Free Web NovelChapter 26: 26. Ripples
Nathan made it halfway across the TCA lobby before the first scout intercepted him.
"Climber Cross!" A woman in a crisp burgundy blazer stepped into his path, her smile polished to a professional shine. "Maris Vellan, Silver Drake Guild. We’ve been watching your progress since the Tutorial Realm, and I have to say, a solo S-Rank clear? On your first climb? That’s extraordinary."
Nathan stopped. He’d expected this. Just not quite so quickly.
"I’m not joining a guild yet."
"I’m not asking you to join." Her smile didn’t waver. "I’m asking you to take a meeting. Silver Drake isn’t one of the Prestigious Five, but we offer something they don’t, flexibility. Creative Climbers thrive with us. No rigid hierarchies. No family politics." She pressed a slim card into his hand. "When you’re ready to talk, my door is open."
Nathan pocketed the card without looking at it. "I’ll think about it."
Maris nodded, her expression suggesting she knew exactly how long "I’ll think about it" usually lasted. "See that you do. And congratulations, Climber Cross. Solo S-Rank is no small thing."
She melted back into the crowd while Nathan resumed walking.
He didn’t make it ten steps before he heard them, two veteran climbers near the ranking board, their voices carrying in the way of people who didn’t care about being overheard.
"Solo S-Rank with F-Grade aptitude? That doesn’t happen."
"Well buddy, It just happened. Leaderboard’s right there."
"I’m saying it shouldn’t happen. Either the Tower glitched, or that kid’s hiding something. Nobody climbs like that without something unusual in their pocket."
Nathan’s stride didn’t falter. His expression didn’t change. But Mirko’s presence stirred in the back of his mind, a flicker of warmth tinged with unease.
’Master...’
’its fine’
He pushed through the lobby doors into the cool evening air. The city was golden with sunset, the Towers on the horizon catching the last light. He should have felt triumphant. Instead, he felt the walls of the arena shrinking around him, the spectators leaning closer.
The countdown had begun.
---
Derek Stone sat alone in the back of his family’s private vehicle, the city scrolling past tinted windows. He hadn’t spoken since leaving the TCA. Tyler and Reid had tried to follow him, but one look at his face had sent them scurrying.
His interface glowed in the dim cabin. The Tower of Beginnings leaderboard. Three names at the top.
Elise. Him. And Nathan.
"Solo. S-Rank Clear"
The words tasted bitter in his mouth.
His father’s mana-comm message had arrived minutes after the rankings updated. Derek had read it once. Then again. Then a third time, as if the repetition might dull the edge.
"I’ve seen the rankings. Your party barely outpaced a solo F-Grade Climber. The Stone name is being laughed at in high society gatherings, your bothers are succeeding. Why can’t you?. Fix it."
No rage. No threats. Just the cold, surgical expectation of a man who viewed his children as assets and failure as a rounding error.
Derek closed the message. His Salamander’s summon mark pulsed faintly on his hand, radiating warmth that usually calmed him. But Tonight, it didn’t. It irritated him instead.
He pulled up a different interface. The TCA sanctioned duel regulations. Climber-vs-Climber. Party format. Tower-observed.
His reflection stared back at him from the dark window; his blonde hair, sharp jaw, the face of someone who had never had to fight for anything... Until now.
"You think you’re special, Cross," he murmured. "Let’s see how special you are when the whole world watches me Stomp you!."
He began reading the regulations.
---
The Winterhart estate was quiet at this hour. Elise sat in the family library, a holographic display floating before her. Nathan Cross’s clear data... what little was publicly available... scrolled past in neat columns of light.
Floor clear times. Rank breakdown. Solo designation. A single notation that made her pause: Summon Type: F-Rank (Bunny).
She leaned back in her chair. Across the room, Dillon Briggs sprawled on a velvet couch, tossing a decorative crystal from hand to hand.
"You’ve been staring at that screen for an hour," he said. "If you’re going to obsess over another man, at least have the decency to do it where I can’t see."
"He cleared it solo.." Elise said, ignoring him. "In under two hours. With an F-Rank summon."
Dillon stopped tossing the crystal. "You think he’s cheating?"
"No." She closed the display. "I think he’s been underestimated by everyone. Including me."
The admission hung in the air. Dillon sat up, his usual smirk fading into something more genuine.
"That almost sounds like respect."
"It is respect."
"Well." He set the crystal aside. "What are you going to do about it?"
Elise was silent for a moment. Then: "I want to climb with him. Once. To see it firsthand. What he does. How he fights. How that bunny of his actually operates."
Dillon raised an eyebrow. "You want to party with the Bunny King. Alone. In a Tower." A grin spread across his face. "That almost sounds like... a date."
The temperature in the library dropped several degrees. Frost spiderwebbed across the window behind Elise’s chair.
