted it to,  nor did it submerge easily—all of which amounted to a waste of precious time.

It was time to shift tactics. We moved closer to the mountain, where the pebbled beach transitioned to clusters of boulders, some of them quite large. One such boulder with a relatively flat surface was peeking out of the water some twenty feet off the shore.

Placing the cord in a coil on the boulder’s surface, I began winding the line again. This time it moved to a decent distance, roughly thirty paces away. Drawing it back was easy enough; making it “frolic” as it did so to provoke a predator attack was the challenging part.

I spent the first hour on training alone. My efforts were improving, but said improvements applied merely to the theory of fishing. Practical results were still nonexistent—not one fish had taken the bait or even followed it to the rocks. I’d been changing positions after three-four fruitless attempts, but had nothing to show for my efforts so far.

What was the matter? Something off with the spoonbait, maybe? But the hungry kote had reacted to a plain copper ring dropped into the river. Could they be sensing the hook somehow? But how? This method of using a piece of metal was unknown in this world. So how could the fish know to stay away from the shiny gadget?!

My imagination was starting to draw ominous shadows of the three structures into which the fort’s residents relieved themselves. I even felt a twang of anger at the builders for not erecting latrines outside the walls of the fort. Why couldn’t they have built them over the river? There were near-vertical precipices on three of the four sides. Doing so would have avoided the issue of cesspits altogether.

I glanced up at the sun. The spoon-shaped luminary was itself trolling toward the zenith at alarming speed.

And when it got there, the latrines would cease to be mere shadows in my runaway imagination.

That would be bad.

Very bad.

The most epic of failures imaginable.

The line snapped, suddenly taut. Oh, screw you, fish! My anger swelled. This was yet another of the numerous times the spoonbait got caught in underwater rocks or driftwood. At first I had mistaken these for a predator taking the bait, but the differences were immediately apparent. My tackle remained idle instead of mimicking the hooked fish’s jerking movements.

So it was now. I pulled and pulled, but the spoonbait didn’t move an inch. It seemed stuck for good, probably buried in some drowned log. And if so,