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

The ground rumbled and shook. The dirt cracked and stones jutted forth right into the flesh of the wave of boars.

Some had managed to dodge the attack and were still coming for Max.

SNAP!

All the nearby trees began to crack from the earthquake attack.

But they were more than just random trees. They were trees that Max had purposely climbed and broken the branches into sharp pointed bits.

They weren’t random trees any more—they were homemade guillotines, slicing downward and stabbing the remaining boars who hadn’t been killed by the earthquake attack.

STAB!

Max stood in front of the pile of boar corpses and watched the mound glow silver and leave behind a hefty splattering of coins and copper monster cores.

He collected all the loot and placed it in his pouch.

None of the monsters had escaped, so that was forty copper monster cores he’d just gained.

If he added them altogether, he currently had fifty-two copper monster cores.

He grinned. He had used his trait three times already today. Under normal circumstances, he’d have to take a long break now, but because he’d taken so much time between each use, he could simply just keep on going. The three consecutive times rule was more important in longer fights where you might need to trigger an ability multiple times in a row.

Max stood up and started rushing through the clearing. As he ran through the woods looking for monsters to attack, he thought about how many more monster cores he could collect that day.

Let’s do this, he thought.

46

By the time Max had used his trait for the natural maximum limit of six that day, he had collected 168 copper monster cores.

He slouched against a tree and took in his profile.

Name: Max Rainhart

Rank: Unranked

Trait (Unique): Mimic. Unleash the last move you were hit with at double the power.

Strength: 8

Agility: 8

Endurance: 7

Mana Affinity: 7

Passive Skills:

Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)

He grinned. His agility stat had gone up by one point. That made sense to him. He had been running around the forest all day. Plus, running around on floor-2 would help increase his stats further and faster because he was training in an area with greater mana density.

That gave him another idea. He was full of them today it seemed.

For the rest of the afternoon, he was going to do Sakura’s training regimen inside the endless forest!

Max returned to the apartment that evening, sore and exhausted.

He’d ran consecutively for over an hour in the endless forest, doing laps between the floor’s two teleporters.

After he’d finished that, he’d done one hundred push-ups and sit-ups each.

And after all of that, his stats had gone up...zilch. Nothing.

As disappointed as he was, he decided he was going to continue this training regimen for the next two weeks.

The plan he had devised in the library still wasn’t ready for fruition yet and part of him wondered if he even had to do such a crazy plan any more.

He had 168 copper monster cores! He should be able to rank up in no time.

Max had a nice hot shower and then cooked dinner for himself and Sakura. After he’d done the dishes, he sat down with his pouch and began to drain the copper monster cores of their mana.

E-Rank here I come!

By the fifty-third copper monster core, he’d raised his mana affinity stat by two points, going from seven to nine.

Only two more points until I rank up, he thought, eagerly getting to work on draining the next monster core.

An hour later, he’d drained another fifty copper monster cores and his stat hadn’t budged at all. More than this, draining the cores didn’t take much effort anymore and it felt like nothing happened to his mana vessels as he drained the cores.

He stopped at the hundredth monster core and went to ask Sakura what the problem might be.

She was tucked up in bed, her hair in a bun, her face adorned with reading glasses. She had a new paperback romance novel in her hand and a mug of chamomile tea on her bedside table.

She did not look anything like one of the most deadly and powerful climbers in the city that she was.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I’ve reached nine in mana affinity,” he said.

“Congratulations,” she said. “Did you interrupt my special reading time just to tell me that?”

“No, it’s...” said Max. “I managed to get lots of copper monster cores and—”

“Your mana affinity isn’t going any higher?”

“How did you know?”

She shrugged. “It’s just the way things work. You’re so close to hitting E-rank but the final two points are usually the toughest. The problem is at E-rank, copper monster cores won’t help you at all, your mana is already too advanced to be improved by it. Since you’re practically E-rank now, the copper monster cores will only do the very minimum to improve your mana affinity.”

Max sighed. “So all these cores I got today were for nothing.”

“You can sell them at the market. Not for much, but for a little,” said Sakura.

Max sighed.

“I’m guessing that’s it,” she said. “So I’m going to return to my book. It’s just got really good.”

“Aren’t all romance novels the same?”

“To someone with unrefined tastes, perhaps, but not me!” barked Sakura. “Now, good night!”

With that, Max walked away.

He considered the sixty-eight copper monster cores he still had. He definitely wasn’t going to waste something he could sell by futilely draining them of their mana.

It looked like he was going to have to go through with his library plan after all.

For the next two weeks, Max went up to floor-2 and did his training method. First, he’d use up his limit of six traits, slaying loads of forest boars, mushroom monsters, and forest mules. He’d collect their monster cores and coins and add them to his pouch. Then, he’d spend the rest of the day doing Sakura’s training regimen.

After two weeks, he’d collected 3068 copper monster cores and earned about 7024 copper coins. His pouch didn’t feel an ounce heavier than the day he got it.

Even better was the