Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 171

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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 171. The Tower – Western Train (5)

The RPG-7, commonly known as Allah’s wand in internet memes, was first developed around the 1960s as far as I knew.
It might have been the 1950s, but since I wasn’t a weapons enthusiast like Bogard, I wasn’t entirely certain.
In fact, I only knew about the RPG-7 through the meme, so I didn’t really understand it in detail.
But even thinking roughly about it, one thing was certain: it was a weapon used a hundred years from now.
Elliot, who had been hesitating, spoke in a low voice so others on the train couldn’t hear.
“According to what the government has been investigating, they suspect that weapons from The Tower may have flowed into the United States.”
Weapons from The Tower?
“These… people from the organization that supports slavery, the Ku Klux Klan…”
“Wait.”
Bogard cut off Elliot’s words.
“The KKK was founded in 1866, right? And the Ku Klux Klan was an organization created by discontented former Confederate soldiers during the North’s Reconstruction of the South—but the war is still ongoing.”
At Bogard’s words, Elliot looked confused, as if he didn’t understand.
I said something to Bogard at the sight of this.
“If it’s a parallel world, the events could be different.”
“Hmm, I suppose so—this is a world where Lincoln died and didn’t become president, after all.”
Bogard nodded in understanding, and I gestured for him to continue.
Elliot nodded with a somewhat reluctant expression and continued his explanation.
“The official name of the organization isn’t particularly important. In any case, they started using strange weapons, so the authorities arrested those using the weapons, interrogated them, and even confiscated several of them.”
They confiscated them?
Everyone perked up and paid close attention at Elliot’s words.
“From the interrogation, we learned various information, including a temporary name for the organization. According to the slavery advocates, a few months ago—much like how you all suddenly appeared in that empty bar—a warehouse appeared.”
“A warehouse?”
“Yes, they described it as an armory. It looked as if a war had just been fought there, with blood stains, bullet holes, and corpses that hadn’t been dead long. The warehouse contained weapons they’d never seen before, and while some of the instructions bore characters they didn’t recognize, there was also English, so understanding how to use them wasn’t difficult.”
Appeared suddenly, they said.
“A Dimensional Instability Phenomenon.”
At my murmur, everyone’s eyes turned to me.
“Ah, from what I’ve picked up while climbing The Tower and from information in the Library, I understand that when dimensions become unstable, objects from other worlds are ejected. In our world, don’t monsters often emerge from what are called Gates or Dungeons?”
Everyone nodded in understanding at my words.
“So that armory came from another world—a parallel world more advanced than this one?”
At King Kong’s question, I nodded.
“That’s my guess.”
Didn’t the heart fragment of the Cosmic Monster Nightmare that I possessed fall from the 97th Floor to the 14th Floor for a similar reason?
“The problem isn’t where the armory came from, but how many weapons are inside it.”
At my point, Elliot spoke up.
“According to the interrogation, it wasn’t completely packed. They said it looked as though weapons had been in the process of being removed from the armory during an active war.”
At Elliot’s words, Bogard spoke seriously.
“Even if it’s not completely full, if the warehouse is large enough, the amount inside could be extraordinary.”
Considering the scale of American warehouses, the size could indeed be extraordinary.
But from what I hear, it appears to be a Middle Eastern armory rather than an American one, so I’m not sure how large it actually is.
Then Quan, who had been listening quietly, spoke up.
“…But is this something we should be concerned about?”
“What?”
At King Kong’s fierce gaze, Quan flinched slightly and spoke.
“I, I mean… our mission is simply to escort Elliot safely, right? Once this is over, we’ll be leaving, so I was wondering if we really need to worry about such things… I’m sorry.”
Quan’s point was certainly valid.
There was no point worrying about it if we weren’t going to stay in this world and become heroes fighting to maintain peace.
Park Jeon-bin also nodded in agreement.
“Well, that’s true. When you think about it, weapons from an earlier era falling here isn’t entirely wrong. In another sense, since they’re products of advanced technology, researching them could help with technological progress, right?”
At his words, King Kong and Bogard’s expressions became complicated.
“Now that you mention it, that does seem like a point.”
“Maybe I was just worrying needlessly.”
Outside the speeding train, the sky was beginning to take on a golden hue as dusk approached.
Then Lee Su-young spoke in passing.
“But once it gets dark, do we need to keep watch?”
At this trivial question, we had to engage in a heated debate about whether we should keep watch or not.
As a result, we concluded that keeping watch was the right thing to do, if only to guard against pickpockets on the train.
Nineteenth-century America’s law and order was far from secure, even aboard a moving train.
If one wanted to sleep peacefully, one needed at least to have purchased a ticket for a berth with partitions.
Lee Su-young and Diana, both ladies, took the first and second watches, while I lost at rock-paper-scissors and ended up with the second-worst watch duty at the very end.
Still, with eight of us rotating, an hour per watch was manageable enough.

