The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. They are unknown and may seek to harm me just as much as my enemy unless I am careful.

Sarah Valentine

Welcome to the Eternal Tower Floor 11 Hard!

Goal: Defend the village from the monster attack in 10 days.

For the next 10 floors, work within a team of 5 Tower Climbers to complete challenges. If a teammate dies, they will not be replaced.

Time limit: 30 days

Note: time dilation in effect.

I reread the floor notice while looking at the four women who had appeared with me. I felt my mind moving faster as I tried to process everything as fast as possible and quickly figure out this situation.

Tower Climbers.

If the Tower could be believed, then I was not alone. Other climbers. That meant John was right; I would be completing the Tower with others. It wouldn’t be from the first floor, but there were still other climbers in the Tower.

“Miki!” shouted one of the women before she charged at me. I dodged to the side as she dove at me with her arms spread wide. “Don’t be like that. Surely you missed me?”

I looked over the young woman. She was vaguely familiar. I was certain I had met her in the past, but I couldn’t remember when. I used my scan skill to help me out.

Name: Susan Ferris

Level 16 Tower Climber

Disposition: Aroused

The name sounded familiar. I thought over things for half a second, then it clicked. Crazy Ferris, the young woman who didn’t enter the academy and entered the Tower on the Hard Difficulty. Since she entered the Tower she had been more of a joke. What kind of idiot would want to climb the Tower without entering Climbers’ Academy first? While I knew her name from the academy, I did not think I had met her before she entered the Tower. But then why did she look so familiar?

“My love, why do you reject me?” she asked while having an over exaggerated frown on her face. “Come my love, surely a kiss would refresh your memory. Let me kiss you once more my love.” She kneed before me and pulled at my shirt while speaking, as if to pull me down to her.

Then it clicked. Crazy Ferris had entered the Tower seven years before I had. Around that same time a woman had stalked me and would randomly appear to try to accost me at my family’s store. She had only stopped after my family’s guards made it clear she would not be tolerated. Memories came rushing back. I was now certain this was the same woman, even though she appeared younger than I remembered. Or was it that I was now older?

I looked to the other three women for help and quickly scanned them to see if there was anyone else I knew.

Name: Julie Stevenson

Level 15 Tower Climber

Disposition: Amused

Name: Sarah Valentine

Level 15 Tower Climber

Disposition: Disgusted

Name: Amanda O’Connor

Level 15 Tower Climber

Disposition: Afraid

“Don’t look at them, look at me,” pleaded Susan. “They are not worthy of you. I am not worthy of you either. Only the mistress is but she is not here. Let me care for you instead.” She was no longer pulling on my shirt and was instead pulling on my pants.

“That isn’t necessary,” I said and felt my voice rise an octave as she grabbed something that I definitely did not want her to grab. “I think it would be best not to do that.”

“Of course my love, my king, my god,” said Susan reverently. “I understand that you do not want them to watch. They are not worthy. I am not worthy.”

She was not this crazy the last time I met her. All she had done in the past was insist that I should date her. Since she had walked into my parents store off the street and I had never met her before I had assumed she was just drunk. When she came back again and again, I started to avoid her. The more I rejected her, the more desperate she became. It appeared the past eight years did not decrease her feelings.

“As entertaining as this is, I feel like we need to have a small talk to find out what is going on,” said Julie.

“Are you all real?” asked Amanda so quietly that I wasn’t sure if she wanted us to actually hear the question.

“That is the million dollar question,” said Julie. While not knowing the expression, I understood the sentiment.

“You are all so stupid,” said Susan smugly while glaring at the other woman. She stood and wrapped her arm around mine possessively. “You are so stupid that you do not even realize that you are stupid.” I gently extracted my arm from her grasp.

“There is a simple way to figure this out,” said Sarah, ignoring Susan. She turned to Julie. “Who is Gregor?”

“Oh he was nice. Do you think he will appear on this floor or was climbing Nasijuf last thing thing he would do with us.”

“That answers if we are both real and that we had similar experiences in the Tower,” said Sarah. She turned to Amanda. “On what floors did you see Gregor?”

“I met him on the third floor,” said Amanda quietly. “Next was the sixth floor. The third and final time was on the eighth floor.”

“That three of us,” said Sarah. She turned to Susan. “What was the reward for completing the last floor?”

