by Jakob Tanner
But it was all worth it, he thought.
When there was only about a week and a half until the midterms, Max woke up to a text message from Casey.
“Hey! How goes midterm training? Want to meet up for coffee?”
Max held the phone in his hand and paused as he read over the message once more. It wasn’t that odd to be hearing from her, was it? They did exchange phone numbers for this very reason. But wasn’t Casey training extra diligently for the midterms as well? Could they really just hang out at a café all afternoon? But then again: he hadn’t been very productive the last few days anyway, what was one more day of hanging out?
Also, if he recalled correctly, Casey said they should hang out if either one of them stumbled across something important about the midterms.
Maybe that was why she was texting him.
Either way, he wasn’t going to find out anything until he spoke to her.
He texted her back and they arranged a time to meet the next day.
The following afternoon, they met at a café downtown in the heart of the tower-zone.
Casey sat in the back drinking a matcha latte.
He ordered a simple black coffee and joined her at the table.
“Where’s Toto,” asked Max.
As if it had heard its name, the girl’s pet gerbil poked its head out of Casey’s pocket.
“Shh!” said Casey. “You’re not allowed pets in here.”
She crumbled off a bit of her biscotti and handed it to Toto as bribery to go back into hiding deep within her hoodie’s pocket. The gerbil picked up the cookie crumb which looked gigantic between its little hands and nestled itself away out of sight.
“Toto loves cookies,” giggled Casey. “So do I!”
Max took a sip of his black coffee. He wanted to ask why she had invited him here, but he figured there was no way to straight up ask that without sounding like a total jerk.
“How is your mid-term training going?” Casey finally asked.
Max had thought about how much he was going to tell Casey on the way here and he figured he had nothing to hide from her.
“I ranked up,” he said.
“You hit E-rank!?” she gasped. “You’ve only been in the tower-zone for a couple of months and you’re already at E-rank? It took me almost two years to get to E-rank and I’m still nowhere close to getting up to D-rank. That’s incredible, Max.”
He smiled. He was pretty pleased with himself for ranking up, but he also kept his ego in check. Casey ranked up without going up to the endless forest. No wonder it took ages. She must have had to practice mana channeling every day, maybe even save up to buy a silver monster core. It wouldn’t have been easy; but then she and the rest of the students at the climber academy besides him had years to get there. He had to play catch-up and exploit any advantage he had.
“Congratulations are now over though,” said Casey, her eyes suddenly getting serious. “That’s right, wipe that ‘I’m-the-greatest’-look off your face, because you’re not going to like what I say next.”
Max suddenly straightened up in his chair.
You’re not going to like what I say next. What could that be about? What did she know that he didn’t?
“Go on,” said Max.
Casey grinned.
She took another sip of her matcha latte and dropped another biscotti crumb into her pocket for Toto.
“Tell me, Max, have you only been training your stats this entire time?”
Max nodded. Of course that was what he had been doing. It’s what all the students were doing. How else were they going to train for the midterms.
“See, that’s what I was doing too,” said Casey. “But then I thought about it for a second. Why did they give us so much independent study just to train?”
Max grinned, picking up on where she was going. “You mean: it’s a test within a test.”
“Exactly,” she smiled. “Sure, training might help you pass the midterms, but you know what would be even more of a guarantee? Actually knowing what the mid-term test was going to look like. That way you could really prepare.”
“Good thinking, Casey,” said Max.
He was slightly irritated that he hadn’t thought of this himself. He’d been so focused on ranking up and gaining in power that he’d lost sight of the hidden message within the assignment of the midterms.
“So we have a week until midterms,” said Max. “How are we going to find out what the test is?”
Casey grinned widely.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I already found out.”
56
“How did you find out?” said Max.
“It was easy,” she said. “I actually don’t think they wanted finding out to be super difficult. The test within the test wanted to see if you were clever enough to explore researching the test itself as an option. Anyway, I just climbed a tree and used my trait to blow out some papers from one of the academy windows.”
“Genius,” said Max.
“Both Toto and I agree,” she grinned, dropping another cookie crumb into her pocket.
Max was seriously impressed. Casey was probably ahead of every other student right now in terms of passing the test. There was just one question he couldn’t quite understand.
“So why are you telling me?” he said.
“We made a deal,” she shrugged.
“We’re all technically in competition with each other, are we not?”
“Yeah, but there’s obviously alliances between different students. Just look at Cyrus and his goons.”
“Fair enough,” said Max.
“Plus,” Casey continued. “I’m telling you so hopefully we can work together on the day of the midterms. Sound good?”
Max considered it for a second. If people were allowed to team up during the midterms that probably meant it was better to do so than fly solo. If he was going to partner up with anyone, it was definitely going to be with Casey. Plus, she still hadn’t told him exactly what the mid-term exam was going to be. She was probably withholding the exact details until he agreed to partner up with her.
