Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Willpower is my weakest stat, Archie mulled over, his brows creased in frustration as he lay within a particularly large bush, scouring the giant wall, fifteen kilometers in front of him. Even with the 40% boost I get with it.

I've been ignoring it for so long, Archie frowned. With Vital Sight active, he could see hundreds of sparks of Vitality and various sizes and concentrations of vital energy outlines all along and within the wall. Hell, my own bloodline gives a boost to Willpower…

There were even quite a few humanoid-shaped vital energy outlines scattered below the ground away from the wall, potentially for trapping or getting the jump on suspicious people trying to approach the wall.

Which made sense as the gate between the Netharim Sovereignty and the Yndros Empire had been closed off for years now, or at least that's what Seral told them both. But it was also the reason why both she and Vandrick suggested that they head to the Yndros Empire, the tensions between them were high after a noble dispute between the nations.

Something about one noble from the Yndros Empire assaulting another from the Netharim Sovereignty, and while it might sound like something minor, it eventually escalated into war between noble houses, and apparently, a royal member from one of the nations got caught in the crossfire, and to say things escalated would be an understatement.

It was also something he and Aoife agreed on - it was their best bet to put as much distance as possible between themselves and both the Netharim Sovereignty and Duke Dreadmire's influence, at least for now.

But he'd be damned if they thought they could get away with screwing him over - cursing him pissed him off, sending assassins after him pissed him even more off. Not to mention Aoife's life prior.

In Archie's mind, the Duke of Dreadmire was already a dead man walking. He just needed the strength to see it happen along with Aoife. He wouldn't deny her right to kill them if she wanted to.

Archie slowly crawled from under the bush and towards a patch of fallen branches and leaves that blended in with the natural foliage. Pushing aside the branches revealed a two-foot-wide hole that he quickly slipped in and covered back up with a few mana strings.

Archie carefully infused them with a light coating of Nature Mana, allowing it to seep into their fibers and activated Botanokinesis. As he manipulated the leaves and branches, Archie manipulated his mana to poke and prod at their roots to entice them to grow new roots and to manipulate them to burrow into the dirt.

It took a few minutes for new roots to emerge from their stems and be guided to sink and root themselves into the ground. But once he released the light coating of nature mana he placed within them and deactivated Botanokinesis, every leaf and branch he placed on top of the tunnel's hole were now firmly rooted in the ground and pulsing with life.

Once the leaves and branches were manipulated to grow roots that connected to the dirt below them, Archie then turned to face the tunnel Aoife had dug up earlier to allow him a quicker getaway once he finished spying on the inhabitants of the wall.

Giving one last glance to the hundreds of glowing red figures scattered along, within, and under the wall, Archie turned away and ran down the tunnel, toward Aoife.

As he ran through the tunnel, he made sure not to use any mana-related skills such as Forgesmith's Flame. Not because he couldn't see, his perception was high enough to the point where normal darkness wouldn't be able to hinder his vision, but rather to prevent any guard with high perception from detecting mana being used around him.

It was why he made sure to use a very light coating of nature mana to be imbued with the tree branches and leaves, and why it took longer than normal. He made sure to try and blend it with the forest's ambient mana signature, so as to not have his mana stand out.

Which, honestly, was more difficult than he had initially expected. That's why he was grateful for Aoife's suggestion to practice blending his Nature Mana with the forest's. Ironically enough, his Nature Affinity was far more potent than the forest's own, which meant he had to dilute his mana with enough unattuned mana to match that of the forest's.

While it may have taken him about an hour or so for him to find the closest ratio, he thought of it as another form of mana control training, so he wasn't as annoyed as he'd thought he'd be by staring at a tree and trying to make a fallen branch match its signature.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, Archie climbed upwards, using the footholds Aoife had dug out for them to get out of the tunnel without making a sound. He wasn't sure how she'd made the dirt to hold his entire weight without crumbling, nor how the tunnel was perfectly holding without any support beams.

But then again, it was probably something to do with Aoife's Profession… er, scratch that, it was a hundred percent something to do with her Profession, Archie internally chided himself for forgetting that he was in a magical world. Hell, he'd seen her swap cybernetic arms to ones that held a shovel and a pickaxe in them not fifteen minutes ago, not to mention it took her ten minutes to dig a forty-meter-long tunnel.

Pushing aside the leaves above, Archie crawled out of the tunnel and stepped onto the grass above, his eyes flickering toward the tunnel's tree branch and leaf cover folding atop themselves to conceal the tunnel below.

"Did you find anything of interest?" Aoife asked as she continued to meticulously sharpen her shovel and pickaxe from all the dullness of digging through moist dirt and stone. She had a skill that allowed her to dig without making a sound, but it came at the cost of degrading the sharpness of her tools, so to offset its effects, she was required to sharpen them instead of just repairing the tools with the Self-Repair enchantment they came with.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

'The plan of making a metric crap load of explosives and planting them along the wall wouldn't work,' Archie signed with disappointment. He'd really wanted to create a metric crap load of bombs, blow open the wall and ride through it on his Mana Bike…it would have been badass.

'The wall is way too thick to be blown up in one go, not to mention it's filled to the absolute brim with high-level E-Grades and even more D-Grades,' Archie signed, still looking glum. While he never Identified any of the guards that he saw, he made calculated estimates on their strength using Vital Sight, as if he used Identify on the wrong person, he could have potentially given away his location and screwed up everything.

