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

“More people are going to die if we don’t get those defensive wards powered back up,” said Casey. “There’ll be reinforcement climbers to help with the pandemonium. We’re on an official climber assignment now—we have to believe that everyone else on our side is working together to succeed and save the most amount of people.”

Max watched a group of E-rankers take down two harpies.

Casey was right.

They continued moving forward. The central wall was about three miles ahead of them. If they didn’t have any interruptions, it would take them just under fifteen minutes due to their enhanced climber agility. If they did get interrupted though, who knew how long it could take.

The lives of the citizens were in their hands.

They rushed down a block full of cars with smashed roofs. Ahead of them a squad of climbers took on a massive ogre with over thirty eyeballs on its head.

Down another street was a tentacled monster that hoovered up people, cars, street lamps, or anything into its body.

“Just keep running,” Casey muttered to herself. “Keep your head down. No need to look at all the scary disturbing monster around us. They’re not important right now.”

They continued sprinting down the main city street.

“If we turn here,” said Max. “We might be able to take a shortcut.”

Casey agreed so they made a right turn and then a left into an alleyway.

They stumbled across a group of climbers who didn’t seem to be doing anything. They were smoking cigarettes and playing cards.

“What are you doing?” shouted Casey. “The city’s under attack!”

The climbers stood up at the sight of them and they started to laugh menacingly at them.

Max was starting to regret their shortcut plan.

It was a good plan in theory: as they’d be off the main road and less likely to run into horrible scary monsters and chaos.

It was a bad plan in practice because instead of all that, they ran into a group of climbers who were clearly working for the Archer family.

Their mission had just hit its first obstacle.

95

“Oh, the city is under attack?” one of the climbers asked with a smirk. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Max and Casey took a step back from the group of men.

He recognized some of them. These were climbers who had been on duty in the outer-rim. That’s what Samuel was up to when they snuck into the other part of the city. He was gathering all of the climbers who were loyal to him.

“The girl is kind of cute,” said one of the climbers. “The boss told us to just wait here. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we also had a bit of fun.”

Casey scrunched her nose in absolute repulsion at the men.

Max felt his blood boil.

They were going to have to fight through these guys and Max suddenly had no hesitant feelings about doing so.

The rogue climbers rushed towards them.

Max shadow blinked behind them and elbowed one in the back of the head with a rush of force and mana, sending his face smacking into the concrete floor of the alley.

Meanwhile, Casey had whipped out her thousand paper crane attack: filling the alley with a gust of wind and paper cranes.

The origami birds fluttered through the air slicing at the necks of the rogue climbers.

They coughed up blood and fell to the ground.

The paper birds flew in a flock back into Casey’s pouch.

“That move,” said Max, “is seriously insane.”

They hurried down the alley only to find a C-rank climber waiting for them. This guy kept his eyes up to the sky, paying attention to the swirling airborne monsters.

Max suddenly understood what those other climbers they’d just fought were doing. They were guarding this guy. Another buffer.

Samuel Archer must have buffers all across the city to help him control the monsters.

The man stood up and pulled out a hilt with no sword. Suddenly a ray of blue mana emerged from the hilt, forming a blade of magical energy. He was channeling his own mana to create the blade.

This guy was two ranks above them, they were going to have to be a little smarter about how they fought their way past him.

Then Max remembered what skill he was last hit with.

He stretched out his arms and triggered bind.

A tiny barely visible thread shot out from one of his finger tips and wrapped itself around the D-rank buffer.

The man squirmed.

“Argh,” he cried. “What have you done to me, you punk?”

Casey took advantage of the man’s paralyzed state, creating a huge gust of wind and directing it at him.

Max undid the bind spell at the last minute as Casey’s wind blast smashed into him and sent the man slamming into a nearby brick wall.

“That should do the trick,” Casey declared.

The two moves combined had created a powerful combo. The bind spell meant that the climber couldn’t get a chance to dodge the wind gust. There was also the psychological torture of it too. Would he be sent flying or would he simply have to take the attack while paralyzed?

The D-rank climber groaned and lifted himself up off the ground. He was covered in dirt, but other than that, he didn’t seem to have a scratch on him.

“You gotta be kidding me,” groaned Casey.

Toto poked its head out from her pocket and shook his little gerbil fist in outrage.

The man cracked his knuckles and snickered, ready to pulverize them.

Max realized they were no match for this man with their current abilities. As a D-ranked climber, the man had stats double their own. His endurance and strength stats were enough to make it impossible for their moves to hurt him.

Max had gotten used to having upper-ranked offensive moves in his arsenal that at double the power could break through the sheer stat gap between ranks, but at the moment he didn’t have such an ability.

They were screwed.

The man rushed at them with his powered up mana sword.

Click!

The sound of a lighter flicking on and off, echoed through the