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Chapter: 04
Tower – Tutorial (3)
I created a new clone and entered the 4th floor of the tower.
Since 10 seconds had already passed, I was lying on the ground, and the goblin that had killed me had thrown away the chipped hand axe it was using and was happily swinging my one-handed sword through the air.
It was a one-handed sword for me, but for a goblin the size of a child, it was practically a two-handed sword.
The moment the goblin became absorbed in my one-handed sword and carelessly showed me its back, I picked up the hand axe lying on the ground without hesitation and slammed it down on the goblin’s head, just like it had done to me.
“Headcracker!”
Crack!
The goblin died without being able to react, just like I had.
I took the goblin’s magic stone and weapons.
One chipped dagger and two hand axes.
Including the hand axe I had obtained from the previous floor, I now had three axes.
I stacked the heads of the three axes together, loosely wrapped the blade parts once with the leather skirt the goblin had been wearing, and shoved them roughly into the right pocket of my cargo pants.
Since they were not very large hand axes, all three axe heads fit into the pocket without any problem.
The handles hit my thighs whenever I walked and rattled around, which was annoying, but it was bearable.
Since I wasn’t used to using the inventory yet, I kept the axes there so I could pull them out and throw them anytime.
“Damn, the weight limit is annoying.”
The one-handed sword was also over 500 grams, so it couldn’t go into the inventory.
Still, the dagger was below that limit, so it could fit.
I placed my hand on the crystal and moved on to the next floor, the 5th floor.
When I arrived on the 5th floor, unlike the previous open area, there was a narrow straight passage.
[Reach the end of the path.]
The quest for the 5th floor was to reach the end of the path.
According to the information I knew, it wasn’t that long.
At most, maybe around 1,000 meters?
According to what a tower returnee I saw online said, the path would be blocked by walls every 200 meters, and there would be a door leading to the next section.
I walked forward as the tower instructed.
Of course, simply walking forward wasn’t the end of it. There was a goblin standing in front of the door.
“One goblin, huh.”
Looks like what I read online was correct.
A practice battle where one goblin appears three times in each section, two goblins appear once, and finally three goblins appear in a consecutive battle.
The 1st floor was a place to practice abilities, the 2nd floor was practice killing living creatures, the 3rd floor was full-scale combat practice, and the 4th floor was practice fighting multiple enemies.
Looking at it this way, I understood why people called this the tutorial section.
“Keruk!”
The goblin let out a strange cry and charged at me.
Still, maybe it wasn’t a meaningless death, because I felt less tense than before.
I lowered my body, raised my shield, blocked the goblin’s hand axe, and knocked it away with my shield.
As the goblin’s body staggered, I immediately swung my sword and cut into its body.
I picked up the hand axe and magic stone, then immediately passed through the door and continued walking.
A goblin was no longer difficult to deal with one-on-one.
After passing through the third section like that, I arrived in front of two goblins at the 800-meter mark.
I thought about throwing a hand axe but decided against it.
If I threw a hand axe before the goblins could react and made it a one-on-one situation, it would be easier, but I wouldn’t get any practice.
I wasn’t confident about three versus one, but I should at least try two versus one.
Fortunately, the passage wasn’t very wide, so as long as I didn’t let my guard down, I wouldn’t be surrounded.
I struck the goblin rushing from the left with my shield as if pushing it hard, while swinging the Blue Wood Sword toward the goblin on the right.
The goblin on the right panicked and stepped back, and the tip of my sword only slightly scraped its arm.
I didn’t miss the chance when the goblin on the left, which I had shoved away strongly, fell on its butt. I immediately chased after the right goblin, pushed forward with my shield, and blocked its axe.
Then I swung my sword and cut the right goblin’s neck.
I couldn’t completely sever it this time either, but the right goblin died.
I immediately turned around and swung my sword at the goblin that was getting back up.
“Phew! Good. Looks like I just need to not get too nervous.”
I managed to hunt two at the same time.
As long as I didn’t get overly tense, I could probably win against anything below the 10th floor.
I wrapped the magic stones and the goblin weapons in the removed leather skirts and put them into my bag.
I was collecting weapons and magic stones I wouldn’t use for the sake of selling them.
According to the tower returnee, magic stones could be exchanged for shop points through the tower shop window, and weapons carried by monsters or monster materials could be sold in the city on the public floors.
Using the tower shop only required points, but food, clothing, and shelter in the city required the common currency called “credits.”
“Hmm, it’s getting pretty heavy.”
It wasn’t that heavy. It was only three hand axes and two daggers added.
Each weapon felt like it weighed less than 500 grams, so…
“Ah, I can just transfer them to the main body.”
I didn’t know whether time flowed inside the inventory or not, but no time passed at all for my main body, and there was plenty of space, so it was perfect for storing items.
Of course, the passage for transferring things to the main body was narrow because of the 500-gram limit.
There was probably a way to increase the inventory capacity later.
Then I could use it more comfortably.
I moved the miscellaneous items back and forth between my main body and clone.
Then I crossed the door and arrived at the crystal guarded by the final three goblins.
As soon as I arrived, I threw the hand axes before the goblins could react.
The first hand axe I threw sank deeply into the left goblin’s thigh, and the next one hit the right goblin between the eyes.
“Damn, I was aiming for the center on both.”
Apparently, I had no talent for throwing.
Even though I had practiced shooting with a perfect score several times.
The third hand axe flew accurately toward the goblin in the center, but the central goblin knocked my axe away.
While it staggered from deflecting it, I cut down the central goblin and blocked the axe swung by the left goblin with my shield.
