Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Ash still hung in the air like snow, drifting lazily through the ruined remains of the 42nd sublevel – the Head Miner's Quarters. Archie held a strip of cloak to his face, shielding his mouth and nose from the soot as he tilted his head upward, sweeping the cavern with Vital Sight, now reduced to 0% opacity.

His brow furrowed as his gaze traced each lingering outline of vital energy, every flickering spark still clinging to life somewhere deep in the belly of the Savoris Silicon Mine.

Even in the places they hadn't properly cleared, molerats were already moving back in, slipping into the sublevels by digging tunnels. How many of these things are down here? He mused, a dry chuckle escaping him despite the soot-filled air. We had to have killed at least 200 of them combined.

But just as he began to lower his gaze, something flickered – a vital energy outline vanished, along with its spark.

What?

He tensed, immediately pouring more of his own vital energy and stamina into his eyes, pushing the range of his Vital Sight to its limit. Did it get killed by a golem?

Then he froze.

New signatures bloomed into view – humanoid-shaped outlines, six in total, emerging leisurely into one of the upper sublevel hubs near the mine's entrance.

They weren't molerats.

Each one pulsed with dense, vibrant vital energies. D-Grades. And not newly evolved D-Grades – their vital energy outlines looked far more vibrant and denser than his own, not to mention their sparks of Vitality told him that the majority of them were close-combat Class holders.

Archie's grip on the cloak tightened.

This just got a lot worse.

Archie's lips tightened into a line. Slowly, he licked the soot and dust from his bottom lip, not in hunger, but to ground his mind.

Tim, who'd just started hovering beside Aoife and began to brag about how different fire abilities worked, paused as he noticed Archie go still.

"…What now?" Tim muttered, cautiously spinning midair to peer upward, though he didn't have Archie's vision-enhancing skill.

Aoife had already turned, her spear lowering into a readied stance just by how sharply Archie's presence shifted.

Archie raised a hand and wrote out using a mana construct: 'We've got company. Six. All D-Grades. Coming from above. Close-quarters fighters.'

Tim's wings stilled for a heartbeat.

"Shit."

Couldn't have said it better myself, Archie thought as his eyes remained glued on their forms as they leisurely walked down a set of stairs into the next sublevel.

"…We hiding or attacking?" Tim asked, voice low, wings barely moving as he hovered beside a scorched, steel support beam. The flames around his tail dimmed as a result of his wariness. "Six D-Grades… Fuck."

Aoife remained silent for a moment, her grip tightening around her lance. Her eyes stayed focused on the ceiling above, where the faintest tremor in the silicon dust signaled movement overhead.

Archie didn't respond verbally, but he couldn't agree more with Tim's words. He stayed crouched atop a shattered column, Vital Sight still burning behind his gaze. The six humanoid figures were drawing closer – still masked by layers of rock, but their outlines looked a lot clearer now.

Tim exhaled slowly. "We could try slipping back down the rail line-"

Archie zoned out Tim's words as his brows furrowed even deeper. Is that?

He adjusted his position slightly, squinting harder as he pushed Vital Sight even harder, causing his eyes to become bloodshot and for tracks of blood to drip down his face.

Ah fuck, that's a fucking Flesh Golem, it has the exact same vital energy outline as the one I killed before! He shouted to himself internally as he saw a small, faint vital energy outline skipping in front of the group of six D-Grades, leading them down tunnels.

They were the Hounds.

'They're the Hounds,' he signed. 'They caught up.'

Aoife's entire posture shifted. Her lance snapped upward as her back straightened, eyes narrowing in the direction Archie was staring at.

Tim tilted his head. "…Who?"

"They're the reason Archie can't speak."

Tim's right-scaled brow shot up inquisitively.

Aoife's voice darkened. "They tried to kill us on the way here. They're assassins who are under the command of Duke Dreadmire, one of the five Dukes in the Netharim Sovereignty. Once a mission is assigned to them, they don't stop, and they don't care who they kill getting to their mark."

Tim floated back a bit, expression suddenly far more serious. "Okay… but why? Who sends people like that after you two?"

Archie didn't write anything at first.

