by Jakob Tanner
Pah! Nothing but a commoner with a lousy slice skill, thought Ninja. This climber was nothing but chattel, fodder for the wolves.
The harpy was clearly much more powerful than the lone climber.
Poor guy. He must have gotten lost from his squad.
Too bad for him, thought Ninja. And lucky harpy. It stole my kill.
The E-rank climber cried in pain as the harpy ripped through its guts.
Ninja smiled at the dying man’s suffering and then continued forth, moving slyly through the streets.
He had his assignment to accomplish. He had to kill the recent arrival in the tower-zone. The kid from the outer-rim.
The defense and city climbers had pushed back the monster wave to close proximity to the tower, which meant the rest of the city was near empty. Most of the climbers on duty were at the front of the battle and everyone else was tucked up inside, protected by the runes and wards that kept the monsters from attacking the tower-zone civilians. They were all cooped up like chickens. It meant the foxes of the night had free reign and Ninja had keys to the coop.
He arrived at a tall apartment building.
Most of the window lights were off. The foolish traitless. So at ease with the danger all around them. Monsters were summoned to attack the city and they’d got so use to the manatech defenses they didn’t even blink twice about it. They didn’t even contemplate all the climbers sacrificing their lives month to month so that they could just sit around and go to bed without a care in the world.
It was pathetic, thought Ninja.
But tonight wasn’t about killing traitless as much as he wished it might be.
He walked up to the edge of the apartment building and planted his feet on the wall. He imbued mana onto his feet and started walking up along the walls of the building, breaking the laws of human physics in the process.
Ninja ran up the side of the building, counting the floors as he did so.
Floor one...
Floor two...
Floor three...
Eventually he got to the eighth floor.
Apartment 803.
That was his destination.
The wind blew gently across his face as he stood eight stories above the ground on the side of the building. Screams and explosions could be faintly heard at the other end of the city, closer to the tower where the monster wave battle was taking place.
Ninja moved to apartment 803 and silently stepped onto the balcony.
He double-tapped the window quietly and the defense ward flashed red, lighting up the area.
He quickly grabbed his specialty knife and cut marks through the rune itself, disabling it.
With the defense ward removed, he was able to slide open the glass door and step into the apartment.
All the lights were off. It was silent.
He crept across the living room and silently opened the door to one of the bedrooms. There was someone sleeping under the blankets.
He had been told that there should only be one person in the apartment that night. This sleeping person must be his target then.
He quietly stepped towards the sleeping boy.
He grinned. There was always something satisfying about a clean and easy kill. It meant he’d done everything right up to that point and when it came to assassination, preparation was key.
He lifted up his knife high above the boy’s chest.
Sayonara kid, he thought to himself.
He plunged the knife into the sleeping kid, stabbing him through his blankets.
The knife bounced back. Blood didn’t splash or leak the blankets. A few tiny down feathers flew in front of him.
Ninja swiped the blanket away to see that he hadn’t just attacked a sleeping kid, but rather a pile of pillows.
What the—!?
SLICE!!
A bright golden light of energy pierced Ninja’s back and shot through his stomach and intestines out the other side.
The light of the energy blade glowed up at him, revealing the bleeding hole in his stomach.
The energy blade disappeared, slicing out of his flesh, leaving the open wound to simply gush blood.
Ninja fell to the floor.
How is this possible...?
A voice spoke behind him. Male. It was the kid he was meant to kill.
“I lived most of my life in an orphanage with an abusive perverted old man. I’ve slept with one eye open for most of my life.”
But the boy is unranked, thought Ninja, wincing in pain as blood poured out of his stomach and onto the living room floor.
How can he be so powerful?
“Who are you?” demanded Max. “What do you want from me?”
Ninja couldn’t believe this was it. This was supposed to be a trivial assignment. An errand. A chore no one wanted to do.
Yet he was dying. He was going to die here.
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a red pill. Trembling, he lifted the pill to his mouth.
Ninja had no other choice. If he lived tonight, he’d be jeopardizing the whole plan. There was only one thing left that he could do to help the cause. One last act of redemption after he’d failed here so miserably tonight.
He placed the pill on his mouth and quickly swallowed it.
“Tell me now,” shouted Max at the man trembling on the floor in the darkness. “Who are you!?”
His attacker didn’t respond and then—
Poof!
The man disintegrated into puff of black dust. Even the blood that had leaked out of him so profusely only a few moments before had disappeared as well.
Max stared at the ground. He turned on the light.
The floor of his bedroom was completely empty.
It was as if no one had even been here that night.
The attacker was gone without a trace.
22
Max waited on the couch for Sakura to get home.
The B-ranked climber woman got back to the apartment just after one-thirty in the morning.
“What are you doing up—?”
She stopped. Her face went from surprised to concerned.
“Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
Max nodded his head.
