Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 2

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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 2. The Tower – Tutorial (1)

“My ability is called Multidimensional Avatar.”
I focused on my ability.
A translucent window appeared, similar to a status window.

[Multidimensional Avatar]
[Avatar Points: 10]
[Avatar Slot 1]

It was a simple ability window, much like the status window.
Yet strangely, I could vaguely sense how to use this ability.
When I selected the Avatar Slot, another translucent window appeared.

[Searching dimensions….]
[Search complete]
[Available dimensions for avatar creation: 1. Earth / 2. Tower Floor 2]

Once the search completed, it revealed which dimensions I could create avatars in.
There were only two dimensions available, but I could understand the pattern.
“Dimensions… If I choose Earth, would my avatar appear in Korea?”
If my intuition was correct, this ability allowed my mind—or perhaps my soul—to enter the avatar and control it as if it were my own body.
But it would definitely appear in Korea, right?
It would be troublesome if my avatar suddenly manifested in some foreign country or the middle of the ocean.
“And Tower Floor 2 is available? So the stories about time flowing differently on each floor and each having its own world were actually true?”
Tower returnees testified that they had spent years inside the Tower, yet only days or months had passed when they returned to Earth.
Among the testimonies of Tower returnees, many lacked credibility or were difficult to believe, and it was common knowledge that the WPTO had conducted various censorship operations regarding the Tower since its establishment.
Because of this, the information released to the public was limited to what had been disclosed ten years ago when Tower returnees first appeared, and information up to the tenth floor released by the government for citizen safety.
Since I had never been particularly interested in entering the Tower, I only possessed basic information about it.
“What are Avatar Points for?”
It seemed that creating avatars didn’t cost points, but I couldn’t immediately grasp where to use them.
Since I had no points right now, there was no need to worry about it immediately.
“It’s a shame it’s not a direct and powerful superhuman ability, but it’s quite solid from a stability standpoint.”
Even if my avatar dies, I don’t.
Moreover, I can keep creating new avatars even if one dies.
This was an enormous advantage.
As long as I, the original body, remain safely on the first floor, I’m essentially immortal within the Tower.
I opened the Tower shop and purchased a one-handed sword and a shield with my points.
The one-handed sword had a blade approximately 80 centimeters long, a handle around 20 centimeters, and the flat of the blade measured roughly 5 centimeters across. The shield was a circular wooden construction about 60 centimeters in diameter and 3 centimeters thick, reinforced with an iron rim.
“This shield is heavy.”
Throwing it like some superhero in a movie seemed impossible.
Still, a shield needed to feel substantial like this to inspire confidence.
My points had dropped from 10 to 8, but that wasn’t a problem.
From what I understood, defeating monsters would grant me shop points.
I’d heard that Tower Floor 10 and below were tutorial-level difficulty—an ordinary person wielding a weapon could pass through Tower Floor 1 without much trouble if they’d already mastered their abilities there.
I set down the backpack I’d bought from the military supply store back when I was a private and cinched my combat boots tight.
I’d already taken spare uniforms and such home before my discharge, so the backpack was nearly empty, which somehow made it feel even more cumbersome.
“Avatar creation, Tower Floor 2.”
Tower Floor 2 filled the first slot, and my vision shifted.

* * *

From a pristine white void, I found myself in a room constructed of brick that resembled ancient ruins, and the crystal I’d seen on Tower Floor 1 materialized before me.
Two options emerged from the crystal.

[Proceed to Tower Floor 3? – Condition not met. Hunt 1 Horned Rabbit.]
[Exit The Tower? You will never be able to enter The Tower again, and all shared abilities will be confiscated.]

I skimmed over the crystal’s message and examined my body.
“Is this really an avatar?”
It felt no different from my actual body.
It didn’t feel like an avatar at all.
“Wait, where are my sword and shield?”
In my moment of panic, I reacted too slowly to the white furry mass that lunged at me.
Had I thrown even a punch, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but caught off guard, I couldn’t mount any defense and took the full impact.
“Ugh!”
Something sharp and pointed pierced my chest, stealing my breath away.
The white furry creature thrashed about, kicked my abdomen, and wrenched the long horn protruding from its forehead free.
The horned rabbit, its horn now stained with my blood, looked down at me with a mocking sneer.
“Squeak.”
This damned little beast…!
With that final thought, I returned to my original body.

