“That obvious?” I asked, smiling up at the tiger-man
“Yar,” he growled out. “But was that meself a couple months ago. Easy ta recognize.”
I chuckled.
He was about seven feet tall and wide, all corded muscles, wearing a sleeveless leather vest, bracers. He wore leather shorts and no boots, but a version of bracers for his lower legs. It kept his large feet, and claws, free along with his hands and those claws. His face was that of a tiger but a little more humanoid, so that I could see he was smiling.
And interesting enough, his color was mostly white with black stripes, some spots of gray. The fur was thick. His armor was shades of gray that went nicely with his coloring. A thick bladed dagger hung at his belt, two javelins and longsword over his back, what looked like a bolo on the other side of his belt.
“Yer from one of them new worlds aren’t yer?”
“I am,” I said, as there was no reason to hide it
“The last three have been human worlds,” he said with a sigh.
Even with his growl, and the odd accent, he was easy to understand.
“That a bad thing?”
“Nar,” he chuckled. “Been couple centuries since the last Felitran world been opened. Would har been nice ta see more of me peoples from elsewhere.”
I nodded, kind of understanding what he was saying. The nice thing about the System was that the Tutorials gave us a ton of knowledge to prepare us for this day. Felitran had to be the cat-beastmen species, which could appear on multiple planets just like humans could. As a tigerman, this guy was a species of Felitran.
What the Tutorials didn’t tell us was what all the species were, how they all interacted, what their cultures were and so on. All the good and really important stuff.
“Nick Howell,” I said, not sure if I should hold out a hand to shake or what.
“Zire,” he replied, bowing his head.
I repeated the gesture.
“Do yar have a party?”
“Not yet. You?”
“Yar,” he said, nodding to another tiger Felitran that was walking our way.
Female, she had a sway as she walked our way, one hand resting on the hilt of a curved saber at her waist, another one on the other side. She wore similar leather armor but instead of shorts she wore a leather kilt. The fur along her head was longer, flowing down her shoulders. She had a light orange color with some white along her face and arms, with black stripes.
I was never a furry, but there was something attractive about her.
“That be me mate, Lauris,” Zire said, noticing my look.
I quickly swallowed my tongue and retracted my bulging eyes. I glanced up at the large Felitran and saw he was smiling. Luckily, I hadn’t offended him. Lauris stopped a couple feet away. She was an inch or so shorter than I was, and very lithe and athletic. Every move she had made was graceful.
“Who be yer new friend?” she asked, eyeing me up and down.
“Nick Howell, from one of them new worlds.”
“Greetings Nick Howell,” Lauris said, nodding.
I returned the greeting.
“Greetings Lauris.”
“We shall have to talk again,” Lauris said, motioning to Zire. “Come Zire, the others are gathered and it is our time.”
“We are off to Floor Three,” Zire said, nodding.
“Good luck and see you around.”
The two walked off, joining another three Felitran. The others looked like a Panther woman, Lion man and a feline breed I didn’t recognize immediately. They headed for the middle of the five portals. I moved further away from the entrance portal and toward the obelisk.
Stopping in front of it, I reached out and laid the palm of my hand on the smooth dark colored stone. Words appeared, the familiar System Notification.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
WELCOME TO THE INFINITE TOWER.
YOU ARE GRANTED ACCESS TO FLOOR ONE.
FLOOR ONE BIOMES:
FOREST
PLAIN
SWAMP
CHOOSE A BIOME
There was no more information available about what exactly each biome was. There were probably merchants that sold information and probably even maps, but those would cost MP and I had zero.
That was a weird feeling. Back on Earth, I was loaded, but none of that mattered here. Couldn’t even convert Credits to MP.
Just based on the names of the biomes, I figured I’d start with FOREST since that’s where I’d spent most of my time back on Earth. Mentally selecting it, I got some new words.
THE WHITEMOSS FOREST BIOME
ADVENTURERS: 73
DUNGEONS: 11
SOLO: 4
DUO: 3
PARTY: 3
RAID: 1
QUESTS: 13
SOLO: 6
DUO: 3
PARTY: 3
RAID 1:
HUNTING PERMITS: 7
MULTIPLE ARCANEBEASTS: 3
ELITE ARCANEBEASTS: 4
REQUIREMENTS TO CLEAR INFINITE TOWER FLOOR ONE:
200,000 TOWER POINTS
The System granted me knowledge of what all the words meant and what I could do with it. There were only seventy-three Adventurers in the FOREST BIOME at the moment. Aside from the Elite Permits, Raid Dungeon and Quest, everything could be done by multiple parties or people. The Dungeons were instances, meaning each was a copy when someone entered it. The Hunting Permits were just worth extra MP and resources. They were pretty simple, just hunt down a certain number of specified creatures.
Fairly simple but could be time consuming and not much of a challenge, which is why some of the parties avoided them. But they would be perfect for me. I opened the SINGLE ARCANEBEAST and MULTIPLE ARCANEBEAST Permits. I knew nothing about the monsters listed so just went off the names. I claimed all seven. If I didn’t have the permit, I could still kill the monsters and would have to probably as everything in a Tower Biome was aggressive, but wouldn’t get credit for the kill. I then went to the Quests and read them over. I grabbed the six solo ones. They were mostly gathering quests. Next was the Dungeon. From what the System informed me, I could only run one Dungeon at a time. I read through the list and picked the one that sounded like something I could handle.
Stepping away from the obelisk, I opened my new log that the System had said I received.
CLIMBER’S LOG
FLOOR: ONE
BIOME: THE WHITEMOSS FOREST
DUNGEON: GROWLING OAK CAVE
QUESTS:
FIND 120 CLUMPS OF WHITEMOSS 0/120
FIND 300 OAKEN ACORNS 0/300
GATHER 100 BUSHELS OF PONDTAILS 0/100
GATHER 120 STACKS OF BIRCHEN LOGS 0/120
GATHER 75 WHITEMOSS WOLF HIDE 0/75
GATHER 100 HORRISLEAF ELK ANTLERS 0/100
PERMITS:
HUNT ALPHA HORRISLEAF ELK 0/1
HUNT ALPHA WHITEMOSS WOLF 0/1
HUNT ALPHA URSASPINE 0/1
HUNT ALPHA WHITEHILLS WYVERN 0/1
SLAY 50 WHITEMOSS WOLVES 0/50
SLAY 50 URSASPINES 0/50
SLAY 30 WHITEHILLS WYVERN 0/30
TOWER POINTS:
0/200,000
It seemed like a lot but it wasn’t like I would be doing the quests and permits all in one day. Since I could only run a single Dungeon at a time, I’d be coming back and forth and probably could only manage one or two Dungeons a day. Probably one depending on how they went. I was going to be doing them solo so might need some recovery time.
I didn’t know what Tower Points were exactly, but figured I’d learn soon enough. It was nice that it appeared I didn’t have to clear each Biome to qualify for Clearing the Tower Floor.
Satisfied I was good to go, I headed for the far left portal. I waited as some folks came out, looking pretty beat up, and then I headed into my third portal of the day.
