Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

'Aoife?' Archie signed with one hand, keeping his other on the handle of his Mana Bike as they drove across the Copperbright Desert, his body covered by the sand-colored cloak he pilfered off one of the attackers who was about the same size as himself.

"Yes," Aoife answered, newly covered with a similar sand-colored cloak she'd also pilfered from one of her attackers.

'Why did you call it a Hecatoncheir when the skeleton we saw only had a single head?' Archie asked. He'd been thinking about where a Hecatoncheir could live and what type of cybernetics it wore while driving, when he just realized the skeleton he'd stayed under for a few hours, only had a single head, not the many Aoife implied they had.

"What?... No, I saw…" Aoife replied before her eyes narrowed in disbelief, and she proceeded to get lost in her own thoughts. "…But that was a Hecatoncheir skeleton. The skeleton and bone structure couldn't have survived that long if it wasn't one."

'What do you mean by that?' Archie signed back, moving his bike away from a giant meerkat with a cybernetic mace-like tail that tried to jump on them as they had entered their territory. 'Are their skeletons common to find?'

"No, not at all," Aoife replied, her left arm deploying into her Deepiron lance and piercing through a Duneclaw Meerkat, and her right arm deploying into a Deepiron scutum and parrying a particularly beefier-looking meerkat's charge. "I only learned about them after a group of miners happened to find it by chance in a Silver Mine. They were particularly deep, and one of them had been fed up with mining in the same direction for days and seeing no results, so she branched away from the group and found a giant ravine just below them."

"After they reported what they found, they reported it to the Overseer of the Mine, who reported it to the Duke, who instructed all medium and high D-Grade Miners to explore and collect what they could from the ravine, Aoife continued, Shielding Archie from a frothing meerkat. "At the time, I was a middle E-Grade, but I was instructed to enter the mine regardless as… Laer commanded me to. In that ravine, I saw many things and learned much about skeletons, as they were numerous in that ravine… There were speculations that a war might have occurred within the ravine."

"...It was there I happened to get a glance at a Hecatoncheir skeleton. It had five skulls and ten arms, almost completely covered in cybernetics," Aoife finished, bouncing up slightly as Archie ran over another meerkat that attempted to spit hardened sand at them.

'Then was the one we saw an-' Archie signed before stopping himself. No, it couldn't have been an infant, Aoife said they were born with three heads and six arms and were as tall as a human adult. The rib cage we stayed in was giant, probably the size of a whale.

'Was it the same size as the one you saw in that ravine?' Archie asked, driving up another dune, officially out of Duneclaw Meerkat territory. 'Maybe it was just beheaded somewhere else and it just died here?'

"No, the one in the ravine was much smaller," Aoife said, blocking hardened sand projectiles that the meerkats shot at them as they left their territory. "And I don't think it was beheaded elsewhere?"

'Why?' Archie asked, lightly gripping the clutch and zigzagging between the giant fang-like bones that ran along the downhill of the dune.

"I remember seeing ten skulls attached to its neck… not one. But the more I try to think back on it… the foggier my memory of what I saw becomes," Aoife mumbled to herself, eyes narrowed with various conflicting emotions, before a chilling realization crawled up her back. "...We need to leave now!"

"Wh-" Archie started to sign but stopped himself when he turned back and saw her eyes filled with worry. She was biting her lip and shaking her head, as though she couldn't tell him.

Looking ahead again, Archie gave a silent nod and twisted the throttle all the way back. The Runic Mana Engine beneath their seat started to glow neon green, and the Mana Bike shot forward across the desert, racing toward the enormous wall looming in the distance, towering over the trees below it.

"Okay, we should be safe now," Aoife spoke calmly, her head turned to face the desert behind them.

'From the Hounds? I thought we needed to leave the Netharim Sovereignty to even consider being out of the frying pan?' Archie signed as he slowly increased his grip on the clutch as both he and Aoife left the Copperbright Desert and entered the Greenpatch forest, the forest between the borders of the Netharim Sovereignty and the Yndros Empire.

"No, not them," Aoife answered, confusing Archie. When she'd frantically asked him to go faster, he'd assumed that she saw some more Hounds heading their way or something like that.

"There was an enchantment or some type of bounded field around where we went through," Aoife continued, swallowing her saliva as she got off the Mana Bike. "But for a bounded field to be…" Aoife muttered to herself, looking back at the desert behind them.

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'Assuming I know what a bounded field is, what about them made you act like that?' Archie asked, getting off his Mana Bike and sending it into his spatial storage, making sure to grab his Compass of Desire off of it. With how the tires are, if they attempted to drive on anything harder or more packed than the crumbled dry dirt, then the wheels would get ruined.

If they had any plans of driving in the forest or anything with wet grass, which, according to Aoife, the Yndros Empire was full of, then he'd need to modify his tires. Sawblade ones would be his best bet if not for the trail it leaves behind.

Then what could I do to stop leaving behind a trail? Archie thought to himself.

"There was some type of memory or visual effecting bounded field where we previously were," Aoife answered, before turning away from the desert.

