Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

"We'll be keeping an eye on you three - especially you, sprite," a guard grumbled, glowering at them out of the corner of her eye as they walked past her, having paid the entrance toll.

Nice morning to you, too, Archie thought sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he held Tim against his chest. He kept a firm grip, covering the dragon sprite's mouth to stifle any further expletives and prevent him from doing anything else that might get them kicked out of the city.

"We're terribly sorry," Aoife apologized sheepishly, her face flushing red with embarrassment as she faced the very annoyed guard, and her smirking team of guardsmen that let her pass through, returning her Pouch of Holding.

"You can't just say that to a guard," Aoife whispered, chiding Tim as he struggled to free himself from Archie's grasp. "They might not have let us in - or worse, thrown us in jail."

'As much as I agree that she has the personality of a rotting, bleating goat, that doesn't mean you have to say it to her face,' Archie signed after releasing his hold on the dragon sprite and immediately sighing in resignation as he watched as Tim turned to the guardswoman in question and blew a raspberry at her.

I'm already regretting agreeing to be on an adventuring team with him, Archie groaned. They hadn't even made it past the gate, and they had already caught the attention of the guards.

"You can't blame me for that," Tim complained, flying between Archie and Aoife. "She was polite and everything up until I came out and introduced myself."

"Tim," Aoife chided softly. "You suddenly appeared right in front of her face in a burst of flames. How did you think she was going to react?"

"It was just a bit of flame… How was I supposed to know she'd freak out like that?" Tim asked, shrugging his shoulders. "We do it all the time back in the broods, the flames are nothing more than a lighting show. I barely put in a sliver of mana in it."

'I'm pretty sure the other guards knew that and let it you do it to screw with their coworker, judging how nonchalant they all were when you did that,' Archie said, putting in his two cents.

"My point exactly. She's the one with something stuck up her butt - it's also not my fault her mana detection sucks," Tim said, zipping between the many passersby within the wall's tunnel and out into the city. He let out an excited ooh and ahh as he reached the end.

This… Archie smirked as he took in the sight in front of him as he stepped out of the tunnel. …This is something else.

The city sprawled out before him - a neon jungle of metal and light, pulsing with life. It was a vision of the future, far more sci-fi and cyberpunk than the City of Louther... It isn't even a competition.

A sudden sensation on his cheek made him blink. He touched his face, brushing his fingers against a cool droplet of liquid. Water?

Is it raining now or something? Archie asked himself. But there hadn't been a single dark cloud in the sky on the way here, so there couldn't have been rain.

Leading him to the only conclusion he could think of: ... Am I under a radiator?

Feeling a couple more drops land atop his headdress, Archie looked up, his eyes widening as dark clouds materialized from thin air, beginning to release a steady downpour.

A spell, Archie concluded as he sensed faint trickles of mana in the puddles that began to form on the small cracks on the smoothened asphalt streets.

Harmless though, he mused, easing himself as he observed the city's inhabitants moving through the rain, utterly unbothered and Sixth Sense not warning him of any danger.

The rain-slicked streets reflected the glow of a thousand holo-signs, flickering advertisements scanning the crowd for potential buyers. He created a thin, one by one meter mana platform atop them both as they walked down the streets.

"Welcome to Neo-Eden, the City of Possibilities," a massive projection displayed, hovering above the tallest building, drenched in mana, its digital display shifting through multiple languages seamlessly, with the only language he understood being USL.

The rain-slicked streets shimmered with the neon glow of hundreds of holographic signs that hovered above the passing crowd, each one flashing various items and services: Food, tools, pleasure houses, guilds, and so many more.

Archie took a slow inhale, tasting the air - mana, ozone, and the unmistakable spice of street food sizzling on open griddles. Is that Orange Chicken I smell? Archie wondered as he turned his face towards where the smells floated from.

Each street was packed to the brim, filled with pedestrians, hover-bikes, and mechanized street vendors calling out their wares.

Nudging himself to the side, Archie avoided a young courier who zipped past on quarter-cast cybernetic skates, nearly clipping his shoulder, while a group of heavily augmented officers loomed nearby, one leaning against a lamp post while the others around him were scanning the masses with glowing red optics.

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Hearing a familiar sounding dinging, Archie and Aoife's eyes looked above, watching as magi-lev trains drove atop the skyline, as though the skies were their rails, their sleek bodies flashing past towering skyscrapers covered in shifting advertisements.

One holo-billboard flickered, scanning Archie before displaying a sleek, silver half-cast cybernetic arm that transformed into an equally sleek-looking dual rifle setup. "Upgrade today - Buy one CA-RC-T782 and get a CW installment for free!"

Archie let out a low reverberating hum. The City of Louther had nothing like this. At most everything looked just slightly more modern than what we had on Earth.

'This place looks insane,' Archie signed, still taking in the cyberpunk city he walked into.

"…Yeah," Aoife smiled, her eyes sparkling as she took in everything around her, with a growing smirk, not unlike his. "I've only seen the entrances of major cities before in the Sovereignty, but I've never seen magi-lev trains before."