Then, slowly, his fingers moved, 'Because I killed the man who kept Aoife as a slave.'

The words simmered in the soot-coated air for several seconds before they dissipated.

Tim stared, his mouth half-open. He looked at Aoife, but she didn't correct it, didn't flinch. Just gave a slight nod.

"…Okay," Tim said simply, his flame crest flickering slightly. "Nothing to say other than I don't blame ya, I'd kill the bastard too."

Aoife spoke without hesitation. "We can't fight six D-Grades. Not here, not after just dealing with that golem, and especially if Archie is saying they're dangerous."

'I am,' he signed. 'Each of them has more vital energy than us, even you Aoife, not to mention they completely outnumber us.'

'We can't fight them, we're too… weak at the moment,' he signed as he handed Tim the safe. Who, in turn, held it with his telekinesis, its reinforced surface shimmered faintly.

Archie stood a few paces ahead, partially turned back toward them. His eyes weren't on the safe – they were locked on the deeper end of the shattered corridor, where the purple-glass-like crystals thickened, and the path sloped further underground.

His brow furrowed as he mentally traced every tunnel, pit shaft, and narrow passage they had explored.

His crimson-rimmed irises flickered upwards once more, briefly outlining the humanoid shapes above – drawing nearer. They probably reached the 12th sublevel.

'We can't outpace them through the minecart route. They'll catch up. It's too open,' he signed.

"Then we need a route they can't follow," Aoife said quietly, her eyes watching him. "Should we tunnel through like how we tried to before? As we are not worried about being detected, I can tunnel much faster."

Tim, still hovering midair, squinted in thought… then blinked, his wings fluttering with a sudden spark of realization.

"Wait – wait! That… elevator! I saw this mechanical elevator thing at the back of the Head Miner's quarters!"

Aoife turned. "What?"

"Yeah, yeah! In the far back of quarters, along the wall and behind one of the crumbled support pillars, surrounded by dark purple crystalline-like growths, was this enormous mechanical elevator," Tim said quickly. "On the dark purple crystals is a dead, corrupted miner that killed the miners beside him before he offed himself in the head. You two didn't see it?"

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Aoife shook her head. Archie didn't wait. The moment Tim finished speaking, he blurred forward in a burst of speed.

They sprinted through the ruins, their footsteps crunching through splinters of stone and the sharp edges of the strange purple glass that jutted from the floor and walls. Every shard reflected dim mana-light, casting ghostly hues across the wrecked chamber as they pressed deeper into the collapsed end of the Head Miner's Quarters.

Then, past a twisted frame of warped steel and mana-charred stone-

"There!" Tim shouted, hovering just ahead and pointing downwards.

Archie skidded to a stop beside him, and Aoife stepped up beside them, her breath raspy slightly in the soot-filled air. Embedded into the rear wall and partially hidden behind a scorched and collapsed support pillar stood the husk of an enormous mechanical elevator – easily large enough to transport mining hauls or dozens of workers. Its base was mostly intact, thick with grime and time, but its gears and chains were choked with thick tangles of dark purple crystalline growths that pulsed faintly.

A scorched, shattered control panel jutted from the wall, its interface cracked and blackened from a surge or explosion. Scorch marks trailed up from the mana conductors, blackening the ceiling.

Tim chirped. "See? Dead miner. There."

Sure enough, slumped against one of the crystal-coated walls sat the ruined body of a corrupted miner – still in uniform, helmet cracked in two, the barrel of a mana pistol still buried in his mouth. The side of his head had been blown out, and several others lay strewn nearby, each bearing clean manabullet wounds.

"Something went wrong," Aoife muttered, scanning the wreckage. "Maybe the corruption took root here too fast. Or-"

'- Or he realized what he did and ended it,' Archie wrote in the air without looking up, already crouched by the base of the elevator's outer panel, brushing shards of purple crystal away.

He let his fingers hover over the ruined interface for a moment before reaching into his spatial storage and taking out his Runic Scriber and Thermal Carver.

"This thing even salvageable?" Tim asked, hovering overhead.

