Tower Climber

by Jakob Tanner

  Max stood up and took in the destroyed ground and the nine copper monster cores laying in front of him. He snatched up the cores and coins.

  Nearby, a tree had fallen over during his attack and the branches had snapped into pointy edges.

  Max grinned.

  He had to be as efficient as possible.

  An hour later, a group of student climbers were practicing their squad tactics against a group of forest boars when they heard a huge rumbling sound.

  They looked through the forest and saw a cloud of dust fill the woods while a stampede of boars rushed through the crowd.

  “We better get out of here,” said one of the students. “That looks like enough monsters to be a monster wave!”

  “I thought this floor was supposed to be easy,” cried another student.

  “What’s happening!”

  Max was either crazy or stupid.

  Probably both.

  He sprinted with all of his might as fifty forest boars chased after him.

  He eventually arrived at a patch of dirt where an “X” had been drawn in the soil.

  This was the spot.

  As the mighty stampede of boars rushed towards him, he placed his hands on the ground and triggered the earthquake ability.

  The ground rumbled and shook. The dirt cracked and stones jutted forth right into the flesh of the wave of boars.

  Some had managed to dodge the attack and were still coming for Max.

  SNAP!

  All the nearby trees began to crack from the earthquake attack.

  But they were more than just random trees. They were trees that Max had purposely climbed and broken the branches into sharp pointed bits.

  They weren’t random trees any more—they were homemade guillotines, slicing downward and stabbing the remaining boars who hadn’t been killed by the earthquake attack.

  STAB!

  Max stood in front of the pile of boar corpses and watched the mound glow silver and leave behind a hefty splattering of coins and copper monster cores.

  He collected all the loot and placed it in his pouch.

  None of the monsters had escaped, so that was forty copper monster cores he’d just gained.

  If he added them altogether, he currently had fifty-two copper monster cores.

  He grinned. He had used his trait three times already today. Under normal circumstances, he’d have to take a long break now, but because he’d taken so much time between each use, he could simply just keep on going. The three consecutive times rule was more important in longer fights where you might need to trigger an ability multiple times in a row.

  Max stood up and started rushing through the clearing. As he ran through the woods looking for monsters to attack, he thought about how many more monster cores he could collect that day.

  Let’s do this, he thought.

  46

  By the time Max had used his trait for the natural maximum limit of six that day, he had collected 168 copper monster cores.

  He slouched against a tree and took in his profile.

  Name: Max Rainhart

  Rank: Unranked

  Trait (Unique): Mimic. Unleash the last move you were hit with at double the power.

  Strength: 8

  Agility: 8

  Endurance: 7

  Mana Affinity: 7

  Passive Skills:

  Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)

  He grinned. His agility stat had gone up by one point. That made sense to him. He had been running around the forest all day. Plus, running around on floor-2 would help increase his stats further and faster because he was training in an area with greater mana density.

  That gave him another idea. He was full of them today it seemed.

  For the rest of the afternoon, he was going to do Sakura’s training regimen inside the endless forest!

  Max returned to the apartment that evening, sore and exhausted.

  He’d ran consecutively for over an hour in the endless forest, doing laps between the floor’s two teleporters.

  After he’d finished that, he’d done one hundred push-ups and sit-ups each.

  And after all of that, his stats had gone up...zilch. Nothing.

  As disappointed as he was, he decided he was going to continue this training regimen for the next two weeks.

  The plan he had devised in the library still wasn’t ready for fruition yet and part of him wondered if he even had to do such a crazy plan any more.

  He had 168 copper monster cores! He should be able to rank up in no time.

  Max had a nice hot shower and then cooked dinner for himself and Sakura. After he’d done the dishes, he sat down with his pouch and began to drain the copper monster cores of their mana.

  E-Rank here I come!

  By the fifty-third copper monster core, he’d raised his mana affinity stat by two points, going from seven to nine.

  Only two more points until I rank up, he thought, eagerly getting to work on draining the next monster core.

  An hour later, he’d drained another fifty copper monster cores and his stat hadn’t budged at all. More than this, draining the cores didn’t take much effort anymore and it felt like nothing happened to his mana vessels as he drained the cores.

  He stopped at the hundredth monster core and went to ask Sakura what the problem might be.

  She was tucked up in bed, her hair in a bun, her face adorned with reading glasses. She had a new paperback romance novel in her hand and a mug of chamomile tea on her bedside table.

  She did not look anything like one of the most deadly and powerful climbers in the city that she was.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I’ve reached nine in mana affinity,” he said.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “Did you interrupt my special reading time just to tell me that?”

  “No, it’s...” said Max. “I managed to get lots of copper monster cores and—”

  “Your mana affinity isn’t going any higher?”

  “How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just the way things work. You’re so close to hitting E-rank but the final two points are usually the toughest. The problem is at E-rank, copper monster cores won’t help you at all, your mana is already too advanced to be improved by it. Since you’re practically E-rank now, the copper monster cores will only do the very minimum to improve your mana affinity.”

