Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 129

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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 129. The Tower – Lizardman City (5)

When the doors of the Prisoner Compound exploded inward and the captives seized weapons and began their rampage, panic rippled across the Lizardman warriors’ faces.
I moved through the city hunting Lizardmen in the chaos, picking them off with methodical precision.
Distinguishing between captive Lizardmen and the King’s tribesmen was simple enough.
The captives wore nothing but their skins, while the King’s people adorned their heads with ornaments and dressed in leather or woven leaves.
The distinction made pulling the trigger all the easier.
A shot to the back of a soldier’s skull as he clashed with a captive.
Another to the back of a warrior’s head as he barked orders at his troops.
One more to finish off a tribesman engaged in gang-tackling an armed captive.
I gave them all equal opportunity to experience a one-way ticket to the next world.
Experience should mean you come back, shouldn’t it?
But some experiences, you can only have once in a lifetime.
Much like how you can taste any mushroom once in your life—just once.
“This is something else. Animal welfare groups would be screaming bloody murder. It’s basically fifty-fifty chaos—half-city, half-lizard.”
The pandemonium felt far easier and more straightforward than handling Goblins from atop the City Wall on the 18th Floor.
I felt no guilt killing these carnivorous bipedal reptiles, yet the one-sided nature of slaughter didn’t sit quite right.
Even though I’d engineered the situation, would it feel better to face them head-on?
Watching the Shop Points accumulate—maybe, just maybe, my mind was starting to shift.
So this is why people preach the healing power of money.
Unhappy with your work? Then perhaps your wages are too low?
Perhaps this was compensation for the deficit I’d incurred on the 21st Floor.
On the 21st, I’d faced a uniquely restrictive situation where I couldn’t kill monsters, yet Shop Points had drained considerably.
The 22nd Floor? The surplus was extraordinary.
I had enough leisure to let my mind wander with idle thoughts.
As I ranged across the Ancient Ruins, methodically dispatching Lizardmen, I felt something cut through the air behind me.
A quick turn of my head dodged the projectile, and there stood a Lizardman Warrior, adorned with brilliant feathered ornaments, fixing me with a predatory stare.
“Human…! You are the root of this catastrophe!”
The Warrior’s tongue was remarkably fluent.
I hadn’t expected to be identified. How had he figured it out?
Had I been trigger-happy enough to give myself away?
Looking at the carpet of Lizardman corpses scattered about, the pattern would be obvious to any discerning eye.
Once he’d noticed the anomaly and searched the surroundings carefully, pinpointing me was hardly difficult.
Still, such intelligence and perception were rare for common Lizardmen.
The Warrior, radiating an ominous killing intent and squared for combat, seemed strong enough to make me question whether the 22nd Floor classification was truly accurate.
Definitely stronger than the Goblin that had turned crimson on the 18th Floor, though not quite at the level of the Gung-gi variant I’d faced on the Back Mountain of the 20th Floor City.
That Gung-gi variant seemed to me like the sort of Boss Monster that would require climbers to ascend nearly to the 30th Floor, multiple fighters needed to take it on—and this one bore some resemblance to that.
For reference, Boss Monsters required multiple climbers working in concert, while standard monsters could be handled solo.
My instinct told me this Lizardman Warrior before me now was somewhere in the neighborhood of a mid-to-late 20th Floor quasi-boss or an early-to-mid 30th Floor standard monster.
Either way, it didn’t belong on the 22nd Floor.
Then again, The Tower hadn’t even generated a Crystal to send us back when I’d activated the Signal Device, had it?
The quest itself had never accounted for engaging the city’s Lizardmen directly.
“Yes, I’m the culprit.”
At my words, the Lizardman Warrior hefted his spear, exuding lethal intent.
The spear he’d thrown at me earlier had been crude bronze, but the one he now wielded was finely worked iron.
I drew my sword and laughed.
“I’ll tear you apart and chew you alive!”
“Try if you can!”
The Lizardman Warrior and I charged toward each other.
A guttural roar erupted from his throat.
Yet his spear and my blade never collided.
Before I could even close the distance, a spike of stone rose from the earth—the magic I’d prepared—and punched through the Warrior’s heart from behind.
“Coward…!”
Slash!
His neck severed, the Warrior’s head fell to the ground.
“I’ve never been one to extend courtesy to beasts, anyway.”
This was a hunt.
War, let alone honorable combat—this was neither.
There was no such thing as cowardice in hunting.
The mewling cries of prey trapped in a pit were best left unheeded.
“Let’s see—no Ability Stone here either.”
Unfortunate, but unavoidable.
The Community could trumpet all day about how rare Ability Stones were; the truth was they dropped for him with unusual frequency, so hoping for one wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
Still, there might be another Warrior or a Shaman among them.

