Tower Climber

by Jakob Tanner

  Max couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His entire life, his entire world, had all been one massive lie?

  “Okay,” he said, trying to stay calm as question after question piled in his head, creating a motor of mental stress in his mind. “You’ve explained how Zestiris was created, but why? What was the point of stripping people’s memories away?”

  “It was initially a temporary measure,” explained the climber president. “One that in the end, those who knew the truth, chose to never reveal. It was all done in the name of protecting everyone. It’s why they built walls, separating the two zones of the city. The founders wanted to separate climbers from the rest of the citizens. They did so to protect the citizens from the monster waves but also to protect the citizens from the climbers themselves. The goal was for the climbers to find a way to reach the top of the tower and revive Earth from its destruction, while keeping those who didn’t need to know more blissfully ignorant. We’d seen how panic and hysteria had helped aid the destruction of Earth once already, the founders didn’t want to let such things run rampant a second time.”

  Max gulped once more.

  “So we’re on floor-4, you said. How do the monster waves work? Shouldn’t there just be monsters spawning everywhere all over the city?”

  The climber president nodded. “This is something that remained a mystery to the founders. Zestiris exists on floor-4 of the tower. It is a tamed floor. We suspect the monster waves happen on all tamed floors where the tower manifests itself. We also believe the floors below us have become dead floors, wrought with destruction. No one travels down there any more.”

  “So why do you have guards around the teleporter?”

  The man looked at Max very seriously once more. “In case anything decides to come up.”

  Max tried to process all the information the climber president was telling him. It was a lot and yet he was slightly disappointed. The information hadn’t brought him any closer to finding his sister.

  Yet, he had the president here. Why not ask him now?

  Max gulped.

  “Do you know anything about my sister?” he asked.

  “I do,” said the climber president. “But we cannot discuss such matters now. Nor do I think they’ll aid you currently. You have a lot to think about. The tower climbers of Zestiris don’t just go up the tower searching for adventure and glory, they go in an effort to help save humanity and the planet we lost. You must consider the consequences of your goals and the lofty weight of your desire to become a tower climber. Are you ready to start fighting back on humanity’s behalf?”

  Max didn’t know what to say back to the man.

  “The final climber exams are going to begin in a few weeks. You must train hard for them. If you pass, we can speak again and I can tell you what I know about your sister. Until then, you must go train.”

  The man started to shepherd Max out of his office when Max remembered his whole reason for going out into the outer-rim in the first place.

  “But sir,” said Max. “I don’t know how to say this, but, um—”

  “Spit it out, lad,” said the climber president.

  “The Archer family. How much of what you told me do they know?”

  “Samuel Archer is one the highest ranked climbers in the city,” said the president. “He knows about everything I told you today.”

  “I don’t know how else to say this,” said Max. “But I think him and his family are up to no good. I have no tangible proof, but it was the reason why we went out into the outer-rim in the first place.”

  The climber president guffawed.

  “The Archer family certainly is ambitious, but there are other ambitious well-renowned climber families and clans who will keep them in check. Don’t worry, we keep an eye on things. Plus, I’m the only other A-rank climber besides Samuel. I’d like to see the Archers take me on.”

  Max nodded at this.

  The man didn’t seem to be fearful about the Archers at all. Max felt a brief sense of relief, but was still slightly worried the climber president was shrugging off the threat too easily.

  Max didn’t know how to argue with the man further, so he thanked him for sharing all the information, and left the climber’s guild to return home before Sakura even guessed how he had spent his day.

  Shortly after Max left, the climber president sighed and sat down at his desk.

  He picked up his telephone and dialed a private number of the elite city guard.

  “I want you to keep an eye on Samuel Archer,” said the climber president. “I believe we may have a tricky problem on our hands.”

  Samuel stood in his favorite part of the Archer family penthouse. He stood right in front of the tall glass windows, staring out at the city beyond.

  He smiled as he looked at it.

  “Any day now,” he said out loud to himself. “This city will be mine.”

  75

  “Hiya! How was your day?”

  Sakura asked while lying on the couch, holding up a paperback novel she was reading.

  Max closed the door behind him.

  Sakura had no idea what kind of day Max had just experienced and, as much as he wanted to relieve some stress and tell her about it, he knew that he couldn’t.

  “Just been training,” said Max. “I feel quite tired now though, so I’m going to go to bed early.”

  Sakura put her book down on her stomach and looked at him.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Max. “I think I just pushed myself a little too hard.”

  “Alrighty,” said Sakura, returning to her book. “Get some rest.”

  Max went to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  He then collapsed onto his bed.

  He felt like his whole world was falling apart.

  His life up until then had been a lie.

  And for most of the people he knew around him: their lives had been a lie too.

