Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 116

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 116. The Tower – Airship (4)

The Engine Room I entered following Lugin was quite spacious.
In the center of the chamber, a circular mechanical apparatus continuously rotated its gears with a “whoooosh!” sound.
Soldiers standing guard over the central mechanism saluted Lugin as we approached.
Lugin acknowledged their salute and turned to address us.
“The Captain is currently occupied, so I’ll explain the Engine Room defense strategy on his behalf. Normally, the operation would function like a standard watch rotation, but given our current circumstances, that’s impossible.”
If we could rotate shifts properly, we wouldn’t need to rely on outsiders like us.
“The soldiers currently guarding the apparatus must also move topside. Right now, only four of us are defending this location—myself included.”
So Lugin would be fighting as well.
Of course they couldn’t entrust everything to us, whom they’d only just met today.
“So in the worst case, we’d have to remain vigilant without sleep until we reach our destination?”
We’d spent roughly four hours in the break room, so that left about twenty-six hours ahead.
“That’s correct. However, repelling the Wyverns shouldn’t take that long. At most, eight hours. Once the Wyverns are dealt with, we’ll rotate shifts immediately.”
The situation was dire enough that they’d stationed us here despite being outsiders, but this was the most critical location on the airship—they’d surely be reluctant to leave us here alone.
I felt sympathy for the soldiers who’d endured relentless combat and now had to maintain vigilance against Gremlins.
“What if there’s another attack like this?”
Of course, the rotation plan assumed no additional assaults.
“We’d return and defend the power source. We have Steam Packs prepared for such contingencies.”
The Steam Packs mentioned weren’t the Steam Blocks used as energy sources—they were referring to narcotic stimulants.
During World War II, German soldiers injected Steam Packs—methamphetamine—and covered a two-week journey in three days.
No matter how urgent the situation, they were actually considering using Steam Packs. This place was truly a mess.
Lugin opened a cabinet in the corner of the Engine Room.
Since Gremlin incursions on airships and trains required absolute defense, standardized protocols had been established over centuries.
First, inside the chamber, weapons with ricochet risks—like firearms—were fundamentally prohibited.
There was danger of damaging critical equipment.
Thus, the primary weapons included electrically-charged nets, sasumata with Y-shaped heads mounted on poles, air guns firing tranquilizer darts, stun guns, and blunt leather cudgels like blackjacks.
“These are all non-lethal weapons?”
“Ideally we’d kill them, but Gremlins emit a destructive pulse when dying that damages surrounding machinery. We absolutely cannot kill Gremlins in this location.”
Extraordinarily troublesome creatures.
That explained why there were so many electrical shock weapons.
Capturing them alive was clearly the optimal approach.
“Therefore, you should preferably use weapons from this location. If you have other weapons you intend to use, please inform me now.”
Diana withdrew her mace, and Lee Su-young summoned her slime.
Lugin looked startled upon seeing the slime.
“Is this creature also a weapon?”
“Is it permissible for it to attack the walls?”
At Lee Su-young’s question, Lugin nodded and granted permission.
Once permission was granted, Mul-poong fired the Water Jade Bullet.
Boom!
Whether she had leveled up after capturing Gung-gi, a hole pierced through the steel plating of the wall.
“That power won’t do. It’ll kill instantly.”
“I can reduce the power.”
Clang!
The Water Jade Bullet fired again merely dented the steel plate.
“If you’re confident you won’t hit vital points like the head, it’s fine to use. You should use this weapon.”
The weapon Lurgin handed over appeared to be made of leather—a leather cudgel.
“It’s a Scourge Mace. It’s a weapon that’s somewhere between a club and a whip, so it’s better than a mace for situations like this.”
Was this cudgel really a Scourge Mace?
“Finally, for you….”
As Lurgin looked at me last, I pulled a leather cudgel from the cabinet.
“I’ll use that cudgel too. Ah, but can I still use magic?”
“What kind of magic?”
“Something like this?”
I struck the protective barrier enveloping the power source.
Lurgin tapped the protective barrier with the leather cudgel in her hand.
“Remarkable. Magic can create something like this? How long can you maintain it?”
“If I use mana stones, I can maintain it indefinitely. Right now I’m using my own mana, so as long as it doesn’t deplete, I can keep using it. At this rate, roughly eight hours?”
“Magic like this is perfectly fine to use. No, please do use it.”
“Sure, why not.”
I dismissed the barrier.
I needed to conserve mana—I couldn’t afford to waste it.
“Normally, the Engine Room protection operation divides into soldiers guarding the Engine Room, soldiers patrolling around it, and soldiers searching for gremlins.”
Usually, by constantly rotating shifts and remaining vigilant against gremlins, combat rarely broke out in the Engine Room itself.
But now the situation was dire enough that soldiers who should be protecting the Engine Room had to be pulled away, so the gremlin would definitely come here, seizing the gap where vigilance had disappeared.
For some reason, gremlins had the habit of destroying mechanical devices, and the more complex the machinery they destroyed, the more pleased they became.
“Gremlins are monsters capable of invisibility and spectral form.”
Invisibility could be maintained for long periods, but violent movement would break it immediately, while spectral form lasted at most a second or so.
Both abilities could be used repeatedly, but there was a 2-3 second delay before reuse, and in spectral form, they couldn’t pass through living beings.
Though they resembled Goblins in appearance, they were naturally different monsters—stronger and more cunning.
After hearing all the briefing and precautions about the operation and the shift change was complete, the soldiers who had been guarding originally rushed off to prepare for combat.
“I can feel vibrations—combat must have started.”
Though the Engine Room was at the very center of the Airship, the muffled roar of explosions reached us here.

