Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 157

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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 157. Galaxy Martial God Hall – School Excursion (11)

As everyone scattered in panic, I felt a familiar presence behind me heading underground.
“Why are you following me?!”
Cheon Gong-hu, Cheon Bu-hyeon, and Cheon Ha-sung were chasing me while using the Concealment Technique.
“How did you detect us while we were using the Concealment Technique?”
I answered Cheon Ha-sung’s question in disbelief.
“That’s what you call using the Concealment Technique? You didn’t even suppress your presence at all!”
“Ugh! But we fooled the teachers!”
Certainly, just by looking at who was here, it seemed the auxiliary instructors hadn’t noticed.
But that was less because these fools were skilled and more because the teachers were too distracted to catch on.
Unless they were a homeroom teacher with real combat experience, auxiliary instructors likely started their martial arts careers as school teachers, so they’d lack field experience.
With a massive faction like the Cheon Family, even the regular Military Force Unit soldiers who saw actual combat had standards as high as the Perfection realm.
First-class martial artists at best served as trainees or interns in the regular force, and most built their careers as instructors at military academies, police officers, or soldiers.
Our school’s auxiliary instructors were formally assigned to the education academy under the family.
“Go back right now. Do you think this is playtime?”
Cheon Ha-sung shot back at my words.
“You’re not evacuating either!”
“I’m not choosing not to evacuate—I can’t evacuate!”
The three of them didn’t understand.
“This resort’s central control system has been seized right now. The only forces at our school who could retake it are either Riven or me, and Riven isn’t here right now. So I’m the only one who can move.”
I’d already broken through communication interference to send out a rescue request and dismantled the Gold Jade Lock Barrier Formation—I’d done more than enough work for ten people.
I’d prefer to stay protected, naturally.
But there’s work only I can do right now, so I have no choice but to step up.
“Why do we need to retake it? You said the rescue squad is coming?”
“Even if the rescue squad arrives, they could be intercepted by the resort’s defense system. At minimum, I have to shut down the defense system even if I can’t retake control. So go, now.”
At my words, these infuriating fools clenched their fists instead.
“Then we have to protect you even more!”
Cheon Ha-sung’s words made Cheon Bu-hyeon nod in agreement.
“If this is something only you can do, then you absolutely have to survive.”
At their words, I was momentarily at a loss for what to say.
I’d already wasted dozens of seconds in conversation.
I didn’t have time to spare while forcing these fools to leave.
“If I go down there like this, I’m almost certainly going to die. If you follow me, you’ll die too. Are you okay with that?”
My words were sincere.
If there’s a Peak Master martial artist at the central control room I’m heading to, I’ll die at least five times over.
My Heart Energy Body is unbalanced, making proper martial arts impossible, and even if my magical power level is 6th Class, practically it’s only 5th Class.
I can’t defeat a fully refined Peak Master.
I don’t have the strength to protect these fools.
At my cold question, the three of them swallowed hard.
“There’s no more time to waste. Only suicide hopefuls who are fine with coming home to their families as corpses should follow me.”
I didn’t argue anymore and simply ran.
Then Cheon Gong-hu ran after me.
Seeing Cheon Gong-hu run, Cheon Ha-sung and Cheon Bu-hyeon followed suit.
“Where do you get off trying to look cool alone!”
“Hey, everyone dies sometime anyway!”
Cheon Ha-sung and Cheon Bu-hyeon cried out like they were possessed and caught up to me.
Cheon Gong-hu smiled awkwardly as usual and spoke.
“You’re my friend.”
These stupid bastards. As an adult, I’ll die twenty times over if needed to get them out alive somehow.
I didn’t find these fools completely unlikeable, personally.

* * *

The commander of the covert escort squad ground his teeth at his comrade’s death.
Though he thrashed desperately to survive, his wounded comrade had his heart pierced by the enemy’s blade.
The condition of the remaining three was far from good.
Their bodies were covered in blood, as if toyed with by a cat that had cornered a mouse.
He was still alive largely thanks to the elite Military Force Unit’s top-tier Combat Suit, though the enemy’s arrogance had played its part.
When Inner Energy was channeled into vital points, the suit could even deflect sword strikes—a masterpiece among masterpieces that money alone could not procure.
“Stubborn bastards, aren’t they.”
“The commander’s going to lose patience if we keep dawdling. We’d better finish this soon, or we might have to face Burning Mirror’s wrath.”
The escort guards felt their spirits sink at the enemies’ words.
If Burning Mirror was among the attackers, survival would have been impossible even without this formation.
Just as despair threatened to consume them, the oppressive weight of the formation suddenly lifted.
“What? What is—?”
“The formation!”
The kidnappers froze in shock at the abruptly shattered formation, their guard momentarily lowered.
They knew the escort guards matched their own Peak Master realm, yet it took several crucial seconds to snap their focus back to full readiness.
At the Peak Master realm, those few seconds stretched into an eternity.
The three guards unleashed their Inner Energy in a devastating burst and struck.
In that moment of carelessness, one kidnapper’s head flew clean off, another’s heart exploded outward, and a third took a deep, brutal wound across the abdomen.
“Damn it!”
Seeing their comrades fall, the remaining kidnappers snapped their discipline back into place and came at the guards with killing intent.
Clang!
Thud!
One guard barely deflected the full-force attack, but the other could not—his waist severed, he fell dead.
The last guard, realizing his strike could not be blocked, invoked the Mutual Destruction Technique and severed the enemy’s carotid artery as he died.
In one-on-one duels to the death, it was rare for multiple warriors to fall in quick succession or mutual destruction to occur.
But on a real battlefield with multiple fighters clashing, a moment’s carelessness or an unexpected variable could snuff out lives as easily as a fly’s.
With one guard’s entrails barely contained by his Inner Energy and blood pooling beneath him, the remaining escort captain faced two-on-one odds—an impossible position. He released a smoke screen and fled.
In group combat, the Sword Formation could hold against even significantly stronger numbers.
But facing two opponents of equal realm alone was suicide.
His duty now was to find the comrade who had followed Cheon So-yeon and protect her at any cost.

