Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Archie lounged within the confines of his Explorer's Tent, nestled in his sigil-ridden chair, as he nursed the Information Crystal containing the so-called "Basic Spatial Magic Knowledge" that Bralmir had placed within the Livingwood Propagator.

Basic my fucking ass, Archie grumbled as he moved his right arm from under the Information Crystal to pinch the bridge of his nose. He'd barely covered five percent of its contents, yet his brain already felt like it was all mush.

It had been four days, bringing his total time on this planet to two weeks, since he and Aoife had escaped from the Netharim Sovereignty's Border Wall. To say that legally entering another country's borders had been a smooth task would be a blatant lie.

Once his legs had fully regenerated, both he and Aoife changed back into their previous outfits. Archie quickly ripped off the uncomfortable uniform and reequipped his armor once more, sighing in relief as he was no longer "naked" and susceptible to instantly being turned into Swiss cheese by a physical bullet.

Being turned into Swiss cheese by magical bullets was fine, acceptable really, considering even with his armor on, they would have torn through it. But that would soon change.

With his studies in spatial magic, Archie's understanding of mana was expanding in leaps and bounds with every metaphorical flip of the page.

One could argue that his prior knowledge of mana was limited to manipulation and control training, with absolutely zero theoretical foundation. Therefore, any progress in the theoretical aspect was expected to be bountiful.

Which in that sense, any theoretical learning would technically mark a 100% increase in his understanding, and they wouldn't be wrong.

But with no one to point that out to him, his joy remained untouched, and every piece of new information he managed to make sense of sent him into fits of cackling laughter, much to Aoife's disguised ire.

Which, to be fair, happened every fifteen to twenty minutes or so, which always pulled her out of her shadow sparring sessions. Eventually, it became enough of a distraction that she'd dropped enough clues for him to piece together that it would be best for him to move into the tent just to at least muffle his cackling.

Looking down at his right hand, Archie stared at his right palm, concentrating as a faint violet hue hovered around it. He watched as the hue vibrated, distorting the space around it as though it were liquid putty, including his own hand.

The sensation was uncomfortable, yes, but not really anything to get worked up over; it felt like a thousand dull needles pricking the skin of his hand. From what he'd tested, the worst it could do when he'd gather enough of it was bruise his skin, which Vital Metabolism swiftly healed.

But just as quickly as it appeared, it sputtered out of existence, vanishing as the last vestiges of spatial mana left his control.

A bit longer than last time, Archie noted, rubbing his fingers in an attempt to sense for any remaining echoes of spatial mana that lingered, fully aware of how futile it was.

It had taken him a total of three hours to gather enough Minor Spatial Elemental Spirits within Spirit Link, condense them, and stabilize them to the point where he could safely exit Spirit Link without having them immediately disperse into thin air.

And even then, whenever he attempted to mold it, it would barely last a minute before inevitably dispersing.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd hoped for it to be true, he was neither a young master from a xianxia novel nor an anime protagonist. And honestly, after thinking about it, he was glad.

Some of them had really shitty writers who seemed to take pleasure in making their lives miserable - only to balance it out with "god-tier luck or enlightenments".

To date there was only one he'd read where a protagonist had what he would call god-tier shit luck and an even shittier life that progressively got shittier.

I really wish I could have read what happened next to the black swordsman, I hope he got his revenge on that white haired twat, Archie sighed as he got up from his Sigil Ridden Chair and looked back to the Information Crystal in his left hand.

"Spatial Magic has a multitude of abilities, similar to other magics, its applications are near limitless. Even us gods, including myself, after all this time, have yet to find a limit," Archie reread, his mana once more funneling through the crystal.

"Those who claim they have, have been blinded by their own arrogance and inevitably meet their end, for not even the strongest of gods dare to claim they have reached the so-called limit of their trades."

"Some of the basic Spatial Magics are: Spatial Anchor, Blink Step, Pocket Storage, and Pull. As per the obviousness of their names, Spatial Anchor fixes an object to a location, for example, halting an apple from its descent.

"Blink Step requires you to 'break free' of the space between you and your destination point. Visualization is key. Imagine pushing your body through a thin membrane of space," Archie nodded. Like a bullet passing through a barrel, then instantly appearing at the destination, similar to quite a few battle royale and online FPS games.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

… Okay, here is where I last left off, Archie noted.

"Pocket storage, while a bit more difficult comparatively, requires you to create a self-contained folded dimension within your own body or an external item such as a pouch or ring."

A bit harder my ass. Nothing like casually folding space to create an inventory, Archie quipped, rolling his eyes before reading a hint Bralmir gave. "Using your Spatial Ring to get a feel for how the spell should function and feel would be a good first step."

"Spatial Pull, or more colloquially known as Pull for short, requires you to focus on an object and erase the space between you and the object."

Yeah, just erase space, should be easy enough to do, Archie plainly thought. Wouldn't that just cause a spatial collapse or something along those lines?

But given that Bralmir's calling it a basic spell, I'm probably overthinking it, Archie mulled before continuing.

