Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Easing up his grip on the throttle and giving the clutch a gentle twist, Archie brought his Mana Bike to a smooth stop, chips of silicon and grounded gravel crunching beneath the new and recently fitted multi-terrain wheels.

The hum of the Nature-Attuned Runic Mana Engine faded into the wind as he dismounted, eyes narrowing at the boarded-off entrance of the mine, along with the state of the camp that surrounded the mine's entrance.

Putting away his Mana Bike into his spatial storage, he began to warily look around the camp with Vital Sight activated and scrunching his nose at the smell of rotting flesh that clung to the ruined camp.

Aoife crouched beside a collapsed tent, brushing dust off the crushed and decomposing body of a miner whose cybernetic gear was still partially attached to their limbs. "Savoris Mining Team," Aoife murmured, tilting her head upwards to Archie. "Savoris workers, but they look like they've been dead for at least a month, not two weeks."

'True,' Archie signed, crouching beside Aoife. He pulled back the collar of the dead miner's faded orange tracksuit, revealing the decayed mess of flesh and bone beneath, streaked with tufts of frayed cybernetic threading. 'Not to mention, they don't look like they've been attacked by molerats like the requesters said that they were.'

'It looked like everything here was crushed by something large, judging by the giant craters in their chests and tools,' he added as his gaze drifted toward the massive minecart lying several meters from the tracks that led to the boarded-off mine. The minecart was flipped on its side and its thick steel frame crumpled inward like it had been stepped on by something giant and heavy.

"They haven't even been nibbled on," Tim chimed in, his voice drifting from above as he fiddled with his camcorder. The lens hovered briefly over Archie's furrowed brow before sweeping across the shattered remains of the camp. "And molerats? They usually never leave the ground."

"Why?" Aoife asked, rising from her crouch and turning to face him. But even as the question left her lips, recognition flickered in her eyes. "…Because they're blind until peak D-Grade," she finished, the realization settling in. "I remember now – I read it in 'The Sapients and Non-Sapients on Fractal' Information Crystal."

Archie gave a silent nod, his eyes narrowing as he processed the implications. Something wasn't lining up, and it wasn't just the lack of scavenger activity around the camp.

Why? Archie wondered, rising slowly to his feet. His crimson-rimmed eyes swept across the mining camp and beyond it, toward the jagged rock formations surrounding them like the drip sandcastles he used to make as a kid on the beach.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet.

'There are creatures around,' he signed after a few minutes of silence, pointing toward the craggy hills and drip sandcastles made from stone around the camp. 'I've seen them scurrying around. They can move, but none of them are getting closer than a few meters from the perimeter of the camp.'

Aoife straightened beside him, brushing her cybernetic hands off on her leggings. "So, something's keeping them from even approaching the camp," she said, her voice low. "I can see why the guild was interested in this request, even though they knew the information given to them was falsified."

'So, do we get a bonus or something for dealing with falsified info?' Archie asked, glancing back at Tim and Aoife. 'Or do we just abandon the quest?'

"No to both your questions," Tim said, shaking his head. "We accepted the quest, which means we have to complete it. Besides, the guild already knew it was falsified before they even put it on both the regional Quest Page in the Guild App and the Quest Board in Neo-Eden."

"There are people who do quest reconnaissance – check out the area, get a read on the danger level, and report back. So, it shouldn't be anything beyond what the quest parameters said it was. And as Adventurers, we're not supposed to blindly trust the information we're given. We're expected to adapt."

That's annoying, Archie sighed, but it is what it is.

Guild Quest: Savoris Silicon Mine Infestation

As an Iron Trekker of Omniversal Solutions, you are eligible to undertake quests on behalf of the guild. The barony city of Savoris, a regional city to Neo-Eden, has formally requested guild assistance regarding the reclamation of their third-largest silicon mine that had been taken over by molerats.
Quest Details: Eradicate every molerats within the Savoris Silicon Mine and retrieve a locked safe with the initial (S.M) on its side, located on the 42nd floor of the mine in the Head Miner's Quarters.
Side Objective: Collect, document, and record unusual findings and discoveries both around the Savoris Silicon Mine and within it.
Requirements: Proof of quest completion, along with the standard documentation and recordings required.
Reward: 3 Gold Helix Coins & ?
Shared with: Tizalz Iskarion Malzeth and Aoife

'I guess whatever's in that locked safe must be pretty valuable if the payment is three Gold Coins,' Archie signed, dismissing the Quest Panel he'd pulled up. 'You think it could be some kind of rare ore they found, but died before they could deliver it back up?'

"It could also be an herb," Aoife suggested, heading toward the left side of the ruined camp. Tim and Archie followed behind, only for Archie's attention to get grabbed by a collapsed generator a bit off to the right. "Sometimes you find rare herbs underground or even unusual-looking liquid deposits."

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"What do you mean, 'unusual looking'?" Tim asked, sweeping his camcorder across the ruined camp, occasionally angling it up to catch wide shots of the surrounding stone structures.

"I once came across a puddle of liquid that looked very close to milk in color," Aoife said, her tone calm as she crouched beside another dead worker. With practiced hands, she tugged down the collar of the miner's orange tracksuit and reached inside, pulling out a thin, cracked metal necklace with a small pickaxe pendant swaying at the end. "It was thin, barely a few centimeters deep, no larger than the size of my palm, just sitting there in a small hollow cave I dug into."

