Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Aoife looked at Archie in disbelief, then back at his Mana Bike. "I-" She hesitated. 'I don't think that it can drive down a wall,' she stuttered before quickly remembering where she was. Switching back to signing, she deployed her Scutum, positioning it to cover as much of the Mana Bike as possible without drawing undue attention to it.

'It isn't supposed to,' Archie signed back with a growing smile. 'I never intended it to be able to.'

'Then how are we supposed to get down from here?' Aoife whispered before looking over her shoulders, trying to see if they caught any unwanted eyes from both her deploying her shield and Archie for bringing out his Mana Bike. 'What is the plan?'

'It involves 110% of my concentration, you protecting the back of the bike, a lot of mana, and a whole fuck-ton of luck,' Archie listed off. He then flashed a double thumbs-up to one of the border guards who stood on the other side of the tracks between them, who had stepped back to grab a mana potion from a crateful stash hidden in a pullout compartment atop the wall.

The guard looked confused at them for a moment before shaking their head in confusion, as though asking, 'What's up?'

'Can ya toss me a Mana one for my level?' Archie asked, creating a mana construct in front of him, boldening the word Mana.

The guard looked at Archie with furrowed brows, her facial expression visible even from behind the rising sun mask she wore. She opened her mouth to respond, but her voice was quickly drowned out by the chaotic mix of chittering screeches from the Dinomyrmex Gigasi, explosions, shouting, and other noises around them.

Realizing the futility of verbal communication, she retracted her rifle back into her arm. Then, she raised her hands for a moment, freezing as if trying to recall something.

After a few seconds of struggling to recall the correct hand signs, she turned to one of the other guards, tapping their shoulder. She leaned in close to their ear, murmuring something unintelligible to both Archie and Aoife, her words lost in the chaos of the battlefield surrounding them and miming with her hands.

After a few more exchanges between the two, the female guard crouched back down on the rampart and redeployed her rifle. The guard she had spoken to retracted their staff back into their full-cast cybernetic arm and turned to face them, then signed in broken USL, 'Why you opposite wall?'

'We got asked by the Teleporter Operations Chief Officer, the gorgon just below us, to keep watch on this side of the wall, something about the alert arrays being fucked,' Archie signed.

'The alert alarms are fucked?' the guard signed, his head tilted slightly back, and his eyebrows raised as though in surprise. 'Fuck me.'

'Pretty much how I feel,' Archie signed back with his left hand while rubbing his forehead with his right. 'It's my first damn day back from leave, and war already started. So, yeah. Fuck me indeed.'

'First the Dinomyrmex Gigasi and now we have to deal with Yndrosi scum… I knew I should have…' the guard complained before shaking his head in annoyance and glanced over his shoulder, staring at the carnage below.

Thousands upon thousands of Dinomyrmex Gigasi lay dead, their bodies trampled beneath the boots of guards and the claws of their still-living kin. The grass below was no longer green, nor was it stained red with blood.

It simply no longer existed on the battlefield.

The guard turned back around to face both Archie and Aoife and signed, 'So what you need again?'

'Some pots, for both of us. The ones here are empty. The fuckwits forgot to restock.'' Archie signed, just before ducking under and away from a stream of venom that came from one of the flying Dinomyrmex Gigasi that was quickly killed after it sprayed its acid at Archie and Aoife.

[Dinomyrmex Gigasi – Aerial Sprayer Lv ???]

The guard muttered a few words under his breath, unintelligible to both Archie and Aoife. Even though Archie had learned USL less than a week and a half ago using the Information Crystal, which had supposedly taught him the entire language, every word, sentence, and grammatical rule, the guard in front of him evidently proved otherwise.

I didn't even know you could do that with a can of beans, a rusty remote, and a helmet, Archie mused, impressed by the guard's vocabulary.

'What does it mean to be Deep-Jacked?' Archie signed to Aoife, whose face suddenly turned bright red, and turned her head away from Archie's direction.

Before he could try to pry further, the guard kicked the floor of the rampart while sending a specific pattern of mana along with his kick. After a few seconds, the tile that he kicked rose from the ground, revealing an assortment of potions: healing, rejuvenation, recovery, and a few others that he'd never seen before.

'Which one do you want?' the guard asked, crouching beside the assortment of vials and injectors.

'The works,' Archie replied before narrowing his embered eyes at the assortment stand of vials and injectors. '…Wait, just toss me the rack it's faster than just tossing it one by one,' Archie signed, before the guard was about to toss him a mana injector.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The guard looked at him confusedly, 'The hell you mean toss you the rack? It's fixed in, it always has been.'

Aoife bit on her lower lip as she heard the guard's response.

'Are your circuits fried?' Archie signed, his brows furrowing at the guard's response. 'Unclasp it from the bottom and top and pulse your mana into the rod.'

The guard stared at Archie with a deadpan, "Brother, I've been a Border Guard for forty-eight years now. You can't take it out of the ground. I wish we could, but we simply can't."

'Humor me,' Archie sighed, rubbing his forehead once more. 'I'll give you my dessert for a week if I'm wrong.'

'Your loss,' the guard signed, shaking his head as he placed both hands on either end of the rod, carefully searching for the clasps Archie had claimed were there.

Archie deactivated Gaze of the Forgefather just as the guard's expression shifted to one of disbelief - he had found the clasps on both ends of the rod, just as Archie had described.