"Now don't worry about accidentally ripping a hole through space and collapsing the dimension you're in because you were too lazy to get off the sofa to grab snacks from the cupboards." Archie could hear practically hear the smile Bralmir must have made when writing that section inside the Information Crystal.

"Space has a thing where it knits itself together to prevent that type of thing, besides, you have nowhere near that amount of magical power nor the mana to even succeed at accomplishing that," Archie read, somewhat offended. I have plenty of mana, 5330 in fact.

"To give you some context, even the hundreds of gods and goddesses who fractured your universe couldn't manage to completely collapse it, nor the surrounding universes, despite unleashing the full extent of their powers, only collapsing a large majority of areas within them and rendering them locked down by the System due to interfering with a new Universe."

"While destroying a universe is obviously a much grander feat than affecting a single dimension, the example I brought up is meant to put into perspective the sheer scale of what you're worried about accidentally causing. But even then, the worst you could do would be effortlessly repaired and knit together by the ambient Spatial Elementals and Spirits," Archie concluded, cutting off the flow of mana into the Information Crystal.

Bralmir's not-so-hidden hint about how he could connect with spatial mana wasn't lost on him. Throughout the introduction chapter, he had repeatedly emphasized the value of Spirit Link.

Of which there were ten chapters, with the Introduction and first chapter being the shortest two, and each chapter afterwards was exponentially longer than the last.

He had glossed over the theoretical calculations required to understand how the spells functioned at their bases, as his priority was first trying to get the hang of manipulating spatial mana, ensuring it wouldn't simply evaporate into thin air the moment he exited Spirit Link.

Unlike the case with nature mana and unattuned mana, he had no Affinity for spatial mana whatsoever, same with every other elemental type. He was part of the unlucky majority of multiverse denizens who only had a singular Affinity.

It being unlucky is relative ,really, Archie remarked, returning the Information Crystal back into his spatial storage.

While the number of Affinities you can have is essentially a gacha roll, according to 'General Information of Class and Profession Evolutions' and 'The Myriad of Races within the Multiverse', possessing multiple Affinities isn't always beneficial.

Take dual Affinities, for example, say Ash and Earth. Your mana pool becomes divided into thirds: one-third for Ash, one-third for Earth, and one-third for Unattuned mana.

While both Affinities can draw from the Unattuned pool when their reserves run dry, they can't tap into each other's pools at the same efficiency. In fact, in some cases, it's even worse than having no Affinity for an element at all in some cases.

If you had an Uncommon rarity Affinity for Earth, which, as per the rarity, is uncommon in the multiverse, and pursued the Class of a Seismic Sentinel, having an Ash Affinity at Common or even Rare rarity would often be seen as a disadvantage due to your effectively smaller mana pool size.

That is, unless you could find a way to combine them into a singular Affinity or use them just as equally as you would with the other, and eventually bring them to the same level.

Which wasn't always possible, considering the sheer amount of Affinities that existed throughout the Multiverse. Crystal, Karmic, Dream, Sound, and Bone were among the many types of Affinities that he learned about from within those books.

With that in mind, the actual ratio of having Affinities at the same rarity that complement each other and suit the 'build' you were aiming for at birth was extremely small, even in the multiverse.

And considering what Thalindra mentioned all those days ago, items that raise your Affinity rarity are exceedingly rare, and others would kill you in a heartbeat for them, even those who were Grades above you.

As a result, most individuals would resort to rituals or, during evolutions, choose to forgo the Affinity they believed was holding them back. It was a sobering reality—one that he was glad he didn't have to deal with.

Picking up the crate of Meteoric Iron, which he had left in the middle of the cabin within the Explorer's Tent, Archie returned it back into his spatial storage.

Funny thing really, when he'd first begun to gather Minor Spatial Elemental Spirits, never once did the thought cross his mind to absorb the very energy that kept the Spatial Expansion enchantments running was most probably not a smart thing to do.

If he'd absorbed too much, it could have destabilized the enchantment and collapsed in on itself, with him in it.

If it weren't for Sixth Sense pulling him out of Spirit Link and making him aware of the light shuddering of the cabin, he would have never noticed until it was too late.

To try and rebalance the ratio of Minor Spatial Elemental Spirits, he threw himself completely into manipulating the Spatial Elemental Spirits that lingered within the Meteoric Iron bars and nestled what he could with the Spatial Elemental Spirits that belonged to the Spatial Expansion enchantments of the Explorer's Tent.

He'd purchased the Meteoric Iron bars from the Bazaar for the sole reason of their potential usefulness in building the teleporter, given their high saturation with the spatial element.

Thus, keeping them around while he tried to immerse himself in spatial mana to get a better feel for it, along with their passive generation of Minor Spatial Elemental Spirits every so often, balanced out his accidental overtaking of the ones within the Explorer's Tent.

He still had a long way to go before he could collect spatial mana efficiently, and an even longer journey ahead before he could translate that into runic scripts to create a teleporter. With less than two months left before the bet would end.

No rest for the… what the fuck is that? Archie thought as he looked out of the window of the tent and saw Aoife conversing with a football-sized winged gecko.

[Dragon Sprite Lv 98]