Tower Climber (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1) by Jakob Tanner (interesting books to read for teens .txt) 📗

He looked down to the floor where the assassin had been before he’d vanished into black dust. That wasn’t a teleport spell; that was a suicide. To protect the man from giving up any information.

He’d been learning quite quickly that not all climbers were good people. Some of them were as bad as the monsters they claimed to protect ordinary citizens from. Some of them were even worse than that.

He didn’t like the idea of being a killer, but the world of climbers was filled with them.

Would he have hesitated to stop someone from harming his sister or anyone else he loved for that matter?

No.

He’d try his best to live up to the ideals of a good person.

But who gave a shit if you were a good person if your sister and everyone else was dead?

Only an idiot would see upholding such ideals as honorable.

He decided there and then.

The world could have his honor.

He wanted to find and save his sister.

And to achieve that, he would do anything necessary.

23

Sakura woke Max extra early the following day.

“Good morning!” she cheered. “You don’t want to be late for your first day of school, do you!?”

Max groaned and rubbed his head.

After the events of last night, he’d actually forgotten that today was the first day of the climber academy term. Today was the day he’d been training towards for the last month.

He got out of bed and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready.

Forty-five minutes later, Sakura and him were standing in front of the climber academy.

The structure was a large red brick building with a clock tower. A serene courtyard lay in front of it.

So this was it, thought Max. The Climber Academy.

“Are you excited for your first day?” asked Sakura.

“About that,” said Max. “I can probably take it from here. So maybe see you later tonight?”

Sakura’s eyebrow twitched. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Are you embarrassed of me? What—are you worried people might think your mom walks you to school?”

Max blushed. “...Maybe.”

Sakura got red in the face, clearly annoyed. “I’m not that old! Gah! Maybe they might think you have an older hot girlfriend? Did you ever think of that, huh? The youth of today know no manners, do they? I was going to give you a cameo in my future romance novel, but you just got yourself cut, mister.”

“Uhh...”

Max scratched the back of his head. He really didn’t know what to say here.

Sakura sighed and composed herself.

“Oh, I got you a present. Not that you deserve it any more,” she said, rummaging in her pocket. She pulled out a small brown pouch. She handed it to him.

“Thanks,” said Max. “What is it?”

“It’s a special pouch,” said Sakura. “All climbers wear them. Think of it like an inventory in a video game. It’s not very large as it’s only a beginner’s pouch. I recommend not putting anything insanely big in there like a truck, but you should be just fine storing a good number of monster cores and other materials in there.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” said Max, tying the pouch to his belt.

“Don’t mention it,” said Sakura. “Seriously though, don’t get clever with the pouch or you’ll break it. So don’t try and fill it with water or anything crazy. Alright, I think that’s it. Good luck today, Max. I can’t wait to hear how it goes.”

With that, Sakura strutted off to work at the defense climber headquarters.

Max watched her go and then turned to the courtyard.

First day of school, he thought. Here we go.

He walked through the gates and entered the courtyard.

A mass of teenagers loitered outside the doors.

Max ignored them and headed towards the entrance of the school.

“Don’t bother,” said a voice. “None of the doors are open. The student climbers are supposed to wait out here.”

It was a boy talking to him. He was around his age.

“Oh, thanks for letting me know,” said Max.

He approached the boy, but the boy turned away and focused on his mobile phone.

I guess this guy wasn’t going to be my new friend, thought Max to himself.

He went and stood behind the loitering groups. He looked to see if there was anyone else there on their own. Someone he could maybe talk to, maybe even earn more about what to expect here at the climber academy.

But there was no one else by themselves as far as Max could see.

He sighed.

Even in the tower-zone, popularity was just not something that was going to bless him at school. Oh well.

Max stood around, waiting for something to happen, when a paper airplane flew above the crowd of students.

It caught Max’s attention because it was behaving quite abnormally for a paper airplane.

Mainly, it didn’t seem to be falling towards the crowd. The plane hovered in the air and did a flip. It then flew towards Max. It did another flip before hitting him in the forehead.

“Ah, what!?” said Max.

He heard giggling nearby.

Max’s shoulders suddenly shot up. He’d spent so much of his school years prior to this one dealing with tormentors, he’d learned a giggle was never innocent.

He looked down to the paper airplane that had fallen to his feet after it had smashed into his head.

There was a note scrawled on it.

Open me.

He picked up the paper airplane and unfolded it. There was a note inside.

Are you the new kid?

Max looked up and suddenly he saw a very pretty girl waving at him.

She had wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail and bright green eyes.

She wore a burgundy corduroy pinafore dress with a thin-striped long sleeve sweater underneath. She would have looked playful and innocent if she hadn’t just launched a hostile airplane at his forehead, which made Max suspect her of being quite mischievous.

“Based on that goofy expression on your face,” giggled the girl in front of him. “I’m going to take that as a, ‘yes, you are the new kid.’”

Max didn’t know what to say. He was just mildly shocked that what he had expected