Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

The tracks blurred by in a rush of shadow and flashing yellow warning lights, the twisting tunnels looping through spirals, sudden drops, and heart-lurching turns. Somewhere around the third upside-down corkscrew, Tim had started whooping like a hatchling on their first flight, wings tucked to his sides to keep himself steady in the cart.

"This is insane!" he hollered with gleeful abandon as a rusty and barely holding together mechanical overhang whooshed just a few inches above their heads.

Aoife glanced back over her shoulder to look at Archie with a small smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. Even she couldn't deny it – the ride was exhilarating. "We should begin slowing down."

Their speed began to slow, brakes grinding against old rusted rails as the tunnel started to level out. Warning signs blinked neon red above the final turn: "SUBLEVEL 42 – ARRIVING."

"Last turn, hang on!" Aoife shouted as she pulled back on her cart's brake lever. Tim flared his wings for drag, but that only ended with him shooting out of his cart and smacking Archie in the face, blocking his line of sight. Her cart screeched to a halt at the circular platform just outside the 42nd sublevel hub.

Behind Aoife and Tim's cart, Archie yanked his brake with all his might with one hand and the other moving to peel Tim off his face-

Too late.

Shit.

His minecart slammed into the back of theirs, catapulting him forward. With a clatter of armor, sparks, and a short yelp, Archie and Tim were flung unceremoniously through the air.

Aoife barely had time to twist sideways before they both crashed into the front of her cart, with both Archie and Tim landing face-first into the front panel of the cart with a startled grunt.

"Oof – get off of me, you fridge, you're heavier than a hundred boars!" Tim squawked, legs tangled in Archie's shoulder pauldron and weight.

"Why did you unfurl your wings, Tim?" Aoife asked under her breath, trying to push both of them upright, while doing her best to push down her smirk.

Archie groaned, dragging himself upright from the pile of limbs and wings. 'You're the idiot that made this all happen,' he signed with a half-dazed grin, picking up his headdress that had fallen off his head.

Tim, his legs still stuck in Archie's shoulder pauldron, muttered, "Your face was in the way, that's on you."

Aoife exhaled slowly through her nose. "…We're walking back up when we're done."

After the trio climbed out of Aoife's minecart, they turned to face the gate ahead. The steel was a bit rusted, but overall, it looked decently reinforced and well-maintained, leading into the Head Miner's Quarters.

Looks like this one is separate from the ones that opened when Aoife flicked the switches on, Archie mused as he walked up the large, rusty steel gates and ripped the lock off the chains that held the gate closed.

Letting the chains fall to the ground, Archie pushed open the rusty gates, their hinges shrieking in protest as he was most probably pushing them open in the wrong direction.

As they stepped inside, a thick wave of stale air, heavy with the scent of sulfur, burnt oil, and the familiar scent of rotting flesh that belonged to the corrupted miners, washed over the trio.

It was in ruins, far worse than what they'd seen above.

The remnants of the stone walls of the camp were either warped or had collapsed inwards as if something massive had forced its way through them. Splintered beams of blackened wood hung down from the half-collapsed ceiling, some looking as though they could barely hold their own weight.

What little light came from Tim's hovering flames glinted off shattered furniture, broken mining equipment, and shattered mana lamps.

Everywhere, jagged shards of dark purple crystal jutted out – some looking as thin as blades, others thicker than Aoife's shield. They speared through the stone and metal alike, growing in wild, unnatural patterns like a forest of frozen knives.

Veins of the same dark purple mana pulsed faintly within the walls and floor, as though they were alive, and running through the very foundations of the sublevel.

'You guys thinking what I'm thinking,' he signed as he crouched and picked up a short, jagged spike of corrupted silicon and held it up to his face while taking out a chunk of corrupted silicon that he kept in his spatial storage.

"Corrupted Silicon Elemental," Tim answered, taking out a similar-looking chunk from his own spatial storage. "I've never seen anything like it before, same with the dark purple glass on their bodies and the corrupted miners."

"When my Mom comes to pick me up and help me prepare for my evolution into D-Grade in a couple weeks, I was gonna pass them to her to see if she can make anything of it," he finished.

Aoife crouched near a half-buried desk, brushing aside the torn remains of what looked like documentations of their findings on the 37th sublevel. Her brow furrowed deeply. "This… this corruption is worse than anything we saw on the upper sublevels," she said quietly. "It's like this entire sublevel has become a nest for it."

Tim spun slowly midair, flames trailing from his tail as he lit up more of the ruined chamber.