'This is only the beginning for the both of us,' Archie smirked as he took in the city, watching as the people Tim zipped past stumbled slightly and cursed at him. 'We have a whole multiverse to explore.'

Not to mention a whole lot of other opportunities to discover and unveil, Archie thought, his eyes trailing behind a couple of hover-bikes and carts, not to mention the magi-lev trains. I wonder how much one of those would cost?

According to Aoife, it would take a Skyship at least a couple of days going at full speed to reach Neo-Eden, so they should have around a week or two before the assassins would be able to catch up.

Not to mention the whole fiasco we caused at the Border Wall - and the fact that we're now in the Yndros Empire, a kingdom currently at war with the Netharim Sovereignty. That alone should add at least another week, Archie noted as he glanced through the many shop windows.

If I didn't have Vital Sight, we would've been caught in a heartbeat trying to escape that forest with the sheer number of guards hiding in it, Archie thought with a smirk, recalling how Aoife had given him a short piggyback ride for the first few minutes after they crashed.

They hadn't been able to stop long enough for him to actively use Vital Metabolism to speed up the regeneration of his legs, not with the relentless barrage of attacks still coming at them, nor with them constantly evading the many D-Grade guards hidden within the forest they crashed into with Vital Sight.

After three or four minutes atop the "Aoife Express", his legs had fully regenerated. He hopped off the piggyback ride, and from then on, he took the lead, rushing barefoot through the forest while she followed him, no longer relying on his hand signals to avoid obstacles.

"So, how did you two meet?" Tim asked, hovering beside him as Archie and Aoife stood in front of a barbecue Rockbird chicken stick stand. "Like me, you obviously weren't born in the 23rd Universe. Also, why can't you speak normally? Is it because you're slow?"

After paying the stand owner thirty Copper coins, Archie handed two barbequed Rockbird chicken sticks each to Aoife and Tim, before replying.

'I got quadra-cursed by someone called Seeth'four, and one of the curses placed on me makes me unable to speak,' Archie signed with his left hand before tearing off two barbecue-sauced Rockbird chicken chunks from its stick. 'I was told by a few others that it's a strong one, and I'm stuck with it. My best bet to get rid of it would be by evolving.'

"Oh, I guess that makes sense," Tim replied. "Quadra-curses sound nasty."

'As for how Aoife and I met…' Archie signed. 'It was about two weeks ago, just about when I got teleported here after the Group Tutorial ended. Aoife was-'

"Wait, what?" Tim interrupted, zipping from Archie's right to hover in front of his face. His barbecue-sauced Rockbird chicken sticks floated beside him as his face scrunched up.

"That's… but mom said that the last Tutorial was like a thousand years ago," he muttered, his eyes widening near the end of his sentence.

His slitted eyes darted from side to side before he grabbed one of Archie's fingers, then reached for Aoife's, leading them toward an isolated alley he had spotted up the street.

Archie and Aoife looked at one another in confusion, but not for the same reason.

Once Tim was sure that the three of them were alone and not followed, he got back in front of Archie's face, close enough for Archie to lean his face back.

"You're from the 72nd Universe," Tim whisper-shouted, his voice brimming with excitement. "You're one of the survivors from the greatest stain of the Multiverse, aren't you?"

"The last Tutorial Event for the 73rd Universe happened two thousand years ago - and that was only for those who had reached C-Grade," he continued. "And you're no C-Grade, so you must be one of the survivors."

But it's been over three thousand years since the beginning of the 73rd cycle, Archie mused. Why did the last Tutorial Event happen a thousand years later? Is that normal?

'Yeah, I am. But why do you two look so shocked?' Archie signed, confused by the expressions of shock on both Aoife and Tim's faces. 'Also, why call it a stain?'

"You don't know?" Tim asked, now confused, his excited smile now fading. "Oh shit! You really don't know," he said as Archie just stared at him, expectantly. "Literally everyone knows this. That means you're the real deal."

"The gods themselves destroyed four universes less than two months into the start of a cycle," Aoife answered, making Archie turn his head to Aoife. "While that in of itself wouldn't be considered as a stain on the Multiverse, they destroyed a universe that was still being developed by the System, your universe."

"The System wasn't able to save the majority of the universe, prioritizing those under its protection due to the suddenness of its destruction," Tim joined in. "The System managed to save what it could, but once it did whatever it did, everyone in the multiverse got slammed with its gavel. No one was spared, even the gods themselves got punished, all of them."

'What?' Archie signed in confusion, pushing Tim away from his face.

"Yeah, not even they were spared," Tim repeated.

Bralmir too? Archie questioned to himself. 'Why?'

"I don't know," Tim admitted, shrugging his shoulders and landing atop a garbage lid. "I was never told, and the gods never said anything publicly. Even the ones who appear on Aetherglass Central glossed over everything. All I know is that for a billion years, the minimum set time for when a new universe could be integrated into the Multiverse was when travel between universes was stopped."

"The System punished everyone indiscriminately: Records became harder to earn, System Events were put on pause, Multiversal travel was cut off, and many more, " Aoife finished. "That's why the 72nd cycle is considered the Greatest Stain of the Multiverse."