Rating zero alpha litrpg.., p.1
Rating Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 5), page 1
Arthur Stone
Rating Zero
Text Copyright © 2022 Arthur Stone
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Contents:
Arthur Stone
Rating Zero
Chapter 1
Youth Is for Learning
Chapter 2
The Steel Palace of Crimson Glass
Chapter 3
The First Roommate
Chapter 4
New Roommates. Who Gets the Best Place?
Chapter 5
Trouble at Midnight
Chapter 6
A Piece of Cake?
Chapter 7
The Carnage
Chapter 8
Sticks and Carrots
Chapter 9
The Elite’s Daily Grind
Chapter 10
Living Drums
Chapter 11
The Power of Reason
Chapter 12
More Successes Than Failures
Chapter 13
Not Just Another Mad Scientist
Chapter 14
A Challenge for Khellager
Chapter 15
Blasts From the Past
Chapter 16
Bang to Rights
Chapter 17
The Establishment’s Reputation
Chapter 18
Vying for the Top Spot: Waiting is a Bummer
Chapter 19
Khellager and the Big Day
Chapter 20
First Time In: A Game of Chance
Chapter 21
The Amphitheater
Chapter 22
View From the Top of the Gray Tower
Chapter 23
The Lurkers in the Mist
Chapter 24
A Candid Conversation
Chapter 25
Counting Steps
Epilogue
Order
Many thanks to my readers!
Chapter 1
Youth Is for Learning
The thought that I’d have to conquer the capital of Rava sooner or later first came to my mind about two years ago. I had initially been thinking of it as a necessity. Under the circumstances, no other plan for surviving in this most peculiar world for a long enough time and with a modicum of comfort seemed to pass muster. Not that this one looked particularly feasible, but some things in it struck me as unquestionably appealing right from the start and promised great rewards. The more time I spent thinking about it, the more realistic the plan was beginning to look. It assumed its final shape on an otherwise completely unremarkable day when I almost drowned in a treacherous swamp, and…
But we’ll talk about this later. Some ideas are so dangerous it is unadvisable to so much as ponder them before taking specific action.
Basically, my adventures in the swamp were but the final piece falling into place and deciding my further course of action. The actual work on my general plan began right after my arrival at the trading post. However, all I had back then were dreams fueled by my new abilities and what they might allow me to do. They were what I’d constantly keep in mind and rely on trying to get ready to penetrate one of the Rava Empire’s best-guarded places. Eventually, the details of the plan began to crystallize as I identified the most sensible avenues of approach from among an endless array of possibilities and options. I selected what promised to give me the best chance at turning the tables in my favor.
The plan, which seemed simple at the beginning, evolved into something truly convoluted and rife with obstacles that might well prove to be insurmountable. It branched out into a variety of areas. Some had to be crossed out at the initial consideration stage, while others were rendered impossible by hostile actions or a distinct possibility of such.
Those fortunate enough to survive a weakened clan’s final throes inevitably turned into wounded prey chased by ruthless hunters and hounds. Such creatures didn’t live long and faced inevitable violent death. Rock wasn’t a world where one could evade the attention of ruling elites. They may not have succeeded yet in imposing total control, but any fugitive left traces, and anyone with enough determination and resources stood a high chance of finding them. My enemies had plenty of both and were thus very likely to get there. That was something that did not sit well with me at all.
I considered the simplest of options too, of course. After all, I had no shortage of time, and now there were some resources at my disposal too.
I instantly dismissed every plan that involved moving to some remote location where no one ever heard of the Crow clan or their vanishing scion. Such is the fate of most immediate ideas that come to one’s mind. The “easy ways” tend to be anything but, and fraught with more peril than they are worth. The past can catch up with you anywhere in this world, and the future remains nebulous.
It wasn’t simply a matter of leaving a trail for expensive sniffers. A foreign land was a foreign land. I’d never pass for a native. Hiding my eyes reliably and inconspicuously would be a chore and a half, and the way mine looked, there were quite a few places in the world where I could be killed on sight just for their color. It might not prove an easy task to kill me, but I didn’t want to stack up problems. I had already been saddled with more than my fair share of those.
Yet I wouldn’t give up. I kept thinking, doing research, and going through options.
One day I came across a passage in a rather tedious book on the upbringing of the imperial elite’s heirs. The first time, I simply skipped over it with total indifference and kept reading further. But I felt some strange twinge of prescience—like a tiny splinter in my mind that just wouldn’t go away. I went back a page, and then another. I read the text one more time, paying attention this time, and then proceeded to start over again. Then I stopped, realizing that the splinter wouldn’t let me read any further.
