Tower Climber 3 (A LitRPG Adventure)

by Jakob Tanner

He instinctively felt concern and panic.

  What is going on? he thought. Is this a memory of mine? I have no recollection of this?

  Mother’s words from a few minutes before began to echo through his mind.

  “There’s so much here in this brain to play with...But even more excitingly is the stuff, even you don’t remember. Things that have been neatly hidden away from you all this time.”

  Max looked around the burning wreckage in horror.

  Is this what Mother meant when she said things that had been hidden from me?

  “Brother...”

  Max looked over and saw his sister.

  Her head was bleeding just like it had been in the car crash.

  A piece of ceiling had fallen on her and now she was stuck.

  She needed his help here, just like she did in his other memory.

  But this isn’t real, is it?

  This was Mother playing tricks on him.

  “Max!”

  The way his sister cried out to him made Max think that this wasn’t some fabrication.

  The hidden message from his sister was suddenly clear as day.

  They lied to you. Even more than you think.

  Max gulped at the thought and everything surrounding him.

  This memory was real.

  The car crash, the explosion—that was the fabrication.

  His sister screamed for his help once more.

  He didn’t care about the horrifying consequences and possibilities of what he was realizing right then and there.

  All he cared about was helping his sister.

  He dragged himself across the floor towards her. He’d get the broken wood off and help her escape this burning house.

  Max only moved a few inches across the room when he confronted a pair of boots.

  Huh?

  Max looked up and saw a strange man looking down at him.

  He’d never seen anyone like him.

  He had long gray hair tied back in a ponytail and a gray goatee.

  One of his eyes looked to be made of advanced manatech.

  His right arm was mechanical: beautifully composed of silver metals. It looked as if it was as dexterous or even more so than a normal arm and hand.

  On his chest was a badge made of a clear luminescent substance with the letter S etched into it.

  Who is this guy?

  Whoever he was, he stared down at Max with an open distaste and repulsion.

  Did this man cause all this damage?

  Is this the man who killed my parents?

  Before Max could do or say anything, a nearby window shattered.

  Crashing and sliding into the room was a ferocious werewolf.

  Max recognized that move.

  It was the former climber president.

  The werewolf leaped to attack the S-rank man who swiped the beast away with his metal arm.

  More climbers appeared around them.

  “It’s over, Nicolas,” said another climber. “Give yourself up.”

  Nicolas, Max thought to himself.

  Could this be Nicolas Adler?

  One of the founders of Zestiris.

  But why would he cause all this destruction? It didn’t make any sense. For every answer this new memory gave him, it only raised countless more questions.

  Despite being surrounded by powerful climbers, the man known as Nicolas Adler snickered.

  “I’d like to see weaklings like you try and stop me,” he said. “But I’m in a bit of a hurry; so I’ll be seeing you.”

  With that, the S-ranker jumped out the smashed window and escaped into the night.

  70

  The unlocked memory did not abate.

  Max laid there on the ground, weak and confused.

  A nearby waterbringer started to douse the flames.

  The climber president morphed back into his human form.

  Max instantly noticed that the man had a B-rank badge.

  So he hasn’t become climber president yet, Max noted. Interesting.

  “What will we do with the children?” said a nearby voice.

  One of them came and stood over Max.

  “Look at the curse Nicolas left on this one,” the voice said and Max was pretty sure the speaker was pointing at him.

  Another voice muttered from behind him, “Only one of them is worthwhile to us now.”

  What the heck are they talking about?

  Max wanted to listen further, but the voices began to fade.

  It was as if he was losing consciousness.

  He then remembered this was all a dreamscape, an illusion concocted by Mother.

  He’d become so fixated on the memory she unlocked in his mind he had forgotten that.

  How long have I been trapped in the mercenary woman’s illusions?

  SNAP!

  Max was now surrounded by blackness, falling endlessly.

  His stomach lurched as the horrible feeling of dropping from very high up overwhelmed him.

  I need to get out of this illusion, he reminded himself.

  In his panicked flailing, he managed to smack his hand against his waist.

  His climber pouch was still not there.

  His climber pouch simply didn’t exist in this dreamscape realm.

  But he knew that it existed though, right?

  It’s there, Max thought to himself. I know it is. I just can’t see or feel it.

  He held his hand where he knew his climber pouch to be and tried his hardest to materialize the Caesarian device that would let him escape this nightmare dreamscape Mother had thrust upon him.

  And yet, nothing happened.

  Nothing materialized.

  There was no climber’s pouch for him to draw anything from.

  Max clenched his fists.

  He wanted to scream.

  Mother was winning.

  She was slowly making him lose his mind, from one nightmare memory to the next.

  SNAP!

  Max was back at the group home.

  Mr. Grimes was towering over him.

  “Useless, Useless, Useless,” he snickered to himself. “Always getting into trouble. Always making things difficult for me.”

