Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 191

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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 191. The Tower – The Spire Tower’s Princess (8)

Gual, lord of Mar Castle in the Demon Realm and general guarding the border with Human Territory, gnawed at his fingernails.
An undignified habit for a general and lord of a fortress.
Yet demon-kin born with innate Dark Magic were naturally fiery in temperament, and gnawing nails to ease anxiety was commonplace enough—almost genteel by their standards—to warrant no shame.
Especially not in a predicament like this.
“So the Castle Gate was breached by magic?”
At the general’s question, the officers under his command nodded reluctantly.
“The gate sustained partial damage, sir. Fortunately, the protective magic over the castle limited the destruction, so we’ve barricaded it at once.”
“But there’s a High-Level Mage in the enemy ranks! Damn it, I was careless. I thought two thousand troops was too small a force to worry about—I never imagined they’d bring someone of that caliber.”
Two thousand soldiers were far too few to conduct a proper siege.
He had assumed the enemy’s only option was a prolonged blockade to cut off supplies; clearly he’d been wrong.
Rachel’s magic was simple—only Class 3 in nature—but with enough gold poured into it, she could produce the power of a Class 5 spell.
Greater magical power and scale typically left traces in the surrounding mana before release, but Rachel’s talent for purchasing magic held no such tell.
It was natural the Demon-kin believed a High-Level Mage had arrived—one who completely dominated the ambient mana to mask the signatures of devastating spells.
In truth, given sufficient funds, Rachel was far more dangerous than any High-Level Mage.
She needed almost no time to prepare spells or cast them, and could unleash high-tier magic in rapid succession.
“That explains it—I noticed those grotesque eyeball-shaped Reconnaissance Magic orbs moving through the castle.”
The demon-kin had mistaken Han Ji-woo’s Mage’s Eye, which he’d been caught using, for Rachel’s Reconnaissance Magic deployed from outside the castle.
“Tch, if we’d dragged this into a prolonged siege with all these supplies, we could’ve held out easily until reinforcements arrived with plenty left over.”
The basic tactic in siege warfare was cutting off food supply lines.
It was the most fundamental strategy, attempted in both short and long campaigns.
But the demon-kin had been preparing to sweep through Human Territory in one swift advance, so the castle was crammed with vast stockpiles of preserved rations.
They couldn’t let the humans discover how much war material was stored here; reinforcements must have been sent from rear positions by now.
“Some casualties among the troops are unavoidable, but even a High-Level Mage cannot completely destroy the Castle Gate before reinforcements arrive. Therefore—”
Zzzzzt!!
An emergency alarm shrieked suddenly as the adjutant spoke.
This alarm was connected to the storage facility holding war materials.
“Insane! When did they get inside?! How in the hells did they find the supply depot?!”
“Alert! Mobilize every knight in the castle! Rats have infiltrated our walls!”
“Is this not a rescue attempt for the human princess—are they actually attacking because they’ve learned of our plan?!”
General Gual and his officers descended into chaos, scrambling in frantic response.
First, they had to eliminate the rats who’d breached the castle and struck at their war material warehouses.

