Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 30

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

Chapter 30. The Tower – Escort (3)

“Both of you cross the bridge first.”
“But…!”
Lee Su-young hesitated, so I shouted.
“I have a plan, so go!”
My cry drew the wolves’ attention, and they lunged toward me.
I severed the neck of the first wolf to charge, deliberately let the second wolf sink its jaws into my left arm guard, then used that second wolf to block the third one as it rushed in with its horns lowered.
“Shriek!”
The wolf struck by its packmate’s horns cried out in pain, but it refused to release my left arm guard from its bite.
I cut the third wolf’s neck, then severed the second wolf’s neck and cast it aside.
The force of its bite had left fang marks even in the steel-forged guard.
As three wolves fell in quick succession, the others grew wary and didn’t rush in recklessly.
In that time, Lee Su-young and Milio had crossed the suspension bridge.
“Brother! We made it across!”
“Wait just a moment!”
The alpha wolf, massive as an ox, growled and pressured its subordinates, spurring them all to charge at once.
I slashed at the wolves with my blade, but with so many attacking simultaneously, gaps inevitably formed in my defense.
“Screech!”
“Yelp!”
A small aqua bullet from Lee Su-young’s slime struck precisely into the eye of a wolf exploiting one of those gaps, causing the wolves to lose their balance mid-air.
Lee Su-young was covering me with her slime.
I cut down the wolves as they lost their footing and rushed onto the suspension bridge.
The wolves pursued me, leaping onto the bridge to keep up.
“Huh? It’s not breaking? Then I’ll break it myself.”
I ran across the swaying bridge, stopped, and deliberately slashed through the frayed rope with my one-handed sword.
“Ahhh! Brother!”
As the bridge snapped, five or six wolves plummeted, but I caught the rope with my left arm and reached the cliff face on the opposite side of the ravine.
I reinforced my body with inner energy, wedged my legs into the jagged crevices of the cliff, gripped the rope, and climbed rapidly.
Just as I neared the top, Lee Su-young and Milio grabbed me and pulled me up.
“Gasp! Gasp! I thought I was done for.”
As I caught my breath, Lee Su-young rebuked my recklessness.
“That was seriously dangerous!”
“Ha, as long as I didn’t die, it’s fine.”
Truth be told, even if I had died, it wouldn’t have been a major problem.
Milio looked at me as if wondering whether all climbers were this reckless.
“The villagers will repair that bridge themselves.”
“Haha, I’ll catch hell for it later. But since fixing a bridge costs less than a life, it should be fine.”
“But that monster wolf refuses to leave the center of the Forest….”
I was about to ask why it was here then when a sound of something launching echoed from across the Ravine.
The wolf was flying through the air.
The horned monster wolf leaped across a distance of over ten meters and crossed the Ravine.
Crash!
Though it barely managed to claw its way up the Ravine wall with its hind legs, narrowly avoiding a fall, it had nonetheless cleared that vast distance.
“Damn it, if you’re going to be a wolf, act like one and stop flying through the sky.”
I assessed my remaining inner energy and hefted my sword.
I had expended roughly a third of my inner energy killing the wolves.
If this were the body of my reincarnated clone, I would have abundant inner energy with high efficiency and minimal consumption, but this adult body with its stiffened bones and muscles had poor inner energy efficiency.
It was no accident that Siu had worked to maintain my physical condition since infancy through the Chasing Palace and Piercing Blood technique.
When performed immediately after birth, the Chasing Palace and Piercing Blood technique prevents the conception and governing vessels from closing thickly, improving inner energy circulation and efficiency.
This is why the technique performed in childhood was also called the Marrow Cleansing Technique.
Sigh, if only I could absorb my reincarnated clone, this efficiency problem would be solved instantly.
But it was a problem that could only be resolved by either obtaining an ability to solve the clone’s age issue or waiting until the reincarnated clone aged naturally.
However, there was a way to compensate immediately.
