Tower Climber 3 (A LitRPG Adventure)

by Jakob Tanner

  The tower god smiled at him.

  “Congratulations, Max Rainhart,” said Sabriel. “You and your team have fought well. I feel confident in the alliance’s safety knowing there are climbers as capable as yourself around.”

  Max nodded. “Thank you, um, your high—”

  “I am not royalty, no need for honorifics,” she smiled. “You can call me by my name, Sabriel.”

  Max blinked in shock.

  This lady is so badass and cool, he thought.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you, Sabriel.”

  She giggled. “You are quite humble for someone who just took on a climber a full two ranks higher than you and won, no less.”

  Max shrugged. “I guess I’m a little starstruck. You being a god and all.”

  She smiled once more and took in the crowd.

  “Well, it looks like they’re waiting for us to do the final ceremonial aspect of these games.”

  The tower god then materialized a monster-core unlike any other monster-core Max had ever encountered.

  He could feel its power emanating from it, similar to the way mana seemed to overflow out of Sabriel.

  The core had a clear glassy and transparent exterior but on the inside was a swirling starry mist.

  Whoah.

  It took Max a second to realize what he was looking at.

  This was an S-ranked monster core.

  An astral core.

  A core of this power was extremely rare and coveted. It was the only key that could push a climber from A-rank into the tower god tiers of S-rank.

  To drain this monster core at any rank lower than A-rank would be to commit suicide as the cosmic power of the core’s mana would rip apart one’s flesh, veins, and mana channels. The mana would simply overpower a lower-ranked climber’s body and destroy it from the inside out.

  For humanity to acquire such a core was an incredible boon to Max and his people; even one S-ranked climber was enough to increase a tower race’s stature amongst the other races and floors.

  Max took a step to the glowing orb of power, mesmerized.

  He lifted his hands to take the orb from the tower god.

  “I see a great future ahead of you,” said Sabriel, smiling. “I can assure you that many of the tower gods have taken notice.”

  Max’s eyebrows raised at that.

  “That is both an honor and a curse. My words are both a compliment and a warning,” said Sabriel. “Not all tower gods value peace and harmony amongst the tower races.”

  There was something about Sabriel’s words that unnerved him.

  “Not all tower gods value peace and harmony amongst the tower races.”

  It reminded him of something Mother had said during their battle.

  She had mentioned that she was going to kill him and everyone else at this tournament.

  Including Sabriel.

  “Is something wrong?” said Sabriel, tilting her head at Max.

  Max’s fingers rested on the astral core.

  The crowd was waiting for him to grasp it fully in his grip and lift it above his head and invite another round of applause.

  But a thought was creeping through his mind and he couldn’t walk away from it.

  Mother had fully expected to win her fight against him.

  In fact, the mercenary team had gone so far as to injure Harold to the point that he couldn’t fight.

  If they were planning something nefarious, it was all meant to lead to this moment right here.

  A close vulnerable moment with a tower god.

  Max’s eyes bulged. “Something bad is about to—”

  SLICE!!!!

  It all happened in a split second.

  Max had realized the danger too late.

  Sabriel stood over him, eyes bulging, as a circle of blood grew out from the center of her chest.

  Sticking out from her stomach was the monstrous mutant bone strike that had damaged both Blake and Harold so severely.

  “Sabriel,” gasped Max.

  The tower gods last words to him were, “Take the core, protect it,” before the demonic bone sliced upwards and split the tower god’s body in half.

  74

  Casey stared in horror from the sidelines of the fighting square.

  Sabriel’s body laid on the stone arena, blood and entrails spilling out across the ground.

  “Wh-wh-what is happening?” said Sarah beside her, voice quivering.

  The same question was running through Casey’s mind. She couldn’t even articulate it out loud.

  Did that really just happen?

  Did they all just witness the murder of a tower god?

  Casey’s shock was cut short as suddenly shadowy smoke burst across the arena. The black smoke curled and weaved until ultimately morphing into one shadow demon after another.

  Within seconds, the arena was filled with a horde of shadow demons.

  Some were of the basic brawler variety, but there were some fliers and big giant shadow demon bruisers.

  The monsters wasted no time and rushed towards the stands.

  Those creatures will rip through the audience members with ease, Casey thought to herself.

  “Sarah,” said Casey, turning to her. “We don’t have time to panic. Innocent people are at risk in the stands. We need to help stop this attack. Let’s go!”

  Regulus’ face paled as he witnessed the horror beneath him.

  Hermia was shaking him on the shoulder, saying something to him, but he was in so much shock he couldn’t hear her words.

  It’s happening all over again, he thought to himself.

  This was just like the tournament two decades before.

  No, he thought.

  This is worse.

  Despite his colleague shaking him and probably shouting at him to do something, his eyes were fixated on one thing and one thing only.

  It wasn’t the horde of demonic monsters rushing into the stands of innocent people.

