by Jakob Tanner
All of which meant, he had to raise his stats as much as he feasibly could between now and the final climber exam.
Max sighed and closed his profile from his vision.
It was time to get started on the training.
Max materialized his compass, oriented himself and then began exploring the island.
The island was made up of jungle and rock. He used his knife to cut through overgrown bushes and shrubbery.
For a place called Ogre Island, Max was surprised he hadn’t found any yet.
As he went deeper into the jungle he eventually heard a large groaning sound.
Max immediately threw himself against a tree to hide.
He slowly peeked his head out and saw a whole group of ogres.
They were green skinned, fat, and carried blood-stained wooden clubs.
Fortunately for Max though, the majority of them were all currently taking an afternoon nap, while two ogres stood on guard.
The ogre snores were powerful enough to create a tremor across the nearby ground.
Max shuddered.
It was monster hunting time.
78
Max’s heart began to beat faster and faster as he hid behind the tree near the nest of ogres.
The deep tremors of the ogre snores caused the tree to shake.
The ogre snores also probably made any small noises Max made undetectable by the guards.
He could use that to his advantage.
There was no doubt that he’d stumbled onto a favorable position with regards to fighting these monsters, but if they were to all wake up they’d be able to overwhelm him.
Especially because he currently had no offensive abilities.
He had shadow blink locked into its slot, and then the sleep ability that the agent back in the outer-rim had used on him.
He considered all his options and nodded to himself as he figured out a plan.
Max materialized a protein bar from his pouch and threw it to the edge of the ogre nest clearing.
One of the ogre guards perked up at the sight of a random food dropping.
He waddled over to it and when he bent down to pick it up, Max threw another just a little deeper away from the nest.
The ogre took the bait once more.
Max led the ogre a bit further away from the nest, before shadow blinking behind it and triggering the sleep ability.
Oomph!
The ogre collapsed on the ground and Max turned around frightened that it had been enough to wake up the other ogres.
Fortunately, it hadn’t.
Unfortunately though, the noise had caught the attention of the other ogre guard.
Max ducked behind a tree and waited for the second ogre guard to stumble across his companion and Max triggered the shadow blink and sleep attack combo once more.
Oomph!
He was now standing over two sleeping ogres.
Max wasted no time and materialized his knife. He slid the knife across both of the monsters’ throats.
The two ogres bled out, waking up briefly to cough up blood, before going cold and lifeless. Soon after that they glowed out before disintegrating to a shiny silver monster core each.
Max picked up both cores with satisfaction and then deposited them in his pouch for later.
He then tiptoed to the nest of sleeping ogres and made quick work of them with his trusty knife, gaining another four silver monster cores.
Max explored the island a bit more and ended up finding only one more nest of ogres. He used a similar strategy as he did before and deposited six more monster cores.
The sun was setting and so Max returned to his base camp to call it a day.
The following morning, Max returned to the original ogre nest and saw that a new batch of six ogres had respawned.
Perfect.
What wasn’t so perfect was the fact that they were all awake this time?
He could lure some of them away and then use his sleep ability but he wouldn’t be able to take out the whole group of them that way.
He looked up to the sky.
They were napping late in the afternoon when Max had first stumbled upon them.
He grinned to himself. He’d come back at naptime.
He sneaked away from the ogre encampment and returned to his base.
He still had a good seven hours to kill before he could go hunt the ogres easily, so he had to reverse how he envisioned his original training regimen.
For the next few hours, Max diligently did three hundred push-ups and sit-ups each, then ran up and down the coastline. He improved his mana affinity by balancing rocks on his fingertips imbued with mana.
Then when he was done with all of that, he crafted a pointy wooden spear and went swimming in the shallow parts of the ocean world to hunt down fish for lunch and dinner.
Then, as his last task of the day, he’d sneak up on the sleeping ogres, take them out, and collect their silver monster cores.
Before Max went to bed at night, he’d drain the cores and check his profile and watch as all his stats slowly moved upward.
Casey finished her day of training with an ice cream sundae.
“I deserve a treat,” she said to herself. “Isn’t that right, Toto? Would you like some whipped cream?”
The gerbil licked off the sugary foam on her finger and Casey sighed to herself in the booth of the ice cream shop.
She wasn’t sure what more she could do for her training. She was already E-rank. Her stats were fairly average. There was no way in two weeks’ time she’d be able to rank-up, so how else could she prepare for the final exam?
She knew what she had to do, but she didn’t know how to do it.
She needed to set herself apart. She needed a special move. She needed an attack that no one else was capable of recreating.
