Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Experiment number… fuck if I remember, Archie groaned, his thoughts slow and spaced as he turned slightly, pressing the side of his face against the cold stone floor. He looked far more exhausted than when he first sealed himself in; his breath shallow, chest rising and falling like a forge bellow at the end of its life, the bags under his eyes, previously faint, now dark purple, and his eyes bloodshot.

Above him, a Steel Dagger hovered in the air, not fixed nor held in place by any of his mana strings or density of his mana, but held by controlled and stabilized spatial mana that he actively manipulated.

He stared at it for a period of time, both too tired to sit up and too elated to look away from something he'd been working on accomplishing for days on end.

Spatial Anchor.

The corner of his mouth tugged upward into an exhausted, yet undoubtedly happy grin.

He had done it.

Finally.

His outstretched hand tapped the dagger, more a brush of fingertips than a push. The blade didn't budge, not even by a hair's breadth.

Fixed in place, he thought. His hand fell away, fingers twitching slightly as the dagger gave the faintest shiver-subtle, but noticeable. It responded to the loss of his direct focus, yet still held its place in the air. Stabilized.

Archie stared at it with half-lidded eyes, a mix of pride and satisfaction with hints of fatigue somewhat dulling the fire in his expression.

He really needed to take another Vial of Fatigue Relief before Hollow Slumber would act up once more and plague his mind with even more horrors.

Five nights ago, when he began practicing Spatial Anchor, he closed his eyes longer than normal, less than a few seconds, to him. Just to cool his eyes down.

He found himself drained of nearly all his mana and stamina, standing alone in a desert of jagged glass. His armor, spatial storages, tools - everything was gone.

Stripped bare and hungry.

But he didn't stay still. Something deep, instinctive, and wrong compelled him to move forward. No reason, no destination. Just forward.

Each step sent splinters of glass tearing through his soles, slicing through skin and tendon like paper. His feet bled freely, endlessly, staining the translucent ground beneath him a dark crimson. It was as if his 1215 Endurance meant nothing here-like the System itself had stopped working and he'd returned back to his pre-integration human body.

Worst part? He couldn't even curse in his own dreams. Not out loud. Not even in his thoughts. It was like every word-every idea-had to wade through molasses-thick mud just to surface.

He remembered how he'd broken his own teeth-too numerous to count-from clenching his jaw too hard with every step. The jagged glass sank into his feet like hot needles, again and again, and the so-called 'breeze' that should've cooled his burning skin?

It didn't soothe; it shredded.

Each gust tore across his body like a cloud of powdered razor-sharp, microscopic glass shards that flayed skin from muscle with every pass. The air left trails of red and crimson wherever it touched him.

And still, he walked.

No destination. No end in sight. Just the endless crunch of blood-soaked glass beneath him and the distant hum of a place that hated him simply for existing within it.

The sky above wasn't a sky - it was a void, thick and undulating like black oil. There were no stars, no sun. Just darkness, oozing downward in lazy drips, like grease sliding down a hot pan.

Then the whispers started.

At first, they were faint-like a soft breeze of a cheap and most probably broken AC unit.

But soon they grew overlapping, frenzied, speaking in tongues that made his skin crawl and stomach twist. He couldn't understand the words, but the meaning pressed into him like nails under his skin.

But why did they sound familiar? Like he'd heard that voice before, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember whose it was.

The whispers clawed deeper, pulling at things he didn't remember - memories that weren't his, faces he'd never seen before, symbols that looked eerily familiar, and a pair of eyes he couldn't picture, though he knew-knew-he had seen them before.

He strained, reaching through the fog of his mind to grasp at the identity behind those eyes.

That's when the glass beneath his feet began to shift.

The entire field trembled-rising, groaning, responding. As if the desert he woke up in had read his thoughts.

And then-everything had stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun.

He woke from the nightmare with a ragged gasp that tore from his throat as he jolted upright-lungs burning, skin clammy with cold sweat, feeling somehow worse than when he'd nearly been melted alive by venomous acid by the Verdant Serpent and almost incinerated to death by the Five-Eyed Serpent.

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That was when he learned that Echoing Pain also applied to injuries sustained in his nightmares.

Maybe it worked that way because the Echoing Pain and the Hollow Slumber were cast at the same time. Or maybe the effects were able to bounce off each other-like runes on an item-because they came from the same caster.

He didn't know. And honestly, at that moment, he didn't care.

The pain hit all at once - every one of the hundreds of thousands of glass shards from the nightmare tearing through him again, searing and stabbing across every inch of his body.

He wasn't sure how long the pain lasted as his mind must have blacked out at some point, because when he finally came to, he was met with a screen, his body bruised to high hell, and his heart going a mile a second.

Echoing Pain has drastically weakened.

How?

He didn't know, nor why.

But he was glad that it did, and he had no intentions of looking at the horse in the mouth.

Even now, days after he woke up from his nightmare, surprisingly still able to remember it, Echoing Pain seemed to have almost disappeared.

He still felt the faint clawing on his chest, phantom traces of the Giant Frostiron Tortoise that had nearly tore him to ribbons back when he was an F-Grade. Alongside it, the pulsing sting beneath his right rib cage lingered, where that old, gnarled scar he gained from being impaled by a tree branch.

But compared to how those injuries used to feel back when Echoing Pain was at full strength, this?

This was nothing. Barely a flicker on his senses - and that's exactly why he noticed it. The scars never stopped feeling fresh, raw, like they'd refused to heal. Not even for a moment.