* * *

About three hours had passed since the wyverns attacked the airship.
We positioned ourselves in the four cardinal directions around the power source, waiting for the gremlin to arrive.
The gremlin was cunning—even though the soldiers patrolling around the engine room had vanished, it didn’t approach immediately.
Powerful as the gremlin was, that assessment only held true in comparison to goblins.
Being as shrewd as it was, it knew that charging head-on would be suicidal, so it was waiting for us to grow weary of the vigil and drop our guard.
“This is more tedious than I expected.”
Even if we spent three hours standing in place and chatting to pass the time, eventually we’d run out of things to talk about.
When Lee Su-young yawned, I let out a soft chuckle.
“Well, that’s just how guard duty goes.”
I dispersed my mana finely in all directions to sense whether the gremlin was approaching, while examining the structure of the power source.
The structure of this spherical power source was extraordinarily complex, though I was beginning to understand how it kept the ship aloft.
Remarkably, this airship had superconductors laid throughout, and together with some incomprehensible device beneath the vessel that generated lift, they utilized magnetic fields to defy gravity.
Of course, these superconductors weren’t the kind that operated at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.
The power source’s mechanism was too intricate for me to fully grasp how it functioned, but the power source itself maintained the extreme cold and pressure necessary to keep the superconductors active.
“The battle’s been going on for a while now—I hope the soldiers fighting out there are holding up.”
Diana worried about the soldiers engaged in combat on the deck above.
“Since there’s no commotion, it seems they’re still managing well.”
When I used magic to peek outside briefly, wyverns were swarming densely between the clouds.
At this rate, we might end up standing watch for ten more hours instead of just five.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, I sensed something moving through my perception.
“It’s coming! Su-young! Your direction!”
I erected a protective barrier around the power source with magic as I shouted.
At my cry, Lee Su-young summoned her slime and immediately prepared to fire a water orb, and the moment the air on the wall rippled, she launched it directly at that spot.
“Kyieek!”
The gremlin’s invisibility shattered as the water orb struck its arm.
The gremlin, which had crossed the wall in a spectral state, shrieked in pain, then dodged the successive water orbs while in its ethereal form and fled back through the wall.
Lugin stared in astonishment and asked.
“How did you detect its approach?”
Before I could answer her, I sensed the gremlin’s movement again, and the instant it crossed back through the wall, I fired a lightning-attribute spell—a thunderbolt round.
“Kyieeeek!”
The gremlin was struck by the thunderbolt, convulsed from the electrical shock, and fled once more.
“It’s thanks to my ability. Honestly, it’d be easier if I just killed it.”
“Absolutely not! You mustn’t kill it!”
Lugin cried out in alarm at my muttering.
Since I’d set the spell’s power to the minimum to avoid accidentally killing it, the electricity didn’t incapacitate it, and it escaped quickly.
I decided to gradually increase the spell’s power.
If I keep adjusting it this way, eventually I’ll find the right level of force to subdue it without killing it.
“Wow, when did you even learn magic?”
At Lee Su-young’s question, I answered with a light laugh.
“You’ve seen me use magic before, remember?”
It was mainly when I’d bury barricades with simple earth magic or create makeshift ladders from stones.
“Wasn’t that just brute force though?”
“How could it be? Want to learn it yourself?”
“Isn’t magic difficult? I asked my mother to teach me magic once, but it was full of mathematical formulas.”
Rather than mathematical formulas, it was probably mana flow expressed as graphs.
It saves space on the page, and once you’re familiar with it, you can visualize it instantly just by looking at the equations.
Class 1 simple magic had such straightforward mana flow that it was easy to memorize without graphs.
“Mana bullet series isn’t that difficult. But Lee Su-young, you don’t really need it since you have your slime.”
Just watching the slime’s attacks, they consumed far less mana and dealt far more damage than casting magic directly.
“Then I won’t learn it. I find martial arts easier and more fun.”
Lee Su-young certainly had talent for martial arts, and so did Diana.
If they’d been trained in martial arts from childhood like the direct descendants of the Cheon Family Clan, consistently fed vitality elixirs, I suspected they’d be knocking on the doors of the peak or transcendent realm by their current age.
But without a special constitution like the Heavenly Martial Body, both had started far too late.
Of course, while in The Tower where physical age doesn’t advance, if they trained for decades, they might eventually reach a first-rate level or beyond.
I had three main reasons for recommending they learn martial arts.
I hoped they’d develop a sense of actively handling their inner energy and mana to use their abilities more effectively, and I hoped they’d learn self-defense techniques.
And I hoped they’d fill their dantians with the mana that went unabsorbed and wasted every time we hunted monsters.
I couldn’t absorb it myself due to lacking The Tower’s talent, so I couldn’t use that method, but since both of them had high absorption rates, they could use the method of converting that absorbed mana into inner energy by containing it within their bodies.
“If we’re just repelling gremlins that come occasionally like this, do we really need everyone standing by like this?”
At Diana’s question, Lugin smiled awkwardly.
“Normally we don’t notice the gremlins approaching. We only look around carefully and respond once the alarm sounds.”
The Engine Room had a weight-sensitive alarm system installed.
Gremlins could use invisibility and spirit form abilities, but they couldn’t fly through the air.
I smiled bitterly and spoke to Diana.
“Unfortunately, it seems I won’t be able to rest while we rotate shifts.”
“Ah, so Ji-woo can’t rest thanks to his detection ability.”
“No. There isn’t just one gremlin.”
At my words, Lugin’s expression shifted to shock.
“What did you say?!”
The moment she gasped, twenty gremlins passed through the walls and entered the Engine Room from all directions.
Did gremlins normally swarm like this?

(Continued in the next chapter)

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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