Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 188

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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 188. The Tower – The Princess of the Spire (5)

Under the leadership of Infiltration Squad Captain Owell, we reviewed the operation once more and thoroughly assessed the capabilities of Jose, Gillen, and Na Cheol-min.
Jose’s physical abilities, for one, didn’t exceed those of a robust adult male.
But his summoned creatures, crafted from monster hides, were formidable—each one seemed to match a Lizardman Warrior or at least a run-of-the-mill monster from the early-to-mid 30s floors.
In terms of pure summoning strength, they were slightly superior to Lee Su-young’s Slime.
The hide summons had a drawback, though: unlike the Slime, they couldn’t act autonomously. If Jose fell unconscious, they’d simply revert to leather cloth.
Gillen’s Stealth was formidable—even his presence vanished, making him difficult to locate. Yet someone attuned to magical energy like me could pinpoint him once I’d fixed his position.
Megroleta’s Mage subordinate had been found with little difficulty, after all.
Conversely, if I failed to identify his location initially, it would be extraordinarily hard to track him down afterward.
Gillen had apparently learned Martial Arts on the 20th Floor to better leverage his Stealth ability.
The 20th Floor District City had a Martial Arts Hall that taught standardized martial techniques, much like the Magic Tower taught sorcery.
Though I’d never been there myself.
Na Cheol-min, as a Space Teleportation user, naturally wasn’t particularly combat-capable on his own.
He fought using basic Magic Bullet-type magical tools, and his combat method was quite unorthodox.
Beyond his ability to mark spatial coordinates with runes for long-range teleportation, he could create invisible, tiny “gates” anywhere within twenty meters of himself, firing Magic Bullets through them to strike enemies from their blind spots.
The gates were smaller than the rune-marked doors—only large enough for fist-sized objects to pass through—but that was more than sufficient for firing Magic Bullets.
It was a useful ability in many respects, though climbing the Tower with it seemed to require considerable training.
Megroleta’s Knights were competent—by martial standards, roughly second-class professionals.
But thanks to their Perpetual Cold Iron equipment, they could comfortably reach first-class standards, and with luck might even hold their own against masters.
The Mage was early 3rd Class, and the Priest’s Holy Power seemed inadequate compared to even the Cardinal, let alone Diana.
The Mage’s level was immediately apparent to my judgment, but the Priest’s capabilities I couldn’t assess—I didn’t wield Holy Power myself.
“We’ll wrap up the ability assessment here. Let’s begin the infiltration immediately.”
Owell took the lead with a grave expression.
He tried not to show it, but anxiety was visible on his face—he was clearly worried about the princess’s safety.
Then a question occurred to me.
Why had the Demon-kin “kidnapped” the princess? Wouldn’t assassination have been easier?

* * *

Rachel watched the soldiers move busily about, arranging their formations.
“There are far more soldiers than I expected.”
The troop strength was quite substantial—it appeared to be as many as two thousand.
Lee Su-young looked puzzled at Rachel’s comment.
“Two thousand is a lot? That seems small, doesn’t it?”
Rachel and Diana exchanged startled glances at Su-young’s remark.
“Two thousand being few? Even by modern military standards, that would constitute at least a full regiment.”
Lee Su-young tilted her head slightly at Rachel’s words.
“Well, I don’t know much about the Military, but isn’t that still a small number?”
Before entering the Tower, Su-young had been a high school girl with no connection to the Military, so she had little sense of what a regiment entailed.
Yet from history class, she’d always heard about the Sui’s million-strong armies invading Goguryeo, or the Khitan’s tens of thousands attacking Goryeo—so numbers in the thousands seemed meager for actual warfare.
Especially since she herself was now part of those numbers, it felt all the more insufficient.
Combat would begin soon, and naturally, the more allied soldiers present, the safer she and her companions would feel.
“Wouldn’t you need at least twenty or thirty thousand to fight properly?”
Diana responded to Su-young’s remark.
“That scale would be a full-scale war for the nation’s fate, not a rescue operation.”
Rachel and Diana, trained in Western-centric history, were accustomed to battles in the hundreds to thousands at most.
This difference stemmed from the distinct timelines when East and West unified tribal nations into ethnically unified states.
The East had already formed powerful centralized empires in ancient times before the Common Era and maintained those systems, while the West either remained fragmented until the medieval period or formed feudal states that lacked true centralization even after unification.
Since states and fiefs operated on entirely different scales, the troops they could muster naturally differed, and this historical consciousness shaped cultural differences.
Rachel added to Diana’s point.
“And if you deploy that many people just to rescue one person, it becomes inefficient. Even this number seems substantial.”
“Oh, come to think of it, in the mystery manga I read, kidnappings do have a golden hour. I suppose having fewer numbers is unavoidable then.”
Though Rachel and Diana struggled to agree with Su-young’s assessment that the numbers were small, cultural differences couldn’t be helped.
Diana studied the shared map and spoke.
“Still, Ji-woo needs to be safe.”
At Diana’s concern, Lee Su-young laughed lightly, as if she had no worries left.
“You saw him fight, didn’t you? Worrying about him is less productive than worrying about us, don’t you think?”
Lee Su-young’s words caught Rachel’s interest.
“How exactly did they fight?”
In response to Rachel’s question, Lee Su-young relayed through the party group’s Community chat—keeping the conversation hidden from the others—the various anecdotes she’d witnessed about Han Ji-woo.

-Han Ji-woo: Wait, why are you suddenly talking about me?

