Fourth chapter in the Royal climber

Chapter 4

Yellow grass and green children that aren’t children

Pulling out a stick from her waist she put it in her mouth before she moved her staff to her other hand. As she did she looked over the grassland in front of her. It seemed to go on forever. Sipping on the vitality from the stick in her mouth she slowly turned around to see what she had to work with on this floor.

It all looked the same. Endless knee grass the color of straw surrounded her. Not sure what to do she picked a random direction and started walking. What happened on the first floor was well known, but the rest of the floor up to the ninth floor were always different. Some people reported that they had to fight a boss monster, while others had to face some kind of puzzle floor. From here on out up until the ninth floor she had to figure out what the Tower required her to do to clear the floor.

The ninth floor, and every floor that ended with nine there afterwards was Climbers had to kill a very dangerous monster. It was mostly just a single monster that a climber had to kill to advance to the next floor, but sometimes that very dangerous monster had friends that you had to kill to get to it. The floors that ended in nine were the most dangerous floors in the Tower. Those floors killed more people than the rest in the ten set combined.

Kat’s current ten set were the first nine floors. Her next ten set, if she kept on climbing, were floor ten to nineteen. Even though the first ten set were only nine floor’s, and not as dangerous as any other ten set, it was the one that killed the most climbers. Some mathematicians from the kingdom had discovered that roughly three out of ten people who attempted to reach Massachuttes city on floor ten, only three succeeded. Kat could well understand as she remembered her time when she hadn’t found a tree for days and nearly died.

As she walked through the grassland she started to notice a few things. First there were no bugs. There were patches of grassland south of her village. They weren’t anywhere near the size of this grassfield, but what they did have was a lot of bugs. She remembered that she had never seen a field like this without grasshoppers or no-see-ums, tiny bugs that flew around that were almost invisible unless you look in the right angle in the sunlight. There were no bugs in this field. She also noted that there was no wind as well.

It was the battle cry that saved her life. She wasn’t paying attention like she should have and was walking through the grass when there came a scratch the sent little tingles up Kat’s spine. Her body moved on it’s own as a spear came flying at her. Her staff knocked the spear to the side so that it missed her. She felt the wind on her cheek as the spear passed her face by inches.

She turned to face what had thrown the spear and saw what looked like a naked ugly green baby. It was maybe two feet tall if that, and it’s face was twisted up into a snarl. It also had a second thicker spear that it was carrying that looked far too big for it to be carrying. She only had a second to process what she was seeing as the baby screamed at her again, sending tingling shocks up her spine before it started to charge at her with the point of its spear pointing right at her.

Hours upon hours of killing mice made her actions almost robotic as she flung her left hand out and threw a musket ball of vitality at the charging baby. It struck the baby in its chest and she felt her connection to the green baby’s vitality instantly. She yanked her hand back to try to suck the vitality right out of the thing, and a flood of vitality came rushing up the ribbon that connected it to her, but the thing had way too much vitality for her suck up right away.

She realized at the last moment that it was going to reach her. She spun to the right and threw herself to the ground desperately trying to avoid the spear, but it hit her anyway. It hit her on the top of her left leg, and she felt the tip scrape her hip bone as it tore a large gash out the side as the spear tore itself out the side of her hip. But that was all it got before the vitality flowing into Kat snapped off as the thing died.

She landed on the ground and screamed in pain, but the pain only lasted a few seconds. Deep inside her body she felt what she was calling her vitality stomach start to drain and the pain cut off like someone had shut a valve leaving her hip feeling normal. She looked down as saw her wound visibly close. In fact it closed much faster than her pants repaired the tear that the spear had caused. A few seconds later there was no sign of the wound.

“By the maker.” Kat whispered to herself awed at her healing ability. She knew all climbers had the ability to heal themselves of any wound that didn’t kill them, but she never heard of a healing ability that worked this fast. Her wound had closed in a matter of seconds.

