Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Spirit Nucleus (Epic) – Formed:
The origin for a spirit to physically manifest into the physical plane. The type of spirits imbued into the Spirit Nucleus, along with its environment, determines whether a spiritual entity will form. [Redacted]. [Redacted]. Currently imbued with nature spirits that have an intrinsic tie towards Archie Gracefield's Greater Nature Affinity, enhancing the Spirit Nucleus' records. Currently bound to Archie Gracefield.

Archie felt the steady thrum of a heartbeat pulsing from within the Spirit Nucleus as he cradled it in his bare hands, his Embergrasp Gauntlets already stowed away in his spatial storage.

He continued to stare at the Spirit Nucleus with Vital Sight active, taking in the slumbering, small form of the spirit beast that lay within it. While he was mostly distracted by its sudden emergence and advancement to the next stage, Sixth Sense was not.

However, before he could even react, the Stonecoil Vineserpent lunged at him, to snap its jaws around his left leg - still somewhat protected by his Steel-Plated Shadowstalker Boots, which were already beginning to fall apart - when Aoife's lance pierced through its scaled hide and struck its midsection, pinning it to the ground, hissing in pain.

'Thanks,' Archie wrote out using a mana construct as his hands were currently preoccupied.

"Hmm," Aoife muttered with a nod, crushing its skull with a stomp of her right half-cast CL-LC100D-T457. "Please be more wary of your surroundings next time," Aoife muttered as she pulled her Deepiron lance from both its body and the ground. "While they are weaker, it doesn't mean they cannot hurt or kill you if distracted."

'Sorry about that,' Archie wrote out, looking slightly sheepish. 'This one right here just leaped out of my spatial storage and well…' he trailed off as he nudged the Spirit Nucleus upwards slightly in Aoife's direction. 'Got distracted by it.'

"What is it?" Aoife questioned as she flicked her lance clean of all the blood-crusted dirt along it as she stared at the basketball-sized sphere in his hands.

'It's a Spirit Nucleus,' Archie answered before his brows furrowed in confusion; 'You can't Identify it?'

"…I can, but all it says is 'The origin for a spirit to physically manifest into the physical plane.' The name of the … orb you are holding only displays itself as a jumbled-up mess of words," Aoife answered, looking just as confused as Archie now was.

Well, that's something, Archie noted. 'It's called a Spirit Nucleus. Back when I was in the Group Tutorial, I got it as a reward from a dinosaur dungeon, and I've been raising it ever since.'

"But, living beings cannot reside within a spatial storage," Aoife said. "I've heard as such from…" she trailed off and moved her gaze back toward the Spirit Nucleus.

'Laer?' Archie asked, taking a tentative breath. Years of buried trauma don't just fade away in a matter of weeks, he reminded himself.

"…No," Aoife replied, her eyes fixed on the Spirit Nucleus. "Back when I was a slave… You pick up bits and pieces of information from those around you."

"When I was helping to uncover a Silver vein, I heard a couple of higher-level miners mention that living beings cannot live within a spatial storage because the System prevents it."

'I mean you're not wrong at all, I wasn't able to put it in my spatial storage before, but a friend managed to create one for me that was able to while it was still growing,' Archie said, before shrugging. 'But I guess because it reached the next stage where it's now hibernating, it can't hold it anymore.'

Lightly tapping his fingers against the Spirit Nucleus' shelling as he held it against his chest, Archie looked back in the direction of the grove where he saw Tim wave feverishly at them, trying to grab their attention.

'Looks like he found something, we should catch up,' Archie wrote out as he loosened the clasp on his satchel and rotated it so was now facing his front. As he walked toward the entrance of the grove, Archie cleaned out the wooden effigy fragments that remained within them with Forgesmith's Flame and started to melt together straps of leather to create two long leather strips.

Once both leather strips were long enough, he melted their ends onto both the bottom and top lip of his satchel with Forgesmith's Flame and carefully held up the Spirit Nucleus with a few mana strings as he ripped off as many leaves as he could from the trees and bushes around him and stuff them into the modified satchel.

Once the satchel was sufficiently padded, he drew his Silver Carving Knife and sliced into the side gusset, widening it to accommodate the larger size of the Spirit Nucleus. With deliberate care, he slipped the glowing core into the modified space. Then, rotating the satchel's strap around his waist so it rested against his lower back, he secured the clasp once more.

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It's going to be harder to fight with this thing on, but I'll have to make do with what I have at the moment, he thought, as he passed into the grove that the Grumblebarks protected and slipped back on his Embergrasp Gauntlets. If anything, he could think about having it on his back as a way of training spatial awareness while fighting.

"Woah, what's that you got there on your back?" Tim asked as he zipped around him. "Where did you find that egg?"

His eyes suddenly widened as he leaned in, close enough to feel Archie's breath on his skin. "Did you lay it?" he asked in a low, urgent whisper, dead serious. "I've never heard of a human laying an egg before, but I can keep it a secret."