* * *

Cheon So-yeon moved through the resort, hidden beneath the Concealment Technique.
The safest option would have been to use the Tortoise Breath Technique, entering a state of false death where every sign of life slowed to an extreme, then hole up in one place.
But doing so might allow her pursuers to hunt down the other students with impunity.
So Cheon So-yeon deliberately shook off her escort and left subtle traces of her presence—breadcrumbs for their Aura Sense to follow.
Based on her experience from both lives, her pursuer seemed to be a master of Burning Mirror’s caliber.
Cheon So-yeon, still at the Perfection realm despite being able to break through to Peak Master at will, could not match a warrior of that power.
All she could do was buy time in this deadly game of tag, though the helplessness of it gnawed at her.
Some fifteen to twenty minutes after the formation activated, she felt the oppressive pressure suddenly vanish.
“Ji-woo…!”
Cheon So-yeon knew instantly that her friend had dismantled the formation.
At school, Cheon Ji-woo was the only one who had studied formations to that level.
They attended classes together every vacation—formations, strategy, tactics—so she knew his capabilities well.
She herself hadn’t progressed as quickly through advanced formations and high-tech strategic systems as Ji-woo had, but she’d learned the fundamentals.
So Ji-woo would certainly try to retake the resort’s Central Control Room next.
The enemy commander—the Burning Mirror warrior—would also understand its importance, so he might abandon his pursuit of her and head there instead.
Cheon So-yeon climbed higher into the resort, deciding to make herself an even more obvious bait.
She left more pronounced traces to keep the enemy’s attention on herself, away from Ji-woo.

* * *

I followed Blue Eyes, the resort’s management AI, straight toward the Central Control Room.
It was the most critical location not just for the resort but for the entire asteroid, protected by a labyrinthine formation that made even approaching it difficult.
The infiltrators must have spent months trying to crack this formation.
But I didn’t need to.
Blue Eyes, who understood the formation’s architecture, was linked directly to my mobile phone.
“Step 1.3 meters at eighty degrees from your current position. Step 0.7 meters at ten degrees from your current position.”
“This formation is completely insane. The Illusion Confusion Demon Nail Piercing Formation?”
It paled in comparison to the Gold Jade Lock Barrier Formation, but it ranked high in sheer complexity.
This was the kind of formation installed where security was paramount—notoriously expensive to set up.
Without Blue Eyes providing both audio guidance and visual assistance, I would have needed to analyze the flow of energy with each step.
But through my mobile phone, Blue Eyes projected a holographic overlay showing exactly where to place each foot, so I moved without hesitation.
The three idiots who’d followed me scrambled to match my pace, footstep for footstep.
What would normally have taken twenty minutes to navigate through the proper entrance, I managed in twenty seconds.
If the enemy had altered the structure even slightly, it would have been disastrous—but they couldn’t risk changing it, not when they had to move through it themselves.
The Illusion Confusion Formation was so delicate that shifting a single minor detail would completely reshape the invisible maze within; even a master of formations couldn’t redesign it at will.
Once I reached the door to the Central Control Room, I gestured for the three to stay silent and spoke to them through Sound Transmission.

-From this point on, follow my instructions exactly, or we’ll all be in danger. Stay sharp.

The three nodded gravely at my words.
Fortunately, none of them was fool enough to refuse my orders and go rogue.
I finished laying out a quick plan via Sound Transmission, then signaled the three to fall back.

-One. Two. Three!

I sent the signal through Sound Transmission, yanked open the Central Control Room door, dumped an entire canister of Space Cockroach Extermination Smoke into the sealed chamber, and slammed it shut again.
Hissssss—!
“Kyaaahhhhh—!!”
Smoke billowed through the crack beneath the door, and a woman’s panicked shriek tore through the air.
I confirmed the toxic smoke was spreading properly and bellowed out.
“Gas! Gas! Gas!”
Then I sealed the door completely shut with Barrier Magic.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
From inside, someone threw their full weight against the door, desperately trying to force it open—but my Barrier Magic held firm.
As I felt the impacts reverberating through the barrier, a smile crossed my face.

(To be continued in the next episode)

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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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