Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Archie narrowed his eyes, slowly sweeping his gaze across the corridor as he activated Vital Sight, dialing it to 80% opacity. A faint crimson hue glazed over his vision, highlighting his sight with faint outlines of rats and other critters within the tunnel they stepped into.

As the three of them advanced deeper into the first floor of the Savoris Silicon Mine, following the faint, chiseled signs etched into the walls that pointed toward the main stairwell.

Nothing immediately alarming stood out. No predators hiding and waiting to pounce on them, no more Savoris Mining Team corpses lying around. Just the occasional faint vital energy outline of a rat scurrying through the cracks or darting across rusted rails.

Archie's eyes met Tim's and Aoife's eyes for a few moments, each of them conveying the exact same thought: This is suspicious.

For how messy everything looked above ground – with the Savoris Mining Team's corpses crushed and tossed around like ragdolls, and the camp in ruins – the tunnel they entered through the entrance of the mine was oddly clean, showing no signs of a struggle.

But then his eyes flicked downward.

Beneath their feet, just below the layers of stone and sediment, larger outlines pulsing with vital energy came into view. Thick-bodied and rodent-like, the shapes moved slowly yet fluidly… almost as if they were swimming through the earth.

Molerats, he realized, recalling the quick refresher he gave himself on them when Tim mentioned them just half an hour ago.

Quickly skimming through the information he'd absorbed from the Sapients and Non-Sapients on Fractal Information Crystal, Archie mentally reviewed the general traits and behavioral patterns of molerats.

Blind until peak D-Grade, extremely territorial, physically weak in the early stages, non-sapient until advancement, and fiercely pack-oriented – the creatures had no reason to be above ground.

Which only made it more suspicious that the quest pinned the blame solely on them. They were too underdeveloped to have crushed the miners the way they were found, let alone wreck the entire camp.

And if the warning signs carved along the tunnel walls were anything to go by, the miners had taken care not to encroach on molerat territory. Clear etchings marred the stone walls of the tunnel he walked through, warning the miners to steer clear of zones where signs of molerats were located.

Archie's brow furrowed. Something wasn't adding up. Whatever's in here… they aren't just molerats.

He glanced back at Tim and Aoife as he ended up taking the lead after squeezing through a tight section of the tunnel. 'Whatever killed those miners isn't on this floor,' he signed before turning to face the stairwell at the end of the tunnel.

"Down we go then," Tim muttered, switching the camcorder to low-light mode as he hovered behind Aoife and Archie. "Let's find what's worth three gold coins and whoever or whatever did that to the miners."

They descended in a loose formation, with Archie in front, followed by Aoife and then Tim, atop the previously smooth-cut stone steps of the mine's stairwell. Their eyes and camcorder traced the length of the stairwell, with Tim breaking the thick silence with a groan.

"Ugh, why does it only go down two floors? Did we follow some sort of out-of-date sign's directions?"

"No," Aoife said calmly, already crouched beside one of the old rail tracks that ended just shy of the stairwell's descent. "The signs were accurate. The miner markings lined the tunnel walls, too."

"What do you mean?" Tim asked, turning the camcorder toward her. "I didn't see any markings, just the regular signs that pointed us here."

"There were," she replied, nodding toward the faint, near-invisible lines scratched into the stone. Her eyes drifted to the stairwell's edge, where the floor dipped down into the third level.

"After a month of mining, you've had your pickaxe or shovel deployed for so long that you forget you're still holding it. By the time you're heading back up to clock out, you're dragging it along. You don't even notice it."

She extended a finger to one of the minor grooves that trailed along the edge of the metal rails, and another that cut into the corner of the stairwell's stone. "See that? Scrape marks. Thin, inconsistent, but constant. Hundreds of them. All following the same directions, up and down."

Aoife was about to continue, but she stopped mid-motion before her brows furrowed in confusion and kneeled beside the rusted metal beam that held the reinforced midsection of the stairwell, half of the second floor.

Her cybernetic fingers traced over thin, white scar-like markings along the waist-high level of the rusted metal beam. "This… this scraping looks recent, no older than a week old."