'No, I did not lay it, I got it during the Group Tutorial as a dungeon reward. I've been holding it in my spatial storage ever since, but for some reason or another, it decided that it doesn't want to be holed up in there any longer,' Archie wrote out, rolling his eyes at his last question and pushing Tim away from his face.

"Hm, it'll be a bit more difficult for you to fight with it strapped onto your back, but I guess you'll have to make do with it," Tim mulled as he hovered in front of him.

"I'll keep a close eye on your back while we fight - we don't want anything sneaking up on you. On that note, take this too," he said as his body suddenly became a blur, and the next thing Archie felt was a small, warm, scaled palm slapping him in the forehead and sending a surge of obscenely warm mana into his body.

Archie jerked his head back, startled, as a warm rush of mana began to bubble from within the clawprint that now rested atop his forehead. It spread quickly, enveloping his entire body before settling into a thin, yellowish gold membrane-like exoskeleton that layered itself over his armor and modified satchel that held the Spirit Nucleus.

Staring in confusion at his now glow-in-the-dark armored hands and body, Archie looked up at Tim, who was admiring his handiwork. 'What is this?' Archie asked.

His Sixth Sense hadn't activated when Tim suddenly became a blur, nor when the lingering mana began spreading across his body, slowly forming a membrane-like exoskeleton.

"A shield," Tim answered before pulling back out the camcorder that he received many years ago, back when he first joined the guild. "It should be able to protect you from two or three hits from the Grumblebarks if they're around the same level as the ones we killed."

Two to three hits, that's not bad at all, Archie mused as he began to clench and unclench his fists. Even though they were twelve or so levels under his own, they packed quite a bit of strength in their hammer-shaped paws.

'While I appreciate the help - and don't get me wrong, this is definitely useful, but next time give me a heads-up before smacking my forehead and casting a spell on me,' Archie signed. 'The last time I suddenly got hit with a spell I couldn't see, I got quadra-cursed. So, I'm still a bit hesitant about someone suddenly using magic on me.'

"Got it," Tim smiled, sticking out a thumbs up before he flicked the camcorder back on and began to record the inside of the grove this herd of Grumblebarks resided in.

Why do I get the feeling that he doesn't? Archie muttered inwardly, already bracing himself for whatever came next. Shaking off the thought, he turned his attention back to the Grumblebarks' strange behavior.

Scanning the grove, he knelt beside the hammer-shaped paw prints embedded in the dirt and began to follow their uneven path through the undergrowth. At first, they seemed to lead somewhere - but before long, they blurred into a chaotic mess, tangled with the tracks of the other Grumblebarks.

Archie sighed, shoulders slightly slumping. So much for that, he outwardly sighed, straightening up. The trail was a dead end, too many overlapping hammer prints to make sense of anything.

Still, even this could mean that maybe something had stirred them out of hibernation and had caused them to act weirdly, Archie mused. It wouldn't be the first time he'd heard of an ability that would cause people to go into a frenzy; Oliver.

Nevertheless, this was just one of many possibilities that could have made them act like this. There were still other possibilities to consider, like the presence of a much stronger predator wandering into Tanglebloom Forest, or perhaps an overabundance of creatures throwing the ecosystem off balance and causing chaos.

It reminded him of something he'd once heard back on Earth, during one of those random binges of short nature documentaries he always ended up watching whenever he accidentally doom-scrolled for too long.

In one documentary, he'd watched a time-lapse of a forest where wild rabbits were left unchecked and destroyed the forest's ecosystem completely because hunters had overhunted the natural predator population. Overpopulation, with no natural predators to control them, led to the complete decimation of the trees and plants they relied on, disrupting the entire ecosystem.

And while humans also contributed to that problem, it was still an option to consider, as there were roads that passed through the forest.

Taking out his Mana Revolver, Archie quickly unloaded four manabolts into the head of a Grumblebark that poked its head through a particularly dense thicket of thorny shrubs, and firing once more at its downed head, delivering the killing bolt.

They have both high magic and physical resistance, Archie grumbled in jealous annoyance. His armor would have only offered slight resistance against the first manabolt, thanks to the inherent magic resistance from infusing his own mana into the reinforced steel during the purifying and molding process of his smithing.

But that resistance would only protect him from a single manabolt. If another hit him in the same spot, then his skin would be the only thing left to prevent it from melting through his insides. To give Endurance credit, it did far more than he had originally thought.

While Endurance affected his stamina and fatigue, it also enhanced his constitution and overall toughness, which not only improved his physical resilience but also his magical resistance. After a couple of tests and a lot of convincing, he was able to tank two fully charged manabolts from Aoife to his torso, though the third tore through the head of his large intestine.

This was different from Willpower, as 'The Myriad of Races within the Multiverse', one of the books he'd purchased from the System Bazaar, stated that Willpower affected both the regeneration of your maximum mana pool and your resistance to mental magic only.

This revelation made him double down on his decision to keep dumping his Free Points into both Willpower and Wisdom, and hoping that when he evolved, either his Class, Profession, or hopefully both, would grant stat points to Willpower.