  Max sighed. “So all these cores I got today were for nothing.”

  “You can sell them at the market. Not for much, but for a little,” said Sakura.

  Max sighed.

  “I’m guessing that’s it,” she said. “So I’m going to return to my book. It’s just got really good.”

  “Aren’t all romance novels the same?”

  “To someone with unrefined tastes, perhaps, but not me!” barked Sakura. “Now, good night!”

  With that, Max walked away.

  He considered the sixty-eight copper monster cores he still had. He definitely wasn’t going to waste something he could sell by futilely draining them of their mana.

  It looked like he was going to have to go through with his library plan after all.

  For the next two weeks, Max went up to floor-2 and did his training method. First, he’d use up his limit of six traits, slaying loads of forest boars, mushroom monsters, and forest mules. He’d collect their monster cores and coins and add them to his pouch. Then, he’d spend the rest of the day doing Sakura’s training regimen.

  After two weeks, he’d collected 3068 copper monster cores and earned about 7024 copper coins. His pouch didn’t feel an ounce heavier than the day he got it.

  Even better was the increase to his stats. He still wasn’t able to push his mana affinity beyond 9, but he was able to raise everything else.

  He smiled at his profile, taking it all in.

  Name: Max Rainhart

  Rank: Unranked

  Trait (Unique): Mimic. Unleash the last move you were hit with at double the power.


  Strength: 11

  Agility: 11

  Endurance: 10

  Mana Affinity: 9

  Passive Skills:

  Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)

  It wasn’t just that the numbers had gone up either. Even without the raised stats, he objectively was faster and stronger and able to withstand more pain. It’s what happened after you spent two weeks in the densest area of mana you’d ever been in, hunting and training all day long.

  He walked with a new confidence, exuding a strength and power that most normal people his age did not possess. He was slender, yet had the tight muscular tone of someone with incredible strength. Sakura had once told him that a stat of ten in the first three stats was the upper limit for most humans in the outer-rim. The only regular non-climber humans who would technically have stats above ten were professional and Olympic level athletes.

  After he left the tower that day and was back in the regular tower-zone’s streets, he noticed he was catching the eye of the occasional woman watching him, drawn to him in a way he’d never experienced back in his former outer-rim life. The first few times it happened, he looked over his shoulder, thinking these women were looking at something behind him. They just smiled at him when he did this and went about their day.

  Most of these women looked to be a few years older than him and, while he was certainly flattered by the attention, he had more important things to focus on.

  Like upgrading his equipment and cashing in on all the loot he’d accumulated while training.

  With his pouch full of loot—yet not weighing any more than the day he first got it—he strutted through Hawker’s Alley, the main market street in the tower-zone. The merchants of Hawker’s Alley bought, sold, and traded items pertaining to climbers and the tower.

  He passed by stalls selling impressive-looking swords and other weaponry. There were a few stalls selling mana-infused armor and shields. There were others with an array of rare antiques and trinkets on a red velvet cloth, each item a curiosity begging to be inquired about.

  There was one man in front of a stall of glass bottles full of strange liquids.

  “Get your potions, get your poisons, we sell the rarest liquids available in the tower!”

  Interesting, thought Max. He peered towards the man’s stall to see if he sold mana potions. The merchant did indeed sell such potions, but Max’s shoulders fell when he saw the price: 50 gold each, or as Max broke down the currency, 50,000 copper coins each.

  He sighed and continued exploring the market.

  The first thing he needed to do was sell his extra copper monster cores, then he’d know how much money he had to work with.

  He scanned the market and eventually saw a merchant who had only three items on display at his stall: a copper monster core, a silver monster core, and a gold monster core.

  Max hurried over, excitedly.

  “Ah, interested in my wares, young man?” asked the old man behind the stall.

  The man’s skin was wrinkled and he looked over seventy-five years old.

  Max looked at the price tags at the cores and his jaw dropped as his eyes moved across the table.

  A copper core sold for 10 copper coins.

  A silver core sold for 100 gold coins.

  A gold core sold for 100,000 gold coins.

  “Monster cores ain’t cheap,” said the merchant.

  “But why are copper cores so much cheaper compared to the rest?” asked Max.

  “Copper cores are common,” said the man. “Plus, they only really help a climber reach 9 in mana affinity, whereas a silver monster core will help a climber up to 29. It’s a lot more useful and more uncommon as well.”

  Max nodded. That made sense to him.

  “Why would anyone buy a copper monster core then?” asked Max.

  “Most climbers aren’t interested in buying them, except for the keen young students who haven’t had their year at the climber academy yet. Outside of them, though, its mostly businesses who use copper monster cores to power their factories and equipment.”

  Max nodded. That explained why there were plenty of non-climbers here in the market street. In fact, a mana-infused sword might be even more valuable to a mob enforcer than a climber who could rely on their trait in combat.