One small mercy in all of this, he supposed. Maybe it shorted itself, just like when I push Runic Amplification too far and it ends up breaking the rune I use it on.

Weary, he pushed himself off the cold stone floor, feeling heavier than ever as he slumped back against the cave wall. His tired eyes stayed on the floating dagger, watching blankly as the first rays of dawn glinted off its steel. With a blink, like a starter's gun, Archie canceled the Spatial Anchor.

His hand shot out, catching the dagger by its leather-bound hilt. The quick movement only filled him with even more fatigue.

He slowly twirled the hilt between his fingers, eyes fixed on the blade as his mind swam in the fog of exhaustion. Then, with a slow blink, he flicked the dagger forward.

It flew through the cave, stopping a couple of inches away from the stone wall six meters ahead-then whipped back into Archie's palm with a soft thwack.

Spatial Pull.

This was definitely something he planned on abusing the hell out of once he figured out how to speed up the spatial mana gathering process and refine his control over it.

He could already see the possibilities: dragging an enemy flying above him, or even just further away into arm's reach and be able to deck them in the face, yanking loot from across a collapsed corridor, retrieving dropped items mid-fight, or sweeping up rare materials scattered around without having to walk and grab them or create a mana string to.... The ways he could use Spatial Pull were truly endless in his eyes.

Right now, the most he could manage to pull through space was something only slightly heavier than the dagger in his hand. Anything over a kilo and a half? Completely out of the question. He'd tried it once with a crate of iron - just once - and nearly gave himself a hernia from the effort.

Still, baby steps. Dagger today, crate tomorrow. Maybe in a few weeks, he could be yanking materials straight out of dungeon walls like a loot magnet. And if he kept progressing fast and well enough, maybe-just maybe-he'd reach the point where he could stop an aircraft mid-flight with nothing but a wave of his hand.

Sending the Steel Dagger back into his spatial storage, Archie reached in again and pulled out a Vial of Fatigue Relief. He pressed it against his inner bicep, just above the elbow hinge, his finger hovering over the trigger for a moment before finally pressing down.

The injector hissed softly as the fatigue-relieving potion surged into his bloodstream, which to him felt like a cool wave cascading through his veins. Within seconds of him activating the trigger, he could already feel the exhaustion that gripped his muscles begin to vanish.

Looking at his reflection off his Reinforced Bracers of Deflection, he saw that his bloodshot eyes began to clear, the deep purple bags beneath them fading as the potion worked its way through his system. The dense fog that had previously clouded his thoughts and dragged his mind into a haze of lethargy had started to lift.

It feels a lot slower than last time, he sighed. He lifted himself off his slouch, rolling his shoulders in a grimace as the tension slowly seeped from his back. Sitting back on his heels against the wall, he leaned on his clammy forearm, now propped on his knee.

Yeah, this is taking much longer than last time, he thought, releasing a frustrated sigh. That alchemist didn't say anything about diminishing returns on use.

Lifting his head from where it had been resting on his forearm, Archie reached for one of the cloaks covering the Spirit Nucleus and wiped the sweat from his face. The cool fabric against his skin helped shake off the last bits of fatigue. This time, when he looked around the cave, he felt more awake, his mind no longer buried under the weight of exhaustion.

His gaze landed on the Runic Scriber a few meters away. With a flick of focus and a subtle shift in mana around him, Archie cast Spatial Pull. The scriber shot across the cave, the Steel Sheet beneath it tagging along, both caught in his waiting hand with a meaty thwack.

A tad quicker than before, he noted before sending both his Runic Scriber and the Steel Sheet back into his spatial storage. Then, pushing himself up from the ground, Archie rolled his shoulders and stretched, joints popping as he worked out the stiffness that had settled into his limbs after remaining seated and prone for days on end.

That's enough practicing and experimenting for now, Archie decided, turning on his heel toward the stone door. He scooped up his satchel and slung it across his chest in one fluid motion, carefully nestling the Spirit Nucleus inside and clicking the flap shut before shifting the bag to rest against the back of his right shoulder, letting the other strap hang loose at his side.

Without missing a beat, mana strings surged to life, extending from his body, reaching out to collect the gear strewn across the cave floor. His Headdress of the Savage Ursine floated up first, followed by the Steel Chestpiece of Protection and the Reinforced Bracers of Deflection. Each piece hovered momentarily in front of him before being sent into his spatial storage.

However, just as his hands were about to grasp the steel rod handles, he stopped. With furrowed brows, Archie reached into his spatial storage and pulled out his Guild Membership card that lightly vibrated for another second before a holographic screen popped out from the card.

Welcome Archie Gracefield, you have one unread message marked as urgent.

What? Archie asked himself, stupefied at the moment.

Would you like to read your unread message?

Sure, Archie hesitantly answered in his mind as he pressed the 'Yes' option that hovered in front of him.

Direct Messages -> Tizalz Iskarion Malzeth (Tim)
► Tim (Verified E-Grade) (Verified Dragon)
Posted on 73rd cycle; 3402,7,29, Time: 23:12:08
[Tagged as Urgent]

Yo, you down for a quest? I found a good one, it's in an abandoned cave, one with metals. Aoife said she's in, now we're just waiting on you. But if you're still busy, it's fine. Call me if you're down.

Blinking at the message owlishly, Archie only had a single response as he stared at his Guild Membership Card. This shit works as a phone?