Before she could continue on that line of thought she felt her eyes burn. It wasn’t painful. It felt like she had been reading in poor light for a long time. The sensation only lasted a couple of seconds, but it unnerved her until she realized it was her first skill activating. The knowledge that her eyesight had improved by a very tiny amount flooded her mind. She knew that eyesight was part of the body attribute, and she realized that the skill hadn’t been able to steal the full attribute. It only stole a part of it. Yet she felt the skill had acted normally.

That made her want to understand her skill even more as she had thought it would take the entire attribute. She knew she could spend a power coin for more information on her skill once she reached Massachuttes city, but she knew that would be stupid. Both her father, and her uncle had been adamant about not spending power coins on anything but attributes. Spending a coin on anything else was a waste of a coin according to them.

Knowledge, her uncle had said, was acquired by experimenting with the skill. Taking a shortcut by using the coin to gain a bit of information was a waste that could kill if she was lacking an attribute at the wrong moment. A climber only got one hundred and forty power that they could add to their attributes by clearing floors in the Tower. Aside from the coins, which were very rare and were only awarded to a single person in a crew, that was all you could possibly get. If you were in a five person crew, that wasn’t nearly as much of a problem if you were in a twenty person crew. The coins were only issued if you impressed the Tower and the high average before floor fifty was only four per ten set.

Nearly every monster was stronger than a climber. That made climbers always be behind the monsters of the Tower when it came to attribute. Lacking even a single attribute could mean your or one of your crew's death. Things like, you were strong enough to penetrate a monster's thick hide, not having enough mana to get that last spell off, or not having enough health to survive those precious seconds until your healing ability could kick in. A single attribute could mean the difference between life of death.

Also according to both of them, fancy armor or weapons was nice, but using a coin to buy it from the Tower was a waste. The weapons and armor break. A bad hit, or just overuse could destroy your things. That’s why climbers always carried several weapons and if possible a second set of armor. Her father always carried two bows and a dagger just in case. He also carried a repair kit so he could hopefully repair his armor in case of a bad break.

There were also many ways of getting weapons and armor that didn’t cost a power coin. You could get a climber who had traded away his or her Tower granted skill for a crafting skill. There were plenty of people who did just that. So for the cost of a few materials and Boston pounds, you could get a crafter to build you that weapon that you wanted. It wouldn’t be as pretty, but it would work. You could also take the weapons from human-like monsters that you killed in the Tower and use them for yourself. Oftentimes that wasn’t ideal, but if you needed to you could.

Kat closed her eyes and thought about her skill. She imagined two of herselves like she had been shown when she got the skill, and saw that without any input from herself one of her bodies now had a slight glow around the eyes. The glow wasn’t real, she realized as she looked at her copy. It was just her mind telling her that one copy of herself now had better eyesight than the other.

When she opened her eyes and looked around she couldn’t see any difference. Everything looked just like normal. With a sigh of disappointment she turned to look at the dead green baby thing behind her. It was laying face down. She used her foot to roll it over. Once it was right side up she saw it wasn’t a baby, but an old ugly green man. She noted that it’s chin had a few white hairs sticking out at odd angles. It also had wrinkles around its eyes that people got when they grew older. He was also completely naked with his privates hanging out. Kat quickly looked away feeling her cheeks burn in embarrassment.

Looking at his spear, she noted it wasn’t anything special. It was just a stick that had been roughly sharpened at one end so there was a stubby point. She reached down and picked it up to get a closer look at it. Still not impressed, she used her finger to pick at the blunt end of the stick hoping to find a ribbon of vitality, but there was none. In fact it felt oddly empty unlike her own staff, which now that she was holding something else, felt alive in her hands. She dropped the old man’s spear to the ground and started walking again, taking a small pull off of her stick in her mouth.

Her vitality levels in her stomach felt fine. It wasn’t topped off, but it wasn’t that far from being full either. She also felt a small drain on her vitality. She wondered if it was because that much vitality was only temporary if it was because she was using the small trickle just going about her daily life. She also remembered she hadn’t eaten in a very long time, but she felt hungry, she only felt a little of it. It was the same with her thirst. Yes, she do with a drink of water, but she could also do without.

“I need to test that out.” Kat thought to herself as she scanned the surrounding area looking for tiny green men. As it was, their height gave them the advantage with the ability to hide in the knee high grass.

