Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 200

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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 200. The Tower — The Cursed Treasure of Immortality (2)

Once Diana confirmed we were safe, she immediately poured Holy Power into my leg.
Beads of sweat began to form on Diana’s forehead as she channeled the Holy Power.
“It’s a terrible curse. It won’t be easy to drive it out.”
“Hmm… how long do you think it will take?”
At my question, Diana studied my leg carefully while continuing to pour Holy Power into it.
“Perhaps… two days?”
Diana, who had so effortlessly dispelled even the dying curse of a Class Five Night Walker back on the previous floor — despite being weakened from starvation — was saying it would take two days?
At those words, I told her to stop using her Holy Power.
“Everyone, step back.”
I pushed my companions away from me, lifted my leg, and without hesitation sliced it clean off with my sword.
“Ahhh! Why?!”
Rachel screamed as I severed my leg.
The severed limb, completely consumed by scales and transformed into a small fish-like monster, began belching mist to shield itself from the sun.
But its body was so small and the mist it exhaled so sparse that when I scattered it away with Wind Magic, the creature was exposed to direct sunlight and withered into powder.
“So sunlight is its weakness. Next time we enter the cave, let’s focus on Solar Magic.”
Rachel turned to me in alarm at my words.
“Is that really what matters right now?! What about your leg!”
I laughed, drank a Mana Recovery Potion, and activated my Regeneration ability at full power.
Rather than simply closing the wound, I made the bone grow from scratch.
“Ugh, I’m running out of mana…!”
Reattaching a severed limb didn’t require that much magical power, but creating a missing one from nothing demanded an enormous amount.
Even after using all the Internal Energy from my Dantian and every drop of magical power from my Astral Body, the bone had only grown about three centimeters.
I continuously drank Mana Recovery Potions while regenerating bones, blood vessels, muscles, and skin.
“Gasp… gasp…”
When I finished regenerating, I was on the verge of complete exhaustion.
It seemed that regeneration consumed not just magical power but physical stamina as well — something I hadn’t noticed before.
I should have just absorbed my Clone and created a new one instead.
Still, my Regeneration skill jumped dramatically from level 26 to level 43, and my Pain Resistance rose to level 29.
Though it was just below the ankle — only about twenty centimeters — the process of creating a missing limb from nothing was extraordinarily painful.
Rachel stared at my regenerated leg with apparent disgust.
“…What, are you some kind of lizard?”
Lee Su-young and Diana chimed in agreement with Rachel’s comment.
“Yeah. I thought you were just reattaching a severed limb, but this is literally like a lizard.”
“Even lizards take months to regrow their tails. And their regrown tails are usually weaker or shorter, but Ji-woo regenerated yours perfectly.”
I collapsed onto the ground, utterly spent, and answered.
“Phew… it’s harder than it looks, I tell you.”
“It didn’t look easy to begin with. I saw you sweating cold sweat while regenerating — there’s no way it could be.”
Rachel looked at me in disbelief, then turned her gaze anxiously toward the cave.
“By the way, when the sun sets, those things aren’t going to come out of the cave, are they?”
I shook my head in response to her worry.
“From fighting them, it seemed like the cave itself is sealed by some kind of sorcery. If they could escape, they would have gotten out long ago.”
The monsters the statue had been controlling were likely the traitorous Pirate Captain and his crew who had come searching for Red Beard’s treasure.
They would know that a ship was moored at the Coastal Cave on the island, so if they could escape the cave, they would have abandoned the island long ago.
Even if it became day, as long as they wrapped themselves in the mist that my cursed leg had expelled to protect itself from sunlight, they’d be fine.
“From what I can see, the monsters are controlled by the statue and can’t stray far from it, and the statue is bound by sorcery and can’t escape the cave.”
Judging from the curse written in Red Beard’s map cursing the woman who deceived him, and from the Pirate Captain’s log, it was probably a measure set by some sorcerer from an island mentioned in the log.
I didn’t know who, but she was a wise woman.
I wiggled my regenerated leg to check if it worked properly, then pulled on my socks and shoes as I spoke.
“If the cave somehow breaks open, we can just flee straight to Floor 20. Let’s rest and prepare today, then try again tomorrow.”
Rachel asked, sounding exhausted at my words.
“Your leg just went through all that, and you’re already thinking about trying again?”
“But it’d be a shame to give up all that treasure. Besides, after fighting once, I’ve got a rough idea of how to clear it.”
Facing dozens of endlessly regenerating monsters in a confined cave was harder than fighting hundreds of ordinary ones, but there were certainly ways to deal with them.
I looked up at the still-clear sky and continued.
“We’ll discuss strategy in a bit, but for now let’s head back to Base Camp and get some rest.”
I wanted to sleep deeply and get the exhaustion out of my system.
I should have just regenerated the clone instead.
“Oh, Rachel.”
“Yes?”
“How much Credit do you have on you?”
Don’t hold back—spend it freely.

