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

The students all shuffled and hesitated, no one volunteering to be the first to ascend to a part of the tower they hadn’t been to before.

“What if there’s monsters right in front of the teleporter that I can’t handle!?” said one student.

An examiner snapped. “If you’re scared of such a possibility then you might as well give up now. The tower and its different floors is a very dangerous place. If you’re scared about being chaperoned for an exam in here, there’s no way you’ll be able to survive against higher-ranked monsters or withstand the pressure of a multi-floor conflict.”

The student who spoke nodded his head and whimpered an apology at an almost indecipherably low volume.

Max was more intrigued by a different part of what the examiner had said.

Multi-floor conflict.

He knew that some floors were large enough to contain whole worlds, some bigger than Earth even. Did these different floors actually have diplomatic relationships with one another? So much so that sometimes relationships fell apart and they went to war with each other. What was the scale of a multi-floor conflict?

Max didn’t even want to think about it, it seemed so massive. He sighed. Every time he thought he was beginning to understand the tower and its machinations, he quickly realized how little he still knew about the mysterious spire and all of the worlds and people it housed.

Max shook his head. He could think about all that later. He needed to stay focused on the exam and he knew exactly how to do that.

He raised his hand and walked to the front of the group of students.

“I’ll go up first,” he said, grinning at the examiners. “Gladly.”

The instructor snickered at this boldness, but then gestured with his hands that Max should step forward and put his money where his mouth was.

Max gulped and walked into the center of the light and thought to himself: ascend to the next floor.

58

Before Max even opened his eyes, he smelled sand and salt water.

After the strange feeling of going through the teleporter, Max took in the new floor.

He was in a sandy tropical island.

Palm trees stood around him, the sky was a bright blue, and through the shrubbery he could see an ocean.

“Ahhh!”

Max turned around and it was Casey who emerged next from the teleporter.

She blinked and once seeing it was safe, put her hands on her hips.

“I couldn’t let you show me up like that!” she said, sticking out her tongue. “We’re a team, remember?”

Max smiled. “Of course.”

“Where are we anyway?” said Casey, looking around. “Maybe the exam is actually a beach holiday? I read a book once about the importance of taking breaks and it said that a lot of people don’t know how to relax, so maybe the mid-term exam is actually a test about how good we are at relaxing?”

Max narrowed his eyes. That’s the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, continuing to look around.

Behind the teleporter was a large wooden building with the tower-zone climber seal on it.

There were a few climbers with copper and silver badges pinned to their chests. This must be a Zestiris climber outpost of some kind.

He didn’t have time to ponder it as the area filled up with the rest of the students and then the examiners as well.

“Welcome to the next floor,” said the instructor. “The Archipelagos!”

The instructor and examiners led them through the jungle towards the beach area.

“This floor is similar to the endless forest in that it is a mono-climate zone with a similar temperature and topography throughout its entire known area. As you can see since there is no tower in sight, this is another wild floor.”

“But what about that outpost,” said Max, pointing back through the jungle to where they came.

“Zestiris has climber outposts on most floors. Just because a floor is wild doesn’t mean that a minority of people won’t live there, but I would put emphasis on minority. Not many people choose to live a life of hardship with twenty-four hour monster spawn cycles.”

Max nodded and didn’t ask the instructor any more questions.

Along the beach was a dock full of moored boats. There were little fishing boats and even larger frigates. They all had the Zestiris climber seal on them.

“Unlike the endless forest,” said the instructor. “The distance between the arrival teleporter and departure teleporter is vast. This world is an oceanic floor full of islands with a variety of different species of monsters. It may be only one floor above the endless forest, but it is ten times more dangerous.”

The group of students looked around in awe. The place was so majestic and beautiful. It was hard to believe it was as dangerous a floor as their instructor was describing.

The instructor and the examiners led them to a big boat. It was already moored and had a plank set up for all the students to use to walk aboard.

The students nervously followed onto the deck of the ship.

It had been over an hour since they’d met up in front of the academy courtyard, and the exam still hadn’t yet begun.

How much further did they have to go until the exam actually started?

Once everyone was aboard the boat, a group of climber seamen unmoored the ship. They began to move further into the vast blue oceanic world until the island they started on became a mere speck in the distance.

The students huddled together in different groups based on friendships and alliances. Max and Casey stood at the back of the deck by themselves.

“Can we eat one of our protein bars yet?” she asked Max.

Max shook his head. “No. It’s not even lunchtime. Let’s hold off until we understand the exam more.”

The island they’d started on was completely out of sight now. There were a few different islands within view though.

“They must be taking us to a special island,” said Max. “If the test was going to take place in the ocean, we would’ve stopped by