  It was Sabriel.

  The tower god.

  It was almost impossible to reconcile the fact that a being of such immense power was the same person as the one lying dead in front of him, her body split in half on the ground at the center of the arena.

  He turned to Hermia.

  His colleague’s face gave him a window into what he himself must have looked like there and then.

  Shocked.

  Sick.

  Terrified.

  And, most definitely, at a loss for words.

  Regulus gulped as he considered the most pressing thought in his mind that pushed through all of his other immediate panicked concerns.

  This might be the end to the United Floors Alliance once and for all.

  Tiberius stood up amongst the panicked crowds in the arena and turned on his squad’s communication device.

  “Everyone alright?” said Tiberius. “We’re experiencing a high-level attack. Let’s pick off the demons quickly and then go for the mercenary squad and force them to pay attention to us. Along the way, we help escort as many civilians out of here as orderly as we can. Got it?”

  The voices of his team members affirming Tiberius’ plan echoed through the communication device and the A-ranker conjured his mana blade and quickly got to work.

  A woman screamed nearby.

  A black demon had pinned her on the ground and was about to chew off her neck.

  Tiberius jumped through the stands at lightning speed, slicing his mana blade through the air before he even landed.

  The demon’s head flew straight off.

  Within seconds, the demonic creature disintegrated, sizzling into nothing.

  Tiberius turned around and helped the woman back up.

  “The exit is over there,” he said. “Stay calm. You’ll be alright. Head that way.”

  The woman shakily nodded and ran towards the exit.

  Tiberius looked over his shoulder, eyes wincing with anger and bloodlust.

  He saw another set of demons attac
king and rushed forward, ready to make quick work of them.

  Oliver and Will stood up from their seats as audience members scrambled around them to escape the stands and the incoming horde of shadow monsters.

  They both readied themselves to fight.

  “What’s the plan, Oliver?” said Will. “I’m a bit concerned my shadow bear attack won’t work on these shadow-based monsters.”

  Oliver grimaced.

  If Will couldn’t transform that would pose a huge problem for the two of them. They worked best as a team, and Will’s shadow bear mode was perfect for taking on lots of smaller monsters at once.

  “Gimme a sec,” said Oliver, triggering his own trait, mana eyes.

  He could suddenly see through the skin of the shadow monsters, taking in the channels and meridians of their mana veins.

  He took in the dark magic that their bodies were composed of. He cross-referenced it with his own observations of Will’s shadow bear mode.

  He grinned.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem, mate,” said Will.

  Will stretched and cracked his arms and knuckles, preparing himself.

  “Alright, let’s do this then,” he said.

  The Elestrian C-ranker screamed as he morphed and transformed into a giant bear composed of shadow and magic.

  In the process, the boy’s scream transformed into a mighty and triumphant roar.

  Max stood over Sabriel’s dead body.

  He shivered with shock and horror.

  “Wh—”

  Max couldn’t even articulate anything, his voice just shaking. He didn’t even know what he wanted to say.

  Why?

  What just happened?

  What the heck? What’s going on?

  Max felt like time was moving slower as he stared down at Sabriel’s dead body.

  He knew everyone was screaming and running in a panic around him, but he just felt frozen.

  He looked down to the astral core in his hands, then to Sabriel’s body on the ground, and then further ahead across the square to where the monstrous bone pincer attack had come from.

  It was the hooded figure—the B-ranker on the mercenary team.

  The figure turned to leave.

  No one was paying attention to the mercenary as there was too much other chaos around them.

  Max was the only one focused on the unknown fighter.

  As the figure turned and began to run away, Max thought he caught a flicker of the figure’s hair from beneath their hood.

  Long scarlet strands of hair.

  Max was dumbstruck.

  It couldn’t be.

  75

  No way, Max thought.

  He stood there dumbfounded, watching the hooded figure run beneath the stands of the coliseum.

  The red hair he saw flashed through his mind once more.

  It couldn’t be, could it?

  Max dematerialized the astral core into his climber’s pouch and then ran across the arena after the mercenary team’s B-ranker.

  The screams and battles happening across the arena were all a blur as he sprinted forward after the hooded B-rank climber.

  There was a small pang of guilt as he knew he was relying on other climbers to fight off the demons and protect the audience members.

  But then he knew he was leaving the situation in capable hands.

  He had to focus on his current objective.

  Because, if his eyes weren’t tricking him, his overall goal as a climber—the very person he’d been searching for all this time—had just walked into his sight.

  Winifred stood beside her colleague and teammate Kai as they orchestrated chaos across the arena.

  She directed a group of spirits to fight alongside the demon horde, keeping the other tower races and their climbers busy.

  “Kai—this was not part of the plan,” she shouted. “What are we going to do?”

  The plan had been for Mother to collect the astral core from Sabriel, trigger her illusion magic on the entire audience, while the unknown B-ranker took out Sabriel. By the time, the audience would have snapped back to reality, they would have been long gone.

