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

“Fair enough,” said Max.

“Plus,” Casey continued. “I’m telling you so hopefully we can work together on the day of the midterms. Sound good?”

Max considered it for a second. If people were allowed to team up during the midterms that probably meant it was better to do so than fly solo. If he was going to partner up with anyone, it was definitely going to be with Casey. Plus, she still hadn’t told him exactly what the mid-term exam was going to be. She was probably withholding the exact details until he agreed to partner up with her.

“Alright, I’ll team up with you,” said Max.

“Yay,” she said, clapping her hands. “I knew you would.”

“Alright, now what’s the exam?” asked Max.

“Well, I actually don’t know the exact details...” murmured Casey.

Max’s eye twitched. He went through all that posturing, even agreeing to team up with her, and she didn’t know the exact details of the exam!

“All I know is the exam is going to be a survival test of some kind,” said Casey.

Survival test!?

“And that’s the extent of what you know?” said Max, leaning back in his chair.

He scanned the café once more. There was hardly anyone in here and there certainly weren’t any climbers or student climbers about.

While on the face of it, knowing that the mid-term exam was going to be a survival test didn’t sound like much, but there were many ways they could prepare with that knowledge alone. If they’d been in the dark, they might have spent money buying extra offensive materials, but a test of survival would be different. They needed to go pick up supplies straight away.

“Hello, Earth-to-Max?” said Casey. “What’s going on in there? Share your thoughts? You’re always so serious all the time!”

She then stuck her tongue out and, as if on cue, Toto poked his head out of her pocket and also stuck its tongue out.

Max stood up. “C’mon, we gotta go prepare.”

They headed to Hawker’s Alley and the nearby adjacent streets to pick up some supplies.

The market street was filled as always with the usual seedy group of merchants, criminals, and tower-zone businessmen looking to accomplish something with the help of a little tower magic.

“Everyone’s leering at us,” said Casey. Toto sat perched on her shoulder.

“It’s just the way of the market,” Max explained. “They want to reel you in as a customer.”

“Except now I don’t want to look anywhere,” she said. “I don’t think this is a very good sales strategy if you ask me.”

Casey got noticeably more uncomfortable so Max dragged her to the side near an empty storefront. They needed to think through what kind of supplies they needed.

“It’s a survival test,” said Max. “So what we need to pick up are the most crucial survival utensils.”

“A rope!” said Casey. “A fishing rod!?”

Max shook his head.

“Nope,” he said. “Why do most people die out in the wilderness? Starvation and thirst. Our number one priority should be getting water bottles and food. I don’t think the test will last longer than a week, do you? So we need seven day’s worth of food and water each.”

“Ooh, you’re so clever, Max,” said Casey. “Next time I steal test secrets, I’m coming straight to you! I’ll never have to study again!”

Max laughed. Casey was clever and proactive enough—more so than any of the other students including himself—to steal information on the mid-term exam and yet she was still so lazy when it came to studying that she didn’t want to work even when she practically had the answers to the test in front of her.

“Oh,” said Casey, just realizing something else. “What about shelter? We might need that if it’s a survival test?”

Max nodded his head. “Yep, that’s the next most important thing in terms of survival. The only issue with shelter is I’m not sure how much shelter material we’ll be able to carry in our pouches.”

“Oh, that’s a good point,” said Casey. “We can still maybe get some tarpaulin?”

“Definitely,” said Max.

“Oi!” came a loud voice. “You kids going to shop! Or are you just going to stand there and scare away customers!”

Casey yelled back, “If anyone’s scaring customers, it’s you, you dope!”

Toto looked to be shaking his tiny gerbil fist in outrage alongside Casey.

The merchant grumbled and turned away.

Ironically, now that they did have their shopping list figured out, Casey refused to buy anything from the heckling man’s stall.

By the end of their shopping spree, they’d picked up a 24-pack of plastic water bottles each along with twenty-two protein bars each as well. It all fit into their pouches just fine.

“What can these things not hold?” asked Casey. “This is the most basic form of pouch and it doesn’t seem to fill up.”

Max considered this. During his training, he’d amassed a huge amount of monster cores and coins, which didn’t seem to overfill the pouch at all. He wondered whether it had less to do with weight but dimensions? Or was it only based on mana density? Or a combination of all three? Or was there no feasible limit on the amount of items, but rather on each individual items weight?

He remembered talking it over with Sakura a while back. “You can’t use it for holding pockets of air or large amounts of water...there are some very rare and expensive pouches that do that, but I wouldn’t worry about that for the time being.”

He wasn’t going to question it so long as they were able to pack all their supplies. Casey was even able to get some tarpaulin, along with matches and firewood in her pouch as well.

They were just about to leave the market when Casey grabbed Max’s arm and pulled him to the side out of the way. They ducked behind a merchant selling mana-imbued ceramics.

“What’s going on?” asked Max.

“Shh,” said Casey. “Look!”

Walking through Hawker’s Alley was Cyrus and his group of teenaged goons.

Crap. If Cyrus saw them there, he might be able to piece together more information