Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 184

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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 184. The Tower — Princess of the Spire (1)

The morning after returning from Floor 28.
Out of habit, I rose before dawn, practiced my breathing exercises and ate breakfast, then headed to the cafe where I’d arranged to meet my party.
I arrived first and was sipping coffee in the empty cafe when Rachel showed up earlier than the scheduled time.
“I thought I’d be the first one here, but I’m late.”
I smiled faintly at Rachel’s words and replied.
“Late? We still have quite a bit of time before the appointment.”
Lee Su-young and Diana hadn’t arrived yet.
“I wanted to come first and show that I’m diligent.”
Rachel ordered a coffee and took the seat across from me. We passed the time with light conversation.
It was just casual talk—nothing with any particular theme—we discussed impressions from climbing the Tower and shared unremarkable information.
Among the simple conversation, there was also talk related to the WPTO, including the fact that it was established to control the ability users whose numbers had grown due to the Tower, thereby reducing ability-user crime.
“At least several million people enter and exit the Tower in a single year. But that count only happens if they reveal or are caught being Tower Returnees, so it’s estimated that roughly nearly ten million Tower Returnees are created each year in reality.”
I understood—when I left the Tower, I certainly had no intention of broadcasting that I was a Tower Returnee, so there had to be many people like me.
Especially in foreign countries, where many people were sensitive about personal information, they would likely hide it even more.
So the roughly fifty million Tower Returnees that were officially estimated could actually be more than twice that number.
No wonder the military told people to exit immediately if they went into the Tower.
Just looking at the posts condemning incidents and accidents posted on the community, entering the Tower seemed to have nothing to do with a person’s character, so I didn’t think those who emerged from the Tower would behave quietly once they left.
As we continued this sort of conversation, and the appointment time drew near, Lee Su-young and Diana walked in together.
“Good morning! You both came early.”
Lee Su-young greeted us with a cheerful smile, true to her outgoing nature.
Lee Su-young ordered grape juice while Diana ordered black tea, and they took their seats.
Once all the party members had gathered, Rachel spoke.
“Though I suppose we’re not officially party members yet, we’ll need to climb at least three more floors together, and we haven’t had a proper introduction. I’m Rachel L Cullenberg, I’m twenty-seven and American. Thank you for hearing out my insistent request yesterday.”
Following Rachel’s introduction, we took turns introducing ourselves as well.
After listening to our introductions, Rachel pulled out a card, and as it disappeared from her hand, a sound barrier materialized around us.
“Since we’re now the same party, I should explain my abilities to some degree. Yesterday I introduced myself as a mage, but strictly speaking in terms of abilities received from the Tower, I’m closer to a magic user.”
Rachel placed a card on the table that she called a Memorize Card.
“My ability is ‘Coin Magic.’ Simply put, I can purchase spells from a catalog using Credits, store them in these Memorize Cards, and use them anytime I want.”
I felt genuine admiration at Rachel’s explanation.
The Tower really does have every conceivable ability.
Now there’s an ability to buy magic with money?
“Is that why you said that spell that creates sunlight was expensive?”
Rachel looked flustered at my question.
“Did I say something like that?”
I nodded at her question.
She must not have remembered it, having said it during the middle of battle.
Now I understood why Rachel had explained her ability before challenging Floor 29.
“If you’re ‘purchasing’ spells, then you can’t adjust the scale or power of magic usage arbitrarily.”
Rachel nodded at my conjecture.
“That’s right. Those things are usually determined when you ‘purchase’ the spell. For example, if I purchase a spell called Magic Arrow, the size of the arrow and the speed at which it flies are set at the time of purchase, and when using it, I can only control the direction it flies and the target.”
“It’s an ability with limited adaptability. But depending on how you apply it, the versatility could be incredible.”
One cannot learn every spell in the world.
But Rachel’s Coin Magic ability granted her the absurd versatility to use any spell imaginable.
Rachel nodded at my words.
“Exactly. Actually, when I first arrived at Floor 28, I didn’t have any sun-related magic at all. I saw that the monster called the Night Walker was vulnerable to sunlight and bought it immediately.”
At Rachel’s words, Lee Su-young’s and Diana’s eyes widened.
Coin Magic was difficult to handle when the problem arose unexpectedly, but when one could predict that the problem would arise, there was no better ability.
In fact, most abilities weren’t particularly adaptable, so one couldn’t say Coin Magic’s disadvantage was significant.
Just as on Floor 28, neither I nor Lee Su-young had managed to exploit the Night Walker’s weakness.
Every ability had its strengths and weaknesses.
If anything, Coin Magic was a well-rounded, hexagonal ability with few weaknesses.
“And the greatest advantage of this ability is that using magic consumes almost no mana. Since the cost in Credits was already paid at the time of purchase, regardless of whether the range is large, small, powerful, or weak, it only takes the same amount of mana to awaken the magic sleeping within the card.”
Lee Su-young asked at Rachel’s explanation.
“The more you hear about it, the fewer disadvantages it seems to have. That can’t be right, can it?”
Rachel admitted it readily, nodding.
“Powerful and useful magic is expensive. Not just expensive—ridiculously expensive. Of course, not to the point I can’t afford it, but I’ve spent about half of all the Shop Points I’ve earned climbing so far on buying Credits?”
Diana expressed surprise at Rachel’s words.
“Half seems less than I expected?”
“Since the ability operates on Credit consumption, I possess an auxiliary ability called Fortune of Wealth.”
It appeared to be a subsidiary ability like the “Reincarnation” or “Third-Person Avatar” tied to my Multidimensional Avatar.
Lee Su-young and Diana nodded, as if recalling their own auxiliary abilities.