  Max groaned inwardly.

  The constant shifting through bad memories was getting predictable now.

  Almost tedious.

  There was something nightmarish about the endless loop in and of itself.

  Max smirked at his former guardian.

  He had an idea.

  It might just work, he thought to himself.

  He stared at Mr. Grimes and crossed his arms.

  “What are you smiling about?” Mr. Grimes sneered.

  “Just that you’re not real,” said Max. “I can stay in this memory all day. I don’t care.”

  Max’s confidence was all it took.

  SNAP!

  The memories changed.

  The death of his parents.

  The original memory.

  The fake one.

  Mr. Grimes again.

  Seth bullying him at high school.

  Max approached all these awful memories with a smirk and Mother kept changing them, looking for something to draw out his pain and emotions.

  SNAP!

  Max was suddenly in the Zestiris fighting arena for the final exam of the Climber Academy.

  Cyrus Archer was in front of him and monsters surrounded them.

  The mercenary woman had brought Max back to the coup attempt.

  A moment where his new better life was under threat.

  The cackling laughter echoed through the false memory.

  “This was us even back then,” hissed Mother. “Orchestrating from behind the scenes. If only you were killed! If only we killed you then...!”

  Max didn’t care.

  As the old woman spoke, he had been trying his best to resist smirking.

  He didn’t want to signal to her that this memory didn’t work against him either.

  He didn�
��t because this had been his plan all along.

  He had goaded the old woman to manipulate him this way.

  He wanted to come to this memory.

  She had sent him to a place where he had a climber pouch.

  He didn’t waste any time.

  He materialized the Caesarian eye device and put it on his head.

  He gave a wave and said, “Sayonara grandma!”

  71

  Max triggered the power of the Caesarian mana tech.

  The special glass lens was able to break through the fog of the illusion, revealing a patch of fragmented dreamscape revealing the Caesarian arena.

  Reality.

  He could see the stands, people watching in confusion, as Max probably just stood there trembling and doing nothing.

  The patch was like a scar ripped between worlds.

  A portal.

  Max rushed towards it and jumped through it.

  He gasped as the true reality rushed back into existence, stimulating all of his senses.

  He lifted his hands and stared at his trembling fingers.

  The crowd started to roar with excitement.

  They must realize he’s broken out of the illusion.

  He’s probably been standing still for who knows how long, that even the tiniest gesture of lifting his arms had signaled to them a change in the fight.

  He then clenched his fists.

  He’d escaped the illusion.

  The Caesarian device wouldn’t work a second time.

  He now only had one shot.

  One second to win this.

  He had to take advantage.

  Mother scowled and grimaced at the human boy standing across from her in the fighting ring.

  The boy kept his eyes shut and his feet on the floor like last time.

  “Do you really think you can escape my illusions that easily?” she sneered.

  This boy really was a fool.

  Had he forgotten the oppressive nature of her ability? She’d let him play around with his closed-eye strategy for fun, but she could tap into every single one of his senses. It was all just a matter of choosing when she wanted to suck him back into a reality of her own making.

  She triggered her trait and watched the boy’s eyes go glassy as she took over his mind.

  Her trait allowed her to step between the realm of reality and that of her illusions.

  With the boy trapped once more, she stepped into the illusion and saw the boy surrounded by the purple realm, crying in agony.

  “You foolish boy,” she scoffed. “Did you really think you could escape me? A C-ranker no less as well.”

  The boy was screaming now.

  She’d succeeded.

  She’d broken him.

  Now that he knew he had no escape, she had finally cracked him.

  She materialized herself in the dreamscape and took a slow step towards the psychologically destroyed young man.

  “You really are pathetic,” she said. “I don’t know what my colleague sees in you. We would have sent more assassins after you, but once she caught wind of the first pair that attacked you in the desert realm, she made us stop.”

  She giggled manically as she walked closer to the boy, writhing on the floor.

  “In the end, though, you and your teammates were neither here nor there,” said the woman. “You weren’t our target. Everyone here was, including that bloody self-righteous tower god that everyone looks up to. Well, once I’ve gotten rid of you, we can finally achieve our goals after having spent far too much time in this awful repulsive place.”

  She stood over the boy now.

  “Don’t worry,” she sneered. “I’ll make sure your little friends don’t have as painful a death as you have had; but only just.”

  She then gripped her sewing needle and stabbed it into the boy on the ground.

  “I’ve made you lose your mind,” she gasped as she stabbed the boy over and over again. “But I saved my favorite torture for last. Repeated death.”

  She cackled as she stabbed the boy again and again.

  But then she paused, as something wasn’t right.

  No blood splashed on her face, which was one of her favorite aspects of killing. It was like a rare delicacy.

  The boy laid there, wanting to be destroyed.

  She stabbed him again and again, paying greater attention this time.