My strength and stamina were both 9.
In martial arts, the lower the realm, the more pronounced the differences in physical ability became.
I purchased ‘Strength Growth Elixir 1’ and ‘Stamina Growth Elixir 1’ from the Tower Shop and consumed them.
The effect of Growth Elixir 1 was to increase a stat by 1 when it was below 10.
The price multiplied by 10 each time I bought one, but for now it was the only method to rapidly strengthen myself.
My talent in the Tower was utterly dismal.
The fact that my strength had risen from 8 to 9 early in the Tower was almost certainly because it had been ‘8.9999’ and absorbed ‘0.0001’ to become ‘9’.
As my strength and stamina reached 10, vitality surged through my entire body.
I had become a full 10 percent stronger.
It wasn’t merely my physical abilities that had grown 10 percent stronger.
My efficiency in physical enhancement through inner energy had also increased by 10 percent.
This was why martial arts placed such emphasis on body cultivation.
The ox-sized horned monster wolf, most wary of me, charged at me first.
I swung my sword toward the wolf.
I blocked the wolf’s claws and swept my blade across the ground, but the wolf dodged nimbly and thrust its horns at me.
I blocked the horns with my left arm guard and seized them.
Then I tried to drive my sword down onto the wolf’s head.
But the wolf thrashed its head violently and flung my blade away.
“Ugh!”
I rolled across the ground once and immediately got up to charge at the wolf again.
“Brother! Bright Wind!”
At that moment, Lee Su-young’s voice rang out as a yellowish slime flew toward the wolf.
I raised my left arm to block the slime Bright Wind from view.
The monster wolf charged straight at me with its jaws wide open.
Flash!
A brilliant flash grenade detonated, and everything around me vanished into blinding white.
Even with my eyes shut for roughly three seconds, the intense light seared my vision so fiercely that when it finally faded, the monster wolf writhed in agony—robbed of its sight.
Even I felt my eyes sting despite closing them and shielding my face with my arm. The wolf, staring directly into Siu’s radiance, might have had its optic nerves burned out entirely.
I swung my blade at the disoriented wolf’s neck.
But whether by instinct or by tracking my position through sound and scent, the beast rolled aside and evaded my strike.
Still, it couldn’t fully escape—my sword carved deep gashes across its neck and flank.
“Grrrrr!”
Wounded by humans it had underestimated, the monster wolf snarled ferociously.
But blinded and bleeding, it was no longer a match for us.
As I charged forward, the wolf stumbled backward in panic, desperately trying to evade.
Behind me, Lee Su-young unleashed arrows and aqua bullets, pressing the assault relentlessly.
Its massive frame, unable to dodge properly, became an easy target.
Where the aqua bullets struck, bones shattered. A dozen arrows left it bristling like a porcupine.
I channeled my inner energy and brought my blade down with full force, severing the wolf’s neck.
Its neck was too thick to sever cleanly, but cutting through the arteries proved effortless.
The wolf thrashed and collapsed to the ground, convulsing.
Within moments, it bled out and fell still.
Drenched in wolf blood, I sat down hard on the ground, exhaling with relief that the battle was finally over.
“Su-young, nice work. Without you, this could’ve gone very badly.”
“No way. Without you, I’d have been torn apart by that wolf pack and died before we even crossed the Ravine.”
Lee Su-young and I exchanged a high-five.
Checking the Tower Shop, the monster wolf hunt was worth 2.5 points—far more than the standard 0.5 points from other wolves.
Split evenly between us, this monster wolf totaled 5 points. It was a 15th Floor-level creature.
“Why did this thing crawl all the way down here?”
Milio offered his theory in response to my question.
“Probably because it’s early spring and food is scarce. This time of year, wolves become vicious—even adults never venture into the Forest.”
You should’ve warned us about that beforehand, you little brat.
Well, there was no point dwelling on what was already done, so I just gave Milio a light flick on the forehead and called it even.