At this point I have to admit that what I said earlier is not just a fairly jumbled account of how my plan had come into being, but an incorrect one at that. But be it as it may, that was how it all started, although I never could have thought that a measly few lines of dry text would set the direction of my life for years. I didn’t even start researching the subject immediately, which was probably for the better. After all, even if those looking for me interrogated Ash with extreme prejudice, he would never be able to tell them that most of my time and attention was invested in that particular topic. Things that really mattered would invariably get lost in the sheer number and variety of books I had delivered at that time.
Therefore, no one would have been able to realize that I’d been collecting morsels of information about this exotic topic from all that sea of different literature. Only Beko had once asked me why I kept rereading two completely unremarkable books. I told him it was because of the gorgeous illustrations they had, and that I wanted to look at them again and again. He asked no more questions.
Thus, Great Master Tao was the first to figure it all out, and only because I set a very tight deadline for my training with him. He was someone with an interesting biography and got to spend quite some time by the emperor’s side in his youth—as close to His Imperial Majesty as only the most trusted bodyguards were allowed. That lifestyle had obviously given him a great insight into the affairs of the aristocracy, so putting two and two together was not so hard for him. The date and a few things I had let slip were enough.
However, Tao had no idea about my real identity. Trying to find me through him would be inconceivable even for a paranoid mind such as mine. After all, my enemies were people, rather than some kind of omniscient demons. People could be fooled, and I had always taken great care to make sure they were.
Even my arrival in the capital through the Western Gate had been calculated. At first I intended to enter from the south, but then decided it would be too predictable for someone hiding their tracks to swap the direction of their approach for the opposite, thus giving a cunning tracker an indirect indication that I had really been coming from the north.
The West was fine by dint of offering a middle ground. Besides, anyone who cared to look would easily find the master archer I had studied with briefly. Thankfully, he wasn’t Tao. The man was akin to a master craftsman who did his job well and without any unpleasant surprises. All you needed to do was pay on time. Young aristocrats routinely study with such teachers. Clan masters are a great thing to have in-house, so to speak, but the more experience you could draw on, the more experienced you’d become yourself. Variety was useful.
Youth was for learning, but there were different kinds of learning. Even a most reclusive master—like Tao—could be approached in a certain way. Such people were a common resource and represented the level achievable by all (all aristocrats, that is, since a commoner could only dream of training with someone like that, and no, those wouldn’t be the healthiest or most productive dreams).
However, aristocrats differed from each other too. Greatly so. The family in charge of Clonassis until the power balance there shifted radically did not even qualify as proper aristocrats. I could say that with confidence, hailing from one of Artha’s oldest clans. To compare the Danto even to a nearly extinguished clan such as ours would be… well… I don’t know. I am not trying to sound judgmental.
No, strike that. One simply could not compare snail droppings to crown jewels. The Danto were nothing like us. It wasn’t just them being down below, way beneath the oldest aristocracy. Their very claim to nobility was based upon something completely different. It would be hard to explain it in Earth terms. There was a special term in the local language referring to something akin to a petit bourgeois with enough lipstick and rouge on, and covered in sequins, to seem different from the more regular commoners. That’s all those guys were. Dressed up clowns who were not even funny. Not even one in a thousand of such characters could have any hopes of studying with someone like Master Tao.
But even if Tao did welcome everyone on that mountain of his, what he was teaching was just one of many such subjects. Anyone who wanted more in this world would have to have been born in a family that could afford to pay for the privilege.
However, Rava’s true aristocrats had the means for a completely different training option—one that was quite exclusive. There was a special facility catering to their needs, of which the name could be translated verbatim into the language of my first life as the “Steel Palace of Crimson Glass”. It certainly sounded strange, and that was why I always had to think of reasonable earthly parallels to overcome the idiosyncratic nature of the local vernacular, which could literally take an outsider such as myself an entire century to get used to.
Still, hard as it might be to embrace verbosity, embrace it they did, throwing words out and around in handfuls where just one or two would suffice, even though all that semantic abundance did not in the least guarantee clarity. Given a choice, I would call the place a boarding school for the noble youth, or something to that effect. Or The Snobbery Seminary. Or something more neutral, such as The Aristocrat Academy. Or, perhaps, the College of Hubris.
To me, it was a place where I could make my dreams come true.
The reasons why were simple. For one, this was the place where I knew I could get guaranteed access to the Elements attributes that I still hadn’t managed to lay my hands on. That was something completely different from chasing phantoms like ice spiders. It was a time-tested method.