* * *

Each time the train passed through a station, passengers disembarked and boarded in turn.
As the sky outside the windows grew completely dark, the night train slowed its pace—whether for safety or some other reason—and began to pass through stations without stopping, racing through like an express.
At night the stations closed entirely, so it made sense to run like an express service.
Most passengers had already disembarked, unless like us they were traveling far.
Park Jeon-bin surveyed the nearly empty first-class compartment and spoke up.
“As a night train, we’ll save considerable time.”
Elliot nodded at Park Jeon-bin’s words.
“Indeed. The original plan was five days, but at this pace we’ll make it in nearly four. Since we’ve already come one day, we should arrive the day after tomorrow.”
Just then King Kong yawned and drew the blanket distributed by the station attendant over himself as he spoke.
“Let’s get some sleep now.”
The blanket’s quality left much to be desired, but at least since we’d purchased first-class tickets, it didn’t smell.
Since the train wouldn’t stop until morning anyway, we stretched out across the seats and prepared ourselves for sleep.
Passengers in other seats were also stretching their legs into the empty adjacent chairs, getting ready to rest.
Just then, from beneath the seats, the slime balloon—Mul-poong—bounced upward and softly climbed onto me.
When I glanced sidelong at Lee Su-young, who was on the first watch, she smiled quietly and brought her index finger to her lips.
It seemed she had assigned us party members a sort of sentinel in the form of our summons.
Since the twenty-first floor, she’d mastered the method of sleeping while fighting with her summons, and now she was demonstrating her resourcefulness by repurposing them as personal guards and night watch—impressive.
Truly reassuring.
In return, I inscribed a Simple Barrier Magic onto a sleep mask I’d purchased from the Galaxy Martial Arts World and secretly sent it to Lee Su-young and Diana.
Crudely made, it would only function for about half a day, but it was enough to allow them to rest comfortably in such an open space.
That’s what party members ought to do for one another.
With that thought, I donned the mask, drew the blanket over myself, and fell asleep.
A few hours into my slumber, a piercing scream jolted me awake.
“Aaaaaaah—!”
I pushed the sleep mask up and surveyed my surroundings at the sound of the cry.
The interior of the train was dark.
According to historical record, the first electric light was created in 1802 by British chemist Humphry Davy using arc discharge, and in 1844 John Wellington Starr invented the filament incandescent bulb, but it was Thomas Edison who brought it into widespread commercial use.
Edison’s major activities began in 1877, so in the mid-1860s as it now was, electric lights would be difficult to find anywhere except perhaps lighthouses or major government offices—certainly not on a moving train.
Checking my Avatar Slot’s time, it appeared I’d slept for roughly five hours.
I created light with Simple Magic and illuminated the surroundings, whereupon everyone stirred awake from the scream and knitted their brows, looking toward the rear car where the sound had originated.
Then everyone gasped in shock.
“Everyone, duck!”
A hail of gunfire poured down above our ducked forms.
Bogard Dellington transformed into a Wolf Man and shouted.
“Damn! After Allah’s magic wand, now it’s a Chicken Gun?”
A Chicken Gun—the AK-47.
The nickname came from the fact that the Soviet Union’s standard rifle, the Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle model 47, was cheap enough to cost as little as a chicken dinner.
Fortunately, we’d hidden our bodies beneath the seats and protected ourselves with our respective abilities and magical tools, so there were no immediate casualties.
However, automatic rifle fire from mere twenty-floor-level Climbers proved formidable enough that Quan, Park Jeon-bin, and King Kong all appeared to have taken gunshot wounds.
Yet since the wounds weren’t fatal, they immediately began returning fire with Revolvers.
“Aaagh! It’s a monster!”
As we returned fire with our Revolvers, the masked assailants who had been spraying bullets cried out in terror at the sight of Bogard transformed into his Wolf Man form.
Of course, even Elliot found us peculiar and called us wizards, so why should these thugs be any different?
Four masked intruders who had climbed from the rear car into the front poured concentrated gunfire at Bogard.
As all eyes locked onto Bogard, I quickly cast Simple Magic on a blanket and unfurled it in front of him for protection.
The bullets that pierced through several layers of enchanted blanket had their force greatly diminished and failed to penetrate Bogard’s hide.
“Ow! Ow!”
Even the weakened bullets stung Bogard.
While I protected Bogard, Park Jeon-bin bound the assailants’ legs with his weapon’s whip-like form and yanked them over.
“Whoa!”
Then King Kong’s Space-Crossing Long-Range Punch cascaded down upon their heads.
The moment we subdued the assailants, I exchanged glances with Lee Su-young and Diana.
“I’ll send my summons to scout the other cars and see if there are more enemies.”
“Bring the wounded to me. I’ll treat them.”
Lee Su-young sent Light Breeze to another compartment, and Diana sterilized the medical forceps with alcohol to extract the bullets.
If she used her holy power to heal directly, the wounds would close up with the bullets still lodged inside.
But had she possessed those forceps and sterilizing alcohol before entering The Tower?
Since she’d mentioned attending a medical graduate school, it wasn’t strange for her to carry such instruments for practical training.
While King Kong, Park Jeon-bin, and Quan received treatment from Diana for their gunshot wounds, Bogard spoke to me.
“I didn’t know you’d mastered magic too. We owe our lives to you.”
“You’re too kind. You’re all so resilient that I doubt the damage would have been severe even if I hadn’t held back my power.”
“Ha-ha-ha! A noble wolf is always tough! But you must gauge your own strength accurately. I say this in earnest—you saved us. When we meet on the Common Floor again, I’ll buy you a drink. Stay in touch.”
Bogard sent me a Community friend request, and his words didn’t sound like empty courtesy.
I accepted his request without hesitation.
It was then that Lee Su-young spoke.
“More enemies are coming! Twelve of them! It’s too dark to see their exact armament clearly, but they’re carrying guns!”
At her words, everyone prepared for battle.

(To be continued)

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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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