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

As he ate, he saw Sakura had left a note for him.

“Good luck Max! I’ll be cheering you on from the stands! Don’t wait up for me, I had to leave early for a meeting with the other branch commanders.”

Max smiled at the note, finished his breakfast, and then set off to the tower-zone’s main sports arena.

The tower-zone was fully alive and awake that morning as Max made his way downtown to the arena housing the tournament.

There were billboards and posters advertising the final exam. One even had his photograph on it. He saw everyone’s face from Casey to Cyrus to Sybil. People pointed at him as he went down the street.

It was like he had become a minor celebrity.

He eventually reached the tournament arena. It was a large coliseum-like sports venue. Throngs of people lined up, clogging the entrance to see the matches.

E-rank and D-rank climbers circled the whole arena, standing guard.

One guard approached Max as soon as he arrived.

“Max Rainhart?”

“That’s right,” he replied.

“Good. Please follow me,” said the man. “Contestants have their own special entry location.”

Max followed behind the man. He stared at the crowds and the size of the arena as he went forward. At the sight of it all, he was beginning to feel a sense of nervousness in his stomach.

But as soon as he felt a bit of nerves, he clenched his fists.

I shouldn’t be nervous, he thought. I’ve been training for this. This is just one step on my road to becoming one of the strongest climbers Zestiris has ever seen.

The man escorting Max eventually brought him to a smaller, less exciting looking entryway.

He opened the door and gestured for Max to go inside.

“The other contestants are all waiting down the hall,” said the man. “Further instructions will be given to you there.”

Max nodded and stepped into the passage. He went down the hall and found a room filled with the ten remaining contestants.

They all glanced at him with steely eyes before looking away and going quiet.

Casey’s face lit up as soon as she saw him.

She came up to him.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “It was so tense it was becoming hard to breathe.”

Toto poked his head out from her pocket and waved.

Max looked around the room and could see everyone was on edge.

There was a nervous, almost violent energy, filling the room.

Everyone—including the normally arrogant Cyrus Archer and Sybil Westley—looked as if they were feeling the nerves, the pressure of the upcoming tournament.

None of them knew who they might fight first, or if that fight was going to be their last.

Sakura stood in a glass box high up in the stands of the arena, staring down to where the fights would take place.

The battlefield was still currently empty.

“Another term of the climber academy comes to an end,” sighed the climber president. “It always goes by so fast. Don’t you think so too, Sakura?”

Sakura didn’t answer straightaway. She had an uneasy feeling.

The branch commanders were supposed to have a meeting prior to the tournament to go over how they were assessing the student climbers. If a climber won all their matches that was an automatic pass. However, if a climber lost, but showed a good amount of strategy, cunning, and power—it was still possible for them to pass.

The branch commanders and the president were supposed to go over this and what unique ways one could judge some of these attributes during the course of the matches.

It all sounded fine. Good, even.

There was just one problem: none of the other branch commanders were here.

Where the heck were they, wondered Sakura to herself.

“Sakura?”

She turned to the climber president. He smiled at her. He was waiting for her reply.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It does go by so fast.”

“Remember, Sakura,” he said, “so long as there are kids willing to train and become climbers, with the hopes of seeking the unknown reaches of the tower, there is still hope for us all. Enough hope to keep a smile on your face each day.”

Sakura nodded.

“Sir,” she began. “Are you not concerned that none of the other branch commanders are here?”

“Huh? Oh yes?” he said, blinking and looking around. “Where are they all?”

Oh brother, thought Sakura. The climber president—powerful climber that he was—was still getting old and senile.

The thing that bothered Sakura the most was that all the other branch commanders were missing. If there was just one more in this box, maybe she’d be feeling confidant about the others being late.

But none of them were here and that included Samuel Archer.

Samuel turned on the golden tap in the main bathroom of his penthouse apartment.

He ran his hands under the warm water, washing them gently with lavender-scented soap. The water in the tap ran through his fingers, landing on the white porcelain of the sink tinged with red until it swam away down the drain.

The man hummed a tune to himself as he washed, then dried his hands.

Today is the day, he thought to himself. The day of reckoning. The day that he and his family would rewrite the rules of this damned city.

He stepped out of the bathroom, walking over a bloodied corpse.

His entire penthouse looked like a Jackson Pollock painting of flesh and blood.

His most recent opponents had put up a greater fight than he had expected. Powerful as the fools were, they had walked blindly into his trap and he had made sure there was no room for escape.

He laughed to himself.

Riing, riiing!

Samuel pulled out his phone and sighed at the caller ID.

Sakura Sato.

He answered the phone. “Hello?”

The tiresome woman yelled and ranted at him, asking where he was.

“I’m on my way now,” he sighed and then ended the phone call.

He did a little twirl with his fingers to his servants who then promptly got to work cleaning up his home.

They’d start by removing the bodies of the dead branch commanders.

81

Max felt his nerves taking over.

His skin was pale. He was fidgety and twitching all