The sun on this floor was very visible and moved like a normal sun, so she knew it had only been a half hour when she heard a higher pitch war cry that sent little electric shocks down her spine. A female version of the green people jumped up from the grass and threw a thin wobbly spear at Kat. This time she didn’t freeze, but moved to her right and used her staff to knock the spear out of the air. Then she threw a musket ball back at the thing. Female green thing tried to charge at her but only got a few steps as Kat sucked the vitality out of it. It never got close to her before it fell over dead.

Like the male version it was completely naked, and had nothing of value on its person. Kat felt her eyes burn again for a little bit, but the feeling quickly faded like before. She looked around trying to see if her eyesight had gotten any better, but everything still looked normal. Shaking her head in disappointment she left the thing where it lay, and continued on her journey.

The next time she heard the war cry it came from two beings. Two of the green men shot up from the grass and threw their wobbly spears at her. One went wild and landed far from her but the other one, she had to duck to avoid getting hit in the face. She dropped her staff as the two grabbed their thicker spears and started to run at her. She flicked out her right hand sending a musket ball at the one to the right. She then flicked her left hand and send out a second musket ball of vitality. The second one flew much slower and would have missed if the green man hadn’t been running right at her. Luckily both hit and she yanked both her hands back and sucked at their vitality.

Right away she knew she made a mistake as she was flooded with way too much vitality. She barely saw as the two green men dropped dead. She was too overwhelmed by the pain that radiated out from her stomach. She dropped to the ground and struggled to breath. She started to get light headed and her sight was being slowly swallowed by blackness that came from the edges of her vision.

Gasping, she tried to stay upright on her knees when she felt a pop. All the excess vitality suddenly started to drain out of her and down her feet into the ground below her. Then it stopped and the pain slowly went away. She still felt that her stomach was still overly stretched out, but it was as bad as it had been only seconds before. When she felt like she wasn’t going to fall over, she opened her eyes.

What she saw stunned her. All around her in a perfect circle that was about five feet or so wide were green grass in the midst of all the yellow grass. She could feel the vitality from the grass warming her body like the heat from the sun on a warm day. Slowly standing up, she noted that some of the grass had sprouted tiny white flowers. Shaking her head in wonder, she picked up her staff, and started walking again.

She plucked a few flowers on the way out of the circle and placed them on her har. Her father would not have approved, but she couldn’t help it. She felt oddly happy, almost giddy.

“It’s not just a weapon.” She said out loud. She didn’t know why she was happy that her skill could be used in other ways besides killing and healing herself. She just was.

She was attacked six more times. Twice she was forced to use both her hand and pull vitality from two of the green people at once. The first time resulted just like it had happened before. Sharp overwhelming pain then a pop and a circle of green around her. The only difference was that this time she paid attention to what happened and learned how to drain the excess vitality away from her stomach.

The second time she was attacked by two green people, she sucked in the vitality, but instead of just letting it go to her stomach, she pulled some of it downwards. The vitality washed down inside her legs then out into the grass around her. There wasn’t any pain when she controlled the flow. The circle of vibrant grass was slightly larger as well when she controlled it.

Her eyes burned each time she killed a green thing. It was only after that she thought hre sight might have gotten better. It might just have been her imagination, but things seemed sharper and clearer. Like she was seeing more detail when she looked at a blade of grass. If it wasn’t her imagination then it was only a very slight improvement.

She stopped when the sun started to set. She sat down, not bothering to try and find a better location to rest. Everything was the same. The land was mostly flat and the dirt soft. It wasn’t soft enough that her feet sunk in too deep, but she did note that she had left a track in both the grass and the dirt that wouldn't be all that hard to follow. It, she told herself, couldn’t be helped. The grass was too thick for her to move without creating a trail and the dirt was too soft for her not to leave tracks.

Still, she sat down in the middle of her path. She watched the sunset for the first time in months and nearly cried at how beautiful it was. Once it got dark things got weird. It didn’t get completely dark like she thought it would. Instead everything remained visible, but turned into shades of grey. She could still see perfectly which she tested by looking at a blade of grass, but other than there being no color, she could see just fine.