“Should we leave the wolf carcass and just take the magic stone?”
“Yes. Honestly, I’d love to grab those other wolves’ magic stones too, but it’s not feasible, is it?”
“Not a chance.”
Without the monster wolf, the stragglers would be manageable, but backtracking to that location would cost us considerable time.
I split open the monster wolf’s chest with my blade, revealing a blue magic stone and a yellow ability stone within.
“Whoa! Do boss monsters really drop better loot?”
The magic stone was incomparably larger than the ones from goblins, which were barely the size of a pinky nail.
“An ability stone—that’s the gem that grants you a skill, right? I heard those almost never drop!”
Lee Su-young’s eyes gleamed with undisguised greed.
But then she shook her head and spoke.
“Distribution should be proportional to contribution. You did more in the fight, so you should take it. Honestly, without you, I think I’d have died before we even crossed the Ravine.”
I let out a soft chuckle at her words.
“Well, I’ll give you that.”
Tanks were naturally aristocrats even in raid guilds back in the game.
In game raids, tanks were rare because they weren’t fun to play, making them valuable—but in reality, they earned that status by literally risking their lives to protect others.
“But I’m not taking this for free. Without you, that fight would’ve been much harder, so let’s say I get six parts and you get four.”
I rose to my feet.
“I’ll use an emotion stone to identify the ability name, and if I need it, I’ll pay you in Tower points. If you need an ability instead, you pay me in points, and if neither of us needs it, we sell it and split the proceeds six to four.”
Now that I thought about it, I’d also obtained an ability stone from defeating the Hop Goblin.
Did ability stones drop this frequently normally? Or was my luck just insanely good?
Lee Su-young nodded at my proposal.
“If you’re willing to do that, I’m happy!”
Lee Su-young and I had reached an agreement on the distribution.
It was a shame to leave the wolf corpse behind, but it was too heavy, so we decided to abandon it.
Unless I desperately needed money, there was no reason to fret over it—and I didn’t.
Ah, so that’s why The Tower sold credits so cheaply through Shop points.
It was giving people the breathing room to avoid making foolish choices.
With that thought, I left the Forest.
As we emerged from the Forest, the few adults in the Village were pacing nervously at its edge, worried about Milio.
“You’re safe!”
“Uncle! We got the medicinal herbs!”
Milio chattered away with the relief of having survived and the childish desire to boast about his exploits.
His account was somewhat exaggerated—claiming he’d confidently led the way and that the massive wolf monster was the size of a house—but largely true.
When the villagers heard the monster wolf was dead, they didn’t quite believe it until they saw me covered in blood, then they gasped in amazement.
“Milio, you should give the herbs to your mother first.”
As I handed him the heavy sack of medicinal herbs, Milio nodded and ran toward home.
“Mom! Mom! We got the herbs!”
The way he ran searching for his mother was unmistakably that of a small child.
The village adults thanked us profusely and fretted over how to repay such kindness.
I told them I hadn’t done it for any reward and simply asked if they had water to wash with.
The blood on my clothes would need to be washed with special detergent later, but I wanted to clean my hands and face immediately.
Lee Su-young nodded vigorously, clearly feeling the same way.
After the villagers heated water and I washed up roughly, I went to Milio’s house and found that his mother had already been given medicine made from the herbs’ extract, and her fever had come down considerably.
“Thank you! Thank you! With this, Mom should be able to hold on until Dad comes back!”
“Good, I’m glad.”
I left Milio’s thanks behind and headed to the crystal before the 11th Floor.
Checking the time, nearly four hours had passed since we entered the Forest.
Unlike the 10th Floor, which had been autumn, the 11th Floor was early spring.
It seemed each floor operated on a different time axis, so I couldn’t tell if it would be night or day as we climbed higher.
“What do you want to do? Go up? Or go back down?”
The 10th Floor, our residential level, was always accessible to return to.
At my question, Lee Su-young paused for a moment before answering.

(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
—————