Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 198

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 198. The Tower – Treasure Island (3)

I woke early again as habit dictated and ran through my martial arts forms.
Internal Energy flowed through the blade’s edge, and a pale blue lightning crackled along its length.
Each stroke grew sharper and swifter—the sword technique now had none of the soft, wind-like fluidity I’d mastered before, but instead descended with the savage fury of a lightning bolt from the heavens.
The Lightning Thunder Demon God Technique I’d recently learned paired well enough with the Roeyeon Sword from my family’s legacy, yet the stability I’d known when my Internal Energy and martial form had been perfectly aligned was noticeably lacking.
It couldn’t be helped; the Lightning Thunder Demon God Technique’s foundation came from outside the Cheon Family, after all.
When I finished that single round of sword dance training and stood drenched in sweat, I heard applause.
“Wow, is that martial arts training? It looks like such an impassioned dance—it’s beautiful.”
Rachel must have woken early too; she watched with admiration, her hair still tousled from sleep.
In the Martial Arts World, it was taboo to spy on another’s training, but Rachel was a mage and held no such customs.
Besides, if I’d wanted privacy, I should have trained far from Base Camp—her presence wasn’t her fault.
And I already knew she’d been letting her Mage’s Eye drift around the Base Camp area while practicing it.
I sheathed my sword and used magic to sweep the sweat away.
“Good morning. Since you focus on magic, it’s better you don’t pursue martial arts.”
Unlike me, Rachel’s magic was grounded in her physical body rather than an Astral Body foundation.
Magic based on the flesh carried the risk of creating an Energy Balance System imbalance, but since Climbers received the Tower’s Blessing, their bodies grew simply from hunting monsters, so it wasn’t a serious concern.
Internal Energy used in martial arts was heavy and required a stronger body to channel it, but Magical Power was lighter—so even a relatively frail body wouldn’t throw the balance into serious discord.
At my words, Rachel glanced toward the tent, then asked with surprise.
“Did you teach Diana and Lee Su-young martial arts?”
“Diana’s a vanguard, so learning martial arts gives her stability. Lee Su-young gets some Self-Defense Technique—enough to create distance quickly if needed.”
“But still, the power received from the Tower is the very foundation itself…”
Rachel stared at me with evident confusion.
“Foundation is just that—foundation. When you invest, when you place trust, you have to do it with certainty.”
Rachel looked at me with mild surprise at my words.
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh, my brother used to say something like that long ago.”
“Ha ha, what an honor. I’ll go wash up first, then.”
I brushed it aside lightly and stepped into the makeshift shower I’d rigged up, letting cold water cascade over me.
The water came from sea water I’d purified with magic, separating out only the clean water.
After showering, the water pooled on the ground and flowed through drainage channels I’d dug, emptying down the Coastal Cliff below.
Once I’d finished washing, I prepared a hearty breakfast.
After we all ate together, before settling in for sleep, I handed out Cooling Cloaks I’d simply enchanted, one to each party member.
They all seemed genuinely delighted, having worn down yesterday’s heat.
“Don’t pry the Magic Stones off the cloak. They’re the power source. They should last about a week.”
“Yes! Thank you so much!”
I took a copied Map, and my party members scattered once more in different directions to search.
“The skull’s eyes glow red, it says—red…”
I sat back in my chair at leisure, pondering the riddle while sending my Mage’s Eye across the island in all directions.

* * *

On our second day at Floor 33.
We’d been searching without any findings.
Unlike the first day, Lee Su-young and Diana now trained their martial arts while moving around the island, while I practiced Internal Energy Cultivation at Base Camp.
Rachel learned how to handle the Mage’s Eye from me.
The third day was much the same.
It was leisurely and peaceful—Diana and I had no real complaints, but Lee Su-young, with her slightly impatient nature, and Rachel, who wanted to prove her necessity, both seemed frustrated by the lack of progress.
Still, when I explained that both martial arts and magic required patient, unhurried practice, they both nodded in agreement.
Time passed that way, and by lunchtime on the fourth day.
Lee Su-young reported a discovery through a Community Message.

-Lee Su-young: There’s a wrecked ship and skeletal remains of a person in a cave beneath the Coastal Cliff! Come quick!

At Lee Su-young’s report, we all headed toward the location she’d marked on the Minimap.