She looked up to see if there was some kind of celestial event causing the odd coloring, but there was nothing above her but darkness. No clouds, no stars, no anything. Shrugging at the odd floor quirk, she lay down and tried to get some sleep. She knew she had a long day ahead of her in the morning.

She was woken up by a war cry. She sat up startled and looked around. She was still trying to figure out where the war cry had come from when she heard a second one. This one sounded like it came from a female green thing while the first one sounded like a male had yelled out. As if they were waiting for that war cry, Kat heard a bunch of screams and yells that came from all around her.

“Dratted.” She cursed, and started to crawl away from where she had been sleeping, trying her best not to create a trail behind her and mostly failing. She stopped about ten feet from where she had slept and peeked her head up over the grass. The world was still colorless, but she was still able to see. What she saw made her want to curse again.

The grass behind her about twenty or so feet away was moving in an unnatural way. She knew what that meant. She quickly glanced around hoping that that was the only enemy coming at her, but to her left, roughly two hundred yards, a large swath of grass was moving unnaturally in her direction following the trail she had left behind during the day. Far behind that patch of grass, she thought she saw another smaller swath of grass moving as well.

“Blazes.” She cursed once more as she took in what was headed towards her. Before she could do anything more there came another war cry, but this one much closer than any of them so far. Her head shot around and she saw a green man, who glowed white in the odd light, standing not twenty feet from her looking right at her. She rolled to the left as she saw him pull his arm back while holding his flimsy spear.

She stopped once she was on her belly and tossed out a musket ball of vitally at him. He was so close and standing still so her ball hit him in his stomach. She yanked her hand back, sucking in his vitality. The little green bugger had enough time to throw his spear, but it was a weak throw and landed a few feet in front of her. It was so weak that it didn’t stick into the ground, but turned sideways towards the grass before coming to a halt.

Kat looked around again and picked a direction where there wasn’t any unnatural movement of the grass before getting to her feet and making a run for it. Several war cries came from behind her as she ran. She looked over her shoulder and saw several lines of unnatural movements in the grass coming right at her. What was worse was that they were gaining on her.

She stopped and spun around when a green female popped up from the nearest line and threw her spear. Kat ignored it as it flew over her head and shot out a musket ball of vitality striking the thing in its head. She sent the extra vitality down into the earth below as the green female dropped dead. She turned and started running again.

She had to stop again as four more lines of natural grass converged behind her to create a large swath of unnatural movement of grass. She dropped her staff as four glowing white green men and women shot up and threw their spears. She ran forward under their throws and started tossing out musket balls of vitality. She hit two right away. She chanced it and three one more ball at a third one who was running right at her. To her relief the connection to the two other green people didn’t fade. She sucked in the three even as she tossed out a fourth ball.

The grass around her grew from knee high to almost waist high in a matter of seconds as the four green people dropped dead. Large white flowers bloomed all around her as she turned to run again. She had only just turned around when a green female came out of nowhere and stabbed Kat in the stomach with her spear.

Kat grunted in surprise and pain as the spear sunk into her stomach. She could feel her vitality drain away as her body tried to heal itself. The little green female was snarling at her still holding on to the spear. She was in arm’s reach so Kat lifted her hand and touched the snarling thing on it’s mostly bald head. Point blank she fired off a musket ball and the thing's head exploded.

Kat didn’t get any vitality from it, but she still felt she had enough inside her stomach that she could heal herself. She yanked the spear out of her stomach and cried out. There was only a flash of pain as a good chunk of her vitality drained away from her stomach. A couple of seconds more and she was able to stand upright again. She looked back and then around her as she found herself being encircled by lines of unnaturally moving grass.

Her staff was gone, she had no idea where it had gone. She didn’t know what to do, and panic started to set in. In almost blind panic she started shooting off musket balls of vitality in the paths of the on coming green people. Some she felt hit and she yanked their vitality out of their bodies. Some missed and felt nothing as the musket balls fell into the dirt. Then the world became crazy as the green men and women started to pop up all around her with their thick spears trying to impale her. Her hand flashed out time and time again, yanking back vitality as the fight descended into chaos.