  The current situation was a much sloppier chaotic mess than they had planned for.

  “I’m improvising as best as I can,” shouted Kai in reply, creating a massive tidal wave that smashed into another section of the arena hall.

  “We need to get out of here,” Winifred hissed. “What do we do about the others?”

  Kai looked over his shoulder and saw that their B-rank colleague had disappeared.

  “I think it’s every man for themselves at the moment,” said Kai. “One last strike should do it and then I say we get the heck out of here. We can all meet back at headquarters higher up in the tower anyway.”

  “What about The Toddler?”

  “He’s a lost cause,” said Kai. “Plus, with Mother no longer with us, no one else will be able to control him. He can live his days in an asylum where he belongs.”

  “Okay,” said Winifred, taking it all in. “One last strike. Let’s do it how we practiced.”

  Winifred clenched her fists and made a connection with one of the most powerful spirits she knew.

  Not all spirits were material living creatures. Some were more abstract beings lost to time. Trees, winds, and, most important at that moment, oceans.

  Winifred contacted the spirit of a great mighty ocean lost to the corrosive wheels of time, while Kai conjured the biggest tidal wave attack he could muster.

  The giant wave towered over the arena. The rushing hostile water took on a silver hue as the spirit of the ocean synthesized with the conjured water to create a wave far deadlier than either climber would have been able to conjure on their own.

  It was their special combo ability.

  Spirit Tsunami!

  The powerful oceanic blast tore through the arena, destroying it into rubble.

  “It looks like we just cleared a path for our getaway,” Kai smirked. “C’mon!”

  The two mercenaries rushed away, leaving the chaos behind.

  Casey materialized her origami wings and flew up above the arena to scan the chaos.

  The number of demons and spirits causing chaos across the arena had barely dwindled.

  The giant destructive tidal wave that Kai and Winifred had just created had ripped a whole section of the coliseum into a pile of wreckage and was now acting as another exit for the panicked civilians.

  Casey saw three demons were surrounding a young man, pushing him more and more into a corner.

  “Hang on tight, Toto!” said Casey to her gerbil friend clutching onto her shoulder.

  Casey then flew down and conjured her air katana as she did so.

  The demons were about to jump and feast on the young man’s flesh, but suddenly they found themselves unable to jump for their legs had literally been cut from under them by a slice of Casey’s wind katana.

  She swooped back down and took out the three demon heads in a single slice, finishing them for good.

  Piece of cake, she thought.

  She looked over and saw Sarah fighting a lone demon on her own.

  The demon would at first have the upper hand tearing into her flesh but then, as her body healed itself, she would imbue her fists with mana and pummel the demon back in a stunning surprise attack, taking the monstrous creature out.

  This attack was clearly not orchestrated very well, Casey thought to herself. This was an improvised strategy. A distraction. A last-minute plan.

  All of which told Casey that whatever the mercenary team had been concocting, the destruction of the arena and everyone in it wasn’t their end goal.

  The observation brought both relief and concern. For if they weren’t trying to kill everyone here, what worse goal were they ultimately trying to accomplish?

  Maybe this is all just distraction, Casey considered.

  She then looked down to the puddle of blood leaking out from the dead tower god at the cente
r of the arena.

  A worse thought entered Casey’s mind.

  Or maybe our enemies have already succeeded.

  Max rushed through the underground section of the coliseum.

  He was sprinting through shadowy hallways, chasing after the echo of footsteps far ahead of him.

  The echo of footsteps from the mercenary team’s B-ranker in the distance was a guiding light through the passageways, but then suddenly they stopped.

  Max halted his feet and took a moment to catch his breath.

  Which way had the mercenary gone?

  Without the echo of their footsteps to guide him, he didn’t know which way to turn.

  Then the sounds of the footsteps on the floor returned.

  But they were closer.

  The echo was getting louder.

  Finally, stepping out of the shadows was the hooded figure of the mercenary team.

  They lifted up their arms and pulled back their hood, revealing their long red hair and face.

  “Long time no see, older brother.”

  76

  Max’s heart thumped against his chest. He sucked in a deep breath. His eyes widened.

  Standing across the hall from him was Elle.

  His long-lost sister.

  He simultaneously recognized her and was also caught off guard at the unfamiliarity of her.

  He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised; of course she was going to look different. She wasn’t going to look like her four year old self ten years later, was she?

  His little sister had obviously grown up in the intervening years when they hadn’t seen each other.

  Just as he had.

  The girl standing in front of him was tall and slender with long red hair that she kept in a ponytail while allowing for a few bangs to fall at the side of her cheeks, framing her face.

  And her face—it had lost the round babyish cheeks and grown into something slender and beautiful.

  But there was a violence in her face as well.

  A hostility.

  It was an angular face. Her big blue eyes had a slanted tilt to them and her nose was sharp like the point of a knife.