* * *

Following Lee Su-young’s directions, we found a Coastal Cave hidden within the Coastal Cliff.
Or rather, it wasn’t so much hidden as positioned in a spot invisible from the island itself due to the terrain.
It seemed Lee Su-young had discovered it while circling the island from the sea on the Flying Carpet she’d obtained on Floor 23, carrying a Slime.
Rachel called out from inside the cave, watching Lee Su-young lean out and wave her hand.
“How did you get over there!”
“I rode the Slime!”
Lee Su-young enlarged three Slimes and sent them our way.
Now that I thought about it, the monster encyclopedia did classify Slimes as aquatic creatures, didn’t it?
We rode the Slimes she sent, passed through the Reef Area, and entered the Coastal Cave.
The Coastal Cave was far roomier than it appeared, and moored inside was a medium-sized sailing ship.
Rachel spoke as she gazed at the vessel.
“It looks similar to a galley. Seeing all those barnacle-like things stuck to the bottom of the ship, it seems like quite a long time has passed since it was moored here.”
Just as she said, so much time had passed that the ropes had rotted away in the saltwater, frayed and broken in places.
The rope ladder lowered beneath the ship looked intact at first glance, but the moment I put my weight on it to climb, it snapped with a crack.
I turned to Lee Su-young with a question.
“Where did you find the skeleton?”
“On top of that ship.”
Lee Su-young rode the Slime and bounced high into the air.
Splat!
Could a Slime even do that?
Ah, it just rammed its body upward toward the sky.
Her creativity is remarkable.
I followed in Lee Su-young’s footsteps, using Light Body Technique to leap lightly onto the ship’s deck.
Fortunately, though it was a wooden ship, it hadn’t suffered major damage from being moored inside the cave.
I tapped the deck lightly with my steps and kicked at the railings with my foot—both held firm.
“It looks like we can climb aboard safely.”
I pulled a Rope from my Inventory and secured it to the railing, then lowered it down.
Diana, who had trained in Martial Arts, climbed up without difficulty, but Rachel had to use Magic to lighten her own body weight before she could barely make it up.
She looked light, but her lack of strength showed.
Diana put on her gloves and examined the skeleton carefully before speaking.
“The left ribcage is fractured. It appears the person was attacked by something—judging by the fracture area and pattern, I’d say it was more likely caused by a blade than a blunt instrument. Looking at the teeth, there are signs of prolonged gum disease, probably from frequent scurvy due to long voyages. The leg bones show traces of a fracture that healed improperly, suggesting this person likely walked with a limp. And with so many fractures and cracks throughout the skeleton that have since healed, it’s highly probable this was a combat veteran who frequently suffered injuries.”
Diana spoke with the expertise of a graduate student of medicine.
Based on the size of the bloodstain remaining on the deck, she estimated the skeleton’s cause of death was exsanguination from a chest wound.
To me, it was just a skeleton corpse, so I was amazed at how she could determine such things.
“If that flag hanging there is a pirate flag, then this ship is a pirate vessel, and this person was a pirate.”
Diana nodded in agreement with my observation.
“That does seem to be the case.”
We explored the interior of the pirate ship. Inside, the stench of decay and aged odor hung thick in the air.
“Ugh! The smell!”
Lee Su-young and Rachel, who had weak stomachs, retreated because of the reek.
“Just stay here. I’ll go in and look around by myself.”
At my words, Rachel pulled out a card and spoke.
“I can use Magic to create an air barrier to block out the smell.”
Whatever Magic she cast, a wind veil enveloped us, and we no longer detected the foul odor.
Venturing together into the ship’s interior, we discovered the source of the stench: Food Supplies stored in the hold had rotted and decomposed.
The corpse on deck had reduced to bones, yet remarkably the provisions had stopped at mere decay.
Perhaps it was because the space was sealed?
Ship’s biscuits were worm-eaten, but they hadn’t rotted.
Inside the ship, we found nothing of particular value—rotted Ropes and nets, tattered clothes, Crossbows and Arrows, rusted Pistols and Lead Bullets.
Seeing that the Pistols had matchcords rather than flintlocks, the technological era of this world seemed to be roughly the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
While examining the interior, I discovered a space that appeared to be the Captain’s Quarters.
There were navigation tools: Calcite for determining the sun’s position even on cloudy days, a Compass, a Star Map, a Nautical Chart, and a Telescope.
Diana spoke while studying the Star Map.
“Looking at this Star Map, it doesn’t seem to be the Earth we know.”
I wasn’t well-versed in constellations, but I at least knew the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia—yet none of the stars I recognized were present here.
As I rummaged through a drawer, I found a worn notebook.
“A Ship’s Log.”
I quickly skimmed through the Ship’s Log.
To summarize the log’s contents briefly, it was as follows.
The captain of this pirate ship, the log’s owner, had once been the right hand—or at least an intimate associate of equal standing—to the legendary pirate Red Beard.
Then, true to his pirate nature, he betrayed Red Beard over the treasure he’d amassed, covet­ing it for himself.
Expecting loyalty from a pirate in the first place was foolish; it was less betrayal than independence, really.
The Pirate Captain coveted not only the vast wealth of gold and silver Red Beard had collected over a lifetime, but when he betrayed Red Beard, the true treasure he sought was the “Treasure of Immortality” that Red Beard had obtained thanks to a young priestess on Banoff Island.
For the record, the island where I now stood was a nameless deserted island.
Yet despite the fatal betrayal, the captain never obtained Red Beard’s treasure.
Red Beard had already hidden the Treasure of Immortality on this island and vanished.
Years passed before they found Red Beard again, but by then he’d lost his memory and was living an ordinary life as a one-armed fisherman.
The captain ransacked the memory-stricken Red Beard’s dwelling and discovered records and a map that Red Beard had left before losing his past—and came to retrieve the treasure.
It was probably the same map we’d seen, or one without the warning message Red Beard had sent to himself.
“Treasure of Immortality—even the name sounds inauspicious and wicked.”
It was the sort of name that made you feel cursed to become an octopus-head.
I suspected this Treasure of Immortality might be what the Tower was telling us to find.
The truncated journal didn’t record the treasure’s location, but since it belonged to someone Red Beard knew well, there were notes about the reasoning process to deduce the treasure’s position from Red Beard’s way of thinking.
“Red Beard loved sunsets where the evening glow painted the sky… I think I can roughly understand what ‘when the skull’s eyes glow red’ means.”
At my words, everyone re-examined the passage I’d read.
Then they looked at me with puzzled eyes.
“How did you figure that out from this?”
“Well, I can’t say this is exactly it—it’s only a guess, really.”
I gathered the Ship’s Log and headed outside.
The thought of having to wander the island again searching for skulls if my guess was wrong made me sick.
If I’m wrong, we’ll head back to the Common Floor.