Archie glanced over from where he stood near a collapsed generator, his brows knitting slightly as he began to fiddle around with it, his gauntlets off his hands and above the generator. 'And no one knew what it was?' he wrote using a mana construct that hovered beside Aoife's face.

Ah… Archie glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his hands still buried in the exposed internals of the damaged generator. Considering how she talked about her life before we met, that milky puddle was most definitely something valuable, he mused, his ever-present grin fading into a grim frown.

A loose wire sparked near his fingers, but he barely noticed as half his focus was on analyzing the generator's internals, and the other was lost in thought.

I mean, I get the whole law of the jungle; the strong rule the weak, survival of the fittest, and all that jazz. But… slavery? Archie clenched his jaw at the thought. I still don't understand the appeal of owning a slave, maybe it's just some demented kink thing that people with too much power in their heads have.

He clicked his tongue in irritation, fingers working through the tangled mess of exposed wiring. A little too forcefully, he yanked at a cluster of wires – and with a sharp snap, an entire section of the generator's internals came loose in his hand.

…Shit.

The torn components clattered onto the ground with a faint metallic echo , and he sighed, pushing the back of his right palm against his nose before crouching lower to assess the damage.

Engine looks fine… so does the lubrication system, Archie assessed, eyes narrowing as he popped open the second access panel with an audible crack. The alternator… not sure if that's rust or just some weird alloy – I've never seen that color on metal before.

He leaned in, inspecting the discolored metal with a squint, then shrugged. Anywho… the battery's bricked to high hell, that's for sure. He tapped the frame absently. Guess I'll find out when I take it apart and try to repair it when I get… the… time.

Archie froze for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts as his eyes darted around the internals of the generator.

I could use this for the teleporter, hook it up to the Mana Engine in my Mana Bike, Archie mused, sending the collapsed generator into his spatial storage and putting on his gauntlets. Sure, the conversion ratio would be shit considering the Power Core is Nature-Attuned, but the sheer amount of energy within it should make up for it.

Guess that means I also need to make jumper cables – mana-conductive ones, he thought, stretching his back with a muted groan. His eyes wandered until they landed on Aoife, who was collecting yet another pickaxe pendant that all of the miners seemed to wear around their necks.

Tim, meanwhile, had climbed atop one of the stone pillars just outside the camp, trying to record some of the creatures moving within it using some sort of fire-laser spell to cut a hole into it.

Picking up a pebble from the ground, Archie chucked it at Tim's unguarded head, to which it landed with a sound that resembled a rock striking another rock. "Ow!" Tim hissed as his mana grabbed ahold of his camcorder as it fell out of his hands, and he frantically rubbed his head in pain. "Would it have killed you to put a little less strength in that?"

Smiling at Tim's reply, Archie casually slung his hands behind his head and slowly began to walk toward him. 'You know, for someone who claims to be the fastest, you sure managed to get absolutely drenched in slime goo and get hit on the head by a pebble,' he signed with a shit eating grin. 'You even have a bit on your elbows.'

Tim groaned dramatically, looking down at the stubborn green streaks still crusted into his scale elbows. "It was a sneak attack! It came from above! Both the slime and the pebble; I don't have eyes on the back of my head like you two do."

Aoife chuckled under her breath, shaking her head as she beckoned the both of them toward the silicon mine's entrance. The heavy and hastily put-up wooden boards were still nailed tightly shut, reinforced with metal braces that looked to be completely aesthetic if not for the enchantments inscribed into them.

Aoife paused mid-reach, her fingers hovering inches from the splintered wooden boards as Archie raised a hand to stop her.

'There are a couple of wards on them; enchanted ones,' Archie signed, his fingers moving quickly as he stepped closer to the boarded-up mine entrance and slowly ran his fingers over them, revealing the enchanted script beneath the wood.

His eyes scanned the crude etchings burned and carved into the wood and metal braces, glowing faintly beneath layers of dust and grime. These were kept in storage for a hot minute before they were put to use.

And if he was being honest, the enchantments were, frankly, amateurish. Nothing like the intricate spellwork of real Enchanters that he'd seen in Louther – this was patchwork enchanting at best.

And even though he knew little to nothing about enchanting, with what little he'd learned during his two-and-a-half-hour crash course from the Cybernetic Enchanters back in Louther, he could piece it together well enough.

'A structural reinforcement ward was etched along the grain of each board, a repulsion script was woven into the opposite side of the board,' he signed, craning his neck to get a better look at it from above. 'And finally, a directional filter charm etched across the top brace – it's weak, but still good enough to filter out the fumes that come from the mine into the air.'

"So, what now?" Tim asked, turning to Archie, who got up from re-reading the row of enchanted scripts on the base of the mine.

'Sparta,' Archie cheekily signed before he took a step back and, without hesitation, delivered a sharp, Spartan kick at where the boards converged together in the middle.

The makeshift barricade exploded inward with a violent crack, splinters flying in all directions as the weakened enchantments failed under external pressure. A soft, fizzing echo came from the broken braces as the wards gave one last pulse and died.

'Alright,' Archie wrote out with a smile on his face as he walked into the infested Savoris Silicon Mine. 'Let's go see what's worth three gold coins and a bunch of dead miners.'

Tim and Aoife remained glued in place for a few seconds, watching his silhouette disappear into the mine.

Tim blinked, confused. "What's a Sparta? Some sort of martial art?"

Aoife furrowed her brows. "I don't know… it sounded like a spell to me?"

They looked at each other, shrugged, then followed him in after a few seconds, the mine swallowing all three in a low-humming silence.