  How did one keep moving forward under such circumstances?

  He had never felt compelled to travel to Europe or Asia, but he always felt comforted by the possibility that he could go and do that.

  But that was all mere fabrication.

  His world was a lot smaller than he realized, consisting of the outer-rim, the tower-zone, and the tower itself.

  It may have been smaller, yet it felt suddenly much more frightening.

  He was one of the few humans with the power to climb the tower. One of the few humans to be able to go forth and find a way to save humanity and undo the damage to their lost home world.

  All of his goals and decisions suddenly felt like they even had more weight.

  He felt an oppressive overwhelming sense of responsibility.

  It made him feel sick.

  Part of him also wondered what Elle thought? He could imagine that his sister had spent some time here in the tower-zone and then had been strong enough to ascend through the floors of the tower herself.

  She, too, must know of the truth of this world, of the real state of affairs.

  How did such knowledge govern her actions, he wondered.

  His phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket.

  He checked and saw it was Casey.

  “Hey! Are you alright? I woke up at home in bed. I’m not hallucinating that we were in the outer-rim earlier today, right?”

  Max wrote her back straight away, explaining the entire day’s events up until when they were put to sleep. He was about to tell her everything the climber president had told him, but then he stopped. Probably best not to send such crucial information over text messenger.

  They made a plan to meet up the next day, return the ward-breaking knife, and get Toto out of the clutches of that weird merchant and make a training plan for the upcoming climber final exam.

  He lay back in bed and sighed.

  Only a few more weeks until the final exam.

  If he succeeded there, it would be the first true step towards finding his siste
r.

  76

  The following day, Max got up at seven a.m. sharp.

  He showered, got dressed, made breakfast for himself and then he was out the door. He left a scribbled note to Sakura: “Gone to train. Will be back in two weeks or so.”

  He met up with Casey briefly and gave her the ward-breaking knife to get Toto back. After that, he wished her good luck on her training and continued his morning preparations.

  He sucked in the cold January air proudly as he marched across the tower-zone to the climber’s guild. He made a few quick stops by some shops, picking up some extra supplies.

  He had two and a half weeks until the climber exam finals. It was going to be a massive one-on-one tournament with elimination rounds, hosted in the main city arena for everyone to watch.

  The pressure was intense.

  Which was why Max had no time to waste: he had to get to training.

  He signed at the gate and headed up towards the tower.

  He was walking with steely determination and the wind at his sails, until he abruptly stopped.

  He was in the middle of the tower’s entryway, near the fountain where young tower-zone children were tested to see if they had a trait.

  The thing that had made him stop was the light of the teleporter.

  Instantly, he flashed back to that warehouse in the outer-rim.

  This isn’t floor-1, he thought to himself, taking a hesitant step forward.

  He gulped and walked towards the teleporter.

  They knew.

  The instructor knew when we were taught to ascend floors.

  They told them to, ‘ascend to the floor above you’ or ‘ascend to the endless forest.’ Never ‘ascend to floor-2’ as that wouldn’t have worked.

  Max strode towards the teleporter now.

  He also remembered the instructor explaining that once you’d ascended to a floor you could ascend multiple floors at once, from one arrival teleporter to another.

  He stepped into the light of the teleporter and tried an experiment.

  If they were on floor-4.

  That meant the endless forest was floor-5.

  That the archipelagos was on floor-6.

  He closed his eyes in the light of the teleporter and thought to himself:

  Ascend to floor-6.

  His stomach lurched and his hair stood up and then seconds later, he was standing on the island where he had started the mid-term exams.

  He walked to the beach and saw there was a whole marina of boats.

  He walked up to one boat that had a group of sailors throwing up ropes to one another and looking as if they were preparing to depart.

  There was a man with a big nose and slicked back gray hair and wore a captain’s hat. He had a copper-ranked climber’s badge on his chest as well.

  “Ya looking for a job, laddie?”

  Max shook his head. “I need to find an island to train on.”

  “Ah, I see now,” said the captain. “You’re a climber! Or a wannabe one!”

  Max nodded. “Pretty much. Are there any good islands on this floor to train on?”

  “Ah, there’s one just yonder there,” sighed the captain looking out to the sea.

  “Could you drop me off there?”

  “I could,” said the captain. “But we’re on a long voyage to hunt down a specific nasty kraken, won’t be coming back that way for a while.”

  “How long is a while?” asked Max.

  “I reckon a week and a half, maybe two weeks,” said the captain.

  Max grinned. That was perfect. “Works for me,” he said to the captain.

  “You sure, lad?”

  “I guess if I was going to be nervous about anything,” said Max, “It would be about you guys coming back at all? The kraken won’t kill you all, will it?”

  The captain laughed.