'Yeah. The damage isn't too bad, and the core framework is stable. Crystal overgrowth just shorted the controls, not the whole thing,' Archie signed. 'I can fix it.'

He paused, then added, 'I remember enough from the crash course I took back on Earth; the elevator at my job exploded once because of overuse. HR made every intern do safety and diagnostics training for a week on how elevators functioned because they thought that we were expected to know how to fix the elevator as Computer Engineers.' He smiled in dark amusement as he reached into the internal wiring inside the terminal.

"What should we do to help?" Aoife asked, watching as Archie carefully analyzed the structure of the elevator with his now embered eyes, courtesy of Gaze of the Forgefather, and mentally thanking every deity whose name he remembered that the elevator was created with runes and not enchantments.

"We could see if we could try and destroy the minecart rails," Tim suggested, turning to face the minecart tracks they used to get from the 23rd sublevel to the 42nd sublevel. "Make them use the stairs instead of the minecarts, who knows if they might have someone like Archie with them to repair the carts?"

'Be careful,' Archie wrote out. 'They should be reaching the 15th sublevel in a couple minutes… I think, give or take two or three sublevels.'

"Sounds good." Aoife turned sharply. "Tim, let's hurry. I found a couple of explosives we could use."

What? Archie thought, his fingers stopping momentarily.

"You have what?" Tim called, chasing after her. "You had explosives this whole time? When did you get them?"

"There are hundreds of them on every sublevel," she called back, already sprinting down the tunnel. "Look, there are some by the stairs over there."

Archie exhaled silently, turning his full attention back to the glowing network of runes and runic scripts. His Runic Scriber hissing softly as they went to work, sparks dancing as he began rewriting the damaged runic arrays – one mana pathway at a time.

Aoife and Tim burst back into the ruined Head Miner's Quarters, boots skidding over broken stone and shards of purple crystal.

"Archie!" Aoife shouted, scanning the debris-strewn chamber. "We blew the tracks! Tim overdid it again!"

"I regret nothing!" Tim added proudly, flames still licking off his wings.

A shifting of stone and a faint clink drew their eyes upward – Archie hung on the ceiling, his left hand embedded into the ceiling and his right hand holding his Runic Scriber, covered in soot and dust.

His chestpiece was gone, and so was his headdress – his burned hair singed and clinging to his brow. All around him, runic scripts pulsed faintly with blue-orange light, etched into the stone ceiling and the rusted steel beams that ran along them.

'Did you finish?' he wrote in the air with a mana construct, his left hand still embedded into the ceiling and his right, putting away his Runic Scriber.

"Yes!" Aoife confirmed. "Blown, buried, and nothing's coming back that way without a miracle!"

Archie nodded once. Without another word, he leapt from the rafters, landing in a crouch beside them before immediately sprinting with them toward the elevator. 'Run, we're on a timer!'

"A timer for what?" Tim shouted as he chased after Archie, towards the elevator with Aoife just behind them.

'Boom,' Archie signed as he sprinted across the ruined floor, boots pounding over cracked tile and crystal shards. His fingers were already crackling with focused mana as he skidded to a halt at the elevator's busted terminal.

"What do you mean, boom?" Tim shouted questioningly. "Why does everyone here have explosives but me?"

A rapid series of taps on the runic interface, followed by the mana pathways activating, traveled into the elevator box.

"Go go go!" Tim yelped as he dove into the elevator box, wings folding tightly to fit. Aoife followed right behind him, both their hearts leaping as they heard the sound of fabric tearing.

Archie didn't waste time. He leapt in after them, spun around, and reached up.

With a sharp pull, he loosened the falconer's knot he'd rigged with the strip of his now-tattered Headdress of the Savage Ursine – the one thing holding the elevator's suspension gears in place.

The box groaned, metal creaking as it began to travel upwards.

Mana surged into his hands and into the internal elevator terminal as he activated Runic Amplification.

Less than a second later, a wave of golden-orange light exploded across the elevator's inner walls. Runes flared to life, searing through the layers of crystal growth that remained and half-repaired circuitry.

The elevator jolted.

Then-

BOOM!

It shot upward like a bolt from a cannon.

