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

He retrieved the supplies from his pouch that Casey and him had purchased originally for the mid-term exam and used them to help set up a temporary place of lodging for the next two weeks.

He tied the tarpaulin to a set of trees to create a roof and shelter from the rain. He then chopped down some wood to create a fire later.

He didn’t want to make a fire straightaway as he wasn’t sure where the titular ogres of Ogre Island were and he didn’t want to call attention to himself.

He materialized one of the many protein bars he’d had leftover from the midterms and chowed down on it as he reviewed his profile.

Name: Max Rainhart

Rank: E

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

You may choose to retain one ability you’re hit with, adding it to your arsenal of attacks at double the power.

Ability Slot: Shadow Blink (Rare)

Strength: 13

Agility: 13

Endurance: 11

Mana Affinity: 11

Passive Skills:

Kokoro (Warrior Spirit)

Max looked the stats over with an air of disappointment. It was funny how these exact stats had seemed so triumphant a while back, but felt not good enough now.

He hadn’t gained any stats from his adventure into the outer-rim. Why would he have? He hadn’t fought anything and the mana density wasn’t any more intense than it had been before.

He wouldn’t rank up again until he reached a mana affinity of 31, which even though he had two weeks to train, he doubted that would happen. Nevertheless, Sakura did tell him that the early ranks were separated into two phases, significant enough that just because two fighters might be E-rank it wasn’t enough to guarantee it was an equal match-up. Someone with 25 stat points in mana affinity was at a different level than someone with 11.

All of which meant, he had to raise his stats as much as he feasibly could between now and the final climber exam.

Max sighed and closed his profile from his vision.

It was time to get started on the training.

Max materialized his compass, oriented himself and then began exploring the island.

The island was made up of jungle and rock. He used his knife to cut through overgrown bushes and shrubbery.

For a place called Ogre Island, Max was surprised he hadn’t found any yet.

As he went deeper into the jungle he eventually heard a large groaning sound.

Max immediately threw himself against a tree to hide.

He slowly peeked his head out and saw a whole group of ogres.

They were green skinned, fat, and carried blood-stained wooden clubs.

Fortunately for Max though, the majority of them were all currently taking an afternoon nap, while two ogres stood on guard.

The ogre snores were powerful enough to create a tremor across the nearby ground.

Max shuddered.

It was monster hunting time.

78

Max’s heart began to beat faster and faster as he hid behind the tree near the nest of ogres.

The deep tremors of the ogre snores caused the tree to shake.

The ogre snores also probably made any small noises Max made undetectable by the guards.

He could use that to his advantage.

There was no doubt that he’d stumbled onto a favorable position with regards to fighting these monsters, but if they were to all wake up they’d be able to overwhelm him.

Especially because he currently had no offensive abilities.

He had shadow blink locked into its slot, and then the sleep ability that the agent back in the outer-rim had used on him.

He considered all his options and nodded to himself as he figured out a plan.

Max materialized a protein bar from his pouch and threw it to the edge of the ogre nest clearing.

One of the ogre guards perked up at the sight of a random food dropping.

He waddled over to it and when he bent down to pick it up, Max threw another just a little deeper away from the nest.

The ogre took the bait once more.

Max led the ogre a bit further away from the nest, before shadow blinking behind it and triggering the sleep ability.

Oomph!

The ogre collapsed on the ground and Max turned around frightened that it had been enough to wake up the other ogres.

Fortunately, it hadn’t.

Unfortunately though, the noise had caught the attention of the other ogre guard.

Max ducked behind a tree and waited for the second ogre guard to stumble across his companion and Max triggered the shadow blink and sleep attack combo once more.

Oomph!

He was now standing over two sleeping ogres.

Max wasted no time and materialized his knife. He slid the knife across both of the monsters’ throats.

The two ogres bled out, waking up briefly to cough up blood, before going cold and lifeless. Soon after that they glowed out before disintegrating to a shiny silver monster core each.

Max picked up both cores with satisfaction and then deposited them in his pouch for later.

He then tiptoed to the nest of sleeping ogres and made quick work of them with his trusty knife, gaining another four silver monster cores.

Max explored the island a bit more and ended up finding only one more nest of ogres. He used a similar strategy as he did before and deposited six more monster cores.

The sun was setting and so Max returned to his base camp to call it a day.

The following morning, Max returned to the original ogre nest and saw that a new batch of six ogres had respawned.

Perfect.

What wasn’t so perfect was the fact that they were all awake this time?

He could lure some of them away and then use his sleep ability but he wouldn’t be able to take out the whole group of them that way.

He looked up to the sky.

They were napping late in the afternoon when Max had first stumbled upon them.

He grinned to himself. He’d come back at naptime.

He sneaked away from the ogre encampment and returned to his base.

He still had a good seven hours to kill before he could go hunt the ogres easily, so he had to reverse how he