In the far back, half-hidden behind a crumbled support pillar, the remains of an enormous mechanical elevator could be seen – its gears and chains choked by more of the dark purple crystalline-like growths, that had grown over the corpse of one of the corrupted miners who still had the barrel of their pistol in their mouth and the side of their head blown off while the rest of their team laid atop the ground with manabullet wounds on their dead.

Damn, Tim mused, eyeing the dead corrupted miners. What happened here? Did he kill them to stop them from attacking someone else? Was it self-defense? Or was he trying to hide something from them and got caught? ...So many possibilities of what could have occurred here.

***

Their footsteps echoed hollowly through the ruined Head Miner's Quarters as they each spread out, picking carefully through the rubble.

"Still no signs of a big safe with the initials S.M. on its side here," Tim said, hovering close to the ceiling to get a dragon's eye view of the ruined camp.

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Archie grunted as he kicked aside a broken desk, the wood crumbling into rotten splinters. 'Not seeing anything,' he signed, frustration starting to creep across his usually stoic face.

Aoife, meanwhile, crouched beside a collapsed filing cabinet, her gauntleted hands shifting through the debris with methodical patience. She shook her head after a few moments. "Nothing here either. Maybe it was moved?"

"Or eaten by the Corrupted Silicon Elemental," Tim muttered grimly before furrowing his scales in confusion. "Can elementals even eat?"

Minutes dragged by, the only sounds the crunch of rubble underfoot, the faint crackle of Tim's flames, and Archie lifting and tossing aside stone wall chunks with a concerned expression that grew. The tension in the mine grew thicker – it felt wrong, as if the mine itself had begun to hold its breath, waiting for something.

Then Archie's body stiffened.

Sixth Sense.

His heart dropped for a moment. Without thinking, he threw himself to the side, barely managing to avoid a massive, corrupted silicon fist that swung at him, destroying a ruined stone pillar that he had just been standing beside.

BOOM!

Dust, stone, and silicon exploded outward, a small crater had been gouged into the already ruined floor of the 42nd sublevel.

Archie landed hard, rolling instinctively into a crouch, his teeth bared as his head snapped up toward his attacker, his heart beating erratically from the sudden attack.

Looming above him was another Corrupted Silicon Elemental, larger than the one they had fought before. Thick purple crystals jutted from its joints and spine like jagged armor, and veins of burning dark purple mana pulsed visibly through its corrupted silicon-like armor. Its single glowing dark purple crystal embedded on its head was fixed on Archie.

[Corrupted Silicon Elemental Lv ???]

"Ambush!" Aoife shouted, turning on her heel and charging toward the elemental with her Deepiron Lance and Scutum being deployed.

"Ah, fuck, it feels even stronger than the last one," Tim shouted as he began to pelt the elemental with Sunburst Scatter, having activated his own boosting skills to their limit. "What level is it?"

Archie wiped the dust from his mouth with the back of his gauntlet, eyes narrowing. This shit again? he growled lowly, sparks crackling around his knuckles before his fists set themselves aflame as he activated Ember's Embrace.

Fine, I'll just bash your damn head in and reforge your damn silicon into toilet seat, he thought to himself. He activated Adrenaline Rush at 30%, Thornscourge Expansion, and Savage Charge in quick succession.

Then he launched forward with a thunderous crash, slamming his fist into the elemental's side and keeping its attention locked on him.

"118," Aoife shouted as she thrusted her lance forward – into its massive leg.

The elemental's fists came down again, creating thunderclaps of stone and corrupted silicon slamming into the cracked floor as Archie darted left and right, narrowly avoiding each crushing blow. Shards of corrupted silicon flew everywhere with each strike, embedding themselves into the walls like dark glass shrapnel.

Aoife's lance struck from behind, glowing dull gray as it pierced between the dark purple crystals along its right leg joint, but the elemental barely flinched.

"Target its back!" she shouted, pivoting to keep its attention split. "Archie will focus on its front."

Tim dove in from above, cloaked in sunfire, wings leaving comet trails of flame as he unleashed a spread of searing bolts into the elemental's massive, corrupted silicon neck.

Archie slipped under its swing and slammed both his fists into the elemental's knee, causing it to buckle slightly. He planted one foot and vaulted upward, swinging his fist upward in an uppercut that drove into the elemental's lower jaw, making it jerk its head back.

'We need to break through its chest again!' Archie quickly wrote out using a mana construct midair as he landed and rolled. 'That's where its core was last time!'

The elemental retaliated instantly, its arm shifting with a grinding crack as it morphed – the entire forearm extending into a twisted blade of purple crystal. It swept it wide like a guillotine.

Aoife blocked with her shield, sliding back several meters from the sheer weight of the blow. "We need a bigger crack!"

