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

“Hold on,” he said. “Can we backtrack a moment? I can see—my stats? Almost like a video game. How do I make them go away?”

Sakura giggled. “That would be your profile. Every climber has one. Just like every climber has a trait. As you can probably see, yours is pretty special.”

He looked at his profile once more and read over his trait.

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

Parts of the battle with the minotaur were coming back to him now. His arm glowing yellow and dealing a devastating punch to the monster.

“My arm—it glowed during the fight,” said Max, looking at his fist.

“As did the minotaur’s arm, remember?” said Sakura. “Your trait is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. When you were hit by that blow from the minotaur, your body retained the mana from the attack and was able to manipulate that with your own mana to deal a devastating blow.”

Max lifted up his hands and stared at them. These had been the hands he had his entire life and yet he felt like he was looking at the hands of a stranger.

“Did I really do all that?” he asked, looking at Sakura. “I don’t know if I could do it again.”

“You probably can’t,” said the woman. “You’d probably heal somebody though as the last move you were hit with was a heal spell. Starting to get it?”

“Sort of,” he said. “But back to the original question. How do I get rid of this screen in my vision? It’s driving me crazy.”

“Just think in your mind, close profile, or something remotely like that and it should go away,” Sakura explained. “Give it a try and let me know what happens.”

Max took a deep breath and thought to himself.

Close profile.

The profile disappeared from his vision.

“All better?” asked Sakura.

“Yes, thank you,” said Max.

“Good,” she said. “If you want to see it again. Just like with closing it, think to yourself: open profile.”

Max scratched his head. Questions kept piling up in his head, one then the other, and by the time he got answers from Sakura he felt like he had even more. Sometimes the answers ran so far ahead of his questions, he realized there were more basic things he had to ask.

“Okay, my mind is clearing up a bit now that the damn screen isn’t floating in my vision like a fly any more,” said Max. “That’s cool that I have this profile and all, but how did I get this? You said every climber has one—am I a climber now? And—the biggest question of all—how come I can use my legs again?”

Sakura nodded her head.

“All very reasonable questions,” she replied. “After the battle, the healers were able to cure you of your wounds, mending your legs back into shape. When they were healing you, they discovered an invisible inscription on your back—in outer-rim terms, a curse—and when they removed it, it returned the feeling to your legs.”

“But shouldn’t I need physiotherapy or something? People don’t just go from unable to walk to suddenly swinging their legs off hospital beds.”

“Normally, in the case of someone having a fractured neurological link in their spinal cord, that would indeed be the case. Except that wasn’t the case with you. You had a cursed inscription on you. Once removed—normal neurological activity simply resumed as normal.”

“If it’s so powerful, how were they able to remove it?”

“You can thank yourself for that. It was your kokoro passive skill that ultimately broke a piece of your inscription, letting you access your trait.”

Max sighed. He was overwhelmed by all of this. At first, he could make sense of it, but then new questions kept popping up.

“But I thought—” He couldn’t piece the words together. “I thought I was injured in a car crash—”

In fact, he knew he was. He remembered the flames of the wreckage. Blood dripping down his parents’ heads.

Sakura paused, thinking for a moment.

“I don’t have the answer to that question,” she said. “I truly don’t. Your case history doesn’t line up with the fact that you have a trait or a profile or any of this. All I can say is the more time you spend in the tower and the tower-zone, the more mysterious unexplainable things happen. Maybe someone knows what they all mean. The tower gods perhaps, but I certainly do not.”

Max looked Sakura right in the eye and the woman looked away. He believed she was telling the truth about not knowing why all of this was happening to him, but he got the feeling she was still holding important information from him.

She suddenly clapped her hands.

“Now Max,” she said. “I know you probably have more questions for me and you can ask me more in a bit, but it’s important that I ask you a few questions now.”

Max nodded.

“Somehow, you’ve ended up in the tower-zone. More than that, you have the potential to make an excellent climber one day. Would you like to be a citizen of the tower-zone? Would you like to become a climber?”

Max’s heart raced.

The chance to become a climber.

Never in a million years did he think such a possibility would ever be offered to him. He had long ago accepted that only the life of a scholar or archaeologist might get him close enough to the tower so that he could enter and search for his sister one day.

His sister. Elle. He might actually be able to uphold his promise to her now. Be able to ascend the tower and find her.

His answer was obvious. It was definitely a yes.

But then he paused for a moment.

Citizens of the tower-zone weren’t allowed to leave. It was illegal for a tower-zone citizen to enter the outer-rim. The punishment was known to be very severe: jail time or even death.

That was when he remembered: Sarah and Mr. Grimes. He had unfinished business in the outer-rim.

“How long have I been asleep for?”