Chapters (122)
- Tower Climber
- Jakob Tanner
- Contents
- Newsletter
- Dedication
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
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- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
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- 73
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- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
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- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
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He had two and a half weeks until the climber exam finals. It was going to be a massive one-on-one tournament with elimination rounds, hosted in the main city arena for everyone to watch.
The pressure was intense.
Which was why Max had no time to waste: he had to get to training.
He signed at the gate and headed up towards the tower.
He was walking with steely determination and the wind at his sails, until he abruptly stopped.
He was in the middle of the tower’s entryway, near the fountain where young tower-zone children were tested to see if they had a trait.
The thing that had made him stop was the light of the teleporter.
Instantly, he flashed back to that warehouse in the outer-rim.
This isn’t floor-1, he thought to himself, taking a hesitant step forward.
He gulped and walked towards the teleporter.
They knew.
The instructor knew when we were taught to ascend floors.
They told them to, ‘ascend to the floor above you’ or ‘ascend to the endless forest.’ Never ‘ascend to floor-2’ as that wouldn’t have worked.
Max strode towards the teleporter now.
He also remembered the instructor explaining that once you’d ascended to a floor you could ascend multiple floors at once, from one arrival teleporter to another.
He stepped into the light of the teleporter and tried an experiment.
If they were on floor-4.
That meant the endless forest was floor-5.
That the archipelagos was on floor-6.
He closed his eyes in the light of the teleporter and thought to himself:
Ascend to floor-6.
His stomach lurched and his hair stood up and then seconds later, he was standing on the island where he had started the mid-term exams.
He walked to the beach and saw there was a whole marina of boats.
He walked up to one boat that had a group of sailors throwing up ropes to one another and looking as if they were preparing to depart.
There was a man with a big nose and slicked back gray hair and wore a captain’s hat. He had a copper-ranked climber’s badge on his chest as well.
“Ya looking for a job, laddie?”
Max shook his head. “I need to find an island to train on.”
“Ah, I see now,” said the captain. “You’re a climber! Or a wannabe one!”
Max nodded. “Pretty much. Are there any good islands on this floor to train on?”
“Ah, there’s one just yonder there,” sighed the captain looking out to the sea.
“Could you drop me off there?”
“I could,” said the captain. “But we’re on a long voyage to hunt down a specific nasty kraken, won’t be coming back that way for a while.”
“How long is a while?” asked Max.
“I reckon a week and a half, maybe two weeks,” said the captain.
Max grinned. That was perfect. “Works for me,” he said to the captain.
“You sure, lad?”