Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 134

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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 134. The Tower – The Trial of Gold (3)

“I’d prefer to hold off on dividing the gold until after we clear the 23rd Floor.”
“Hold off on dividing it? Why?”
Lee Su-young answered my question.
“When we left the 22nd Floor, we overfulfilled the mission and created karma, which let us choose the 23rd Floor, right?”
“That’s right.”
“We don’t know if that karma came from defeating the Lizardman King or if it’s related to the gold itself, so why don’t we just take the gold with us for now?”
I nodded at Lee Su-young’s words.
“I see—you’re saying we might actually need to use the gold we collected this time on the 23rd Floor?”
“Honestly, I suspect the karma came from killing the king, but you never know.”
“No, you’ve got a point. Considering the Lizardman King was trying to use that ancient golden altar, it’s entirely possible the karma is gold-related.”
After returning to the 20th Floor, I examined the Community around the keyword “karma” and found that there were two main ways floors connected.
Either a quest in the lower floor didn’t complete fully, or a Bonus Stage.
I couldn’t understand what “quest not completing fully” meant, but I’d probably figure it out as I climbed higher.
Normally, lower-floor communities had no posts about situations like ours, but occasionally they appeared in the overall Community—which suggested that either way, it was an event that rarely happened at lower floors.
As I nodded in agreement, Lee Su-young laughed triumphantly.
Diana and I cheered for her.
“You’re amazing, Su-young! I never would’ve thought of that!”
“Woohoo! Su-young’s the best!”
“Aha! Praise me more!”
“Genius! Lee Su-young!”
“The greatest of geniuses! Lee Su-young!”
After receiving so much applause, Lee Su-young grew a little embarrassed and blushed slightly, clearing her throat.
“Ahem! That’s enough.”
“A century’s prodigy who even mocks the divine! Lee Su-young!”
“The strongest climber in the world! Lee Su-young!”
“Stop it already!”
As Diana and I continued teasing her with our cheers, Lee Su-young burst out loudly.
Diana and I giggled at her outburst.
Lee Su-young pouted her lips slightly as she spoke.
“Actually, we don’t have to ascend to the 23rd Floor as something connected to the 22nd. We don’t know what will happen on the 23rd Floor in connection with the 22nd, and it might be better to gulp down the gold right now.”
Converting gold to Credit, we strengthen our power by buying better equipment.
Even though the Tower seems to hand out money freely, once you try to spend it properly, there’s no end to how much you need.
Money isn’t just for food and survival.
We buy necessary materials for necessary items, hire craftsmen to forge weapons from our carefully gathered materials, purchase information, and secure transportation.
Whether inside or outside the Tower, the need for money is endless.
In that sense, keeping the gold as-is might be more advantageous than using it on the 23rd Floor.
“I’ve already thought about a distribution plan for that scenario.”
Lee Su-young spoke to me with a hint of tension.
“You get all of it except for 1 ton each that Diana and I take.”
I was taken aback by Lee Su-young’s words.
“Not an equal split?”
She laughed at my question and replied.
“I have a conscience, so I couldn’t ask for an equal split. Honestly, just what you did on the 22nd Floor was already so much.”
She counted on her fingers one by one as she spoke.
“You found paths through the jungle, built sleeping quarters and showers while we slept, and honestly, without your magic, we wouldn’t have found a way to clear the Lizardman lair, let alone dared to face that monstrous king.”
Lee Su-young trembled slightly as she recalled the king’s oppressive presence.
“You defeated the king, and most of all, without you, how would we have excavated and brought all that enormous amount of gold here?”
It’s true that without my magic and Spatial Cube, it would’ve been impossible to carry such a massive quantity of gold.
Diana nodded at Lee Su-young’s words.
“At most, one person would’ve brought 50 kilograms if they carried a lot. Even then, it’s more likely we brought much less because we wanted to take the byproducts from the king and the Warrior Captain.”
That was fair. The Mithril Spear and the king’s corpse were worth more than gold.
If we had to choose between the two, we’d definitely be right to abandon the gold.
Lee Su-young agreed with Diana’s words.
“But we didn’t even hesitate over how much byproduct to take—we just swept up everything. According to what I heard from Mom, among all Tower Returners in the world, fewer than 50 people have Spatial Dimension Items or abilities, they’re that rare. In Korea, I think only one person had one?”
That item is that rare?
If we’re talking worldwide, there had to be well over 50 million Tower Returners, right?
From what I’d seen in the news, more than half of them were people who’d given up on the floors below the 10th, which was called the Tutorial.
Tower Returners who couldn’t clear the 10th Floor had abilities that weren’t particularly impressive.
At best, they were on the level of an ordinary person wielding an iron pipe—easily subdued by a single police officer with a taser gun.
Creatures like that couldn’t have acquired proper items, artifacts, or magical tools, so even accounting for dead weight, there were an enormous number of famous Tower Returners.
Even if I counted only the famous people from Korea known to have played around in the 50s-range floors, that was at least hundreds—and yet only one person had a Spatial Dimension Item?
Well, I suppose there’s no helping that different dimensions and worlds have different levels of technological advancement and resources.
In the cities dominated by the 33 Magic Towers, Space Magic developed to an extreme degree because they had to maximize every inch of narrow space, which is why Spatial Magic is common there.
On the other hand, because it was a dying world, food was incredibly expensive.
Meanwhile, in the Galaxy Martial Arts World, space technology was highly advanced and martial arts existed, but Heterodox Techniques like magic had nearly gone extinct.
What remained was only in the form of Formation Magic.
“Still, isn’t 1 ton too little?”
Saying I was giving away 1 ton rather than receiving it was somewhat ridiculous.
Lee Su-young chuckled at my question and replied.
“Actually, I was worried you’d think it was too much. Do you know Korea’s total gold reserves are 100 tons? 1 ton would be one hundredth of that.”
That’s all? Well, since currency shifted from the Gold Standard to Fiat Currency, there was no need for nations to hoard gold.
“Honestly, if I were you, I would’ve said even 100 kilograms was too much.”
“Really? I brought this much, though.”
“Do you know how much 1 gram of gold costs Outside the Tower?”
I shook my head at Lee Su-young’s question.
“The market price keeps changing, but at current rates, 1 gram goes for about 220,000 won.”
“What! That expensive?”
So how much is 1 ton? Roughly… 220 billion won? Insane! So 100 tons would be 22 trillion won?!
My mind reeled at the staggering sum.
“Should we go elsewhere instead of tackling Floor 23?”
At my question, Lee Su-young and Diana burst out laughing.
“Ha ha ha! So you are human after all. Watching you fight the Lizardman King, I felt a little distance between us, but suddenly you feel so much more relatable.”
“Heh heh, right? Ji-woo always seemed without greed.”
I was flustered by their laughter.
“What do you mean? Think of how much you could do with that money! Of course I’m tempted!”
I began listing off all the things I could buy if I took this gold Outside the Tower—a house, a car, and more.
“…Wait? Even indulging in every luxury imaginable, it doesn’t add up to 10 billion?”
But as I spoke, I realized there was far more money left over than I’d anticipated.
Compared to 22 trillion, 10 billion was like a single cup of water drawn from a lake.
They say money talks better when you’ve spent money before, but even my imagination as an ordinary person had clear limits.
“Since there’s nowhere to spend it anyway, wouldn’t it be better to use it to climb the Tower and make ourselves stronger?”
I was genuinely convinced by Lee Su-young’s words.
“That’s true. If you can buy strength with money, that’s always better.”
Personally, I’d choose strength over money, and satisfying my curiosity over strength.
This Tower was a colossal mass of questions, and the best way to solve it was to climb it; and climbing required strength.
“Diana, you have no objections to tackling Floor 23, which is connected to Floor 22?”
“No, none at all.”
Diana’s unhesitating answer made me nod.
“Then let’s discuss how to distribute the gold after we tackle Floor 23 and see what’s left.”
We might end up needing to use all of it.
…Though thinking about it again, maybe we could keep 1 ton aside?
No, that would be wasteful.