'For what reason would there be one there?' Archie asked, in confusion. Maybe she's just overthinking it. Deserts are known to show mirages, I know that for sure, so maybe it was the sun playing tricks on us or something, cause I didn't feel any spell or anything like that touch me. 'To hide the number of heads of a Hecatoncheir? Why would that be important?'

"No, the Hecatoncheir isn't… wasn't important, nobles purchase their bones for decoration or alchemical concoctions," Aoife answered distractedly, taking out her Water Tin and taking a long sip, in an attempt to calm her fast-beating heart. "Besides, anything within eyeshot of the border walls belongs to the Netharim Sovereignty."

"So, unless those bounded fields were placed by the Netharim military, then it would be impossible for anyone to have placed a bounded field or anything of the sort within that area, especially by the border of the Yndros Empire."

"But the more I think back on it, if it reached that far, it couldn't have been done by…" Aoife trailed off before she looked up at the tree in front of her. "…I need to confirm something," Aoife muttered in a panic before scaling up the giant tree.

She's become a lot more… out of her shell. Archie blinked in shock as he stared at Aoife quickly disappear up into the tree's crown. Well, I'm glad she's become a lot more comfortable.

Waiting on Aoife to arrive back down, Archie finished one of his rabbit-troll sandwiches and checked where they needed to go with his Compass of Desire.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Archie saw Aoife quickly scale back down the tree and land on the grass with a soft thud.

Archie was going to ask what it was that made her suddenly want to go climb a tree, but the look on her face made him concerned; she was matted with sweat, and she breathed heavily. 'Are you okay?'

"We need to need to cross the border as soon as possible," Aoife said, before pulling Archie toward the wall, unwilling to wait for a response.

Catching himself from tripping, Archie kept up pace with Aoife. 'What's wrong? What did you see?'

"The bounded field wasn't just on by the Hecatoncheir skeleton, nor on the path we took," Aoife said as she shifted her left arm into a lance, skewering a deer-rabbit hybrid with cybernetic legs and flicking it off her arm before it shifted back to its resting state. "The bounded field was the Copperbright Desert."

What? Archie thought, utterly baffled, ducking under a swipe at his head from a giant stick bug. 'What? Was the desert a mental projection or something? An illusion? Or something along those lines?'

"No, the Copperbright Desert is very much real," Aoife answered.

'Then what's got you all spooked out?' Archie asked calmly, frustrated by her not just explaining what it was that got her all spooked, but not wanting to say anything that would make her even more stressed than she already was.

"The entire Copperbright Desert is under a bounded field," Aoife said, her tone grave. "It has been for days now, maybe weeks now, I don't know. I have been noticing things feeling off, but I assumed that they were because of…"

'Laer?' Archie offered in understanding.

"Yes," Aoife acknowledged. "First, it was small things like our Trapmaster accidentally stepping on the wrong pattern and dying from the bolt traps, even though he's explored the Temple of the Handlers for years. Or me forgetting to sharpen and clean my lance after skewering an Acidspitting Wretch."

"But not being able to remember something clearly from three minutes ago… that was the spark that fried the circuit," Aoife muttered.

'I still don't get it?' Archie admitted, still a bit confused by her actions. On Earth, it was well known that being in a desert such as the current one they were in was very dangerous, and mirages were commonplace within them.

'I still only saw one head on the Hecatoncheir skeleton, not ten. Also, what's the big deal with there being some type of memory affecting bounded field on the Copperbright Desert? Deserts such as these on my planet were known to create mirages and illusions when going through them as we are now, albeit my deserts weren't magical,' He signed.

"That's the issue - you didn't know what a Hecatoncheir was, yet you still only saw one head. That shouldn't have happened, since you've never seen one before to use as a frame of reference. Illusions and mirages manipulate what you already know to warp your perception," Aoife explained as they rushed through the forest. "The bounded field's memory alteration effects are powerful, far too powerful for it to be natural."

'What do you mean?' Archie asked.

"The amount of mana it would take to sustain this effect for days on end, while only growing stronger, is far beyond anything I've ever heard of," Aoife answered. "Not to mention the distance it covers… Someone or something created this bounded field over the entirety of the Copperbright Desert, and it isn't showing any signs of slowing down."

If this is unnatural then, holy shit, Archie thought to himself. I thought that it was maybe a zone debuff like in games, but if someone or something created it like what Aoife is claiming, then how much power would it take to keep whatever it is doing active over an entire fucking desert?

'Fuck… it just hit me,' Archie signed with a sigh. 'I don't know why it was so difficult for me to… I don't know. Wrap my head around this, but is it not normal?'

"It is not your fault," Aoife said softly. "Bounded fields are very powerful and assault the minds of those weaker than the caster, making them believe what the caster commanded the bounded field to do. Considering how I only noticed it when you pointed out something being off, then they would have to be, at the very least, a C-Grade, one with extensive knowledge on bounded fields."

"With you being an E-Grade, your Willpower, your resistance toward mental compulsions, is not high enough to not be affected by a C-Grade whose Intelligence stat is more than all of your stats combined and doubled, maybe even quadrupled," Aoife finished softly.