The quest sheet the three of them read through claimed that the Savoris government stopped receiving communications with the Savoris Mining Team in the Silicon Mine two weeks ago, and the team they sent after a week of no response never returned.

'Guys, quick question,' Archie signed as he reached to grab a fallen metal beam from the doorway of the third level of the mine and held it to the side to allow Aoife and Tim to get through.

"Yeah, what's up?" Tim said before cheekily adding, "Other than me, of course."

Archie rolled his eyes and attempted to playfully swat at him with his one free hand, but missed as Tim swiftly dodged and blew a raspberry at him. Smirking at the camcorder that was aimed at him, Archie carefully set a bent metal beam back down diagonally against the edge of the empty doorframe. Archie signed out his next thought:

'How common is it to find C-Grades in the Multiverse?'

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He'd been mulling it over for weeks now. Ever since that Xalvori team showed up and turned the Ravenous Dune Worms into mulch back at the Temple of the Handlers, the lack of C-Grades out in the places he'd visited had been gnawing at him.

Outside of that encounter, he'd seen maybe three or four in total—two in the Netharim Sovereignty, another in the Yndros Empire, and a handful that occasionally popped into the Guild Tavern.

Which was weird, because according to 'The Myriad of Races within the Multiverse, 36th Edition', C-Grades were supposed to be more common to find than sand on a beach.

"In the Multiverse?" Tim echoed, lowering his camcorder and tapping a claw against his chin. "Super common."

He tucked the camera away, wings twitching lightly as he floated under the next fallen support beam Archie had just lifted for them to duck under.

"Like, stupidly common. But you're still new to the wider Multiverse, yeah? You said this is your second planet – first being your pre-System one, which, by the way, I need the full story on sometime. Like, no System? How did you live?"

'Video games and pie,' Archie wrote using a mana construct as he carefully placed down the rusted metal beam after Aoife walked through.

"Anyway, my point – what you've seen so far? It's skewed. Most of the folks here are D- and E-Grades, yeah. But that's just this planet. Think of the population like a pyramid. You've got the E-Grades at the bottom, tons of 'em. Above that, D-Grades, a little fewer. Then C-Grades, less than that, but still a massive chunk. Then B, A, S, and all the way up to gods and goddesses chilling on the very tipity-top."

Tim raised his hand, index finger pointing upward like he was tracing an invisible triangle in the air with the camcorder now hovering parallel to his chest.

"The higher you go, the fewer there are. That's just the ratio. C-Grades are super common across the Multiverse. It's just that this planet's a little… you know…"

He paused, searching for the word, eyeing Aoife out of the corner of his eye, before shrugging. "Bad."

"… What do you mean?" Aoife softly asked, confused at Tim's words. C-Grades were the top of the top on Fractal. "How can a planet be… bad?"

"Comparatively speaking," Tim replied with one of his claws scratching the back of his neck. "It's a low-tier planet in terms of history, bad mana density, poor inheritance cycles, and limited access to good Class or Skill options. People plateau early. C-Grades show up, but they don't stay."

"They either leave for higher-ranked worlds or attempt to get recruited by factions who could provide them with better opportunities. And the ones that do stay here either can't leave or are here for a reason, such as Branch Manager Diwlos and his job to manage Fractal's Guild Tavern on this planet."

"But most importantly," he emphasized, spitting out a wad of fire at a rat that attempted to jump on him, incinerating the level 15 rat in less than a second. "The lack of any record density within the people of Fractal is what prevents the vast majority of its inhabitants from leveling past early D-Grade, not to mention reaching C-Grade."

I need to find some more books or Information Crystals on records, Archie noted to himself. But just like everything else on my list of things to do, it would have to wait until he finally completed that teleporter and met back up with Bralmir.

'Thanks,' Archie signed, letting out a weary sigh just as his hand shot out to catch a rat that had lunged for his face. Holding the squirming creature up for a closer look, he studied the faint hum of its cybernetics – its glowing red eye and segmented metal tail.