* * *

I climbed the mountain with my party.
If my guess was right, I’d find the skull Red Beard had marked once I reached the peak.
“I searched that mountain thoroughly yesterday, you know.”
Lee Su-young asked whether there really was a skull on the mountain.
Rachel spoke up in response.
“The sun’s starting to set. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tomorrow morning to search?”
I shook my head at Rachel’s suggestion.
“No—if we don’t go now, we won’t find it.”
Even on a low-altitude mountain, descending at night was dangerous.
That’s why Red Beard must have hidden the treasure so it could only be found if you climbed the mountain at this specific time of day.
Fortunately, we climbed diligently enough to reach the Mountain Peak before the sun set.
I’d worried about Rachel’s stamina on the way up, but it seemed she had the Tower’s Blessing—and while her raw strength might be lacking, she had the endurance of a decent athlete.
I studied the map and the sun’s position, surveying the terrain below the mountain.
“It should be this direction…”
Lee Su-young sat down on a nearby rock and said:
“I looked around when we got up here, and there was no skull down there.”
Everyone followed my gaze toward the land below, and slowly the sunset began painting the sky behind us.
“What?!”
The party gasped at the sight unfolding below the mountain.
“A skull!”
As the sun shifted position, various objects on the island cast shadows that formed the silhouette of a skull across its surface.
We’d found nothing no matter how hard we looked—but reading the Ship’s Log had let me recall the shadows.
Diana marveled at the sight.
“‘When the skull’s eyes glow red’—that was referring to when the sunset casts its light across the island.”
In the hollowed eye sockets of the black skull-shaped shadow, the red glow of the sunset filled perfectly.
“So when it says ‘follow the direction of its gaze’—that means following the direction the eyes are looking?”
The right eye of the shadow skull had a pupil, but it was shifted to one side.
“It said that when I gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into me. If we look from where that eye is, in the direction it’s looking, shouldn’t we find something?”
Based on my reasoning, I marked the skull’s eye position on the map and we descended the mountain.
As we came down, I noticed the sun’s movement meant the skull-shaped shadow existed for only about ten minutes.
No wonder we’d failed to find it.
We reached the position of the skull’s eye that I’d marked on the map beforehand and looked in the direction the shadow pupil was pointing.
Everyone searched intently for anything unusual when Lee Su-young spotted something.
“Oh! Something’s shining!”
In the direction Lee Su-young indicated, something glowed in the darkness like the eye of a wild beast.
Upon closer inspection, something hidden deep within a dense thicket was faintly luminescent, reflecting light from within a cave.
The way it gleamed looked like an eyeball, if anything. Unsettling.
So that’s why they say the abyss gazes back when you gaze into it.
The next problem was the phrase about the demon’s lair leading there.
Was that also metaphorical? But once they said Treasure of Immortality, it somehow didn’t feel like a metaphor anymore.
“Since we’ve confirmed the location, should we head out tomorrow?”
Everyone nodded at my suggestion.
“Yes, there’s no need to hunt for such a fishy, ominous treasure like the Treasure of Immortality in the dead of night.”
We were all in agreement and about to return to Base Camp when Lee Su-young studied the map and spoke up.
“But it’s very close to the Coastal Cave I discovered, isn’t it?”
At Lee Su-young’s words, I examined the map myself.
“You’re right. I wonder if that pirate who was dead on the deck went into that cave, fell into a trap, got wounded, and escaped?”
Rachel chimed in at my speculation.
“Or maybe they fought over who gets the treasure. They’re pirates, after all.”
Rachel’s theory made sense, so I nodded in agreement.
It was a pirate crew run by a man who had already betrayed others and started his own crew from scratch.
Greedy dogs like that would forget their own parents and siblings the moment a precious treasure was within reach.
Morning of the fifth day since we’d ascended to Floor 33.
We entered the cave where the treasure was believed to be.

(To be continued in the next chapter)

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————