Since it was party chat, Han Ji-woo saw the messages while heading toward the Secret Passage and reacted, but Lee Su-young brushed him off as saying it was nothing and went on to describe in detail how he’d fought the Lizardman King like a madman.
They were in the same party, so it felt a bit off to create a group chat excluding Han Ji-woo instead of just doing a one-on-one conversation.

-Han Ji-woo: I’m not that crazy. You’re exaggerating.
-Lee Su-young: It’s not gossip behind your back—it’s right in front of you.
-Han Ji-woo: Oh, you’re right.

From Lee Su-young’s perspective, Han Ji-woo lacked self-awareness.
To her eye, he threw caution to the wind in a way that looked genuinely reckless.
She knew he did it because he trusted his Regeneration, but even before he’d gained that ability, Han Ji-woo had been rash—back on the 11th Floor of the Tower, when he cut through the rope he was standing on just to shake off that monster wolf.
That alone proved it.
While they chatted away the time, Han Ji-woo sent a message.

-Han Ji-woo: Going inside the Fortress now.

At Han Ji-woo’s report, Rachel headed toward Megroleta, the commander of the Rescue Force.
Not only Han Ji-woo but Jose had also sent a message—and because of that, Pam-tamin, Jose’s colleague, found Megroleta as well.
When Rachel and Pam-tamin arrived, Megroleta’s expression grew intrigued.
“Long-range communication that enemies can’t detect or jam. Say, once this is all over, does anyone have thoughts about taking a commission? I’d treat you well.”
At Megroleta’s offer, Rachel smiled and bowed her head slightly.
“It’s a kind offer, but we have our own goals. I’m afraid we can’t abandon those to take up a post in a distant foreign land like this.”
Pam-tamin nodded in agreement with Rachel’s words.
“I see. Then I suppose there’s no help for it. I’ll trust that you’ll give your utmost effort at least until my sister—the Princess—is rescued.”
“Of course. We’ll do everything in our power to save Her Highness.”
Megroleta nodded and mounted his horse.
“All forces, advance!”
At Megroleta’s shout, the Rescue Force that had been standing ready began moving with flawless coordination.

* * *

The small Infiltration Squad, myself included, had set out to secretly infiltrate the Demon-kin Fortress. Now we slipped into an Abandoned House, practically crumbling in a sparse forest far from any settlement.
When we brushed aside the dust-choked floor of the house, a stone door appeared.
The Mage cast a silencing spell, and the Knight Commander broke it open easily.
It seemed to be an escape route, designed to open only from inside and not from outside.
Of course, breaking it like this meant enemies could now enter through the Secret Passage from the outside as well.
The Infiltration Squad entered the passage and had to move single-file through a corridor that was neither wide nor tall—we had to crouch the whole way.
If it were spacious enough to move freely, we could be detected from outside using magic or other means, so the narrow passage was unavoidable.
Jose, whose frame was large, let out a low complaint about the difficulty of navigating the passage.
“Eight people is too many for this.”
Still, compared to the two Knights in full plate armor, Jose was moving relatively comfortably.
After moving through the cramped passage in an awkward crouch for quite some time, we finally reached the exit into the Fortress interior.
Owell, the leader of the Infiltration Squad who stood at the front, spoke in a low voice.
“Climbers, make your report.”
At his words, Jose and I nodded, and shortly after, Rachel’s message came through: Megroleta was leading an army of two thousand toward the Fortress.
“We breach the moment we sense the commotion. The teams move as planned beforehand.”
Based on the Fortress’s layout, there were three likely locations where the Princess might be held.
The Spire’s exile quarters, the Central Guest Hall, and the Underground Prison.
Of the three candidates, the most dangerous was the Guest Hall, which had the most barriers to break through; next was the Spire, then the Underground Prison.
Therefore, four of us were assigned to the Central Guest Hall, two to the Spire, and two to the Underground Prison.
Owell and the Mage would go to the Guest Hall, along with the Climbers Na Cheol-min and Jose.
Since breaking in was as dangerous as breaking out, Na Cheol-min—who could escape at any time using Space Teleportation—was included here.
Jose was included because he was good at using summons as cannon fodder.
Na Cheol-min’s Space Teleportation could transport a maximum of three people including himself.
Once the Princess and Jose were teleported out, Owell and the Mage would essentially be dead men walking.
Owell and the Mage seemed prepared, though they surely knew the danger better than anyone.
The next most perilous location, the Spire, would be tackled by the Knight Commander and Gillen, while the relatively safer Underground Prison would fall to myself and the Priest.
The path to the Spire lay exposed on all sides, making Gillen—who could wield Stealth—better suited than me; since Gillen could extend the Stealth’s effect to one other person for a short duration, the Knight Commander would accompany him.
If the Princess was indeed in the Spire, Gillen’s Stealth would need to shield her instead, leaving the Knight Commander as good as dead.
Should the Princess be held in the Underground Prison, she would surely have been treated poorly, which meant the Priest—capable of healing with Holy Power—had to go.
I couldn’t send the Priest alone, so I found myself assigned as his escort.
Owell, his eyes closed and his attention fixed on the sounds around him, suddenly snapped them open and gave a quiet command.
“Now. Good fortune to us all.”
The moment Owell opened the Secret Passage and we slipped into the fortress, our teams scattered, each sprinting off in our designated directions.
I ran behind the middle-aged Priest, dispatching the Mage’s eyes throughout the fortress as we went.
The primary objective was the Princess. The secondary objective was the Perpetual Cold Iron.
Wait for me! Every scrap of Perpetual Cold Iron in this fortress is mine!

(To be 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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