Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Archie lunged forward, just as rust-colored root spears burst from the ground behind him, tearing through the spot he'd been in a split second before. He hit the ground, pivoted on his heel, and kept moving through the Tanglebloom Forest with Tim just beside him.

Activating Vital Sight, he searched for Aoife.

Pivoting sharply on his heel once more, he rebounded off the trunk of a massive, crimson-barked tree - its surface pulsing faintly, with mana.

Thorn-covered tendrils burst from the underbrush in response, narrowly missing his side as he twisted mid-air, boosting Adrenaline Rush to 25% to ensure both the Spirit Nucleus and the modified satchel remain untouched.

Creating a thin mana platform to spring off of, Archie pivoted to his right, where he launched himself towards Aoife, who burst through a dome made out of roots that formed around her.

"Oi! Aoife!" Tim shouted as he flew side by side with Archie, waving at her with one hand as the other was holding the camcorder. "We have everything we need, we just need to run!"

Aoife gave barely more than an almost imperceivable nod as she shrouded herself in a dull gray colored steam that pulsed with both mana and stamina, the telltale sign of her boosting skill, and launched herself forward.

Following just behind Aoife, Archie twisted himself once more off of an oversized rock and shot towards the direction Aoife ran in, where he speed vaulted over an extended tree root that attempted to knock the wind out of him.

A breath later, the ground beneath him cracked open, and a jagged spire of crimson-colored roots exploded upward - he pop vaulted over it without thinking, grabbing a thick branch overhead and swinging himself higher into the forest canopy.

This parkour thing is fun as hell, Archie smiled as he landed atop a tree branch, but in doing so, he had to deal with another set of obstacles.

The crimson-colored leaves shot towards him like small daggers, and airborne baseball-sized spores shimmered gold and red as they wafted in his path, releasing a… lethargic aura around them.

Are those spores… releasing some sort of draining effect as they float around? Archie asked himself, narrowing his eyes as he felt a very minor tug on his stamina reserves as he neared one.

This won't do at all, he thought as he activated Ember's Embrace around his fists and simultaneously sent out a jab towards the spores that wafted in his path, activating Hyper Impact.

Hyper Impact was an interesting thing. Apparently, if you punched around twenty Grumblebarks - killing one every seven punches or so - while maintaining Adrenaline Rush at about 10%, you could store the energy of roughly one hundred and forty strikes into your fists.

Now, the resulting blast from Hyper Impact wasn't exactly equivalent to one hundred and forty punches all at once, since the skill could only absorb a portion of the energy with each hit, but it was still more than enough for what Archie had in mind.

As Hyper Impact activated, a spiraling explosion of flaming air erupted from Archie's fist, surging forward in a wide, twisting torrent. To which Tim instantly followed up by releasing a golden, red burst of flame into the twisting torrent Archie was releasing forward.

The blast spun like a horizontal cyclone, glowing with intense orange and gold hues as it tore through the forest canopy they ran through. Spores evaporated on contact, disintegrating into a haze of golden-red dust, and the razor-edged leaves were incinerated in midair.

The forest canopy they faced didn't stand a chance - entire limbs of trees lost their crimson color, looking nothing more than brittle, charred matchsticks.

Tim's Dragon Flame + Hyper Impact + Ember's Embrace = Very Big Damage, Archie thought as he leaped off of a mana platform he created just beneath his feet, not wanting to take the chance to see if the charred tree limbs would be able to hold his weight.

As he pushed forward, the forest let out a deafening scream, its echo reverberating in his mind. The sound of thousands of animals and trees screeching, roaring, and snapping filled his head.

His eyes narrowed slightly, but beyond that, there was no outward reaction to the noise.

Primal Roar gives me way more of a kickback than that, he chuckled to himself, unfazed, as he quickly shifted his body aside to narrowly avoid waves of thorn-covered roots that shot out from the charred logs all around him.

Once his feet touched solid ground, Archie shot forward.

Out of the corner of his right eye, he saw Aoife looking over her own shoulder at them both, raising her finger to point to his left.

Sixth Sense began to tingle once more in the same direction her finger pointed towards.

Without giving another moment of thought after he double checked that both Tim was beside him and the Spirit Nucleus was still on his back, he pushed Adrenaline Rush to 35%.

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I don't think I'll ever get bored of this, he thought gleefully as he felt his adrenaline surge throughout his being. He pushed his legs harder, his body propelling forward just as gnarled, vine-like roots shot out from all around, snapping like desperate hands trying to grab him.

Sensing a buildup of nature mana from the area he was about to step into, Archie's brows furrowed in irritation. In one fluid motion, he slammed his foot down, the force sending cracks spiderwebbing through the dirt as he channeled a sharp, commanding surge of his own nature mana deep into the earth.

He laced it with a single, forceful instruction through his Botanokinesis: Away.

His mana shot forth like lightning into the ground, threading through soil and stone, saturating the soil with a power far denser, far more refined than anything the forest could muster.

Almost immediately, it met resistance - a thick wave of foreign nature mana that surged back at him, heavy and defiant. The Myrelace's influence clung to the earth beneath his feet, territorial and invasive, as if trying to choke out his presence.

In a contest of raw mana between a mid D-Grade and a relatively high E-Grade, the outcome was obvious - the D-Grade's mana, more potent and refined, would crush its weaker counterpart without struggle.

But that equation didn't account for the depth of Affinities.