She pushed her sundae away suddenly losing her appetite.
Toto perked up at this, looking at Casey with disbelief.
“Don’t give me that look,” said Casey. “I can stop eating ice cream whenever I want and right now I don’t feel like anymore. I don’t deserve a treat. Not until I can figure out how to take myself to the next level. Until then, no more desert. C’mon let’s go.”
She hurried out the door with Toto on her shoulder as the owner of the ice cream shop yelled, “I’ve told you before! No pets allowed!”
Casey ignored the man, lost in her own thoughts.
She hoped she’d be able to think of how to improve her fighting style by the time of the tournament.
79
Just over two weeks later, the sea captain who’d escorted Max to Ogre Island, was looking at the foreboding patch of rock in the ocean through his spyglass.
He sighed as he looked out to the island.
“We should be docking at the coast in about an hour sir,” said one of crew.
The captain nodded and stared out at the island.
It’s been just over two weeks since we left that kid on the island. Was he going to be there waiting for them? Or were they going to find his ravished corpse strewn on the beach?
The ship parked itself near the coastline. The crew only saw an empty beach.
There was not a person or ogre in sight.
“The kid didn’t make it,” sighed one of the sailors.
“Yeah, you owe me three silver,” said another. “Pay up!”
The captain was filled with sorrow as he scanned the empty beach.
So the kid didn’t make it in the end, huh? Pluck will only get you so far...
“I see something,” said a crewmember.
“Oi! Give me my silver back then,” said another.
The figure emerged from the forest. The person’s clothes were ripped and torn apart, his body stained with dirt and cuts, but without a doubt, it was him.
The kid had survived and it looked like he had succeeded in his training as well. The boy looked significantly stronger than he had before.
As they let the kid back onto
the boat, the captain could even feel the presence of his mana. It was stronger than it had been when they had left him on the island two weeks prior.
The captain turned to the kid with an impressed look on his face.
“I guess you gotta get back for your exam then. When does it start?”
The boy grinned, his face dirty and his eyes slightly manic.
“The final exam starts tomorrow.”
80
It was hard to believe that the very next day, Max woke up on a comfortable bed in Sakura’s apartment.
He’d grown used to the wild living of Ogre Island.
He felt a groggy strange feeling—almost like what he imagined jet lag to feel like—which must have been what happened to you when you spent so much time on one floor and then returned to another.
Beyond a physical tiredness, it was just psychologically strange to go from a tropical ocean world of islands to the semi-dystopian city state of Zestiris.
He could see why the captain and his crew, amongst others, preferred to live out their lives on other floors.
The archipelagos didn’t have the rules, walls, and secrets of Zestiris.
It felt more free up there somehow.
Max couldn’t wait to climb even higher in the tower.
But first he had to compete in the final climber exams.
He could worry about everything else later.
He rolled out of bed and quickly reviewed his stat sheet, going over the gains from his training.
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: 19
Agility: 19
Endurance: 16
Mana Affinity: 18
Passive Skills:
Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)
With stats nearing almost twenty, Max was about to exceed and go beyond the strength and agility of a professional athlete. Even now, a punch—especially one imbued with mana—would seriously hurt the average thug in the outer-rim.
To normal humans, he was now a serious threat that one wouldn’t want to mess with. Yet in the world of climbers, he was still near the bottom of the totem pole.
But so were the students he’d be competing against today. Or, at least, he hoped.
He got up, showered, and ate a decent breakfast. He didn’t want to overload himself as that might slow him down and make him sick during the tournament fights, but he also didn’t want to get hungry. He felt like he had struck a good balance that morning.
As he ate, he saw Sakura had left a note for him.
“Good luck Max! I’ll be cheering you on from the stands! Don’t wait up for me, I had to leave early for a meeting with the other branch commanders.”
Max smiled at the note, finished his breakfast, and then set off to the tower-zone’s main sports arena.
The tower-zone was fully alive and awake that morning as Max made his way downtown to the arena housing the tournament.
There were billboards and posters advertising the final exam. One even had his photograph on it. He saw everyone’s face from Casey to Cyrus to Sybil. People pointed at him as he went down the street.
It was like he had become a minor celebrity.
He eventually reached the tournament arena. It was a large coliseum-like sports venue. Throngs of people lined up, clogging the entrance to see the matches.
E-rank and D-rank climbers circled the whole arena, standing guard.
One guard approached Max as soon as he arrived.
“Max Rainhart?”
“That’s right,” he replied.
“Good. Please follow me,” said the man. “Contestants have their own special entry location.”
