Tower Climber (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1) Jakob Tanner (reading comprehension books TXT) 📖

She smirked as she polished a wine glass.

“More chattel coming through, huh?” said the woman. “You gotta speak to the manager. You’re looking for a skinny old geezer in a purple pinstriped suit. He’ll be wearing an old hat and sunglasses. He’s hard to miss. He runs this place.”

Max nodded and thanked the lady for her help. He then started moving through the crowd to find the man she spoke of.

More chattel coming through, huh?

The woman’s words stuck with him. He guessed the other students had enquired about signing up to the woman as well. But why call them chattel? It made him uneasy.

He walked on the outer limits of the arena where he found the old man in the purple pinstriped suit, leaning against the wall with a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Max, approaching the man. “I hear you’re the person to talk to about signing up to fight in the arena.”

The man stood up straight. He had a wide Cheshire cat smile with yellow stained teeth.

“You think you got what it takes to fight in the arena, do you?”

Max nodded.

“What rank are you, kid?”

“Unranked,” said Max. “Does it matter?”

The man chuckled. “Of course, it matters, kid. We’re here to make money, take bets, and put on a show. I can’t put on an unranked kid in the center of the arena, but don’t worry, we have special rings just for chattel like you.”

There it was again.

Chattel.

“Follow me, kid,” said the man.

The man led the way entering a new chamber with a smaller arena.

The fighter below wore a copper badge on his shirt, so Max could tell the fighter was E-rank.

He was up against a giant serpent.

But unlike the metal man who’d dominated the firebreathing lion, the E-rank fighter was getting devoured by the fangs of the large serpent.

He was bleeding out on the floor.

“Is anyone going to help him?” asked Max as he followed behind the purple suited man.

“Like I said before, kid: we’re putting on a show here. If you can’t satisfy the crowd’s bloodlust by killing the monster, well, in that case, we let the monster kill you.”

Max shivered.

He wondered to himself: was any of this legal?

They went past a few more smaller arenas until they were at the very back.

“Wait here,” said the man who went and spoke to another arena worker.

The purple suited man came back a few minutes later.

“So here’s how it works, kid,” said the man. “This is the lowest stage we got. This is where you start as an unranked fighter. We’ll start you off with something close to your level and if you win your battles we’ll let you fight monsters as high as two ranks above your own.”

Amazing, thought Max. Two ranks above his own meant D-rank. Monsters with silver cores.

“If you win, you get to keep the core and the money dropped from the monster,” said the man. “Sound fair?”

Max nodded his head. He got the feeling that the man didn’t expect Max to get very far; but he felt more confident than the man was giving him credit for.

“After each battle, if you win,” said the man, “you’re given a mana potion so you can keep going. We want our fighters to go as long as possible. Give the people a show is our motto!”

Max nodded his head.

“Does that all make sense?” said the man. “We can have you down there in the arena in ten minutes. How you feeling? You ready to fight?”

38

Max stood in the small battle arena and faced a floor-2 forest boar.

The crowd around him cheered.

“Fifty coppers says the boar kills the boy in under three minutes!”

“Aye! I’ll take that bet!”

Max smirked. These guys really didn’t think much of him, did they?

That was why the manager referred to him as chattel. This arena at the back was for people betting on the fighters to lose, for people who enjoyed seeing monsters kill weak climbers.

Well, Max thought, I’m about to show them.

In fact, he was more disappointed than anyone else to see a forest boar as his first monster opponent. He came here to fight more powerful monsters than this, but he guessed he had to start somewhere.

The forest boar rushed him and Max triggered the slice ability.

The energy blade shot forward and sliced the boar completely in half.

Seconds later all that remained on the ring was Max and a copper monster core and a few coins.

The crowd was silent and dumbfounded, then they started cheering and heckling with excited fervor.

“Bring out another monster!” they yelled.

“The kid is hustling us! Give the little prick a bigger challenge!”

Max scooped up the monster cores and then leaned against the ropes of the fighting ring to rest and wait for the next monster he was going to fight.

One of the arena workers came up to him and handed him a small blue vial.

“You’re allowed one mana potion after each fight,” said the staff member. “You can use your traits as much as you’re normally able to.”

Max took the vial and thanked the man and took a sip.

Max couldn’t help but make a face when he swallowed the drink down.

It tasted like very powerful cough syrup.

He felt a new urgency and vivacity to the mana running through his body after finishing the potion.

So the blue liquid was a form of liquefied mana then? Max wondered if he could figure out a way to create such a potion on his own using his own internal mana. That would have to be a project for another day though.

The staff members came to the arena with a monster in a steel cage. They placed it in the ring and then opened it and stepped out.

“Let the fight begin!”

Waddling out of the cage was a large overgrown mushroom with arms and legs and red angular eyes full of blood lust.

The crowd cheered and started calling out bets.

Max took in the monster. He hadn’t seen anything like this before, but he suspected it probably existed within