  Max was also happy to hear that copper monster cores weren’t completely useless then. There was indeed a market for them. It just wasn’t climbers.

  He felt a lot less worried now about his next question.

  “Do you buy copper monster cores?”

  “Of course,” said the merchant. “I buy them for four coppers apiece.”

  Max nodded. “Okay, well, I got 3068 copper monster cores and I’d be willing to sell them to you at five coppers apiece.”

  The merchant’s jaw dropped.

  “You insolent young man,” said the merchant. “I’m offering you a fair deal already.”

  Max grinned. “Maybe, but so am I. If I sell them to you at five copper coins, you’re still selling them at double the price. Plus—I bet those companies who use copper monster cores for fuel want them in large quantities. I’m saving you a lot of trouble by bringing you so many all at once. For that, I think I deserve a premium, don’t you?”

  The merchant narrowed his eyes. Max had outmaneuvered him and there was nothing he could do about it but accept the deal.

  “Fine,” said the man. “3068 copper cores at five coppers apiece is 15,340 copper coins. So to make things simple you’ll receive 15 gold coins, 3 silver coins, and 40 copper coins for your trouble. Deal?”

  “Deal,” said Max.

  Max unloaded his monster cores in the back of the merchant’s stall, filling the area briefly with a mound of cores, until the merchant himself vacuumed it all up into his own pouch.

  He handed Max the agreed-upon money and thanked him for the trade.

  “Oh, one last question,” asked Max. “What’s the exchange rate between tower-zone currency and the U.S. dollar used in the outer-rim?”

  The merchant snickered. “You boy ask the craziest questions. Thinking about taking a trip, are you? There’s no official exchange rate as the two currencies aren’t meant to mix. However, there are certain merchants—not me, mind you—who make deals in that area. It’s my understanding that one tower-zone copper coin is roughly equal to one U.S. dollar.”

  Max couldn’t believe it.

  He now had 22,364 copper coins in his pouch. Or, according to the merchant, $22,364 dollars. He’d earned that after two weeks of training. He ran the math in his head and realized he could be making a high six-figure salary if he just kept doing what he was doing. It would become super boring and tedious after a while, but it was a pretty insane amount of money for a sixteen year old boy like him to be making. It was an insane amount of money for anyone to be making!

  This was another reason why being a climber was such a coveted position in society. It offered opportunities for vast sums of wealth; and this was only after Max had visited the floor above this one. For those climbers who went even further, the riches became even more beyond belief.

  No wonder Sakura’s apartment was so nice, despite how untidy it was.

  But as Max thought this all over, he suddenly had another question.

  “Wait,” said Max.

  “Yes?” said the merchant, growing increasingly annoyed with Max’s incessant questioning.

  “What’s to stop wealthy families from just buying powerful monster cores and becoming incredibly powerful super fast?”

  The man laughed. “Well, for one thing, there are laws against such practices in the tower-zone, especially when it comes to unranked and student climbers. It’s a severe enough rule to get someone barred from becoming a climber. The rule was put in place because it makes the testing phase of the climber academy more complicated and stacked in the favor of wealthy and powerful families, which then creates a problem in finding the best suited young climbers for the job.”

  Max nodded. That made
sense. “But—”

  “But that doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to stop the rich and the powerful, does it?” smiled the merchant. “You’re right. The other reason why it’s not allowed is that it’s incredibly dangerous. Draining mana from a high-ranked core can potentially kill you. It works the same way as tower-sickness, overwhelming your body and atrophying your bones and blood vessels from the inside out.”

  “But—”

  “But what if the rich and powerful just gradually increased the monster cores and raised their mana affinity bit by bit?”

  Max nodded. That’s exactly what he was going to ask.

  “That creates a new problem for the theoretical climber. If your mana affinity is significantly higher than any of your other stats, you can develop hostile mana disease, sometimes referred to as HMS. Essentially, it’s the tower’s system of monitoring that you don’t focus on one stat above all else. To use an extreme example, someone who has a mana affinity of 100 but only a 10 stat in endurance, strength, and agility would die from HMS.”

  “But I thought mana affinity represented one’s ability to withstand and control mana?” asked Max.

  “That is true, but only to a point,” said the merchant. “Mana affinity also represents one’s internal mana, which increases at the same time as the stat does. A young kid with E-rank stats in everything else, but S-rank level mana affinity is simply untenable. The kid would die from his own internal mana burning through his own body.”

  “And because there’s tower-zone rules about who can climb to what floor of the tower that feasibly puts a cap on wealthy families’ ability to strengthen their offspring to get ahead of the curve,” said Max, finishing the old man’s thoughts for him.

  “Precisely,” said the merchant. “But you’ll see those rules are harder to enforce once a climber gets to E-rank or D-rank. As more floors open up to them and they can train their stats higher, they then begin to gain an edge over everyone else, but it’s a less oppressive edge than it would be otherwise.”