Dillon raised both hands. "Joking. I was joking. Please don’t freeze my eyebrows off. I need those."
Elise turned back to the empty space where the display had been. "I’m not joking." Then she returned her gaze back to Dillon."I don’t even know why Grandfather Allowed your stay in the estate, but you better know your place"
"Sure thing, Princess."
---
The apartment was warm and smelled faintly of the stew Lucy had attempted to make for dinner. Nathan sat at the small table, his combat suit exchanged for a worn shirt and loose pants. His body still ached from the climb but the healing potions had done their work. By tomorrow, he’d be fully recovered.
Lucy sat cross-legged on the floor, Mirko in bunny form cradled in her lap like a particularly fluffy cat.
"Did you fight a dragon?" Lucy asked, eyes wide.
"No dragons. Just Golems, serpents, a lot of undead, and a shadow wyrm."
"What’s a shadow wyrm?"
"A very large, very angry snake made of darkness. sSssSssSssSss" Nathan made a snake hissing face with his hands curled up in the air but Unfortunately for him Lucy found it rather cringe than amusing or cute. freewebnσvel.cøm
"Did Mirko bite it?"
Mirko’s ears twitched. ’I did something far more impressive than biting.’
"She stabbed it," Nathan translated, letting down his hands as the realisation of his cringe behaviour dawned on him. "Repeatedly."
"Good." Lucy nodded with the cute grave seriousness only a child could muster. "Snakes are creepy."
Later, after Lucy had been tucked into bed and the apartment had fallen quiet, Nathan sat alone at the table. The materials from his climb were spread before him: the Shadowsteel Ingot, cold to the touch and faintly light-absorbing. The Echo Shard, still humming with residual magic. The Rusted Commander’s Gauntlet. The Golem Core Fragment. And The Storm Eel Scale.
He opened his status panel.
[Name: Nathan Cross]
[Class: Archer]
[Level: 19]
[Title: Fast Climber] ƒгeewebnovёl.com
The title was new. He focused on it, and a tooltip appeared: Awarded for clearing a Tower with an overall S-Rank, Solo. Slightly increases movement speed and stamina recovery while inside Tower environments.
It was useful but Not flashy. The kind of incremental advantage that compounded over time.
Mirko shifted into humanoid form beside him, her long green hair spilling over her shoulders. She studied the materials with the same tactical focus she had worn in the arena.
"These are for the ring?" she said.
"Some of them. The Shadowsteel and Echo Shard, at least. Vex said the Leyline Ring is upgradeable. I want to see how far we can push it before the next climb."
"I love how you always plan ahead, Master."
"Someone has to." Nathan leaned back in his chair. "The guild scouts are circling. Derek seems like he is going to do something dumb soon. And at least two veteran climbers were openly discussing how impossible my clear was in the middle of the TCA lobby, who knows what kind of snowball avalanche that little gossip can cause in this fantasy-anime world."
Mirko’s ears flattened. "Fantasy-Anime?."
"Never mind... they suspect something. But they don’t know what." He met her pink eyes. "We bought time with the S-Rank. It makes us look exceptional, but within the realm of talent and luck. eventually we are going to reveal your true strength...."
"And we are not ready."
"No." Nathan closed his status panel. "Not yet. But we’re getting closer. Now is not the time to become targets for whatever bad organisation is out there. When we are stronger... You’ll be All over the news!"
They sat in silence for a moment, the city lights glittering beyond the apartment window. Somewhere out there, Derek was nursing his wounded pride. Elise was analyzing his data. Guilds were drafting recruitment pitches. And in the TCA’s administrative wing, a clerk was about to forward a flagged file to the internal review division.
Nathan didn’t know that last part. But he could feel the shape of it... the way the world was beginning to turn its attention toward him, slowly and then all at once.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We’ll visit Vex. The Leyline Ring needs to be stronger before our next climb."
Mirko nodded. "And after the ring?"
Nathan looked at his reflection in the dark window: a young man with an F-Grade aptitude, a Knight-class bunny girl, and a growing list of people who wanted to either recruit him or destroy him.
"After that," he said, "we prepare for the coming storm."
---
In the TCA headquarters, long after most of the day’s climbers had gone home, a clerk in the data processing division worked through the nightly automation queue. Tower clear records scrolled past... hundreds of them, each one tagged and sorted by the system.
One file was automatically flagged. Climber: Nathan Cross. Anomaly detected: Humanoid-type summon capability registered. F-Rank designation conflict. S-Rank solo clear.
The clerk glanced at it. It was unusual, but not unprecedented. The Tower’s deep scan flagged things all the time. Most turned out to be data artifacts or edge cases.
Still. Procedure was procedure.
So he forwarded the flag to the internal review division.
Somewhere in the labyrinth of the TCA’s bureaucracy, the file landed in an inbox that hadn’t seen activity in months. It would sit there for a while longer.
But not forever.
