Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 126

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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 126. The Tower – City of the Lizardmen (2)

I grabbed the unconscious Lizardman by the tail, messaged the Community party chat to regroup, and made my way toward Lee Su-young.
“Why did you bring that lizard?”
“Oh, there’s something I want to ask it.”
“Pardon?”
Lee Su-young looked confused at my words.
Monsters obviously can’t speak.
They lack intelligence and are savage, which is why we call them monsters.
“But these ones seem like they can talk. Let me interrogate it for a moment.”
“Wait—does that mean we killed a native inhabitant, not a monster?”
I smiled slightly and shook my head at Lee Su-young’s concern.
“No, based on what the Explorer’s journal says, it does seem to be a monster. It’s just that they have a primitive language system, and I’m thinking my Translation ability might have picked up on that. I should find out for sure.”
Even if this Lizardman could speak and had intelligence, it would still be a monster.
Lee Su-young nodded, seeming relieved by my explanation.
“That makes sense—I’ve heard there are monsters that can bewitch people with their words.”
“I’ll interrogate it and be back. Tell Diana I’m stepping out for a moment.”
“Yes? Ah, Diana would probably be uncomfortable dealing with a talking monster anyway.”
I nodded and lifted the Lizardman, using the Lightness Technique to move a good distance away.
Once we were far enough apart, I bound the Lizardman with a Magic Chain and woke it.
I wished I could use Andromallius’s power of Lie Detection during the interrogation, but that could only be used with a “body” I’d directly contracted with.
Whether because it was a “contract” tied to Summon Magic, even when I absorbed the duplicate, I couldn’t absorb Lie Detection or Scale of Sin.
Though it would have been problematic if I had.
Summon Magic carries risk, after all—if I absorbed the benefits, I’d absorb the risks too.
“Keh-krrk.”
The moment the Lizardman came to and saw me, what it said left me speechless.
“Human? Tasty. Keh-rrrrk!”
This dim-witted reptile, oblivious to its own situation, tried to lunge at me.
But all four limbs were already bound, so it could only writhe on the ground, helpless.
“My body won’t move? Why? Why?”
“I see. So you’re just a beast that can speak—nothing more, nothing less. And a dangerous one at that, since you’ve already tasted human flesh.”
Still, the fact that it could speak suggested it had more than just mindless cries—a primitive but genuine language system.
Could I turn off Translation? I didn’t want to listen to this.

[The public ability ‘Translation’ has been deactivated.]

“Keh-rrrrk! Keh-krrk! Keh-rrrrk!”
“What—this ability can be toggled on and off?”
The moment I thought about reactivating it, a notification appeared.

[The public ability ‘Translation’ has been activated.]

Well, if the Mini Map, Shop, and Status Window could all be toggled, it would be absurd if Translation alone couldn’t be.
“I hate this! Hate it! So frustrating!”
The Lizardman still made its guttural sounds, but now I could understand the meaning. A new discovery.
“Listen, Lizardman. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Huh? Human, tasty.”
The Lizardman opened and closed its snout repeatedly, as if still hungry for me.
Does it understand my words or not? This is confusing.
Since Translation is bidirectional, it seems the beast is just ignoring what I say.
“Well, I was foolish to expect reason from a beast.”
I pulled out an Injection—one that my magical duplicate Shadow typically used.
It was a type of truth serum, though closer to a sedative or anesthetic.
It worked the same way as someone babbling incoherently under twilight sedation during an endoscopy, despite their intention not to.
Being a special preparation of the Andromallius Family, it had no aftereffects or addiction, though it was less effective against those with strong willpower or high drug resistance.
Given the risks of Summon Magic, using this recklessly and watching my sin count spike would be a loss.
In that regard, other mercenaries probably have it easier.
I hear that elsewhere, there’s a strong tendency not to see people as people—they extract information and don’t care whether the target lives or dies afterward.
Well, that’s why the Andromallius Family became the mercenaries’ terror.
“But I’m not sure if it works on Lizardmen.”
I pressed my foot on the thrashing Lizardman’s neck to still him, then drove the injection home.
As the drug took hold, the Lizardman’s struggles grew sluggish, his pupils glazing over.
Half-asleep, I pulled out the Magic Book Printout and searched for a spell I could use.
I’d memorized over a thousand spells, but not all of them.
I’d only been learning magic for about six months—a raw recruit—and the applied spells alone numbered nearly ten thousand volumes even at just Class 1.
The unit was “volumes.”
Some volumes contained as few as one spell, while others held more than a thousand.
Finding the right spell was a task in itself.
“Ah, here it is. Hypnotic Magic.”
The spell I found was only Class 2—a basic mental-type magic so elementary that anyone with their wits about them could resist it even without channeling a shred of Mystical Energy.
In other words, it was magic that worked frighteningly well on anyone not in their right mind.
Naturally, the drug-addled Lizardman succumbed without effort.
“Now then. Time for you to tell me everything you know.”