“Kieeeek!”
“Wow! Dual axes! That’s cool!”
The left goblin pulled out the axe I had gifted it and swung both axes with both hands.
I blocked with my shield and swung my sword.
This was my first time fighting someone with a two-handed weapon, and it was quite troublesome.
It swung wildly, leaving openings, but actually stabbing into those openings was difficult because I wasn’t skilled with the sword.
However, because its leg was already injured and bleeding heavily, it soon exhausted itself, and cutting down the tired goblin was easy.
After collecting the weapons and magic stone, I sat down and rested for a while, then placed my hand on the crystal and went up to the next floor.
The 6th floor was similar to the 5th floor’s environment. However…
[Pass through the maze.]
From here on, it was a maze.
Naturally, I didn’t know the answer to the maze.
“It’s a shame I don’t have a ball of thread.”
In Greek mythology, the labyrinth of Crete was escaped by using a thread to trace the way back.
Well, I wasn’t returning the way I came. I had to pass through it, so maybe a thread was meaningless.
I took out a notebook and pen from my bag and slowly moved forward while drawing a simple map.
I used each line drawn in the notebook as one block, drawing one mark every ten steps.
Whenever I reached a fork, I marked it in the notebook, and on the wall in the direction I went, I left a mark using the blood from the leather skirt after wiping the goblin blood off my blade.
Blue stood out well.
When choosing directions, I used the right-hand rule and always chose the right side.
The right-hand rule was one way to pass through a maze. No matter how complicated the maze was, if there was an exit, it would eventually connect to one surface, so the theory was that you could escape by keeping your hand on the wall while walking.
“Are there no monsters in the maze?”
Just as I muttered that after walking for a while, I encountered a horned rabbit in the passage.
The horned rabbit naturally charged at me, and I blocked its headbutt with my shield.
The horned rabbit failed to land after its attack was blocked and fell over, and I immediately cut it down.
After encountering six horned rabbits and two goblins, I reached the exit about three hours later.
“Three hours, so it wasn’t that big of a maze.”
I went up to the next floor.
The 7th floor was a wider but shorter path. Maybe about 500 meters?
[Break through the trap path and reach the end.]
So it really was a trap path. Since there were no monsters, I had expected this.
Online, posts from tower returnees cursing about the trap path were common everywhere, from social media to communities.
I carefully stepped forward. As I slowly moved ahead, I heard a mechanical sound.
“Ziiing~!”
I held up my shield toward the hole where the sound came from.
Bang!
An arrow struck the shield. The impact transmitted through the shield was quite strong.
At least it had about the same power as the hand axe the goblin swung.
“Is it a mechanism where stepping on certain places causes arrows to shoot from those holes? At this speed, wouldn’t just running be better?”
After deciding, I ran without hesitation.
Ziiing~! Ziiing~! Zzzzzzzing~!
The sound of mechanisms activating came all at once, and arrows flew toward where I had been standing.
“Ah!”
Damn! There were holes behind me too!
An arrow hit my shoulder and knocked me forward, and I got up while hearing an ominous activation sound coming from my back, or rather, the ceiling, protecting my head with my shield.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
A rain of arrows poured down above me. The shield became heavier with every arrow stuck in it.
“Damn!”
Occasionally, arrows from the left diagonal hit my forearm and hip, while arrows from the right diagonal struck my side and thigh.
I gritted my teeth and kept running.
Sometimes I blocked arrows following the direction of the sounds, and sometimes I just took them with my body, but eventually I crossed the 500-meter path.
“Damn it, was this really made to be passed? Why is there an arrow rain pouring down?”
Although I complained, I had to admit it.
I had been somewhat reckless.
If I had slowly walked one step at a time and dealt with the traps, it would have ended with just a few arrows hitting me, but I ended up looking like a hedgehog.
Still, thanks to the shield, I was able to protect places like my head and heart where a hit would mean instant death.
At this rate, I’d die from blood loss or metal poisoning.
Without hesitation, I opened the ability window and selected [Absorb].
When my consciousness returned to my main body, the notification from the ability window greeted me.
[You gained 120 Avatar Points by absorbing the avatar.]
[The level of Multi-Dimensional Avatar has increased. You are now Lv 7.]
[You gained 2000 Avatar Points from leveling up Multi-Dimensional Avatar.]
[Current Avatar Points: 2230.]
Did my level become 7 because I reached the 7th floor?
No, when I checked my status window, the strength that had been 8 had somehow become 9, and the Blue Wood Sword’s level had become 7.
It seemed that the ability [Multi-Dimensional Avatar] also leveled up based on how much the clone grew before being absorbed.
Maybe because it was still early and it was giving me things like Avatar Points that I had no immediate use for, the growth was fast.
Once my level increased further and Avatar Points had actual uses, the level probably wouldn’t rise so easily.
Right now, honestly, there wasn’t much difference between level 1 and level 7.
“But why did my strength increase?”
I didn’t know why my strength went up.
Strength was my lowest stat, but I hadn’t even done strength training.
“Oh, looks like Absorb has no penalty unlike death.”
Unlike when dying temporarily disabled the slot by turning it gray, Absorb allowed me to immediately create another clone and enter it, and no time passed either.
In the new clone, the arrows that had been stuck all over my body were pushed out and fell to the ground.
I checked the ability window to see if I could use Absorb repeatedly, but Absorb was grayed out and disabled.
“Tch, so I can’t use a strategy where I intentionally get injured and recover repeatedly.”
I thought it would be useful in battle.
I grumbled and went up to the next floor.
(To be continued in the next chapter)