* * *

After settling the distribution question, we made good use of our day.
We read books in the Library, and the three of us spent time at the Market.
The Library had plenty of medical texts, so Diana seemed likely to visit often in her personal time.
To prepare for climbing the Tower, we used the Credits to hire craftspeople contracted with the Climbers’ Association.
The craftspeople custom-made a new Mace for Diana and a Leather Garment for Lee Su-young, and I had protective gear made from the Lizardman King’s hide and scales.
I could have bought cheap imitation Heavenly Silk Combat Suits from the Galaxy Martial Arts World and worn those, but as I climbed the Tower, I felt that the level of combat suit I could afford on a child’s pocket money wasn’t sufficient.
When I saw the garment the craftsman created, it looked quite impressive.
“I only got one Outer Coat out of it.”
“Even with the Lizardman King being huge, one coat is already fortunate from just one creature’s worth.”
Besides, since it had been worn ragged from fighting me, even one coat was more than acceptable.
Still, Lee Su-young got upper and lower garments as well as an Outer Coat, gloves, and leather boots all nicely made, while I only got an Outer Coat, so I felt a bit disappointed.
Lee Su-young had used ten Warrior Captains’ worth of materials, so it was only natural that enough Lizardman Leather remained to cover her entire body.
Still, there was some consolation in the fact that my outer coat was more valuable.
The coat was thick, and inside it scales were embedded densely like lamellar armor, so it functioned as armor itself.
Through magical treatment, it maintained the scales’ characteristic hardness when struck, yet retained the soft texture of leather in normal conditions.
Best of all, it was durable enough that I could later inscribe magic into it, and it held magical power exceptionally well.
“Your craftsmanship is remarkable. I’d never have guessed this was Lizardman Bone,” Diana said.
Her new mace was fashioned from the magically shaped skull of the Lizardman King mixed with steel and a portion of melted Mithril from the spear, resulting in a white mace with a subtle silver sheen.
Originally I’d planned to forge it from a Warrior Captain’s bone, but there was more than enough of the King’s bone left over, so we used that instead.
After fighting the King, my cheap combat suit became nothing but rags, so I traded my spare Lizardman Bone for Diana’s Warrior Captain Leather.
The Warrior Captain Leather naturally became an inner garment of proper leather.
The leather garment held magical power well enough that it offered better defense than my cheap combat suit had.
I crafted not just the outer coat and garment but also several spare Longswords from the Mithril and leg bones and arm bones, while Lee Su-young made two bows from the Warrior Captain’s collarbone and vertebrae and tendons, and created many Arrows from the leftover bone.
We had to pour in all the byproduct sales from the crafting process and every Credit we’d earned on the 21st Floor, but I harbored no regrets.
We still had Gold left.
Of course, if we end up depleting the Gold on the 23rd Floor, that would be a different story.
The next day, we headed toward City Center to ascend to the 23rd Floor.

(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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