* * *

After a day of rest and preparation, we stood before the cave entrance on the morning of the sixth day.
“So now we’re not even hiding anymore.”
Even before stepping inside, the statue’s ominous magical aura radiated thick and heavy.
No matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t a 33rd Floor level quest.
Still, I understood why quests of such anomalous difficulty appeared at all.
According to the golden dragon I’d met on Floor 23, each floor is a world contracted with The Tower, and the floor number is determined by that world’s average level.
From The Tower’s perspective, this world’s standard corresponds to Floor 33, but because of the trap of averages, problems that exceed the 33rd Floor level are an inevitable occurrence.
This quest appears to be something being handled before such problems fully manifest, though.
I suspected that the reason we’d drawn such a difficult quest was precisely because our level had surpassed the 33rd Floor standard.
Of course, that was only my conjecture.
It could just as easily be that The Tower’s system has gone haywire and keeps assigning us difficult quests. What would a lower-level climber know?
“Is everyone ready?”
Everyone nodded at my question.
“I’ve never bought this many cards before.”
Rachel hung card cases all around her waist in clusters.
Fortunately, Rachel’s ability allowed her to purchase Magic even with the Credit she’d left in the bank.
Apparently, as a special perk of the ability, the bank even offers Credit loans.
I gather you have to maintain a credit score to borrow, though I don’t fully understand all that—and normally climbers can’t take loans at all, so in many ways it’s a troublesome ability.
In any case, being able to purchase Magic with Credit held in the bank meant that if I simply transferred my banked Credit to Rachel’s account, I could use my own Credit for Magic purchases.
Fortunately, we’d earned plenty of Credit on Floor 29, so there was no shortage.
Still, since I’d requested quite a lot of Magic, I covered part of the Credit cost myself.
After all, it’s money I won’t be able to use once I leave The Tower—might as well show some generosity now.
The downside was that the usage rights to the Magic we’d purchased belonged to Rachel, so I couldn’t use them myself.
But then again, the cards were made through Rachel’s ability, so there was nothing to be done about it.
“Let’s go. Time to unleash the pay-to-win warrior!”
Rachel frowned at my words.
“Don’t give me weird nicknames. I’m already unsettled enough spending more Credit than I expected.”
Rachel had every reason to be unsettled—we’d spent nearly a third of what she’d earned on Floor 29.
Discussing Magic purchases with Rachel had let me grasp her ability’s structure quite well, and structurally, Credit was no different from Magical Power.
The problem was that the Magical Power didn’t regenerate automatically.
Rachel’s Magic pricing starts at roughly 1,000 Credit for Class 1 (equivalent to 100,000 won).
At Class 2, prices begin at 10,000 Credit (equivalent to 1,000,000 won), and the price multiplies by ten with each class increase.
Since we were in the 30s floor range, the catalog contained Magic up to Class 3.
The catalog structure seemed to update every ten floors.
Though only Class 3 Magic was registered in the catalog, if you poured enough Credit into even cheap Class 1 Magic, you could achieve the power of Class 4 or higher.
Frankly, I was amazed she’d climbed The Tower with such an ability.
Rachel’s ability certainly had many advantages, but its drawbacks were painfully clear.
Magic was brutally expensive.
Ironically, combat ability outside the ability itself was essential for Rachel.
Hunting with her ability made sustainable use of it nearly impossible.
If I rated Class 1 Magic as equivalent to Floors 10–19 of The Tower and Class 2 as equivalent to Floors 20–29, then climbing The Tower required one-shotting each floor’s monsters with Magic to avoid losses, and anything from two shots onward meant accepting a deficit.
Without using her ability to hunt, or without supplementary income beyond hunting, climbing The Tower was structurally impossible.
Rachel’s ability almost certainly had extremely high rarity.
It was the kind of ability where a single mistake in money management early on, or taking out even one loan, meant a straight fall into the abyss.
“Well, you were the one who insisted on executing your strategy anyway, Rachel.”
Even if Floor 33 were to fail, I planned to recover most of Rachel’s spending myself.
If we succeeded, the Treasure would leave us with dozens of times our expenses anyway.
I grinned and took the lead, entering the cave and slicing apart the fish-man hybrids that had been waiting for us to arrive.
To make sure we didn’t get bitten, I shoved the severed corpses back violently with Telekinesis Magic.
Once I’d cleared space for my companions to enter, they all came through.
The moment Rachel stepped into the cave, she cast Mental Protection Magic on us, followed by Solar Magic so intense it made the spells we’d used on Floor 28 seem pale by comparison.
The Class 4 level Solar Magic—something I couldn’t use due to insufficient Magical Power—was so scorching that my skin prickled with heat.
That single spell alone cost 2.5 million Credits.
“Shrieeeeeek!”
The fish monsters writhed in the sunlight, and like the creature my legs had become, they belched thick fog from their mouths, engulfing the interior of the cave.
“Sunlight means nothing to us!”
Their sheer size and numbers meant the chill, damp fog filled every corner of the enclosed cave in an instant, smothering the brilliant rays.
The mist seemed to possess a magical property that blocked the sun itself.
All the better. It meant they were expending energy just to generate the fog.
Before the mist could thicken further, Rachel yanked a deck of cards and flung them toward the center of the cave, triggering her magic.
Her spell formed precise air currents that swept the fog rapidly outward and away from the cave.
Each individual casting was only 1st-Class Wind Magic, but triggering a hundred separate spells simultaneously, each calculated to push wind in a different direction, proved far more efficient than any ordinary 3rd-Class Wind Magic—driving the fog outside with ruthless speed.
“Hahahaha! How do you like a taste of real firepower!”

(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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