* * *

After ransacking the first warehouse, passing the second, and reaching the third, I saw Knight Commander-ranked figures charging toward me.
I quickly smashed the third warehouse door open and swept everything inside into my inventory using telekinesis.
The second warehouse had been the Magic Stone Warehouse for spell components; the third was crammed with preserved rations.
Rice appeared to be the staple of demon-kin diet.
Dried fruit, vegetables, and meat were present too, but thousands of tons of rice sacks were stacked to the ceiling.
“Damn, should’ve hit the other warehouses first.”
The third warehouse was far larger than the first and second—built spacious for storing food supplies.
But I couldn’t leave it untouched without betraying the righteous cause of this noble theft meant to stop war.
You can wage war without strategic weapons, but you cannot wage war without food.
Supplies this vast could sustain an army of tens of thousands for at least half a year.
So to prevent war, I had to raid this food warehouse above all others.
Otherwise, I’d burn it down.
But what crime had the food committed?
“Enemy! There’s an enemy here!”
Unfortunately, while I was busily looting the warehouse, the demon-kin knights finally spotted me.
The sheer volume of supplies had delayed me too long.
“Kill that rat!”
“That’s a bit much. Calling a person a rat, really?”
I muttered in complaint at the demon-kin knight’s cry.
The demon-kin knights drew their blades and charged; I held the narrow entrance, kept my back protected to avoid encirclement, and countered their assault.
Born with innate Dark Magic, these demon-kin knights had reinforced bodies through magic, and their blades struck with a brutally overwhelming force.
But no matter how strong the blow—if it doesn’t connect, it means nothing.
Dodging the blades of the demon-kin knights, I struck their armor with the Heavy Strike Technique.
Crackle—boom!
Static electricity erupted, and the clear ring of metal on metal sang through the air.
The demon-kin knights struck by my fist—channeling the internal energy of the Lightning Thunder Demon God Technique that shattered Demonic power—convulsed with electricity, foam flecking their lips as they collapsed.
The Black Demonic Power that flowed through demon-kin by nature ran counter to my internal energy, making even a small amount devastatingly effective against them.
Of course, since these demon-kin knights were barely third-rate fighters, they would have gone down just as easily without the opposing force of Lightning—but it made the job quicker.
“They wouldn’t distribute Eternal Cold Iron to common soldiers, would they?”
These demon-kin knights were third-rate at best.
Even Owell, the captain of the infiltration team, seemed to have exceptional skill among the knights, yet didn’t quite reach first-rate—suggesting that the overall average ability level of this world was low.
It made sense: reliance on powerful divine artifacts from outside prevented martial artists from growing stronger.
“A Holy Knight! The intruder is using Holy Power!”
“Bring the Holy Suppression Device!”
Watching their comrades collapse from light strikes without even a chance to resist, the demon-kin knights mistook my internal energy for Holy Power.
While the demon-kin knights hesitated to approach, I continued systematically emptying their food supplies into the pocket dimension.
When nearly all the food had been transferred, the demon-kin knights returned with a small box.
“We’ve brought it!”
“Good! Kill the Holy Knight!”
The demon-kin knight who carried what appeared to be a magical device infused it with Black Demonic Power to activate its magic.
It seemed designed to nullify or suppress Holy Power.
Believing I could no longer use Holy Power, the demon-kin knights rushed at me again, and having thoroughly cleared the Supply Warehouse, I stored the Subspace Cube in my inventory, then threw my full internal energy into a charge toward them.
Crackle! Crackle-crackle!
“Aaaaagh!”
“Wh-what?! How are you still using Holy Power with the suppression device active?!”
Of course my internal energy wasn’t Holy Power, so there was no problem.
The demon-kin knights who took even a glancing touch of my electrical fist collapsed, foam at their mouths.
The ones hit harder coughed up blood.
While the demon-kin knights panicked, I used the Capturing Hand Technique to seize the suppression device from the box-holder, then stuffed it into my inventory.
“Haha! This is mine now. I can do whatever I want with it!”
Crash!
I smashed through the corridor window and escaped outside.
No matter how advantageous my internal energy was against demon-kin, I couldn’t win if multiple high-ranking knights in Eternal Cold Iron gear pressed the attack.
High-ranking knights struck me as roughly second-rate, and Eternal Cold Iron could boost them to at least first-rate, possibly even peak level.
“No—the intruder’s escaping! Catch him!”
Damn it. Three more storage facilities remained unsearched—and they looked important.
But attempting to raid critical installations now would be suicide.
I had extra lives to spare, so death itself held no terror.
But if I respawned at a different checkpoint instead of here, that was fine—except if I respawned at the same spot, I’d face a Respawn Kill.

* * *

A demon-kin knight burst urgently into the Command Headquarters where General Gual waited.
“Sir—disaster! The Snowsteel Warehouse, the Food Supplies storage, and the Magic Stone Warehouse—all completely emptied!”
“Emptied? Did the warehouse catch fire?”
Gual asked in shock, and the demon-kin knight shook his head, face ashen.
“No, sir! Everything stored there—completely gone. Vanished entirely!”
“That’s impossible!”
Gual’s voice rose in fury.
Spatial magic had never developed in this world—there were no pocket dimensions, not even basic Spatial Expansion Magic.
By Gual’s understanding—and that of all leaders in this realm—the disappearance of such massive quantities of supplies made no sense whatsoever.
Then one of the staff officers waiting in the headquarters spoke carefully.
“General, could the intruder be a Climber? As I understand it, Climbers can place and retrieve items in thin air, can they not?”
Climbers had appeared in the demon-kin realm too.
They remained the stuff of legend among common folk, but the ruling classes knew of their existence as fact.
The Climbers who typically visited demon-kin territory were those who, like them, wielded Black Demonic Power, though human Climbers, dwarf Climbers, and elf Climbers occasionally appeared as well.
Gual shook his head, dismissing the staff officer’s theory.
“I’m aware that Climbers can perform such unusual magic. But according to our intelligence, there’s a weight limit to how much they can store in their space. Five kilograms is what I know of, though some records from three hundred years ago mentioned ten kilograms. They couldn’t possibly carry off that massive quantity—a blade or two, perhaps, but not all of this.”
This realm had once belonged to the 30th Floor tier, but through the efforts of past heroes and Climbers, had descended to the 29th Floor.
“Then who—and how—could it have been?”
General Gual and the demon-kin command staff descended into confusion.
“We cannot afford this. Regardless of how the enemy managed it, we must immediately fortify the remaining warehouses and critical installations.”
There were seven crucial warehouses and facilities within the fortress.
This Command Headquarters, where the General and his command staff were stationed.
One Snowsteel Warehouse.
One Supply Warehouse.
Two Magic Stone Warehouses.
Two central storage facilities for the fortress’s defensive magical formations.
Of these, Han Ji-woo had plundered three locations that held materials critical to the Demon-kin’s forthcoming large-scale invasion operation.
“Ugh. But that leaves us short of troops to defend the walls….”
“If the magical formation’s core collapses, we’ll be undermanned even with our current forces. And there’s a High-Level Mage outside, isn’t there?”
At his adjutant’s words, Gual reluctantly nodded.
“Right. Just hold on a little longer—reinforcements are coming. Station the knights to guard the Magic Stone Warehouse and the core storage. Use whoever’s left to capture that Paladin bastard and beat the location of the supplies out of him. We must recover those materials by any means! Everything else is secondary—prioritize protecting the core and recovering the supplies!”
“Yes, sir!”
At Gual’s command, everyone moved with unified precision.
Gual bit his nails so hard they bled.
He had to recover those supplies, or his head would roll.
The princess was no longer even a concern for him.

(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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