As swiftly as his mana collided with it, the opposing force was overwhelmed - swallowed whole. His single command of Botanokinesis, funneled by his Greater Nature Affinity (Epic), chaotically carved through the resistance with overwhelming potency, decimating the tangled command the Myrelace had laid into the roots of the Tanglebloom Forest to capture him.

Easily overriding the Low Nature Affinity (Uncommon) that belonged to the Myrelace.

Archie paid no heed to the roots that shot towards him as they arced themselves away and in the opposite direction of where the Myrelace commanded them to.

"You've really got great control over your mana," Tim complimented, glancing over at Archie with a casual nod. He then turned to Aoife, whom they had finally caught up to, and waved cheerfully. "Hello!"

Aoife blinked at Tim, her brow furrowing slightly as she took in his complete nonchalance amidst the chaos around them. "H-Hello," she replied back after a few seconds, trying to keep pace with the two of them. "Do you know what's attacking us?" she asked, her voice tinged with concern as she tried to make sense of the madness that had been unfolding.

Archie's eyebrows shot up in denial. He hadn't seen whoever was attacking them as Sixth Sense screamed at him to get the hell out of the Tanglebloom Forest, not to mention whatever it was that was controlling the forest refused to come out into the open.

"Tim?" Aoife asked, her voice cutting through the air as she snapped Tim's attention away from the recording camcorder in his scaled hands, which had been capturing the path behind them.

His attention span is worse than my own, Archie mutely chuckled to himself as he caught sight of an uncaring Tim flying backwards while recording the forest behind them, trying to swallow them whole.

"Hm?" Tim replied, looking momentarily confused, his scaled brow furrowing as he turned to face Aoife. "What did you say?"

"Do you - " Aoife began, but her words were cut off as she bashed her shield forward. The Deepiron Scutum slammed into a monkey that resembled a macaque but was much more like a radioactive rat, with boils and metal grafted onto its body. It emerged from the shadows. "Know what is attacking us? Why is the forest trying to kill us?"

"Oh, you guys don't know?" Tim asked, looking confused. "You didn't grab and look through the Information Crystals that were placed in the Welcome to Fractal Info Bin that was placed by the front desk? They contained everything about the different wildlife and creatures we could expect to see while living on Fractal."

What? Archie and Aoife simultaneously thought. They hadn't seen that at all.

"Anyhow," Tim said, casually dismissing the situation as he put away his camcorder. "What's after us right now is one of the plantoid races called the Myrelace."

He twisted his body 90 degrees midflight, narrowly avoiding spikes of wood that were shot toward him. "They're parasitic in nature and particularly fast-growing. They thrive by embedding themselves in live hosts - trees, animals, anything that's alive, really - and siphoning energy from them constantly, but leaving enough for them to continue living."

"Wouldn't be good for them if their hosts died," he chuckled, watching as Archie punched away another Mirthsprite that was frothing at the mouth and charging toward them.

'If it can do that, then how is it controlling the entire forest?' Archie signed, vaulting over the back of a deer-like creature made of stone as it leapt over one of the many unearthed tree roots.

"My best guess is probably evolution," Tim shrugged, unsure of how it exactly came to take over the forest. "But we're probably just about leaving the part of the forest it can control."

What?

"Oh, yeah, there is no way a mid D-Grade plant can be as large as the entire forest," Tim chuckled at Archie's confusion. "We just crossed fifteen kilometers of forest. Even if it mutated the groves to act as vantage points for its subconscious to bounce between, there are limits to it."

Oh? He's using kilometers now, I thought it was normal to just use USUs, Archie noted with surprise.

"You really should have read the Information Crystals the guild offers," Tim chided him.

"You should have told us," Aoife said, brows furrowed at Tim's words. "We just joined the guild less than seven hours ago; how should we have known?"

"Uh," Tim said, trying to find a response to Aoife's words as he began to scratch his scaled scalp with his sharp index claw.

Upon not finding any, he muttered a quiet apology. "Sorry, I just thought one of the interviewers would have pointed them out for you to have read, my mom did for me when I first joined the guild."

Archie released a tired exhale at both his response and the receding nature mana that he could now identify as belonging to the Myrelace.

Once the Myrelace's mana could no longer be felt around them and the surrounding forest was no longer tinged red, the trio stopped to catch their breath for a moment and deactivated their boosting skills.

Knocking back a Potion of Stamina and splashing water from his Water Tin on his face, Archie rubbed his eyes in an attempt to stave off another wave of fatigue that came from both Hollow Slumber deactivating a 35% Adrenaline Rush.

I need to see if there is an Alchemist that sells some sort of fatigue relief potions or find a place to meditate safely, Archie thought to himself as he took out his Mana Bike. Cause I think I'm almost at my limit now.

After strapping off the modified satchel and attaching it to the front of his Mana Bike, Archie sat down and pulled out three sandwiches from his spatial storage, handing one each to Tim, Aoife, and himself.

Now all that's left is to turn in what we found and collect our money, Archie thought, content as he scarfed down the last bite of his sandwich.

Then he froze.

'…Who was supposed to write the report?' he asked. Glancing at Tim, who was busy reviewing camcorder footage, then at Aoife, who was intensely staring at the Spirit Nucleus.

"You were," Tim smiled, not even looking up from the camcorder as he lounged atop a tree branch.

Archie groaned. Paperwork, the bane of existence.