“Alright, I’ll team up with you,” said Max.
“Yay,” she said, clapping her hands. “I knew you would.”
“Alright, now what’s the exam?” asked Max.
“Well, I actually don’t know the exact details...” murmured Casey.
Max’s eye twitched. He went through all that posturing, even agreeing to team up with her, and she didn’t know the exact details of the exam!
“All I know is the exam is going to be a survival test of some kind,” said Casey.
Survival test!?
“And that’s the extent of what you know?” said Max, leaning back in his chair.
He scanned the café once more. There was hardly anyone in here and there certainly weren’t any climbers or student climbers about.
While on the face of it, knowing that the mid-term exam was going to be a survival test didn’t sound like much, but there were many ways they could prepare with that knowledge alone. If they’d been in the dark, they might have spent money buying extra offensive materials, but a test of survival would be different. They needed to go pick up supplies straight away.
“Hello, Earth-to-Max?” said Casey. “What’s going on in there? Share your thoughts? You’re always so serious all the time!”
She then stuck her tongue out and, as if on cue, Toto poked his head out of her pocket and also stuck its tongue out.
Max stood up. “C’mon, we gotta go prepare.”
They headed to Hawker’s Alley and the nearby adjacent streets to pick up some supplies.
The market street was filled as always with the usual seedy group of merchants, criminals, and tower-zone businessmen looking to accomplish something with the help of a little tower magic.
“Everyone’s leering at us,” said Casey. Toto sat perched on her shoulder.
“It’s just the way of the market,” Max explained.
“They want to reel you in as a customer.”
“Except now I don’t want to look anywhere,” she said. “I don’t think this is a very good sales strategy if you ask me.”
Casey got noticeably more uncomfortable so Max dragged her to the side near an empty storefront. They needed to think through what kind of supplies they needed.
“It’s a survival test,” said Max. “So what we need to pick up are the most crucial survival utensils.”
“A rope!” said Casey. “A fishing rod!?”
Max shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “Why do most people die out in the wilderness? Starvation and thirst. Our number one priority should be getting water bottles and food. I don’t think the test will last longer than a week, do you? So we need seven day’s worth of food and water each.”
“Ooh, you’re so clever, Max,” said Casey. “Next time I steal test secrets, I’m coming straight to you! I’ll never have to study again!”
Max laughed. Casey was clever and proactive enough—more so than any of the other students including himself—to steal information on the mid-term exam and yet she was still so lazy when it came to studying that she didn’t want to work even when she practically had the answers to the test in front of her.
“Oh,” said Casey, just realizing something else. “What about shelter? We might need that if it’s a survival test?”
Max nodded his head. “Yep, that’s the next most important thing in terms of survival. The only issue with shelter is I’m not sure how much shelter material we’ll be able to carry in our pouches.”
“Oh, that’s a good point,” said Casey. “We can still maybe get some tarpaulin?”
“Definitely,” said Max.
“Oi!” came a loud voice. “You kids going to shop! Or are you just going to stand there and scare away customers!”
Casey yelled back, “If anyone’s scaring customers, it’s you, you dope!”
Toto looked to be shaking his tiny gerbil fist in outrage alongside Casey.
The merchant grumbled and turned away.
Ironically, now that they did have their shopping list figured out, Casey refused to buy anything from the heckling man’s stall.
By the end of their shopping spree, they’d picked up a 24-pack of plastic water bottles each along with twenty-two protein bars each as well. It all fit into their pouches just fine.
“What can these things not hold?” asked Casey. “This is the most basic form of pouch and it doesn’t seem to fill up.”
Max considered this. During his training, he’d amassed a huge amount of monster cores and coins, which didn’t seem to overfill the pouch at all. He wondered whether it had less to do with weight but dimensions? Or was it only based on mana density? Or a combination of all three? Or was there no feasible limit on the amount of items, but rather on each individual items weight?
He remembered talking it over with Sakura a while back. “You can’t use it for holding pockets of air or large amounts of water...there are some very rare and expensive pouches that do that, but I wouldn’t worry about that for the time being.”
He wasn’t going to question it so long as they were able to pack all their supplies. Casey was even able to get some tarpaulin, along with matches and firewood in her pouch as well.
They were just about to leave the market when Casey grabbed Max’s arm and pulled him to the side out of the way. They ducked behind a merchant selling mana-imbued ceramics.
“What’s going on?” asked Max.
“Shh,” said Casey. “Look!”
Walking through Hawker’s Alley was Cyrus and his group of teenaged goons.