Sending a pulse of mana through the rod, the guard watched as it shuddered for a moment before releasing a hiss of steam and dust from both ends. The sandstone floor plating detached, beginning to fall, only for the guard to quickly catch and balance it on his left foot.

The guard's slow look up from the rod-covered potion rack in his hand brought a smile to Archie's face.

'Told ya,' Archie signed before glancing left and right, ensuring no carts were approaching on the tracks between them. Once he confirmed the coast was clear, at least for the moment, he waved at the guard, signaling for him to toss the plating over.

Glancing down at the blinking blue lights on the bottom of the tracks, the guard quickly tossed the assortment of potions to Archie, who leaned back slightly to carefully catch the assortment of potions on a rack.

Just as he'd caught it, a large train cart covered his view of the other half of the wall.

This was go time.

Archie dropped the potion rack into his spatial storage and then pulled back his Mana Bike. With a quick flex of mana, he constructed a light greenish blue elevated ramp, hidden behind two thin walls of mana he swiftly created to obscure both the bike and himself, along with Aoife, from the remaining guards on their side of the wall.

Sliding onto the bike, Archie felt Aoife hop on behind him, not a moment later, and tensely grabbed onto the sides of where she sat.

'Buckle up,' Archie signed as he twisted the throttle ever so lightly and creating a silent hum that vibrated from the Nature-Attuned Runic Mana Engine below.

"What's a buckle?" Aoife nervously asked, her question barely audible from the noise behind them.

Archie's smile stretched from one corner of his face to the other as he said nothing, focusing instead on activating both Runic Amplification and Runic Mending across all the runes atop and within the Mana Bike. He then activated Thornscourge Expansion, keeping it thorn-free this time and wrapping it around their midsections and securing them through the holes he had created into the side of the frame when creating the Mk II.

His grip loosened for a brief moment as he exhaled, but not a moment later, with a firm grip, he pulled back the throttle entirely. In an instant, the bike exploded into motion, the sawblade wheels raking across the tough sandstone brick flooring of the wall, and onto the light greenish blue mana ramp he'd constructed.

Less than a second later, they shot off the ramp, soaring over the wall and toward the setting sun, the wind howling around them as they sped through the sky. Aoife's cybernetic hands clenched onto Archie's shoulders in a vice grip.

Which lasted around six to eight seconds before gravity kicked in.

If not for Archie's absurdly high Vitality and Endurance stats for an E-Grade, his shoulders would have popped from their sockets and crushed into paste.

As their descent began, Archie flicked the top of his Compass of Desire open, revealing a crimson needle pointing toward the Northeast, the heart of the Yndros Empire.

Confirming their direction, Archie immediately created another layered mana ramp beneath the sawblade wheels of his Mana Bike, this time angled slightly downwards and far denser.

Archie heard his upper back pop as the sawblade wheels dug into the mana ramp, and as he pulled back the throttle once more, the sawblade wheels tore through the dense mana construct and shot Northeast.

As Archie was in the middle of creating another mana ramp, a bullet whizzed past his head, the sharp cracks of gunshots and spells barely audible over the roaring battlefield behind him, and the wind in front of him.

Fuck me sideways!

Sixth Sense was still on cooldown, and Aoife was still digging her fingers into his back, thus meaning they were effectively sitting ducks right now with no way of protecting themselves from the attacks behind them.

As they landed on another mana ramp, Archie jabbed Aoife in the side with his elbow, trying to snap her attention away from crushing his shoulders and back to the present.

But she remained hunched over and stalwart, digging her head into his back. Ah, great, this was the perfect time to learn that she has a fear of heights, Archie sarcastically thought to himself. If I-

Archie's thoughts were abruptly cut off as a spear-like manabolt of lightning tore through a chunk of his left shin before it tore into the forest below them and exploded. Pain shot up his leg, sending violent spasms through the entire left side of his body.

His fingers twitched as he fought to keep his grip steady on the controls, and his control over his active skills and mana constructs began to shake. Fuck me! Archie thought, sucking in a sharp inhale through gritted teeth.

Landing shakily on another mana ramp, Archie felt the grip on his shoulders loosen ever so slightly and heard a sharp gasp from behind him. Thank you, God! Thank you, guy who made the Internet! And thank you, apple pie!

"What's happen-" Aoife muttered before she shoulder slammed Archie in the back and released a grunt of pain as reinforced bullet tore through her border guard uniform and smashed into her shoulder, stopped only by her Cybernetic Weave.

Archie snapped the handlebars northeast, grunting as a manabolt grazed his earlobe - mere millimeters from piercing his skull. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

"Archie!" she shouted as blood that dripped from his ear splattered onto her face. "Are you-"

'Unless you want us to turn into Swiss cheese before we crash, I need you to protect us from being shot!' he signed hastily with one hand, the other gripping the throttle as mana strings coiled tightly around it, reinforcing his hold.

"Right, I - sorry," Aoife muttered under her breath before smacking her face with both of her hands and coating herself in a dull gray sheen of mana and stamina, the tell-tale sign of her boosting skill having activated.

Aoife then activated the rest of her currently activatable defensive skills and twisted herself to face the barrage of spells, bullets, and other projectiles being fired at them by the Netharim Sovereignty Border Guards from atop the wall, with her Scutum shield now deployed, coated in a dark gray sheen.