Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 132

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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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Episode 132. The Tower – The Golden Trial (1)

When I came to and opened my eyes, an unfamiliar mural came into view.
“What? A ceiling I’ve never seen before wasn’t enough — now there’s a mural too?”
As I muttered to myself, Diana entered the room where I was and spoke.
“You’re awake. How’s your body feeling?”
At Diana’s question, I checked my condition and found my solar plexus terribly sore, with a numbing exhaustion spreading through my entire body.
“Not quite normal.”
“Well, you pushed yourself that hard. You were lucky it ended like this — if we’d been even a moment slower, you’d have died right there.”
Diana spoke calmly, but her tone made it clear she was scolding me.
“You could have escaped easily enough.”
“Ha, I had that hidden trump card I showed you before, so I decided to give it a try.”
The truth was, I’d used that emergency measure when my heart was rupturing, and without Diana’s holy power, I’d have been dead once over. Of course, for a Clone Body like me, it was nothing more than that, but Diana didn’t seem to see it that way — her brow furrowed.
“Consider those of us watching with our hearts in our throats. Do you know how anxious Lee Su-young and I were?”
“Ha, ha, ha… My apologies. Still, I thought I had a real chance of winning, and I actually did, didn’t I?”
“A good result doesn’t make the process good.”
As I drooped at that, Diana chuckled as if she had no choice and spoke.
“Exterminating undead is fine, but still — think of your body. I’m not a doctor yet and I have much to learn, but this is advice from an aspiring physician.”
“Yes! Understood!”
I answered with vigor and rose from the bed, asking.
“By the way, where are we?”
“This was the royal palace used by the Lizardman King. The great warriors and sorcerers, as well as the regular soldiers, are nearly completely annihilated, so all the Lizardmen who survived have fled.”
Of course, having watched the Lizardman King—who had reigned as an object of fear and faith—die in battle, the tribespeople and captives all had no choice but to flee.
In truth, with the chaos and our hunting, there likely weren’t many lizards left alive either.
Probably more than half of the Lizardmen in this city were dead, so for days to come, none of them would dare show their faces near here.
“What about Lee Su-young?”
“She’s roaming the city collecting Magic Stones. Oh, and we’ve placed the bodies of the King and the great warriors in the next room. Su-young thought they’d be useful as materials and wanted to take them.”
That’s Lee Su-young for you — reliable when it counts.
“And these are the Magic Stones and Ability Stones the King left behind.”
“Oh! Excellent!”
I accepted the Ability Stones Diana had already secured and was delighted.
Once I return to the 20th Floor District, I’ll appraise them slowly.
“And this is payment from me and Su-young for learning martial arts from you. After all, we learned the Lightness Skill this time.”
Diana placed two Ability Stones into my hands.
“No, you two should use those. What I agreed to take was my share from when we fought together and obtained the Ability Stones.”
Suddenly uncomfortable receiving the stones, I tried to return them.
But Diana pressed them back into my hands and gripped them there, speaking.
“The martial arts I’ve learned alone include the Cultivation Method, Footwork Technique, Staff Technique, and Lightness Skill. Once I become reasonably skilled at those, you’ll probably teach me higher-tier techniques, won’t you? If things continue like this, I’ll just keep accumulating debt. Relationships crumble quickly if one side becomes too burdened, don’t they? Just like Su-young said, I want the three of us to stay close for a long time.”
“If you put it that way.”
I accepted the Ability Stones the two of them had given me.
Truth be told, while it was bad to lack abilities, having too many abilities wasn’t necessarily a good thing either.
It’s hard to master even one skill, and spreading yourself too thin just kills efficiency.
So far, I’ve only properly trained the swordsmanship I obtained first and the regeneration I got on the 18th Floor from all the Ability Stones I’ve accumulated.
I learned summoning magic too, but I’m not practicing it now since it doesn’t seem efficient anymore.
Still, considering how expensive Ability Stones are, I could’ve sold them to upgrade equipment — something about taking them so easily felt a bit guilty.
Diana, reading my thoughts, spoke.
“This is supposedly a legendary city rich in gold, isn’t it? Su-young went out to collect Magic Stones and search for gold, so we can get money by selling the gold.”
“Ah, I already know where the gold is. I found it while exploring the city.”
I sent a message to Lee Su-young through the Community chat, asking her to come to the palace.

As I used magic to extract gold ingots and ornaments from the piles of earth, Lee Su-young broke into a bright smile, then gasped in shock at the sheer volume of gold pouring out endlessly.
After extracting gold from the earth mounds within the city and the soil heaps outside it, we made our way to the excavation pit at the center of the city.
“This is the ancient ruin site the Lizardman King was excavating.”
I carved earth out of the pit with magic and separated out the gold.