Crap. If Cyrus saw them there, he might be able to piece together more information on the mid-term exam, and the last thing either of them wanted to do was to help that conceited jerk.
They quickly shuffled their remaining supplies into their pouches and remained out of sight as Cyrus and his pals walked by.
Thankfully, they didn’t notice either Casey or Max. As soon as they were out of sight, they hurried away from the market in the opposite direction.
“Phew, that was close,” said Casey.
Max nodded his head in agreement. “Well, I guess that’s everything. See you at the exam in a few days?”
Casey smiled. “Sounds good. Let’s crush this stupid test!”
57
On the morning of the mid-term exams, all the currently enrolled students of the Climber Academy had to meet outside the courtyard and await further instructions.
The group of student climbers all huddled around the building, looking around nervously, wondering whether the exam had already begun and they hadn’t realized it yet.
“I hate how they always make us wait,” groaned Casey. “It’s like—tests are stressful and no fun already—why stretch the experience out, you know?”
Toto perched on her shoulder seemed to be mirroring its owner with a slumped over and dejected look on its face.
Max shrugged sympathetically in reply to Casey, while peering around the group of students. Had the test already begun? No. This wasn’t a survival test. They were just waiting. No reason to get stressed yet.
“GOOD MORNING,” said their instructor appearing at the front of the courtyard with a group of ten D-ranked climbers behind him.
The group of climbers all had silver pin badges attached to their chest.
“Behind me are your examiners along with myself,” said the instructor. “If you follow me, we’ll take you to the exam location.”
The students murmured and shuffled along as the instructor and the group of examiners led them to the climber’s guild building and through the back towards the entrance of the tower.
“Where do you think they’re taking us?” asked Casey, walking alongside Max. “You think they’ve cordoned off a specific area of the endless forest?”
Max shook his head. “I have no idea, but I’m starting to understand your complaints about all the waiting. The suspense is killing me.”
So far, student climbers weren’t allowed to go beyond the floor above them, so if the test did take place on an even higher floor, they would all be entering completely foreign and unknown territory.
“They all look so nervous,” said one of the D-rank examiners as they stood in front of the teleporter and let the students go up to the next floor first.
“Wouldn’t you be?” said another. “During our year, more than half of the class failed the midterms and thereby lost their place at the academy.”
Max gulped.
They’re doing this to scare us, thought Max. They’re trying to make us panic. When the actual exam commences they want our composure to be down straightaway.
Max took a deep breath.
I can’t let that happen, he thought to himself. I need to stay focused.
Max walked into the teleporter and ascended to the floor above.
He blinked and he was in the endless forest along with the rest of the class, including the instructor.
The other examiners followed suit, appearing one by one in the forest floor.
Two E-rankers, not part of the exam, stood by the teleporter. These were the climbers who’d replaced the other two who the Reckless Brothers had killed.
Max felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Those two innocent climbers were hurt because the Reckless Brothers had been coming after him. He clenched his fist and felt no remorse for the deaths that had come to that family.
“All here?” said their instructor, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Okay, follow me then!”
They moved through the forest as a group and it became clear where they were going pretty quickly. They’d taken this route before. The signs carved into the trees also told them where they were going.
They were heading for the departure teleporter.
The mid-term exam wasn’t being conducted on this floor, but on one of the floors above.
Max’s realization slowly began to dawn on the other s
tudent climbers as they traversed further into the endless forest towards the floor’s departure teleporter.
Different groups of students whispered and spoke in hushed tones, sharing the information they were picking up on.
Max felt a nudge in his ribs.
It was Casey. She covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke, “Don’t tell anyone but I think we’re going to another floor.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” grinned Max.
She blinked before going red in the face. “If you had figured it out, why hadn’t you told me!?”
“Shh,” said Max, not wanting any of their competition to hear them on the off-chance that they’d still not figured it out. “I didn’t think knowing mattered. At least, not presently. What do you know about the floors above?”
Casey’s face paled. “That demons live there and other societies of races—similar to humans—but different and sometimes much more powerful. The higher you go the more dangerous it becomes. Do you think they’ll just send us to a floor and tell us to survive?”
Max shuddered. “I hope they give us more direction than that, but if that is what happens, we’ve done all the preparation we could’ve. We’ll just have to roll with the punches.”
Max gulped. He wasn’t just trying to convince Casey when he spoke, but convince himself as well. Another floor in the tower meant a whole new environment with new monsters and new obstacles. But what more could they have done? They’d bought survival supplies and Max had even trained so hard that he had ranked up and gained a new ability.
He took another deep breath and thought consciously about how much they had prepared for this. When he thought about that, he became less agitated. That was the whole point of this preamble to the exam area. To put their backs up and not necessarily in a good way.
The examiners stopped when they arrived at the departure teleporter.