That was also the place to rub elbows with the nobles and then either reveal my incognito in a measured and calculated way when the timing was right or, failing that, simply find out who it was who had such a keen interest in finding me. It was hard to do anything against an unidentified opponent. I didn’t have the resources needed to unravel the plot to kill me—starting with the hired thugs and proceeding all the way up to some mysterious high-ranking party wishing to get the head of a certain Gedar of Crow Clan brought to them.
So, at any rate, the Steel Palace would be a useful place, and an extremely exclusive one. Only the scions of bona fide aristocracy and certain categories of loyal vassals who were not noble by birth could hope to go study there. The bluebloods were accepted with no questions asked; everybody else would have to jump through multiple hoops just to get their progeny on a special list out of which a few lucky ones would be chosen. It was also said that those making that choice couldn’t be bought. Clout and pull did not decide everything in Rava, by far, although they did make life easier and more joyful in more ways than one.
But either way, I didn’t need to concern myself with all that monkey business. I was a true aristocrat and had all the associated rights—subject to certain restrictions, that is.
Time was the real bottleneck. Admissions were only carried out once a year, during daylight hours of a single day. If you didn’t manage to present yourself by sundown, you’d have to turn around and try your luck again the following season. No exceptions were ever made for anyone.
Young people of both sexes, aged between fifteen and seventeen, were eligible. There was some leeway allowed—about half a year or a tad more on either side of the range—but you’d need a special permission from the Headmaster of the Steel Palace or the Imperial Council to make use of it. And getting such a permission would be very problematic for anyone but a scion of a really old family, let alone a commoner.
I was sixteen, so I fit the bill perfectly. But if I failed this year, the next admissions season would be my last chance. Besides, in that case I’d need a special permission as a seventeen-year-old, and thus have to reveal my identity to those who had no business whatsoever knowing my real name.
The arrival of the gang that came to get me when I was hunting the snow spider put an abrupt end to some of my plans. I never managed to train a group of assistants or wait for the return of the people sent out to obtain certain information. I had to abandon many promising activities and out of sheer despair decided to try and manage it all on my own.
That was why I was in such a hurry to accomplish what I had planned by any means necessary. I had to waste time on handling things I fully expected to delegate, and being late was not an option, since no one knew what the next summer would have in stock for me.
My future would have still looked nebulous even if the entire plan had gone off without a hitch, and now it looked as promising as the view through a village privy’s hole. Not a lot of pretty stuff in there. But I digress. There’s no point in dwelling on the unpleasant.
Imperial education was not merely considered the most prestigious—it was said to be incredibly hard as well. I didn’t know all the details, but I knew for certain that some of the students failed to perform as expected and got kicked out mercilessly. However, they could try again, age permitting. Aristocrats would almost invariably get another chance. Commoners found it harder, but nothing was ruled out explicitly even for them.
Therefore, I could also afford to lose a year if I showed subpar results, which would leave me with just one more chance to try. Taking that chance would also cost me my disguise, much to my detriment. That was another reason for me to try and get into the Steel Palace now, rather than later.
One might think it would make no difference, since I’d have to reveal my identity anyway, seeing how a person without a name would not be accepted, and forging something as complicated as a phony aristocrat’s story would clearly be beyond my means. But here I had some of the school’s rules working in my favor.
It was a given that clan conflicts had no place within the walls of this respected institution. Anyone attempting to settle an old score there wouldn’t merely be breaking the rules—they’d be offending the Emperor himself, which was a lot more dangerous than sticking your head into a lion’s maw and biting the beast on its tongue.
The Emperor was considered the honorary commander of the Steel Palace, and the last thing he needed there was clan grudges. A code of rules and regulations had been compiled over the years, and they were now used to maintain peace within the school.
For example, every student had to choose an assumed name that wouldn’t give away their extraction in any way and vow to keep their true identity secret until the very last day. I had my doubts about the real efficacy of this method, but theoretically it allowed for no animosity to be displayed between families with a history of bad blood between them. The commoners were therefore also indistinguishable from the nobility—another bonus that allowed for eliminating class snobbery.
I knew little of how that worked in real-world terms. My mother didn’t pass much useful information on to me, and books were just that, dry texts. A map, however detailed, was still a far cry from real terrain. The authors could well embellish or distort reality, or their information could be dated.
Anyway, even though I never managed to learn everything I wanted about the place, what I did know seemed to be enough for giving it a try. After my serendipitous foray into the territory of Life, my wish to master Elements was even stronger. If I did, I would gain access to every accessible force in Rock. The rest were manifestly out of reach or only known as vague myths. At least that’s what all my sources concurred on.