She punched a green man with her right hand as he tried to impale her. His head exploded as she knocked his spear aside to the left with her left hand. A spear stabbed her in the back, and without looking threw a musket ball at the thing. It hit and she yanked it’s vitality even as she pulled the spear out of her body. At the same time she kicked a spear that was aimed right at her head. She stepped forward towards it and shot it with her musket ball of vitality. She dodged a running green man that charged her with his spear leveled at her. She fired off a musket ball at him, but missed. The second one didn’t and he dropped to the ground dead.

Kat had no idea how long the fight lasted, but as the sun rose the attackers slowed to a stop. She was surrounded by dead little green people. She had flashes of the fight, but most of it was a blur. She remembered her vitality getting very low at one point but then it rose quickly once more. She remembered lots of pain from getting stabbed by so many spears that she had lost count, but her skill saved her life over and over again giving power to her healing ability so she could stay in the fight. It also kept her from feeling tired or letting her muscles get tired. For many uncountable hours she had been a killing machine.

She breathing slowly down as she looked for more threats, but wasn’t able to see any. The grass field all around her had been trampled leaving a wide space of knocked over grass and dead green bodies. Most of them didn’t have a mark on them. There was a large trail where the fight had started and where it had ended. The path was very irregular and windy, swerving to and fro like a drunkard after a night at the pub.

“Tarnation.” Kat cursed as she got her breath under control and the colors started to seep into the world again. Looking behind her, she saw the sky start to light up with the false sunrise. The sky was peppered with colors of oranges and pinks.

Kat absently checked the surrounding area for unnatural grass movement, but didn’t see any. It was also very quiet. There were no more war cries or yelling. It was oddly pieceful.

Shaking her head, Kat checked her vitality stomach, and found it mostly full. Then she started walking back through where she had fought before looking for her staff. While it proved useless in the fight, she still wanted it as a food source. So far she hadn’t found any food nor any water. She was not about to eat the little green people.

To her surprise it was easy to find. There was a black oval shaped thing hovering over it. The black thing reminded her of the Tower’s entrance. She picked her staff up then looked at the hovering black thing. Hoping she was not wrong she put her staff’s head into it. It disappeared and didn’t reappear on the other side. Pulling it out she found it intact. Nodding to herself she stepped into the blackness….

….And hovered for a second and for all of eternity before she opened her eyes to see she was now standing on a dirt road in the middle of an idyllic looking forest. The dirt raod was wide enough to accommodate horse and buggy or one of the new mana trucks. Looking around she saw that the dirt was rough with small sharp looking rocks randomly laying in the road. They looked sharp enough to puncture the tires of a truck or damage the wooden one of a carriage. There were no ruts in the road, but it looked  well maintained. She didn’t think this path was used for carriage traffic. On top of that it looked too wide for it to be just a footpath. She didn’t know what to make of it. It was an odd little road.

As she was looking down at the road she felt an icy coldness that preceded her getting a power which she could use for an attribute. She could feel it colase inside her waiting on her decision on where to place it. She mentally thought; vitality and the Tower heard her. She felt her Vitality stomach grow once more. While the growth wasn’t as wide and deep as before, it still felt the same growth that she had with her first increase in the attribute.

“No power coin?” She asked the Tower out loud, but it didn’t answer her. She really thought she should have gotten one. After all, the stores she had heard from both her father and uncle never mentioned a fight like the one she had been in. At least not in the first ten set. They did talk about fights with their crew that sounded like the fight she had, but those had been after they reached the twenty floor in the third and fourth ten set.

With a huff she walked over to the side of the road and walked down the ditch. She wanted to rest. The night before had been one never ending fight to survive, and while it had been fun, it had also been terrifying. She never had so close to dying in her life. She needed time to rest.

