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

the attributes couldn’t be evenly distributed, so most commoners typically raised one attribute to one, another to two, and the third to three. But there were two other attributes that were rather difficult to get: Perception and Spirit. If you managed to unlock them, you faced the additional challenge of finding ways of expanding their limit as well. The only way to extract maximum value from a degree was to properly unlock all five attributes. This type of degree was called “alpha.”

The Perception attribute granted combat energy: a special type of resource required for the most effective combat talents. It was akin to mana, only for fighters. Whereas Spirit was that very same mana, utilized by mages. Both resources came with their own expendable bars. If you depleted it, you needed to wait for it to replenish before using any talents powered by the corresponding resource. Essentially, without unlocking and developing these attributes, you could never fully actualize yourself as a warrior or a mage.

Those that possessed both attributes were the elites of Rock. You couldn’t dream of a better lot. Over ninety percent of the population were simple omegas. Those with an average of four attribute points per degree were betas. The rest were alphas.

Attributes granted physical and magic power, deftness in combat and in everyday labor, and, of course, stamina, arguably the most essential element to any proper session of work or fisticuffs.

The third block was talents. Though somewhat simpler than attributes, it wasn’t without its nuances. Say you unlocked the Cold Arms talent. Developing it would make you more effective at fighting with clubs, daggers, swords and spears. The improvement was universal across all types of cold weapons—until you raised it to ten. From there, you could either stop or choose a specialization. You could, for instance, choose to specialize in the spear. But you might also earn the Spear talent in combat, without having to raise it from scratch. Such occurrences weren’t common, but not unheard of, either. And that threw the proverbial wrinkle into any planning efforts.

You could unlock any talents you wished—just as long as they met the requirements of your current attributes. And the number of talents could be anything, but no higher than the sum total of your completed attributes. In practical terms, that meant I couldn’t unlock any talents at all given that I had zero innate attributes, and the Order didn’t recognize the ones endowed by the amulet. There was no cheating the higher power of this world.

The fourth block dealt with states. These didn’t grant any direct bonuses, but acted more as modifiers of existing abilities. For most of Rock’s denizens, this block was empty on account of being bloody difficult to develop even for nobles. Acquiring even a starting state meant arranging for the completion of an achievement that would fetch a worthy reward, which was both risky and complicated. You couldn’t delay the attainment of degrees of enlightenment for too long by spending chi on unlocking available attributes and talents. Normal people didn’t have to deal with their reservoir leaking chi into the void; on the contrary, their chi gradually accumulated even when no effort was exerted. As a result, by my age you were almost guaranteed three-four degrees.

But again, that concerned normal teenagers, and I was anything but normal.

The state called Equilibrium was regarded as the most valuable. One completed point of Equilibrium allowed one to unlock an additional attribute point per degree of enlightenment. Meaning, a common peasant could develop not six, but seven points per degree. Though the values of attributes still couldn’t match—that rule was sacrosanct. So something like one to Agility, two to Strength, and four to Stamina. Seven points in all while adhering to the condition.

The Enhanced Enlightenment state was likewise highly prized. One point of the state translated to ten capacity points to your current and future chi reservoirs. The boon didn’t apply to any preceding ones, but the same was true of all other parameters. In other words, any blunder made early on would follow you to the grave, so great care should be taken to develop properly from the start.

Why bother raising one’s chi capacity to begin with? Because the total amount of accumulated primordial energy determined a great deal. For instance, the more of it you had, the better protected your mind was against mental attacks. Moreover, each person had what I would translate as “chi shadow.” It was a reflection of sorts of your current amount of chi, and this resource was used for numerous talents—primarily crafting ones, but some combat as well. Once it was partially or fully spent, you needed to wait for it to replenish, which happened automatically, albeit at a slow clip. A useful boon, all things considering. Certainly couldn’t hurt.

The Enhanced Perception state expedited the regeneration of energy used by fighters, just as mages needed Enhanced Spirit to bolster their regeneration of mana. And the Chi Shadow state accelerated the replenishment of consumed shadow chi.

And the last, most delicious state of all, was called Measure of Order. The higher the value, the more handsome the rewards, i.e. the trophies awarded by the Order. Leveling it was incredibly difficult, to the point that even the most accomplished nobles could only boast two-three points of the stat.

Such were the four blocks. One was utterly unavailable for all but a tiny fraction of Rock’s denizens, and the rest, though technically available, nearly impossible to develop properly for all but an even smaller fraction. It was no wonder that the nobles ruled this world by more than just birthright—they were orders of magnitude stronger than commoners. And their strength lay in more than just stats. It impacted their very structure, anchoring in their bodies. I suspected that, among other things, it also modified their DNA. Or influenced heredity in some other ways. That would explain a lot.

From generation to generation, the