“That I get to see my love!” Once more the crazy lady grabbed my arm laughing. When Sarah glared at her she just laughed harder. “Did you mean to ask what the Tower gave me? In that case it was access to ‘Titles’.”

“Finally you,” said Sarah, turning away from the crazy woman and facing me. “What was the reward for completing the ninth floor?”

“Oh, I didn’t get one,” I said. “I was granted a skill that ended up stealing most of my rewards from the last few floors.”

All of them looked surprised.

“Is that why you are at such a high level?” asked Amanda. How had a person this timid made it through the first ten floors?

“To flip it around, why are all of you at such a low level?” I asked. “By the end of the second floor you all should have been able to reach level 14.”

“How did you complete the first two floors?” asked Sarah as if she just realized something.

“I thought there was only one way, by defeating the orcs. How did you do it?””

“I noticed that the orcs had poor vision, so I led them into traps or had their witches hit them with friendly fire. Once I found the boss and put together the fact that the other orcs were hunting him, I led multiple groups to fight him, then slowly used traps to get rid of the remaining orcs.”

“Same,” said Julie.

“Me too,” said Amanda.

“The second floor was similar except that I had to be rushed to get the orcs led to the boss in the time limit,” said Sarah.

“So you're telling me that you never directly killed an orc?” I asked.

“Hell no,” said Julie. “Who would even try that?”

“They were scary and I was naked,” said Amanda.

“I killed a few,” said Susan. “I built a pit trap then threw rocks at them. It was kind of gross to see their heads bashed in.” The other three gave her varying looks of disgust. “What? I’m not crazy. I mean it’s not like I did it for fun. It took like a week to dig the trap and was exhausting. They did give more experience when killed like that.”

“What about the third floor?” I asked. “Didn’t you have to fight the knights?”

“No,” answered Julie. “Why would I have to fight the knights?”

“Because of the mana swap,” I said.

“Did you manage to avoid the wizard casting the mana swap?” asked Sarah excitedly.

“That wizard gave off ‘creep’ vibes so I just ran away as soon as I met him. Once I was outside the knights scooped me up and protected me from him. I asked them to take me away from the Tower and when we were far enough away the portal appeared.”

“Lucky,” said Sarah. “I had to spend two days convincing Gregor to set up the purification ritual.”

“Did any of you have to fight the knights?” All of them shook their heads. “Then what about the fourth flood? Surely you had to fight the monsters in the Wilds?”

“I didn’t go to the Wilds until the fifth floor,” said Julie. Looking around, all of the other women were agreeing with her. “Didn’t you just talk with the merchant? It took only a couple minutes of questioning to learn she just needed gold. If I recall, her family was short ten gold coins to pay off a debt. I gave them the coins I earned from the third floor and that was it.”

I had a sinking sensation and quickly asked how they all beat the other floors. It turned out that none of them had to directly fight monsters until the dungeon on the seventh floor. All the other floors required them to come up with outside the box solutions or find the right person to help complete a task. Even helping protect the prince on the sixth floor, all they had to do was direct the knights and help them avoid tricks by the enemy to slow them down on their way to find the prince. It was aggravating.

I wasn’t mad at them as much as I was mad at myself. I knew the Tower liked to trick climbers, but it had never occurred to me that the clear conditions themselves would be so open to interpretation. The climber was not even required to complete most of the goals on the other floors as long as it were done by someone.

Take the tenth flood as an example. Julie slowly contacted the sect, notifying them that there was a dragon nearby. Even though she did not have any indication where it was located the sect was able to track it down and kill it within six months. Sarah, on the other hand, hired a group of 50 adventures that included a wandering cultivator. She accompanied them and using commonly known information on dragons the group started to search the mountains. It also turned out that the mountain range decreased in size in the west, so they were just able to follow the trail that started in the west along the top of the mountain until they came across the dragon.

The most aggravating thing though was their experiences with the Klawn Aerd. They all had a standard vision quest and took the short path to the top of Nasijuf. No demons. No surprise. Well there was one surprise. All of them climbed to the top of the mountain first and returned to the village before they took the potion.

“Seriously Miki,” said Susan laughing. “Why would you take something that you knew was going to make you hallucinate then climb a mountain? I would have thought that the Climbers’ Academy would have taught you better than that?”

All three of the other women looked confused at me and Susan.

“What’s the Climbers’ Academy?” asked Sarah.