He used both his own and Aoife's vital energy outlines and sparks to compare with the ones he'd seen using Vital Sight, and while it wasn't anything a hundred percent accurate, it was better than nothing. For example, his vital energy outline was just a tad denser than Aoife's, and even more so than the two D-Grade Hound assassins he killed… well before the last one became a reddish-orange, eight-foot-tall rage monster that wanted to squash me to death.

Nevertheless, using Vital Sight, Archie detected at least three to four hundred high-level E-Grades within a six-kilometer radius, both inside and outside the wall, right where he had planned to place the bombs. He considered them to be high-level E-Grades as he used Laer and a few other E-Grades he identified while within the city of Louther as reference points.

He'd also considered anyone with a denser vital energy outline to be a D-Grade, which he saw forty of. But, considering the constant patrols and shift changes between guards, it was hard to see how many there were at a time, as both the patrol and the shift change times never followed a schedule that he could piece together.

Something that he also noticed were the differences in sparks of Vitality between Classes.

He had grown quite bored while spying on them, so to pass the time, he started flickering Vital Sight on and off. As he did, he focused on the vital sparks of those patrolling the base of the wall on foot and the sentries stationed at the top, as the way the sparks of Vitality moved was very reminiscent of screen savers, with the way they moved around their vital energy outlines.

While everyone's vital sparks were different from one another, there were similarities between them, such as their robustness and faint colors. It was something he thought he was just seeing things at first, but the more he compared the vital sparks between a group of six high E-Grade guards that patrolled together, the more similarities and differences he saw in their sparks.

Some guards with denser vital energy outlines typically had stronger, more robust vital sparks that glowed in warmer tones. In contrast, those with not as robust sparks in comparison glowed in colder tones, with less defined energy outlines.

It was an interesting discovery.

And as he continued to follow and observe the various patrolling groups, the more he learned about sparks and their relation to Classes. Those with sparks that glowed in colder tones were ranged Classes like mages, archers, healers, and so on. While those with sparks that glowed in warmer tones and were more robust in comparison were frontliners, Classes like warriors, vanguards, rogues, and so on.

This was further proven when the guards fidgeted with their cybernetics, repeatedly deploying and retracting them, revealing to him their classes' weapons.

Of course, there were outliers, those whose sparks of Vitality didn't follow the norm. He assumed this was them potentially having hybrid classes, which would allow them to act as mid to close-range combatants, but the vast majority of those he saw followed the mold.

His observations and realization seemed to have been enough for him to receive an upgrade for Vital Sight.

Skill Upgrade: [Vital Sight (Radiant → Radiant)]

Vital Sight (Radiant):
You are able to perceive the spark and flow of Vitality of all entities that possess Vitality. Those with Vitality glow within your sight, with the intensity of their glow varying based on their Vitality. Depending on the strength of your karmic connection with one with Vitality, you can recognize their sparks of Vitality from afar, even amidst a sea of other sparks of Vitality. As you peer into the sparks of Vitality, you are able to faintly gleam into their truth.

While the rarity might not have changed, its contents had.

Everything he read in its description made sense to him; the last sentence told him that his assumptions about the sparks of Vitality allowed him to differentiate between close combatants and ranged ones.

The only thing that raised his eyebrow was the term, karmic connection. He'd never heard of it before, but comparing it to what it previously said, he assumed that karmic connection had something to do with how close he was to someone.

"What do you think we should do?" Aoife asked, before offering, "Should I dig under?"

Archie considered it for a moment before asking, 'Could they have something to detect if you're digging below them?'

"…Potentially," Aoife answered after thinking about his question. "But if we dig deep enough, we might be able to."

"If only we knew how deep the wall goes," Aoife muttered to herself, looking towards the enormous wall that loomed over them.

'Two kilometers deep,' Archie answered, confusing Aoife for a moment before she looked at Archie in shock.

"How do you-" Aoife started before shaking her head in dismissal. "I assume it's how you know the number of guards within and around the wall?"

'Yeah,' Archie answered. The lowest he saw a person go down the wall was around two kilometers using Vital Sight.

'But we would need something to muffle the sound of you mining and digging through dirt,' Archie signed with one hand, and he scratched his growing, yet still scraggly beard.

Hmm, what do I have to work with? Archie thought to himself as he looked through his spatial storage.

Totem? No.

Magic drone? No.

Sandwich? No…Yes, can't say no to a sandwich.

Hmm…

Ah!

I can use the Chameleon Locust Insectoid Cores and the Shadowhawk Beastcores in tandem to create some sort of item like an Effigy of Stealth using Core Resonance Forging, Spirit Link, and Whispers of the Forge to make something similar, Archie smiled.

He would only have a maximum of six attempts until he'd run out of Shadowhawk Beastcores, which meant he would need to give this a hundred and ten percent, as he did not know if they would be able to find any stealth or shadow focused creatures within this forest that were strong enough for their cores to be of use.

'I think I can forge something to get rid of or, at the very least, muffle the noise of mining, but you might need to dig a bit deeper than two kilometers, is that okay?' Archie signed, offering Aoife another sandwich, this time lettuce wrapped.

"It is fine," Aoife replied with a shrug, taking a bite of her lettuce-wrapped rabbit sandwich. "I've dug deeper and longer before. It shouldn't be a problem if you can muffle the sounds of my pickaxe."

'I'll do my best to-' Archie signed, but before he could finish, both he and Aoife froze at the sound of chittering coming from behind a bush just a few meters away from them.