The forest was made up of thirty to forty tall trees that created a living canopy of leaves above her. There was some small brush here and there, but there were also some larger bushes that rose over five feet into the air. Like a normal forest she could hear the wind blowing through the leaves high above her, but she felt none at the base of the trees which grew those leaves. The forest floor was shadowed by the canopy above it, but there was more than enough light breaking through to light up, even if dimly, the forest under it.

Kat found a nice tree that had two roots sticking up like an armrest on her fathers fancy chair in his office. She sat down between the two roots and rested her arms on them. It was a little high, but not that bad that she couldn’t use them as armrests. Leaning back, she closed her eyes and was out in seconds.

She was woken up by a sharp pain in her foot and a sensation of being dragged. Opening her eyes, she found herself yelling in both anger and surprise as she found herself staring at a huge cat. No, not a cat, a mountain lion. She had never seen a living one in real life even though her father had hunted a few of them during her lifetime. She had only seen the dead bodies that he brought back. She was too busy to notice that the colors in the forest had faded away again and everything was colored in shades of grey.

The mountain lion yowled back at her. She snapped her fist forward even as it lunged at her. She got her other arm up in front of it right before landing. Her musket ball of vitality hit it as it hit her. It bit down on her arm and it raked her stomach even as she sucked at its vitality. It’s teeth bit deeply into her arm, and its rear claws tore deeply into her stomach twice before she drained it completely. It froze and fell sideways off of her with its teeth still stuck in her arm.

She used her other hand to pry the jaws open enough that she could pull her arm off of its teeth and out of its mouth. As she did she could feel her vitality drain as her healing ability worked on healing her. A couple of seconds later the pain was gone and she was unscarred. She still checked herself over as her shirt repaired itself. She was unmarked as the day she entered the Tower.

“Blazes, can you not give me a few minutes to sleep!” She shouted at the Tower looking upwards like the spirit of the Tower was somehow above her. She knew she was being stupid when somethin growled at her from the bushes in front of her. Looking down she saw light reflecting off of a pair of cat’s eyes.

She didn't have time to even snap off a musket ball of vitality before it was on her. It landed on her chest and send her falling down into the tree. Just like the cat before it raked her stomach and clamped down on the arm that she got up in front of her throat. She weaseled two fingers into the thing's mouth and sent a musket ball right down the thing's throat. Two second later she pushed the dead cat off of her and stood back up her healing ability already healing her wounds.

“Enough!” She shouted even as she felt her muscles burn like she had been exercising them all day. She ignored the burn too full of rage to realize it was her first skill changing her body. Instead she looked around and spotted another pair of eyes watching her in the distance on the side of a very large hill. It enraged her further. At that moment she lost it. Seeing those eyes made her lose all sense, and she charged at the mountain lion on the hill. She missed the first musket ball of vitality, as the cat started charging right back at her, but her second landed. It died before it got to her.

“Come on!” She shouted. She was not sure who she was daring, the mountain lions or the Tower, but she was fed up. More reflective eyes appeared all around her. Not caring in the least, she shouted again, “Come on, then!” Daring the mountain lions to attack. They did.

Hours later she came back to herself. Well, no she had come back to herself when she found that she faced a mountain lion the size of a horse. By that time it was too late to retreat so she attacked. She was currently trying to pull herself out from under the dead mountain lion before her vitality ran out and she was crushed to death. As it was she hadn’t been able to breath since the thing had died and fallen on her.

She wiggled out from the beast and took a deep breath as her chest expanded again so she could breath. She leaned up against the huge mountain lion and panted. Her vitality was lower than she had ever felt it. It was low when she attacked the huge beast, and now she was dangerously close to being without which meant death.

She pulled a stick out from her fake belt and started sucking out the tasty vitality from it. She chewed at it until she got all of the vitality from it, then tossed it away. She then grabbed another one and sucked it dry too. Only then did she feel better. While she wasn’t full of vitality she was at least nearly halfway full. She knew she could live with that. After all, she had attacked the mountain lion with less than what she had now.

“Mercy.” She said looking up at the sky above her as it lightened with the coming of the sun. “I’m done.” She whispered before standing  up, and followed the trail of dead mountain lions back down the hill. The Tower thankfully left her alone, at least for the moment.