"I'll open one!" Tim shouted, his form spiraling upward in a blaze of orange and gold before he suddenly dove straight down, claws slashing through the air. As he cut, a blazing arc of condensed solar flame followed, slamming into the already-wounded section of the elemental's torso.

The elemental reeled.

"Now!" Aoife shouted.

Archie didn't hesitate – he jumped, fists wreathed in thorn-covered vine-wrapped flame, and drove both fists directly into the weakened, smoldering chest cavity. It cracked. Then it shattered.

BOOM!

A wave of heat and dust pulsed outward from the cavity. The corrupted crystal heart inside flickered erratically, threatening to destabilize.

And then – something glinted.

Amid the pulsing corruption, a faint rectangular outline could be seen lodged deep within the core, partially fused to it. It shimmered a dull bronze under the failing glow of the corrupted mana. The initials, S.M., were just barely visible on one face of it, buried behind corrupted silicon and dark purple glass-like shards.

Tim, hovering nearby, blinked. "Wait… is that?"

Aoife's eyes widened. "The Safe. It's inside the damn elemental."

Archie slowly turned toward them, singed and breathing heavily through his nose. He thought in a deadpan: Of course it is.

Tim sighed, wings flickering. "Why couldn't it just be in a drawer?"

The elemental let out a guttural metallic roar, as dark purple mana and corrupted silicon began to bubble violently from the gaping hole in its chest. Dark purple glass shards and corrupted silicon jutted outward like jagged teeth, trying to knit the wound back together.

Tim cursed under his breath. "It's healing! Aoife, Archie, we need to rip the Safe out before it regenerates!"

Archie, already moving, ducked under a sweeping blow that tore a massive chunk from the ruined wall behind him. He launched himself forward again, vines and flame snaking up his arms as he drove his hands into the molten chest cavity, clawing for the Safe.

But the elemental twisted violently, throwing Archie backwards into a pile of debris.

Ah crap, Archie thought mid-fall, before crashing with a loud clang atop the rusted support beams and stone chunks.

"I'm going for its underarm!" Aoife called. Her shield flashed with mana reinforcement as she sprinted in, bashing her way past a forest of rising silicon spikes. She stabbed her lance upward into the elemental's underarm, where it was least covered in dark purple crystals, aiming to paralyze its swing temporarily.

The elemental staggered, snarling, and tried to bring both arms down to crush her.

Tim zipped in again, lashing flame across the creature's wrists and forcing it to recoil. "Over here, ugly!" he shouted, weaving a trail of sunfire in the air as a distraction.

Archie shook off the debris, pulling himself free, taking a souvenir along with him, and charged again – this time swinging a sturdy steel beam like a baseball bat. He smashed it into the elemental's side with a thunderous crack that resounded throughout the sublevel, sending spiderweb-like fractures across its cracked frame.

From its violent jerk, a corner of the Safe poked itself outwards, but still wedged in a pocket of dark purple crystals.

Aoife yelled, "There! Hit it again!"

Tim built up another wave of sunfire flames, diving in low. As he passed the cavity, he slashed across its chest, molten silicon and crystal hissing and evaporating where his condensed claws of sunfire hacked into.

The elemental thrashed and roared, its movements becoming more erratic. Cracks laced all over its body as the energy holding it together wavered, dark purple light bleeding from every crack.

Archie had seen this many times in games, and he wasn't going to waste this opportunity – he activated Savage Charge, cancelling it just before he landed on its chest.

He roared silently, grabbing onto the Safe itself, his arms bulging with effort as he braced his feet against the elemental's cracked and gouged chest and pulled with all his might.

The Safe resisted, the elemental's corrupted silicon clutching it tight like a vice, but Archie pushed Adrenaline Rush to 40%.

With a final, thunderous heave, Archie ripped the Safe free, stumbling backward just as the elemental's core collapsed inward, detonating in a burst of mana and molten shrapnel.

Aoife raised her shield just in time to block the worst of it, while Tim wrapped himself and Aoife in a barrier of flame to catch the scattered, burning debris.

Dust and silence fell over the ruined 42nd sublevel once more.

Coughing and covered in soot, Archie held the bronze safe aloft with both hands, a crooked grin tugging at his scorched face. His armor was dented, blackened, and still faintly smoking – but nothing Self-Repair couldn't fix.

Tim floated down beside him, covered in soot, and laughed breathlessly. "You know... for someone who can't even talk right now, you're really good at screaming through body language."

Archie flipped him off casually, then signed: 'Let's get the hell out of here before the whole mine collapses on top of us.'

Aoife just chuckled, "Agreed."