Rachel’s explanation of her abilities left me puzzled.
“But is it really all right to explain things in such detail?”
At my question, Rachel smiled slightly.
“I’m confident in my ability to read people. The strengths and weaknesses of an ability should be shared among party members for the sake of safety, and I want to make it clear that I’m sincere about this.”
That was certainly part of it, but the truth was probably that her ability had no exploitable weaknesses in actual use, since the drawbacks were concentrated in the preparation phase.
Even if someone knew about Fortune of Wealth, they couldn’t do anything with that knowledge themselves.
The reliance on cards for magic was a weakness, certainly, but it was something anyone climbing the Tower would inevitably notice anyway.
By revealing it beforehand, she’d earned our trust.
Just as I was nodding at Rachel’s words, a sudden thought flashed through my mind.
“Is that why you’re trying to join our party—because of Fortune of Wealth?”
Rachel looked startled, as if her weak point had been struck dead center.
At her reaction, Lee Su-young and Diana let out exclamations of realization.
“Now that you mention it, we did make money unusually well.”
“That’s right. There were so many opportunities, and you had an uncanny knack for grabbing money at every turn.”
The way they put it made me sound like some gold-obsessed miser.
Rachel nodded at their remarks.
“I’ll admit it. This party—more precisely, you, Han Ji-woo, have an intense Fortune of Wealth around you. It’s so powerful that just riding on the crumbs of it would let us live in luxury.”
Lee Su-young and Diana were taken aback by Rachel’s words.
“The name sounded so cheesy that I wondered if fortune was actually an ability, but it really is one.”
“How impressive.”
What, am I some kind of totem that attracts Fortune of Wealth?
Lee Su-young asked Rachel with sparkling eyes.
“What about my fortune?”
Rachel glanced at me before answering Lee Su-young’s question.
“Fortune is inevitably influenced by the people around you. As long as you’re climbing the Tower with Han Ji-woo, it can only be good. Of course, it’s possible that Han Ji-woo’s Fortune of Wealth opened up because he met you and Diana.”
It was an interesting theory.
My luck had been good since childhood, but my Fortune of Wealth only began after I entered the Tower.
If Rachel was right, perhaps these two—or the Tower itself—had unlocked my Fortune of Wealth.
“Even if fortune comes, seizing it when it arrives depends on individual ability. Mano Hadad, who climbed the 28th Floor with us, certainly had fortune at his side, but he fell behind, didn’t he?”
Lee Su-young and Diana nodded in agreement at her words.
Opportunities to obtain magical tomes, silver, and Mithril didn’t come often.
Mano had simply missed his chance to secure a solid fortune.
At their reaction, Rachel smiled and spoke.
“Of course, Fortune of Wealth is only one small reason I want to join this party. Your abilities were far more attractive than that. We’re not here to make money—we’re here to climb the Tower.”
In my view, fortune and ability were both minor concerns when climbing the Tower together.
The most important thing among those ascending together was character.
Character matters in society, but in the Tower, where you must fight for your life, it matters even more.
You can’t trust your back to a skilled, talented robber wearing a mask of good intentions.
Don’t people say that if you want to know someone, you should travel with them?
Rachel’s suggestion to climb three Tower floors together was probably to gauge our character.
Of course, we’d need to assess Rachel’s character as well.
Rachel asked, looking at me.
“By the way, you said your main strength is Swordsmanship, but you seem quite skilled with magic too. Did you get your ability as a Spellblade type?”
I shook my head at Rachel’s question.
“No, the ability I obtained in the Tower is Martial Arts. I learned magic after coming to the Tower. The person who first taught me magic said I had talent for it.”
It wasn’t a lie.
I’d acquired a Swordsmanship ability stone in the Tower and learned Martial Arts from it, and the Librarian Elder was the first to teach me magic.
At that time, the praise about my magical talent was just words, but Martial Arts allowed me to survive encounters that once killed me—like the Horned Rabbit’s ambush—and face Hop Goblins, so I’d dedicated two slots of my Multidimensional Avatar to the martial world.
Of course, I had no regrets. Magic was good, but Martial Arts was just as attractive and enjoyable as magic.
“I hear from people at the Magic Tower on the 20th Floor that Martial Arts and magic are difficult to practice together. That’s impressive.”
“This is just my personal feeling, but it’s not that difficult.”
The Dantian of Martial Arts and the Astral Body of magic don’t conflict with each other.
The reason the two are hard to combine is that the nature of Qi for Martial Arts and the nature of mana for magic are fundamentally different.
Of course, I simply changed the nature at will without much difficulty.
I rose from my seat and spoke.
“Shall we make our way to Floor 29 now?”
Before ascending to Floor 29, Rachel purchased supplies at the Climbers’ Association.

* * *

—Approximately eighteen years ago.

An oracle descended upon the Lamberton Kingdom, a realm situated on Floor 29 of the Tower.
The oracle’s content was steeped in enigmatic metaphor and symbol, but according to the Temple’s specialist interpreters, the princess in the queen’s womb was a precious being destined to bear a great hero who would one day save the world.
Not long after, the queen gave birth to a beautiful princess, just as the oracle had foretold.
With the princess’s birth confirming the oracle’s words, the kingdom erupted in grand celebration. According to the prophecy, the kingdom would gain a savior—naturally, all rejoiced.
Countless nobles and royalty coveted the position of Royal Son-in-law to the newborn princess.
Some were mad enough to desire the position for themselves, but the vast majority sought to place infant boys of similar age to the princess, or even children not yet born whose sex remained unknown, into that coveted seat.
It was not merely power they craved, but the glory of becoming the father of a hero—the hope that the savior’s blood would flow through their own lineage.
The princess grew up surrounded by universal affection and intense scrutiny.
All awaited the hero who would vanquish the vile Demon Race that threatened mankind.

(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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