“Someone came into the apartment and tried to kill me,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
Sakura quickly looked around the apartment. “Are you serious? You’re not tricking me in some elaborate way to come out on next month’s monster wave?”
Max shook his head. His skin was pale.
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t see any blood. I don’t see any signs of an attacker.”
“He was here,” Max gulped, shivering. “He came through the window.”
“The window!?” balked Sakura, heading towards the balcony. “That shouldn’t be possible with the defense runes—”
She stopped and looked horrified. Her finger pressed on the window to conjure the defense rune. Nothing came up.
“Someone must’ve disabled it,” she gasped.
“He climbed up the side of the apartment building,” said Max. “I was watching the monster wave so I saw him approach the building. That’s when I hid. He came into my room and stabbed my blankets, thinking I was there. If you didn’t give me your slice ability before you left—I would’ve been screwed.”
Sakura headed to the kitchen and grabbed a can of beer, cracking it open.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked.
Max gulped. He felt surprisingly fine. In fact, it was his lack of panic or guilt that was concerning him more than anything else.
He looked down to the floor where the assassin had been before he’d vanished into black dust. That wasn’t a teleport spell; that was a suicide. To protect the man from giving up any information.
He’d been learning quite quickly that not all climbers were good people. Some of them were as bad as the monsters they claimed to protect ordinary citizens from. Some of them were even worse than that.
He didn’t like the
idea of being a killer, but the world of climbers was filled with them.
Would he have hesitated to stop someone from harming his sister or anyone else he loved for that matter?
No.
He’d try his best to live up to the ideals of a good person.
But who gave a shit if you were a good person if your sister and everyone else was dead?
Only an idiot would see upholding such ideals as honorable.
He decided there and then.
The world could have his honor.
He wanted to find and save his sister.
And to achieve that, he would do anything necessary.
23
Sakura woke Max extra early the following day.
“Good morning!” she cheered. “You don’t want to be late for your first day of school, do you!?”
Max groaned and rubbed his head.
After the events of last night, he’d actually forgotten that today was the first day of the climber academy term. Today was the day he’d been training towards for the last month.
He got out of bed and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready.
Forty-five minutes later, Sakura and him were standing in front of the climber academy.
The structure was a large red brick building with a clock tower. A serene courtyard lay in front of it.
So this was it, thought Max. The Climber Academy.
“Are you excited for your first day?” asked Sakura.
“About that,” said Max. “I can probably take it from here. So maybe see you later tonight?”
Sakura’s eyebrow twitched. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Are you embarrassed of me? What—are you worried people might think your mom walks you to school?”
Max blushed. “...Maybe.”
Sakura got red in the face, clearly annoyed. “I’m not that old! Gah! Maybe they might think you have an older hot girlfriend? Did you ever think of that, huh? The youth of today know no manners, do they? I was going to give you a cameo in my future romance novel, but you just got yourself cut, mister.”
“Uhh...”
Max scratched the back of his head. He really didn’t know what to say here.
Sakura sighed and composed herself.
“Oh, I got you a present. Not that you deserve it any more,” she said, rummaging in her pocket. She pulled out a small brown pouch. She handed it to him.
“Thanks,” said Max. “What is it?”
“It’s a special pouch,” said Sakura. “All climbers wear them. Think of it like an inventory in a video game. It’s not very large as it’s only a beginner’s pouch. I recommend not putting anything insanely big in there like a truck, but you should be just fine storing a good number of monster cores and other materials in there.”
“Oh, wow, thanks,” said Max, tying the pouch to his belt.
“Don’t mention it,” said Sakura. “Seriously though, don’t get clever with the pouch or you’ll break it. So don’t try and fill it with water or anything crazy. Alright, I think that’s it. Good luck today, Max. I can’t wait to hear how it goes.”
With that, Sakura strutted off to work at the defense climber headquarters.
Max watched her go and then turned to the courtyard.
First day of school, he thought. Here we go.
He walked through the gates and entered the courtyard.
A mass of teenagers loitered outside the doors.
Max ignored them and headed towards the entrance of the school.
“Don’t bother,” said a voice. “None of the doors are open. The student climbers are supposed to wait out here.”
It was a boy talking to him. He was around his age.
“Oh, thanks for letting me know,” said Max.
He approached the boy, but the boy turned away and focused on his mobile phone.
I guess this guy wasn’t going to be my new friend, thought Max to himself.
He went and stood behind the loitering groups. He looked to see if there was anyone else there on their own. Someone he could maybe talk to, maybe even earn more about what to expect here at the climber academy.
But there was no one else by themselves as far as Max could see.
He sighed.
Even in the tower-zone, popularity was just not something that was going to bless him at school. Oh well.
Max stood around, waiting for something to happen, when a paper airplane flew above the crowd of students.
