The beginning levels of the Tower are there to teach us. The Easy Difficulty teaches us the rules of the Tower. The Medium Difficulty teaches us how to fight. We can only guess what the Hard Difficulty could teach us.

Harold Biech Medium Difficulty climber

Something was off. The Hard Difficulty was hard but the scaling was all wrong. With each level I gained, the orcs became easier and easier to kill. By rough estimation I could tell the standard orc was as strong as I was at level 10. I wish I could say each fight was thrilling, but the truth was the orcs didn't stand a chance once our strength and speed were equal.

Fighting a thousand orcs sounds like an amazing legendary achievement but with my current stats it was borning.

Level 12.

I reached this level earlier in the day and while I felt more powerful than ever, I also felt hollow.

I never wanted to join Climber Academy. While fighting held a certain thrill, I took more pleasure in overcoming challenges than killing monsters. My record achievements in the Academy were due to this drive.

John had been the one who wanted skills to climb the Tower and win fame and fortune. At least I thought that was his goal. The increased wisdom allowed me to make connections I previously missed.

John mentioned a girl that was special but was out of his reach the week before he decided to start the Academy. The way he quickly became friends with the Head of the Academy’s daughter and how he introduced us.

The fact that he introduced us and how he introduced her. At the time it felt like he was trying to talk her up. In hindsight it was clear he had fallen for her and was sharing what he found alluring in her.

The way he encouraged me to take risks and challenges in the academy. It was not about elevating me. It was clearly to give me opportunities to fail and potentially make a fool of myself.

At one point I had thought he had lost interest in climbing the Tower but he suddenly wanted to climb it with me after I decided I wanted to marry Joanne. The amazing hidden knowledge he discovered about the Hard Difficulty that had been secreted away in the Academy's library.

The fact that he encouraged me to keep our plan secret from everyone.

Even now I was sure that my family and Joanne thought I was completing the Easy Challenge. Not only was I likely to die in the Tower but everyone I knew would see me as a failure. The man who was amazing at the Tower Academy but choked on the Tower climb.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to say that his betrayal lit a fire in me and that I burned with a desire for vengeance. But that is not what happened. Instead I looked back on my relationship with Joanne and saw it for what it was, a conquest.

She told me from the first date what she wanted and expected. She never wanted to marry a climber, only to have someone who was strong willed enough to stand up to her father. She viewed our relationship as a fun diversion while I had wanted the prettiest girl in town to be mine.

The truth was easy to see after I had been alone for the better part of the month. Well, that and my increased wisdom stat.

I wasn’t mad, instead I felt like a fool. I thought I was right, while those who were close to me were nothing but honest and upfront with their thoughts and feelings from the beginning.

Yes, John did trick me into this climb, but it was I who chose to walk this path.

John has always been impulsive. He was quick to jump into a situation without thinking things through. I didn’t doubt that he felt justified in the moment and perhaps would carry those thoughts for years to come. But I knew John, he was my best friend. He would eventually slow down and think things through. When that happens he is going to regret this trick. His regret will turn to inward anger and he will purposely make himself miserable in some sort of grandiose belief that he was atoning for his actions.

Joanne wouldn’t be much better. She would feel like our fight had distracted me and that she was the cause of my death. While I now knew my romantic feelings for her were shallow, she is still my friend and deserves better than to carry guilt of my death.

Well when everything is shit, there is nothing to do but carry on. And when everyone is shit, there is no point in passing blame.

1st Floor

Goal: Defeat all remaining enemies

816/1,000 Normal Enemies - Orcs

0/100 Sub-Boss Enemies

0/1 Boss Enemy

Time limit: None

Time to find those remaining orcs and some Sub-Bosses.

Having spent almost a month on this floor of the dungeon, I knew where to go. What I first took to be a hilly forest was actually a wide valley that narrowed the further I went from the initial area. Naturally the Orcs were more concentrated the narrower the valley became.

Walking through the valley I tried to remain stealthy. While the orcs were crappy at seeing anything further than 100 feet, I still had no idea what the Boss and Sub-bosses were or what skills they had.

Hearing the normal grunts that preceded a group of orcs I managed to sneak up on a decent sized group. This group’s appearance was odd, which quickly made me weary to start my normal attack pattern of charging in and massacring the orcs.

There were 20 normal orcs, so similar to the ones I have killed that they could have been clones. But there was also a new type. There were a dozen shorter orcs that were less bulky. I couldn’t be sure if these were younger orcs or the females of their species.

Eventually boredom overcame caution and I dashed in to start the fight. I quickly took out a pair of the normal orcs while keeping an eye on the smaller orcs. While I moved to my next target, the smaller orcs pulled out long straight wooden sticks that reminded me of the training swords of the Academy: straight and well maintained so they could take a beating but nothing fancy as it was still just a training tool. I quickly realized these smaller orcs were juveniles out for some training with the experienced orcs. Deciding to ignore them, I rushed between the bigger orcs quickly taking down a half dozen in a smooth fluid movement.

Then a fireball flew past me, missing my head by inches. Despite missing me entirely I could smell burnt hair where it passed by my head. The fireball continued and hit a tree, which immediately burst into flames as if it was soaked in oil.

That was not good.

I turned back to the smaller orcs just in time to see them all start launching fireballs at me. Luckily the magic spells were slow. Not slow as in a person walking, but slow in the way an apple thrown at you is slower than an arrow shot at you.

I ducked, dipped, dodge, and dove around the balls. Dodging another one I quickly started throwing the only projectiles I had, daggers. Two daggers from each hip that I had secured in rough sheaths flew into the closest two spellcasting orcs. I grabbed more daggers from the orcs I had already killed and threw each as soon as I could.

Once half of the spellcasters were down, I rushed to the group hoping my close proximity would stop them from lobbing fireballs at me. I was wrong as one spell caster missed me and hit another. Focused on dodging and taking down the spellcaster, the fight took on a frenzied tone instead of the well controlled pace that I usually set.

A minute later and every orc was dead. Looking around the spellcasters seemed to have done part of the work for me as most of the remaining normal orcs had been killed by fireballs.

Enemies defeated. 1300 exp awarded.

10 Enemies defeated by others. 10 exp awarded.

It was a great amount of experience but nowhere near enough to take me to the next level. It also looked like I only received a single point of experience for every orc that the spellcasters defeated.

1st Floor

Goal: Defeat all remaining enemies

836/1,000 Normal Enemies - Orcs

12/100 Sub-Boss Enemies - Orc Witches

0/1 Boss Enemy

Time limit: None

Doing some rough math I realized that I would be able to get to level 13 before challenging the boss. The challenge excited me. Time to grind some orcs.