Tim screamed first, "This isn't safe at all! I'm gonna die!"

"Brace!" Aoife shouted, grabbing the side rail with both hands as wind and pressure roared past them.

Archie gritted his teeth, keeping his hand on the elevator's internal terminal.

The crystals on the shaft walls blurred into streaks of violet, black, and gray as they ascended, the hum of mana deepening into a thunderous crescendo. The elevator rumbled, struggling to stay stable under the sudden velocity, but the runes held.

The elevator howled as it climbed, the runes glowing bright enough to cast long shadows against the crystalline walls streaking past them.

SNAP!

A metallic crack split the air like a gunshot as the main cord sheared in two just as the elevator smashed into the uppermost ceiling with a jarring CRUNCH.

The box violently jerked for a second, everything went weightless.

BOOM!

It dropped.

But only two feet in height.

Because one boot caught the shattered cave floor below and braced flat against the top of the elevator, holding the mangled box up with strained arms and shoulders.

Dust and fragments of dark stone rained down as Archie grunted, teeth bared in silent strain. Fuck this shit is heavy as hell!

"Go!" he mouthed – then scrawled quickly into the air with a flick of his wrist:
'OUT. NOW.'

Tim scrambled first, slipping through the narrow gap between elevator and floor like a greased weasel. Aoife was right behind, dropping to her knees and turning with wide eyes.

"I've got it!" she shouted, slamming her shoulder into the ceiling, hands pressing against the buckled metal edge of the elevator's roof. Her body locked into place with a metallic grunt as mana pulsed down her arms in waves of silver and green. "Archie, move!"

With one last breathless push, Archie released his grip on the ceiling, ducked low, and rolled out beneath the gap Aoife held open – just as the entire elevator box groaned violently and dropped into the abyss with a shattering crash below.

For a moment, only their heavy breaths filled the air.

"Go!" Aoife barked, pulling Archie up by the arm. "You said we don't have any time!"

Pulling himself back up, Archie nodded blankly before charging forward down the narrow tunnel and towards the light of the sun.

The trio tore down the tunnel, boots pounding against the ancient stone, their shadows cast wild by the flickering, rune-lit corridor walls.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The explosion ripped up from beneath them, which shuddered the entire tunnel.

Dust and debris blasted outward as the tunnel behind them convulsed – walls splitting, and purple crystalline growths exploding like shrapnel in every direction.

"What the hell was that?!" Tim shouted, glancing back mid-flight as another explosion echoed from deeper below.

'I said, Boom!' Archie signed as they rushed forward.

Chunks of the ceiling caved in behind them. The earth trembled like a wounded beast, and the very air began to press in with a suffocating pressure as wave after wave of detonations roared upward through the mine's sublevels.

Aoife swore and grabbed Tim by the collar as a blast of hot wind and ash surged up behind them. "Faster!"

They emerged into a broader tunnel at full sprint – Archie skidding to a halt just long enough to slam his palm against a rusted emergency bulkhead glyph. It didn't respond.

"Too damaged!" Tim snapped. "We're not stopping now – go!"

They kept running.

Another explosion – closer this time. The ceiling above cracked wide, a jagged maw of collapsing rock and crystal. The glow of dark purple energy pulsed violently along the walls, rupturing outward like veins ready to burst.

BOOM!

A final, massive detonation roared up from below.

The ground behind them folded inward as the last supports of the sublevel gave out.

Archie, Aoife, and Tim dove forward – just in time to clear the collapsing archway as the rest of the tunnel behind them caved in with a thunderous crash.

A massive cloud of soot, silicon, and purple crystal fragments rushed past like a dragon's breath.

Silence. Heavy silence.

They stood at the edge of the collapse, staring back into the smothering darkness where an entire mountain's worth of tunnels had just folded in on itself.

Tim exhaled, wings flickering with dim flames. "Well... at the very least, we didn't have to fight those guys."

Archie slowly lifted a thumb in agreement as he lay on his back.

Aoife didn't speak. She just pushed herself off the ground and offered both of them a hand, eyes scanning ahead.

"Come on," she said, her voice raspy from all the soot they'd inhaled. "We should go."