Without much thought, he snapped its tiny neck with a swift flex of his fingers and took out his Silver Carving Knife from his spatial storage. With steady hands, he severed the tail and carefully extracted the left eye, inspecting the cybernetics before tucking them away into his spatial storage.

"Is it just raining rats now?" Tim grumbled, slicing through another leaping rodent with a flick of his blade. The cybernetic body twitched once before falling still, joining the growing pile around his boots. Above, countless holes pocked the crumbling ceiling of the third level of the mine – dark, twitching with movement, and far too many for comfort.

"We're probably directly under their nest," Aoife said, her voice calm despite the chaos. She side-stepped just in time as another rat dove for her head, letting it sail past her before stomping it into paste, creating a sharp, metallic squelching-crunch noise.

"Considering how this mine has been… supposedly untouched and abandoned for two weeks – and the fallen state of the mineshafts; they're probably starving and stir-crazy by now," Aoife finished, her gaze shifting from the bloody smear beneath her boot to the hole-riddled ceiling above.

She didn't need to guess what happened here.

Without periodic reinforcement, any tunnel – especially one bored deep into the earth of Fractal – became a death trap. She'd seen it too often in her time underground: solo miners or small crews would grow complacent, assuming the walls would hold just a little longer or that someone else had reinforced their tunnel for them.

As if gravity wasn't constantly pressing the weight of the world down on them.

One day without them reinforcing would turn into several. Then a week. Then more. And eventually and inevitably – a collapse.

With her gaze still focused on the ceiling, she slipped off her black leather boots and felt the cool stone and hardened dirt beneath her half-cast cybernetic feet. Aoife's eyes softly closed for a moment as she took a step forward.

Reinforcement of the Depths.

Veins of gray mana grew from the back of her calves before traveling to the soles of her feet, spreading across the stone floor in thin lines. It ran through the cracks and seams, climbed the nearest rusted support beams, and pushed into the walls. Her mana moved fast, steady, and calculated – filling fracturing points, pressing loose earth together, and settling the structure.

The hub and the closest tunnels responded with faint tremors that brought both Archie and Tim concern, but to Aoife, it brought her assurance.

Aoife opened her eyes again. Her irises glowed a dull grey for a moment before returning to their normal color. She flexed her toes slightly before continuing back to her previous pace, continuously reinforcing the section of the mine she was currently in with every step.

"I'm currently reinforcing the floor of the mine to prevent the mine from collapsing in on itself," Aoife said, with a soft smile displayed on her face. "But as I'm reinforcing it, I will neither be able to run, nor will I be able to react as fast as I normally should."

'No problem at all,' Archie signed. 'You just keep reinforcing the mine to make sure it doesn't collapse on us, and we'll make sure no rat, molerat, and whatever that thing over there is, will touch you.'

He pointed with his carving knife.

At the far end of the hub, coming out from one of the tunnels labeled as 'Lower Floor Stairwell', just beyond the reach of their sight, something moved – slow and heavy, and potentially dragging something along the ground if what they were hearing was correct.

A groaning figure limped into view from one of the leftmost tunnels at the end of the sublevel, hunched and twisted, wearing a torn orange tracksuit crusted over with dried blood and grime. Its skin, gray and covered in necrotic flesh and malformed metal, threaded cybernetic wiring snaking out from its chest and curling outwards. Its face had caved inward around a glowing purple glass shard that looked to be embedded in the side of its skull.

[Reanimated Corrupted Human Lv 80]

The corrupted miner let out a low, mechanical groan and began shuffling forward, its cracked pickaxe dragging behind it, leaving sparks as it scraped along the floor.

Tim lifted his camcorder with wide eyes, muttering under his breath, "Oh, that's definitely an unusual thing to happen in a normal mine. We are gonna be getting a juicy bonus for sure for this."

Aoife didn't break stride. "One of the Savoris Mining Team?"

'I assume so, it's wearing the same uniform,' Archie signed, stepping between Aoife and the reanimated corrupted human, and sending his Silver Carving Knife back into his spatial storage. 'Tim, you remain back and make sure none of those who get passed me get close to her.'