It caught Max’s attention because it was behaving quite abnormally for a paper airplane.
Mainly, it didn’t seem to be falling towards the crowd. The plane hovered in the air and did a flip. It then flew towards Max. It did another flip before hitting him in the forehead.
“Ah, what!?” said Max.
He heard giggling nearby.
Max’s shoulders suddenly shot up. He’d spent so much of his school years prior to this one dealing with tormentors, he’d learned a giggle was never innocent.
He looked down to the paper airplane that had fallen to his feet after it had smashed into his head.
There was a note scrawled on it.
Open me.
He picked up the paper airplane and unfolded it. There was a note inside.
Are you the new kid?
Max looked up and suddenly he saw a very pretty girl waving at him.
She had wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail and bright green eyes.
She wore a burgundy corduroy pinafore dress with a thin-striped long sleeve sweater underneath. She would have looked playful and innocent if she hadn’t just launched a hostile airplane at his forehead, which made Max suspect her of being quite mischievous.
“Based on that goofy expression on your face,” giggled the girl in front of him. “I’m going to take that as a, ‘yes, you are the new kid.’”
Max didn’t know what to say. He was just mildly shocked that what he had expected to be another traumatic experience to add to the list, wasn’t in fact, traumatic at all. It was maybe even...nice?
The girl strutted up close to him and offered her hand.
“I’m Casey,” she said.
“I’m... Max,” he said, triumphing over his struggling hormonal brain to remember his own goddamn name.
She giggled again and her cheeks turned red.
“This is Toto by the way,” she said, pointing to a cute gerbil poking its head out of the pocket of her dress.
Max nodded. “Nice to meet you both.”
Casey smiled at him once more.
“How did you get the paper plane to stay in the air for so long?” asked Max.
Casey’s eyes widened at his question.
“Wow, the rumors are true,” she said. “You really are from the outer-rim. Anyone else would’ve been able to guess.”
She took the piece of paper out of Max’s hands and refolded it back into a plane. She then threw it in the air and then focused on it. The plane did a lap around the courtyard.
“I’m what they call an airbringer,” said Casey. “My trait lets me manipulate air. My profile says it’s an uncommon trait. All of the four elemental traits are considered uncommon, actually.”
So cool, thought Max. He was piecing together the way traits worked. They must have their own ranking system going from common to unique. Uncommon was one notch above common. Regardless, the ability to manipulate an element sounded awesome and Max was a little jealous.
“So, what’s your—”
Casey’s question was cut short by a blonde girl in a track suit, knocking into her shoulder as she walked past.
“Stay out of my way, fake-vein,” muttered the blonde girl.
“Who was that?” asked Max.
“Sybil Westley,” sighed Casey. “Don't mind her. You’ll get used to her type soon enough around here. Uh oh, speaking of which—”
Casey’s words were cut off by a new voice.
“Oi, new kid!”
Max became extra alert once more. He had wrongly interpreted
Casey’s airplane prank as hostile, but he could immediately hear the venom in the other kid’s voice.
Whoever was talking to them now was definitely not trying to become friends.
Max turned around and half-expected to see his former tormentor Seth standing behind him. Instead, he saw a skinny pale kid with light blond hair parted across his forehead. He was wearing a yellow tie and looked dressed more for prep school than an academy that trained people to fight monsters in a magical tower.
Max didn’t even grant the boy a proper response, merely glaring at him.
“My mates and I were debating on what kind of trait you have,” said the boy. “They think it’s uncommon, but I have a feeling it’s rare. So tell us.”
The kid’s so-called “mates” were three thuggish-looking guys standing behind him. They looked less like actual friends and more like hired bodyguards.
“I’m sorry,” said Max. “Who are you?”
The boy scowled at Max. “Are you a bit slow, new kid? I’m Cyrus Archer. You must have heard of me.”
Casey whispered in his ear. “The Archer family is one of the most powerful and prestigious families in the tower-zone. His dad is one of the few A-ranked climbers in the city. Cyrus is said to be a prodigy. He’s not someone you want to mess with, even though he is a jerky jerkface.”
“Stop muttering to yourselves,” said the boy. “You are talking to your betters. Don’t you know any manners?”
Ugh. This guy sucked, thought Max. Which wasn’t a surprise as he’d met Cyrus’ father already. Samuel Archer. The man who had tried to thwart him from even getting into the academy in the first place.
Being an asshole must run in the family then.
Max figured he should end the conversation as quickly as possible.
“Good to meet you, Cyrus,” lied Max. “I’m Max and my trait is slice.”
Max figured there was no reason to tell him the truth and as far as he’d seen, slice was a pretty badass trait, so hopefully that would keep the boy off his back.
The kid’s eyes widened at that before he full-on guffawed with smug laughter. He held his stomach theatrically as if what Max had just said was so funny it was hurting him.