  “Hah! You just worry about surviving for two weeks on Ogre Island,” said the captain. “Now climb aboard.”

  Max walked up the plank and sat on the deck, trying to stay out of the way of the other sailors.

  Max sat on the boat and watched the sailors get ready to set sail.

  They all had copper E-rank badges on them. He didn’t see any higher ranked climbers than that. Even though they had climber badges, they appeared more like regular sailors than climbers.

  “Are you guys retired climbers?” asked Max to a passing sailor.

  The man laughed. “Of course not! Though it’s been awhile since any of us have been back to Zestiris. We mainly work across this floor, the archipelagos, and what a floor it is!”

  So that was their job. They loved the world of this floor and so they never left or explored much further beyond. Max figured that a top-level E-rank climber could go as high as floor-30 without suffering significant tower sickness, but if you found a floor you enjoyed and didn’t see yourself hitting D-rank, you might as well stick with it.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Yeah,” said the captain. “Stay out of the way.”

  Max stood at the back of the deck and watched the sailors work: climbing rope ladders, loosening up sails, shouting orders.

  They worked like a clockwork machine, all recognizing how their individual roles gave shape and control to the massive wooden frigate sailing across the ocean world.

  They eventually arrived at an island of similar shape and size to the one he’d done his mid-term exams on, except this island one sailor assured him, “They’d never test students on.”

  That sailor looked Max over, shuddering, and said, “Nice knowing ya, kid.”

  The ship docked at the island and the captain came up to Max.

  “There you go, kid,” said the captain. “First stop, Ogre Island. But I gotta ask: you sure about this? You can stick with us for the next two weeks on the trading route, learn some of what it takes to be a sailor of the archipelagos!”

  “Thanks,” said Max. “But I gotta go train on my own. I got the climber final exams to think about.”

  The captain laughed. “Oh my, it’s been so long since I had to do any such test, it’s making my stomach lurch just thinking about it. Alright. We’ll be coming back this way in about two weeks or so. See you then?”

  “Sounds good,” said Max.

  He then hopped off the boat and waved goodbye to the captain and sailors.

  He then turned around and faced the looming island in front of him.

  Just under an hour later, the captain put down his spyglass away from the island they had just left and reeled off some more directions to his crew.

  The crew got to work, retying the sails and adjusting for a new westerly wind.

  “You think that kid’s going to be alright,” said one sailor.

  The captain sighed. He had been feeling guilty about it since they’d left the island.

  “The kid had pluck, I’ll give him that,” said the captain. “But I’ve never heard of anyone surviving on Ogre Island on their own for more than three nights, let alone two weeks. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  He turned back and looked at the foreboding island once more, before returning his attention back to their next destination.

  77

  Max walked off the beach and headed into the jungle.

  His eyes darted in every direction, keeping eyes out for ogres, but so far he hadn’t seen any.

  A few birds chirped nearby and it was enough to make his shoulders jump.

  Relax Max, he said to himself. You’re going to be living on this island for the next two weeks.

  The first thing he had to take care of was making a shelter and base of operations. While the beach was nice, if there was a high-tide or big wave, it could come and flood his base, so he ultimately chose the best of both worlds by being in sight of the beach but slightly deeper into the island.

  He retrieved the supplies from his pouch that Casey and him had purchased originally for the mid-term exam and used them to help set up a temporary place o
f lodging for the next two weeks.

  He tied the tarpaulin to a set of trees to create a roof and shelter from the rain. He then chopped down some wood to create a fire later.

  He didn’t want to make a fire straightaway as he wasn’t sure where the titular ogres of Ogre Island were and he didn’t want to call attention to himself.

  He materialized one of the many protein bars he’d had leftover from the midterms and chowed down on it as he reviewed his profile.

  Name: Max Rainhart

  Rank: E

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

  You may choose to retain one ability you’re hit with, adding it to your arsenal of attacks at double the power.

  Ability Slot: Shadow Blink (Rare)

  Strength: 13

  Agility: 13

  Endurance: 11

  Mana Affinity: 11

  Passive Skills:

  Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)

  Max looked the stats over with an air of disappointment. It was funny how these exact stats had seemed so triumphant a while back, but felt not good enough now.

  He hadn’t gained any stats from his adventure into the outer-rim. Why would he have? He hadn’t fought anything and the mana density wasn’t any more intense than it had been before.

  He wouldn’t rank up again until he reached a mana affinity of 31, which even though he had two weeks to train, he doubted that would happen. Nevertheless, Sakura did tell him that the early ranks were separated into two phases, significant enough that just because two fighters might be E-rank it wasn’t enough to guarantee it was an equal match-up. Someone with 25 stat points in mana affinity was at a different level than someone with 11.