* * *

Once Lee Su-young and Diana regrouped, they moved in concert, disposing of Lizardmen as they went.
“Combat is breaking out in that direction.”
Lee Su-young, who shared sight with the Slime, surveyed the entire city from above and guided them toward the fighting.
No matter how meticulously Han Ji-woo devised his strategy, it was impossible to predict every Lizardman’s movement within the chaos that unfolded in real time.
From the moment the chaos erupted, their plan had been straightforward: work together, prioritize safety, hunt Lizardmen for profit, and retreat to the 20th Floor if necessary.
The chaos alone had already secured victory for them; as long as they didn’t overreach with greed, they would come through unharmed.
Diana’s cold eyes fixed on a Lizardman engaged in cannibalism; she brought her mace down on its skull, killing it instantly.
Whether prisoner or not, the Lizardmen displayed behavior that made their intelligence seem utterly implausible.
“Just as Ji-woo said—beasts that can speak, nothing more and nothing less.”
Nearly every Lizardman in the city killed and devoured one another.
Cannibalism in nature is far more common than one might think.
Fish that ate their own spawned eggs, crocodiles—such things were commonplace.
Yet even among animals, such behavior was peculiar to those with notably low intelligence.
Had the prisoners not been given weapons, they might have chosen flight instead.
But with arms in hand, they fought on equal footing with both common tribesmen and soldiers who remained unarmed.
When they clustered in numbers, even warriors fell to their blades.
Only the Warriors proved exceptional; no matter how well-armed, prisoners could never overcome them.
Like a weasel loosed in a chicken coop, the Warrior hunted down those prisoners foolish enough to venture outside the compound, slaughtering them indiscriminately.
As they continued hunting Lizardmen, the Warrior suddenly hurled a spear skyward at the hovering Slime.
“Ah—the Slime’s been spotted!”
Even though it remained invisible, the Warrior had deduced that something in the sky was constantly raining fire, starting blazes and killing Lizardmen.
Fortunately, the spear fell short and clattered to the ground.
As the Warrior readied another throw, Lee Su-young hurriedly withdrew the Slime to safety.
“That one appears to be a Warrior, doesn’t it?”
“Does it look very strong to you?”
Diana posed the question, and Lee Su-young took a moment to consider before answering.
“If I were alone, I’d flee immediately. But the two of us together? We could manage it. Though, if Ji-woo were here… I have a feeling he’d cut it down without breaking a sweat.”
“Is there any chance other Warriors might arrive?”
“No. I don’t sense any nearby.”
At Lee Su-young’s answer, Diana smiled and spoke.
“Then let’s hunt it. Dangerous vermin must be dealt with the moment they’re spotted. And if they pose a threat to people, even more so.”
It was common sense on a farm, spoken as the farmer’s daughter.
Their opinions aligned, and Diana and Lee Su-young moved toward the Warrior’s position.
Diana concealed herself with the Concealment Cloak and approached cautiously, while Lee Su-young sent a separate Slime to draw the Warrior’s attention with attacks, distinct from the one hovering in the sky.
The Warrior dodged the barrage of incoming fire and hurled stones and bronze spears at the Slime, desperately trying to strike it down.
With the Warrior’s focus locked on the Slime, Diana burst forth and swung her mace, her arm amplified by Inner Power and Holy Power, aiming a devastating blow at the back of its skull.
Crack!
Yet the Warrior lived up to its name, twisting aside at the last instant and catching the mace with its bare arm.
Because it had blocked with flesh rather than weapon, the impact tore the Warrior’s arm clean off; it fell to the ground, severed.
Diana gasped at the force of her own swing.
The synergy between martial technique and Holy Power exceeded her expectations.
Simultaneously, she was stunned by the Warrior’s durability—the impact had numbed her hands.
Only because she’d poured all her strength into that killing blow had the arm been torn away; without such force, it would surely have withstood the strike.
The Warrior hadn’t raised its arm to block out of hesitation.
Diana swung the Slime-blood-slicked mace again, and the Warrior evaded by bracing its remaining arm against the ground.
It repositioned to counterattack, but in that moment it failed to dodge the firebolt streaking down from above—the projectile pierced its left eye, and it shrieked.
“Keeeee-!!”
Thrashing in agony, the Warrior couldn’t evade the mace arcing toward its head and was killed as its skull caved in.
“Remarkable. Even with enhanced strength, my hands went numb from the impact—those scales aren’t ordinarily durable.”
Diana reflected that without the ambush, even facing the Warrior with Lee Su-young’s aid would have been arduous.
It was thanks to Lee Su-young that she’d been able to stage the surprise—by drawing the Warrior’s focus, Lee Su-young had made it all possible.
Lee Su-young approached before I could react, crying out in surprise.
“Wow! An Ability Stone!”
The Warrior had carried an Ability Stone—a remarkable find.
Lee Su-young scooped it up with a satisfied grin.
“Do you think the other Warriors and Shamans have them too?”
Diana caught the drift of her words and smiled knowingly.
“While we’re at it, we can cover the cost of martial arts training.”
Eliminating these man-eating pests while settling old debts from our martial training—there was no better use of our time.

* * *

I moved through the city hunting Warriors and Soldiers indiscriminately, and to contain the crisis I ambushed Warriors and Shamans pouring out from the Royal Palace at the city’s center.
While I was at it, I checked whether the earth heaps the Lizardmen had abandoned contained gold.
“Incredible—they just left this lying around.”
Using the gold as a focal point, I examined inside the heap and found that one-fifteenth of it was filled with gold.
Not mere flakes, but ornaments and ingots.
I used Earth Magic to gather only the gold. Since the excavated earth piled up was uncompressed, collecting the gold was straightforward.
I placed the collected gold into my Subspace Cube.
Though weightless as a magical artifact, it somehow felt heavy in my hands.
“Insane—we’re talking tons here.”
I’d estimated the city’s total gold at a few hundred kilograms at most, but checking revealed that a single earth heap contained tons of gold.
And there weren’t just one of these heaps—there were dozens more scattered about.
What was gold’s price on Earth these days?
Before entering The Tower, I’d never paid attention to gold investments, so I didn’t know the rates.
But one thing was certain.
If we could take all the gold in this city, we’d be holding wealth that would rival any tycoon.
If we could manage it, that is.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, a massive spear shot toward me from the distance, trailing a sonic boom.
I threw myself clear, and the spot where I’d stood cratered completely.
“Damn—did I leak too much mana while gathering the gold? I’m exposed.”
The elderly Lizardman King emerged from the Royal Palace, radiating murderous intent as he approached.
Looking at the King, I was certain of one thing.
Curiosity kills the cat, but greed kills mankind.
He was stronger than me.
“I’m dying at least once today.”

(To be continued in the next part)

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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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