  The boy wasn’t dying.

  What kind of ridiculousness is this?

  Then a voice echoed around her.

  “Something awry granny?” said the voice.

  Mother’s eyes bulged in shock.

  It couldn’t be, Mother thought to herself.

  She looked around and couldn’t locate the voice.

  It was that damn kid.

  How is his voice and presence so powerful in her own illusion?

  “I’m sorry,” said the voice once more. “Did you think this illusion was under your control?”

  Suddenly, every inch of Mother’s flesh ripped apart and disintegrated.

  The last thing Mother did was scream in terror.

  72

  Max stood over Mother.

  The old mercenary woman was collapsed on the ground.

  He didn’t think she’d be waking up anytime soon. Or ever.

  She’d grown so used to the ability to wreak havoc on people’s minds, the great irony was she couldn’t handle her own medicine.

  Max caught his breath.

  His strategy had worked.

  As soon as he’d exited the first illusion with the Caesarian manatech device, he didn’t waste a second.

  The first thing he did was trigger temporal defense.

  As Mother then began to try and trap him in a second illusion, he was able to pause time within his own temporal sphere of influence and protect himself from the attack. Simultaneously, after surviving the first illusion, he could use the ability in his own arsenal as well.

  And so while time was stopped within his temporal defense, he triggered the illusion trait himself, superseding Mother’s own attempt at trapping him in a second illusion.

  Then it was just a matter of letting it all play out and having Mother think she had trapped him.

  He then stood a few meters from her in reality, while he destroyed her within the illusion’s dreamscape.

  He had to defeat her in reality as well as in the mindscape and so he had conjured his lightning flail and swung it down on her with all his might.

  The blast had been so powerful that smoke swirled around the arena and it took the audience a moment to figure out what had happened.

  When it was finally clear that Max was standing tall and proud while Mother lay collapsed in the ring, they erupted with roars and cheers.

  Casey blinked in disbelief.

  It had all happened so fast, she was reeling from the shock of it all.

  “He won?” she stammered.

  One minute, he was trapped in a psychological prison and then the next second he snapped out of it and was absolutely pulverizing the mercenary A-ranker with his lightning flail.

  “He won!” Sarah cried, hugging Casey.

  Casey hugged Sarah back.

  She looked over the girl’s shoulders to Max, panting in the ring, exhausted from the match.

  You did it, Max, Casey thought to herself. I knew you could do it.

  Across the arena, spectators clapped and cheered at the spectacular final fight.

  “Can you believe it!?” people said to one another. “A C-ranker overtook an A-ranker!”

  “That Max kid is so cool and powerful!”

  “It was amazing the kid was even brave enough to face the A-ranked woman, and then to go on and actually beat her! I’m astounded!”

  At another end of the arena was the Elestrian team clapping and cheering.

  “Go Max!” shouted Will and Oliver.

  Ever since they’d been knocked out of the first round, they had hoped the human team would make a good showing.
/>
  “Wait,” said Will, a paranoid thought filling his mind. “Do you think Max’s victory will overshadow us in Sarah’s eyes?”

  Oliver’s eyes filled with both tears of sadness and joy.

  “I hope not,” he said, wiping his eyes and briefly stopping himself from his clapping. “But if it’s true, it is well deserved. Max fought an incredible match!”

  In another corner, the frog-folk clapped and U’lopp bragged, “You know he had a bit of my help in saving Elestria way back when.”

  And then in another section of the cheering crowd sat Tiberius, his arms crossed and a smirk plastered across his face.

  I knew the kid could do it, he thought contentedly to himself.

  And on it went, all throughout the arena, people cheered and basked in the amazing feat of Max Rainhart.

  Max soaked in the cheers of the crowd.

  Then above him he saw the floating podium of the hosts of the match, swirling around the arena.

  “Well, there we have it!” shouted Regulus. “Let’s give a huge round of applause to Max Rainhart who has just led the human team for the first time in history to absolute victory in the United Floors Alliance Tournament!”

  The crowd roared and clapped even louder and harder than they had seconds before.

  Max couldn’t believe the words that came out of the ambassador’s mouth.

  He knew it was true.

  He had lived through the fight.

  Like the rest of the crowd, even he was partly amazed.

  He looked up to all the beaming spectators, who were now chanting his name in unison.

  “Max!”

  “Max!”

  “Max!”

  73

  After a minute or two, the cheering finally subsided as the shadow of Sabriel and her winged horse fluttered high above the arena.

  Even the winner of the United Floors Alliance Tournament could not compete with the sheer awe and amazement that a tower god inspired.

  The crowd grew into a hushed silence as Sabriel landed in the center of the arena to congratulate Max and crown him victor of the tournament.

  The woman and her flowing blonde hair had a glow to her.

  Max’s stomach fluttered as he felt the sheer intensity of Sabriel’s power overflowing from her.