Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

The cave glowed a dim orangish-green color, reflected by the light of the Inchoate Titansteel Forge just outside the cave. The hue danced along the stone walls, casting warped shadows over scattered scrap metal, singed and burnt Steel Sheets, and half-ruptured cubes made of steel.

Archie sat cross-legged on the stone floor, beside a small pile of steel cubes that he'd forged hours earlier. He hadn't done anything special with them – just grabbed a steel bar from one of the crates he had full of them, heated it, and shaped it into cubes using Mana Smithing Mastery. No Core Resonance Forging and no spirit infusion through Spirit Link.

These cubes were throwaway items – quickly made test subjects for his spatial runes. As he wasn't sure if cores or imbued spirits might conflict with the spatial rune, he intended to etch into them.

This was new territory to him and very volatile too, if the ruptured steel cubes that decorated the floor and soot stains on the cave walls were anything to go off of.

He flexed his fingers, the heat of his bare chest and forge still steaming gently in the cool air as Forgesmith's Flame was still activated inside it, while he retrieved his Runic Scriber from his spatial storage.

He really needed to forge armor that wasn't as bulky as his current set – or at the very least, buy some proper clothes so he wouldn't always have to choose between going bare-chested or having clunky movements when forging and etching.

The rune he had designed over the past two days was scrawled out beside him on a dozen warped and burnt scraps of steel sheets and cubes, each etched with variations of looping mana pathways and supposedly stable matrices – though stable didn't necessarily mean functional, or safe; hence their warped and burnt nature.

This was an entirely new rune formation he was pioneering on his own, using his limited knowledge on spatial magics and understanding of how it worked with his spells and Spatial Runic Base he'd created for the Spatial Pocket spell he'd created two days ago.

Spatial Expansion.

In this case, it was, in essence, a self-contained folded dimension within the cube that was in static sync with the cube's structure.

Being in static sync was the key component. Without it, the folded dimension would either expand outside of the confines of the cube and become unstable and explode, or shrink to the point where it would just release a small pop before the rune disappeared.

I'm pretty sure that it just imploded on itself, but I don't really know. So, trusting the few self-preservation brain cells I have left, I'm not gonna risk making the rune not in static sync. Archie smiled to himself as he grabbed another steel cube from the pile beside him. Now begins trial test number forty-two.

He etched the first line.

Then the second.

Slowly and carefully, he etched the mana pathways of Spatial Expansion Rune Design No. 42, layering them along the outer faces of the cube. Small geometric lattices emerged – intricate pathways filled with resistors, transistors, capacitors – the whole shebang.

As the last, and final mana pathway met the end of the start of the first mana pathway in the middle of the 1st face of the cube, a faint hum could be heard from the steel as the imbued mana within it resonated with the mana pathways.

The mana pathways began to glow a nebulaic purple.

Archie carefully set the cube on the ground before slowly backing away from it, crouching low.

The cube hovered half an inch off the ground before the nebulaic purple colored mana pathways pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

And then with a low hum, it stilled before it settled atop the steel.

He reached for it cautiously, waiting a few seconds in case it exploded. When nothing happened, he picked it up.

Gently, Archie pushed his mana into the steel cube - and it yielded.

His perception was pulled into it, revealing a Spatial Pocket nearly the same size as one of the crates he used to hold his Steel, Silver, and other metal bars.

A breath of relief escaped him as he leaned back and let gravity take him. He'd finally created a Spatial Expansion Rune, his first spatial rune.

Taking in the cool air around him, Archie blinked blankly at the ceiling for a few seconds before raising the spatially expanded steel cube high above his face.

Steel Cube of Expansion (Common):
A steel cube forged and etched by Archie Gracefield, an E-Grade Novice Forgesmith. The Spatial Expansion rune engraved at the top of its steel gives the cube a foldable spatial pocket within it that can contain up to 0.5 x 0.5 x 1 USU. Objects stored within the steel cube must be non-living. Effect: Spatial Storage (Lesser-Low). Status: Perfect. Requirements: Lv 95+ & Humanoid Race.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Alright, next step, Archie thought as he activated Elastic Sizing onto the Spatial Expansion rune atop the mana pathways that covered the cube and began to shrink it to only cover one side of the cube.

After a bit of slightly strenuous contest of shrinking the mana pathways to fit only a singular face of the cube, Archie grabbed a warped steel cube from across the cave using Spatial Pull and tested it to see if he could place it inside the Steel Cube of Expansion.

Once it sat there for a minute, he took it out of the Steel Cube of Expansion and tossed it back into the pile of steel scraps that he was going to reforge into reinforced steel bars.

I guess this proves differential equations actually have a use beyond just being a pain in the ass to learn – and that all those sleepless nights had a purpose beyond just acing a test, Archie mused with a smirk, turning his head toward the notification pop-ups he had previously ignored in lieu of not wanting the rune to blow up in his face.