* * *

After twenty minutes of extracting information laced with the Lizardman’s delirious babbling, I put him down mercifully before the drug wore off.
“…Hmm. What am I supposed to do about this?”
I’d gotten quite useful intelligence from the Lizardman warrior.
But there was a problem.
Our destination—the ancient city of Tansa—was now a Lizardman lair.
And not just any lair, but the den of a massive tribe numbering in the thousands.
Of course, the Floor 22 Quest only required an Explorer to plant the Signal Device and activate it.
Once installed and concealed with magic, the Lizardmen wouldn’t be able to find and smash it.
“The Tower’s intent is clear enough.”
The signal would reach the Explorer’s patrons, or whoever had been their patrons.
Then Explorers would certainly come, and seeing the scale of the Lizardman force, they’d push through with military strength.
The Tower wants to cull the Lizardmen.
The problem was our own objective.
“Damn. What about the gold and Mystical Energy?”
I’d gone through this sweltering, humid jungle precisely for those—gold and Mystical Energy—and if the Lizardmen held them, what was the point? My Mystical Energy!
I exhaled quietly and made my way back to where the others were resting.
When I reached Diana and Lee Su-young, they were sitting together, quietly sharing Preserved Fruit Canned Food.
“You’re back?”
“It’s still cold. Would you like some?”
I sat down before the two women as they offered the fruit, took some, and bit into it eagerly.
In the heat, the cold fruit tasted remarkably good.
“Listen while I eat.”
I explained what I’d extracted from the nameless Lizardman warrior.
“…So you’re saying some god or something from the ancient texts gave the Lizardman King sentience and power, and the King then scattered sentience among the entire tribe?”
“According to the Lizardman I questioned. Though ‘sentience’ is generous—it’s primitive and brutally violent.”
They didn’t just hunt humans; they practiced cannibalism without hesitation. They were beasts, pure and simple.
“The Lizardmen have five Ranks in total.”
First Rank: the King. I’d heard he possessed nearly human-level intellect and tremendous strength, though the details weren’t clear.
Second Rank: the Warlords and shamans. They probably had roughly childlike intellect paired with considerable power.
Third Rank: Warriors. Honestly, just beasts that could talk.
Among the Lizardmen I’d faced, some were strong, but they didn’t seem to pose a real threat.
Fourth Rank: Soldiers. Beasts that could understand speech.
Ordinary Lizardmen, knowing only a handful of words.
Fifth Rank: Tribesmen. The vast majority of Lizardmen—barely different from Soldiers, just weaker.
“The King seems to be aging. He’s trying to gather back the Mystical Energy he scattered to recover his youth and strength.”
Diana and Lee Su-young nodded at my words.
“So that’s why he was hunting the other Lizardmen.”
“How many are in that city?”
At Lee Su-young’s question, I sighed softly before answering.
“Thousands.”
The King: one. Warlords and shamans: around twenty.
Warriors: around a hundred fifty. Soldiers: around a thousand.
The tribe seemed to number somewhere between three and four thousand.
At my answer, Lee Su-young’s expression grew serious.
“That’s quite a lot of them, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a Quest asking us to slaughter them all.”
“What? It’s not?”
“Do you remember the Floor 13 Quest?”
At my question, Lee Su-young paused, searching her memory.
“Floor 13… was that the Quest to exterminate the abnormally proliferating Goblin Lair?”
“Exactly. This Quest has the same grain to it. It’s just that the ones doing the culling aren’t us, but the native inhabitants of this world.”
I laid out my reasoning to them.
The two of them nodded in surprise at my words.
“That makes sense. If they’re Lizardmen, they wouldn’t necessarily smash a Signal Device even if they found one.”
Or perhaps The Tower sent us here, factoring in my magic as well.
Diana fell into thought for a moment, as if wrestling with something.
I was about to suggest we simply install the Signal Device and head to the 20th Floor District or Floor 23, wondering if perhaps Diana was hesitant because of the fact that the Lizardmen spoke, but she said something I hadn’t anticipated.
“Could we handle those Lizardmen ourselves?”
At this entirely unexpected question, Lee Su-young and I stared at her in surprise.
“I thought you’d be reluctant to attack Lizardmen who speak and possess intelligence. That’s surprising.”
At Lee Su-young’s remark, Diana laughed softly.
“Just because something speaks doesn’t mean we should consider it human. By that logic, we shouldn’t have eliminated that Vampire we encountered on Floor 16 either.”
Right—now that I think about it, the Vampire on Floor 16 could speak too.
Even then, Diana had expressed revulsion, though she hadn’t pitied the Vampire.
“If they loved peace and had the will to coexist with people, I would have abandoned the Floor 22 Quest and sided with the Lizardmen. But creatures driven by malicious greed to slaughter their own kind, viewing humans as nothing but prey—I can’t simply leave such harmful beasts alone just because they happen to speak.”
“Are you saying we should eliminate the Lizardmen to reduce the casualties among those who will come because of this Signal Device?”
Diana nodded at my question.
At her affirmation, I smiled and turned to Lee Su-young.
“And we get to keep the gold too?”
“Wait! Don’t say that right after me—it makes me look greedy!”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Ugh!”
I laughed heartily, teasing Lee Su-young.
After laughing pleasantly for a while, I smiled wickedly at Diana and spoke.
“As it happens, I do have a few strategies worth trying.”
Later, according to what the two of them would tell me, my smile at that moment looked more malevolent than anyone’s they’d ever seen.
Well, what’s wrong with how I smile?

(To be continued in the next installment)

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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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