* * *

I returned to the pure white space where only my avatar and I existed, clutching my chest as waves of pain washed over me, my breathing ragged and labored.
“Gasp! Gasp!”
It didn’t hurt.
Yet it did.
The vivid sensation—too real to be merely an avatar’s phantom pain—made my heart tremble with the memory of that piercing blow.
In my main body’s arms lay the shield and sword I had purchased.
“Damn it all! You manifest my clothes but not my weapons and shield?!”
I clenched my teeth.
Relief at surviving mingled with the dull ache of phantom pain, and fury mixed with shame toward the Horned Rabbit that had mocked me consumed my thoughts.
Killed by a mere Horned Rabbit!
I, Han Ji-woo, had never been one to tolerate humiliation since childhood.
Regardless of anything else, I would make certain to kill that rabbit bastard before leaving the Tower.
First, I needed to calm myself.
A bald man’s heart burns with fire.
No—I would act with a cool head and a burning spirit.
I analyzed my current situation.
“What determines how an avatar is created? Why weren’t the weapons and shield manifested?”
In my panic, I hadn’t noticed that the avatar was carrying the backpack I’d left on the ground.
That meant the avatar’s form was based on how I appeared when I first acquired the ability.
When I obtained the ability, the common Tower skills manifested first, followed by my personal skills.
Then could the avatar also possess the common Tower abilities?
I wouldn’t know without checking through the avatar.
As I opened my ability window, I could see the changes in the slots.

[Multidimensional Avatar]
[Avatar Points: 10]
[Avatar Slot 1: Tower Floor 2 / Time 00:00:08 – Status: Dead]
[Points Required for Avatar Regeneration: 1]

So Avatar Points were what I needed for resurrection.
An invisible timer appeared beside it.
And that timer wasn’t advancing.
“Could time be frozen in other dimensions?”
I’d have to verify that as well.
I created another avatar on Tower Floor 2.

* * *

My body lay on the ground.
From the warm, sticky stench of blood I felt seeping beneath my back, it seemed a new clone had been generated at the exact spot where I had died.
The hole in my chest had vanished.
The Horned Rabbit, oblivious to my resurrection, was contentedly wiping my blood from its face with its adorable front paws.
Without moving, I immediately checked if the shop window would open.
The moment I purchased a one-handed sword from the shop and rose to my feet, I slashed at the Horned Rabbit with all my might.
“Squeak!”
The cursed Horned Rabbit sensed my sudden awakening and tried to evade, but my blood had clouded its vision—it couldn’t escape and fell to my blade.
“Revenge for my Clone Number One. Damn you, Bugs Bunny!”
Yes! I won!
I raised my sword high and struck a victorious pose.
Now that I’d won, the blood caked across my back felt unbearably uncomfortable.
“…There’s no way to wash up, is there?”
My pants had escaped the blood, but my shirt and bag were thoroughly soaked in it.
Clone Number One’s wound hadn’t been large, but the hemorrhaging was severe because the heart had been pierced.
I wanted to wash and change immediately, but I couldn’t do that until Tower Floor 10.
I’d heard that Tower Floor 10 was a common area where a town appears.
You can’t return to cleared floors, but you can return to the common residential floors, they said.
The text that appeared on the crystal had changed as well.

[Proceed to Tower Floor 3? – You cannot return to Tower Floor 2 again.]