Skill Upgrade: [Advanced Runic Mastery (Uncommon → Rare)]
Advanced Runic Mastery (Rare):
Runes open the door to enchanting and imbuing objects with various properties, surpassing the object's inherent properties. This skill allows for the creation of simple runes with various effects. Grants the ability to better comprehend moderate quality runes when studying them. Appropriate materials and tools are necessary for etching runes.

Oh, that's nice to see, Archie thought as he took out a rabbit and troll sandwich from his spatial storage and began eating it.

It had been quite a while since his last skill upgrade, and he was glad to see that his efforts to advance his runic knowledge had been acknowledged by the System.

At first glance, the skill description might have seemed unchanged, but there was a key difference compared to its previous Uncommon version: "Grants the ability to better comprehend moderate-leveled runes when studying them."

Previously, it had only allowed him to better understand low-level runes and below, which effectively meant that harder and more complicated runes, moderate quality and higher, that he attempted to study before and were met with failure, could potentially be studied.

Of course, this was limited to what his Grade considered to be moderate-level runes, at least that's what he assumed to be the case, considering how the vast majority of skills would go down in rarity whenever you evolved.

Either way, even though soon it would degrade back to Uncommon or Bralmir forbid Common rarity, it would be a major boon for his development of the one-channel teleporter he was going to build.

*Your Profession has reached Lv 90 – Points allocated, +4 Free Points*
*Your Profession has reached Lv 91 – Points allocated, +4 Free Points*
*Your Race has reached Lv 97 – Points allocated, +3 Free Points*

*Novice Forgesmith profession skills available. Choose one of the options*

Assigning 6 Free Points into Wisdom and 5 into Willpower, Archie began to skim through the list of options offered to him by the System – with only two standing out to him; Rune Erosion and Runic Cloaking.

Rune Erosion (Uncommon):
Allows you to channel your mana into runes and gradually erode their magical pathways, making them inert. The longer you maintain focus, the more the rune weakens, and could also potentially destabilize runes nearby the rune you are eroding.

Just like he'd thought when the skill was first offered to him over a month ago, it still struck him as a damn good combat rune to have – especially for fighting opponents with runic gear.

And considering nearly everyone he'd encountered on the planet, Tim being the rare exception, wore enchanted or runic equipment, it felt like a strong contender to have as a skill.

He could unleash a flurry of blows on a runic shield, wearing down the physical reinforcement runic script on it with every strike he sent its way – enough that it would erode connected runes like Self-Repair, rendering the whole thing unrepairable during their battle.

Unless, of course, they had Runic Mending like himself, to which, then it would be a competition on whose skill was stronger than the other.

Runic Cloaking (Uncommon):
With this skill, you gain the knowledge of how to hide and obscure the presence of the runes on an item, making them undetectable and otherwise cryptic to most observers.

This was also another skill he'd chosen to forgo last skill selection and considered it to be a contender for his final skill as a Novice Forgesmith.

It would allow his runes to be masked from others, hiding their effects from prying eyes who would try and prep around them. Where he could have his Obscuring Stakes look like normal tent stakes to others when they would attempt to identify them. Or make his Steel Cube of Expansion be identified as a random, normal steel cube

Maybe in the future, he could use the skill to trick people into believing a runic item had a different ability altogether – a Necklace of Protection into a Necklace of Beheading.

Hell, maybe he'd be able to test out that theory from the moment he selected the skill.

But either way, there is one clear winner between the two, Archie thought as he selected Runic Cloaking as his fourth and final skill as a Novice Forgesmith. The reason why? Vandrick.

His recommendation on keeping his runes cloaked and hidden from prying eyes struck true to him, quite literally.

Even while he was forging under Vandrick's watchful gaze and being swatted for every mistake he made, he emphasized the importance of Runic Cloaking and how dangerous it was for him to leave his runes to be displayed out in the open.

"Leaving your runes exposed to all is like walking in'a battle buck naked with a stick while yur enemy has a whole damn castle on their back with things that can easily dismantle and pick you apart with," he remembered Vandrick barking at him.

Pushing himself off the ground with a grunt and clumps of dried soot and ember clinging to his arms and torso from his earlier forging and runic etching. His cave was warm, silent, and glowing faintly green-orange from the smoldering Inchoate Titansteel Forge just outside the mouth of the cave.

With his experiment a success, he wanted to move on to the next major goal he wished to accomplish before he seriously got back into spatial rune theorizing and teleporter creation.

And that required him to give himself a few upgrades to his current gear.

Pulling out his Mana Bike from his spatial storage, Archie put a leg over the frame of the bike and activated its engine to which the bike roared to life, rumbling beneath his seat.

Destination: Neo-Eden.

There, he would pick up his Gold Coin reward for completing the Savoris Silicon Mine quest, and see if he could purchase more Vials of Fatigue Relief along with finding some hide or flexible leather armor he could use as a base for the new chestpiece and leggings he was planning on making.