Max followed behind the man. He stared at the crowds and the size of the arena as he went forward. At the sight of it all, he was beginning to feel a sense of nervousness in his stomach.
But as soon as he felt a bit of nerves, he clenched his fists.
I shouldn’t be nervous, he thought. I’ve been training for this. This is just one step on my road to becoming one of the strongest climbers Zestiris has ever seen.
The man escorting Max eventually brought him to a smaller, less exciting looking entryway.
He opened the door and gestured for Max to go inside.
“The other contestants are all waiting down the hall,” said the man. “Further instructions will be given to you there.”
Max nodded and stepped into the passage. He went down the hall and found a room filled with the ten remaining contestants.
They all glanced at him with steely eyes before looking away and going quiet.
Casey’s face lit up as soon as she saw him.
She came up to him.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “It was so tense it was becoming hard to breathe.”
Toto poked his head out from her pocket and waved.
Max looked around the room and could see everyone was on edge.
There was a nervous, almost violent energy, filling the room.
Everyone—including the normally arrogant Cyrus Archer and Sybil Westley—looked as if they were feeling the nerves, the pressure of the upcoming tournament.
None of them knew who they might fight first, or if that fight was going to be their last.
Sakura stood in a glass box high up in the stands of the arena, staring down to where the fights would take place.
The battlefield was still currently empty.
“Another term of the climber academy comes to an end,” sighed the climber president. “It always goes by so fast. Don’t you think so too, Sakura?”
Sakura didn’t answer straightaway. She had an uneasy feeling.
The branch commanders were supposed to have a meeting prior to the tournament to go over how they were assessing the student climbers. If a climber won all their matches that was an automatic pass. However, if a climber lost, but showed a good amount of strategy, cunning, and power—it was still possible for them to pass.
The branch commanders and the president were supposed to go over this and what unique ways one could judge some of these attributes during the course of the matches.
It all sounded fine. Good, even.
There was just one problem: none of the other branch commanders were here.
Where the heck were they, wondered Sakura to herself.
“Sakura?”
She turned to the climber president. He smiled at her. He was waiting for her reply.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “It does go by so fast.”
“Remember, Sakura,” he said, “so long as there are kids willing to train and become climbers, with the hopes of seeking the unknown reaches of the tower, there is still hope for us all. Enough hope to keep a smile on your face each day.”
Sakura nodded.
“Sir,” she began. “Are you not concerned that none of the other branch commanders are here?”
“Huh? Oh yes?” he said, blinking and looking around. “Where are they all?”
Oh brother, thought Sakura. The climber president—powerful climber that he was—was still getting old and senile.
The thing that bothered Sakura the most was that all the other branch commanders were missing. If there was just one more in this box, maybe she’d be feeling confidant about the others being late.
But none of them were here and that included Samuel Archer.
Samuel turned on the golden tap in the main bathroom of his penthouse apartment.
He ran his hands under the warm water, washing them gently with lavender-scented soap. The water in the tap ran through his fingers, landing on the white porcelain of the sink tinged with red until it swam away down the drain.
The man hummed a tune to himself as he washed, then dried his hands.
> Today is the day, he thought to himself. The day of reckoning. The day that he and his family would rewrite the rules of this damned city.
He stepped out of the bathroom, walking over a bloodied corpse.
His entire penthouse looked like a Jackson Pollock painting of flesh and blood.
His most recent opponents had put up a greater fight than he had expected. Powerful as the fools were, they had walked blindly into his trap and he had made sure there was no room for escape.
He laughed to himself.
Riing, riiing!
Samuel pulled out his phone and sighed at the caller ID.
Sakura Sato.
He answered the phone. “Hello?”
The tiresome woman yelled and ranted at him, asking where he was.
“I’m on my way now,” he sighed and then ended the phone call.
He did a little twirl with his fingers to his servants who then promptly got to work cleaning up his home.
They’d start by removing the bodies of the dead branch commanders.
81
Max felt his nerves taking over.
His skin was pale. He was fidgety and twitching all over. Worst of all, he felt like he needed to pee every ten seconds, despite multiple trips to the bathroom.
“I wish they’d just tell us who was fighting who already,” said Casey. “I can’t take all this waiting. It’s making me sick. Toto too!”
Max turned to the D-rank climber who was stationed with them in the waiting room.
“Do you know who is fighting who?”
The man didn’t say anything, just kept his arms crossed, and nodded towards the TV in the middle of the lounge area.
The live tournament broadcast was being shown on the flat screen TV.
