Tower Climber (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1) by Jakob Tanner (free children's online books TXT) 📕

But nothing happened.

He pushed his arm out as far as it could go and triggered the ability once more.

But nothing happened. The mana inside him didn’t appear or transform into Sakura’s ruby-ranked slice ability.

Max didn’t understand what was happening. It was like he was trying to flick a lighter and only got sparks and no flame.

Was he out of juice? Out of mana? Had the mana potions not worked properly?

He then felt a sharp pain in his side.

He looked down and saw his leg was bleeding.

Uh oh.

He had been cut.

Which meant he had been hit by the rock golem’s earthquake ability.

Meaning he no longer had Sakura’s slice ability.

He had lost his trump card.

The fight was no longer in his favor.

40

Sakura Sato sat down at the late morning meeting for the joint-branch task force between the defense climbers and the police climbers.

The task force commander stood in front of a room of twenty or so climbers, going over the intel they had gathered over the last few weeks.

“Underground arenas have been popping up more and more,” said the task force commander. “They operate outside the jurisdiction of what is allowed in official sanctioned arenas and what’s worse they’ve been enrolling low-ranked and sometimes even student climbers...”

The whole room shuddered.

Sakura crossed her arms. These damn underground arenas. They promised young climbers power, but it was all a ruse to sell their deaths to the lowlifes who enjoyed betting on them.

It blew her mind sometimes. The tower granted humanity so much power and what did they do with it? They just found new ways to kill each other.

“We’re proposing we raid the arena in four days’ time,” said the task force commander. “More details will be issued then to avoid any leaks happening before then.”

Everyone nodded.

BANG!

A young police climber swung open the door of the task force meeting room with such force it smacked against the wall.

“What’s going on?” said the task force commander.

The young police climber was out of breath and in shock.

“We just got contact from one of the underground police climbers at the arena,” said the young woman, trying to catch her breath. “A student climber was just killed by a silver-ranked monster in the arena.”

The whole room audibly gasped.

Sakura’s heart quickened. A student climber. What if it was Max? The kid wouldn’t be so stupid to fight in an underground arena, would he?

She stood up.

“Commander,” she began. “In light of this event, I think we should expedite the raid on the underground arena.”

The commander nodded his head. “You’re right, we can’t let any more of our new recruits be killed by these criminals and con men! How soon should we begin?”

Sakura clenched her fists. “Right now.”

41

Max could only think of one thing: that he was a goner.

He took a step back from the rock golem.

The crowd cheered and demanded to see Max’s corpse on the floor of the arena.

They had been on equal footing before, but the match had suddenly turned in the rock golem’s favor. It was now calling all the shots.

It raised its arms in the air and leapt towards Max.

The boy dashed away as the monster crashed down right where he had been standing moments before.

“Kill the punk! Kill the punk! Kill the punk!”

Max was in big trouble. The rock golem was a D-ranked monster with a silver core. That meant in all likelihood, all of its stats were quite a bit higher than Max’s. The only thing that had given Max confidence in these fights was having a B-rank ability which pretty much overruled any stat gains a D-ranked monster would have over him.

But now he no longer had that ability.

His whole strategy had flown out the window.

Max ran to the edge of the ring.

For the time being, he’d keep his distance as he figured out a new strategy.

The rock golem came at him and Max stayed quick on his feet.

“Stop running coward!” moaned the audience.

Max ignored them. He needed to think. What do you do when you’re weaker than your enemy?

The rock golem leapt in the air once more to crush Max with its fists made of stone.

C’mon, Max. Think!

“What are you working on, Max?” Sarah had asked him one evening, ten months ago.

Max had a floor plan of their high school along with all of the class schedules.

“Nothing,” he said, embarrassed. “You’ll think it’s pathetic.”

“No, I won’t!” she cried. “Tell me.”

Max sighed. “I’ve created a map of the school and the schedule that Seth has. I can then use this to know which floors and halls to avoid throughout the day to minimize my contact with him.”

Sarah didn’t say anything and just looked down at the paper.

“It’s pathetic, I know,” sighed Max.

Sarah began to tremble and tears filled her eyes. “It’s not pathetic. It’s just unfair. You shouldn’t have to do this. It’s not right that Seth can get away with so much.”

“I’m doing the best I can to get around that fact,” he shrugged.

Sarah sniffled and wiped the tears out of her eyes. “That’s why I don’t think this is pathetic. It’s pathetic that the world we live in means you have to do something like this. But since you had to think of something—I actually think this is pretty genius.”

“You really think so?” smiled Max.

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “You’re up against a stronger opponent, so you need to take advantage of everything else to stand a chance against them.”

“Well,” Max sighed. “I hope it works...”

BOOM!

Max leapt away from the rock golem’s attack.

The creature lifted its arm from the crater it made in the arena and waddled back around to face Max once more.

The crowd continued to cheer for Max’s death.

He got back to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth.

He grinned to himself, thinking about all the times throughout his life he had to go up against opponents stronger than him.

He took a deep breath.

The audience who wanted him dead was about to face sore disappointment.

He had a new strategy up his sleeve.

42

Max