“If you could have done it this way, why didn’t you do it a few days ago?”
A few days ago? Ah, she meant when I was scooping up the blue earth.
From my perspective, that was half a year ago—I’d nearly forgotten about it.
“Back then, I hadn’t practiced magic properly yet.”
Lee Su-young marveled at my answer.
“You practiced it after coming to the 22nd Floor? While standing night watch and helping us with footwork drills? Magic isn’t even an ability you got from the Tower. You’re completely gifted, aren’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
By Lee Su-young’s reckoning, I’d only had time to practice around when we first arrived on the 22nd Floor.
She couldn’t have imagined I’d spent half a year training in magic under a Grand Mage in another world.
That was the only sane way not to think about it.
Still, how had this excavation pit become so deep?
Most of it was earth, but the gold concentration was quite high—it turned out to be harder work than I’d anticipated hauling it all up.
Once I’d brought it all up and loaded the gold into the Pocket Dimension Cube, Diana asked me something.
“Is that cube the inventory expansion magic tool you mentioned before?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
After finishing the excavation, I leaped down into the pit to examine the altar.
“Wow, they cast both the altar and the incense burner entirely in gold.”
Though the tiered stone structure supporting the altar itself wasn’t gold.
Come to think of it, even ten thousand tons of gold wouldn’t have been enough to build that structure from gold.
The altar’s surface was covered densely with complex ancient characters.
“After all that time, it’s remarkable not a single character has been erased.”
Perhaps some mysterious power had preserved it, or perhaps the mud and earth blanketing the altar had protected it through the ages.
The Baekje golden bronze censer was also buried in mud, preserving its intricate, delicate form intact for over a thousand years.
The characters on the altar proved to be a kind of prayer—a contract inscription.
Within the magical system I’d learned, it was a form of Summoning Magic: a spell that borrowed the power of beings called angels, demons, or gods.
From the prayer’s content, I could sense the entity it had contracted with was obsessed with gold—almost maddeningly so.
“I don’t need Summoning Magic like this, but since there’s gold, I’ll take it. Next are the characters on the stairs.”
Many characters on the stairs were too damaged to read, but they seemed to describe some kind of monster or demon-like entity.
Could this be the creature the Lizardman King had contracted with?
Unable to know for certain, I copied the legible passages into my notebook just in case.
These inscriptions probably wouldn’t be useful, but they were interesting nonetheless.
After gathering everything, I used the Weightless Lightness Skill to escape the hundred-meter pit.
“All right, let’s head back. I’d like to rest somewhere more comfortable—an inn.”
By then, the sky had already turned to dusk.
I’d been in this jungle for nearly five days—how much time had passed on the 20th Floor?
The time differential was roughly threefold, so about a day and fourteen hours?
I’d left around nine in the morning, so it’d be the middle of the night on the 20th Floor.
Fortunately, the inn contracted with the Climbers’ Association accepted guests around the clock, so I could secure a room even at night.
Of course, checkout time was the same, so the later you booked a room, the more you lost—but it couldn’t be helped.
“How should we divide the spoils?”
At Lee Su-young’s question, I thought for a moment before answering.
“Let’s do it downstairs. We can’t very well divide gold here.”
The gold we’d obtained this time was measured in tons.
We couldn’t carry it away if we split it here.
Dividing tons of gold presented its own problems.
I planned to deposit the gold at the Bank and transfer shares to them through wire transactions.
As we headed toward the safe zone where I’d hidden the Signal Device, Diana smiled wickedly and spoke.
“The people who arrive later after receiving the signal will be disappointed. All the gold is gone.”
“That’s their problem to deal with. Isn’t it, friend?”
When Lee Su-young sought my agreement, I nodded.
“Right. Why would I fight that monster and then leave gold behind? It just creates conflict. Better to take it all.”
The explorers would probably be disappointed and leave, but for archaeologists, this place would be like treasure from the ages.
Who knows? Perhaps the archaeologists would decipher the murals and ancient records and discover the gold mines the ancients themselves had worked.
The ancients wouldn’t have just fashioned gold ingots and ornaments from gold raining down from the sky.
As my hand touched the safe zone, a message appeared that was different from usual.

[You have achieved the mission beyond expectations. Causality has been formed.]

Causality? It was an unfamiliar term, but the fact that I’d exceeded the mission goals suggested my hypothesis was correct—the Tower intended to use the indigenous inhabitants of this world to dispose of the Lizardmen.
And then the selection options that normally appeared had changed.

[Would you proceed to Tower Floor 23, where Causality has formed? – This floor is connected to Floor 22.]

[Would you proceed to Tower Floor 23? – You will not be able to return to Floor 22 again.]

[Would you proceed to Tower Floor 20? – You will not be able to return to Floor 22 again.]

[Would you exit The Tower? – You will never be able to enter The Tower again, and all Common Abilities will be revoked.]

Usually only three options appeared below, and there was no option at the top like this.
What on Floor 22 had formed Causality?
Burning the Lizardman city and slaughtering them all?
Or killing the Lizardman king?
Or sweeping away all the gold within the city?
Excavating the Golden Altar?
I’d done so much on Floor 22 that I couldn’t tell which action had created the Causality.
Still, from what I’d seen in the Community, it did seem that lower and upper floors occasionally synchronized with one another.
“So… what should we do?”
Both of them fell silent at my question, considering.
“If it’s connected to Floor 22, wouldn’t that floor also be a jungle?”
I shrugged at Lee Su-young’s question.
“Possibly?”
Lee Su-young frowned at my answer.
“I’d like to rest a bit.”
“So would I.”
Diana, clearly tired of this as well, raised her hand in agreement with Lee Su-young.
“Then let’s go to Floor 20.”
I, too, was in need of rest.
I couldn’t tell if the 23rd Floor, where Causality had formed, was a bonus stage or a boss stage, but at the very least my body was in a condition that demanded recovery.
Recovery meaning I had to rest while the Clone Regeneration Cooldown ticked down.
Without using Clone Regeneration, I’d either need a full week of rest or two days of Diana’s Holy Power healing.
If I climbed directly to Floor 23 in this state and fought continuously for twenty-six hours like I had on Floor 21, I was confident I’d drop dead.
We placed our hands on the Crystal and returned to Floor 20.

* * *

As we arrived on Floor 20, the night sky greeted us exactly as I’d expected—stars and moon hung in the darkness above.
Checking the date on the illuminated Clock Tower, it was just before eleven at night, and by my calculation, roughly thirty-eight hours had passed.
“We have only an hour left, but let’s rest well today and meet again at noon.”
The two of them agreed and dispersed.
The magical streetlights of the city lit the path clearly, so heading toward the Inn was not difficult.

(To be 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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