Before ascending to Tower Floor 3, I extracted a fingernail-sized mana stone from the Horned Rabbit’s corpse.
Mana stones were a novel substance that had garnered attention as a new energy source since The Tower and the Gate emerged.
As I picked up the mana stone, I noticed a green mana stone beside the blue one.
“There were two mana stones?”
I sensed something emanating from the green mana stone.
“Ah, could this be an ability stone?”
Tower returnees, unlike naturally awakened ability users, possessed more than one ability.
There were abilities gained upon entering The Tower and abilities obtained through these ability stones.
Ability stones were supposedly extraordinarily rare, yet here I was obtaining one.
The problem was that I couldn’t identify what ability it granted until I actually absorbed it.
I’d heard that as you ascend The Tower, you can obtain something called an “appraisal scroll” that identifies unknown items.
For now, I didn’t see any appraisal scrolls in The Tower’s shop.
“Well, I’ll just have to try absorbing it.”
Ability stones were called lottery items alongside high-grade recovery potions, but naturally, abilities were worth more than money!
But how do I absorb it? Should I eat it?
As I pondered this, the ability stone responded to my will, sublimating from solid to gas and vanishing.
Then, a swordsmanship technique I’d never seen before was etched into my mind.
Checking my status window, I saw [Azure Wood Sword Lv1] listed next to Multidimensional Avatar.
I swung the sword according to the technique inscribed in my mind.
My body couldn’t quite keep up with the swordsmanship in my head, but it felt distinctly different from when I’d swung the sword at the Horned Rabbit moments ago.
It was a strange and wondrous experience, having never learned swordsmanship before.
“Azure Wood Sword doesn’t display an ability window like Multidimensional Avatar does. Is the avatar special because it’s an ability gained in The Tower? Or does each ability work differently?”
Even Tower returnees didn’t explain their abilities in detail—abilities that were essentially their foundation—so I couldn’t tell if my abilities were special or not.
I opened my inventory to store the blood-stained mana stone.
Inside the inventory was the discharge certificate I’d placed in my main body.
“Wait! Could it be that shared abilities link the clone and main body?”
If so, my main body wouldn’t need to spend shop points on expensive food.
As I was about to place the mana stone in my inventory, I remembered the time differential between dimensions, so I casually tossed it into the air and shifted my consciousness back to my main body.
After counting a full twenty seconds in my main body, I returned to the clone and saw the mana stone falling.
“So time really does stop when you’re in a different dimension.”
I picked up the mana stone, placed it in my inventory, and brought up my status window in the clone’s body.

[Multidimensional Avatar]
[Absorption]
[Main Body: Tower Floor 1 / Time 00:02:48]

The clone’s status displayed the main body’s location and time instead of the avatar information.
And where it previously said “avatar points,” it now displayed “absorption.”
When I selected absorption, an explanation appeared.

[You can absorb the avatar’s abilities into your main body.]

There was no detailed explanation, but I could roughly grasp what kind of ability this was.
It was the ability to send the skills my clone had acquired and the stats it had grown to my main body.
The clone would disappear after transferring its abilities to the main body, but since I could create clones endlessly, calling it a “disappearance” wasn’t quite accurate.
“Indeed, this is how the system grows me.”
I pressed the absorption option, and my consciousness returned from the clone to my main body.

* * *

[Name: Han Ji-woo / Age: 21]
[Strength: 8 / Agility: 11 / Stamina: 9 / Intelligence: 15 / Mana: 1]
[Status: Normal, Hungry]
[Abilities: Multidimensional Avatar Lv 1, Azure Wood Blade Lv 1]

Checking my status window after returning to my main body, I found that the “Azure Wood Blade” ability that had only existed in my clone was now added to my own.
Immediately after, a notification appeared as if my ability window was alerting me.

[Obtained 10 Avatar Points from absorbing an avatar.]
[Multidimensional Avatar has leveled up. It is now Lv 2.]
[Obtained 100 Avatar Points from leveling up Multidimensional Avatar.]

“So Avatar Points are earned through absorption and leveling up?”
It seemed the ability’s level and points were determined by how much I had grown my clone.
Fortunately, it appeared that Avatar Points weren’t consumed simply by absorbing and regenerating my clone.
If they were, absorption itself would have been limited.
I transferred my consciousness back to my clone and placed my hand on the crystal of Tower Floor 2, heading toward Tower Floor 3.
Surely the blade wouldn’t disappear again?

(To be continued in the next chapter)

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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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