Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

Archie clenched his remaining fist over the stump of his severed arm, only an inch of flesh left beyond the shoulder, trying to staunch the bleeding as his breath came hot and ragged against the cold and wet weather of the Sloughshade Woodlands.

Do I cauterize it with Ember's Embrace? Or just let Vital Metabolism try and regrow it as I fight?

His lips were dry, his jaw locked tight as he leapt backward, boots slapping into the thick muck. He widened the distance – a hundred meters now between him and the mountain troll, who stood hunched and chewing on bits of his arm, specifically his bicep like it was a chicken drumstick wrapped in foil, its cracked stone teeth wet with blood and rain.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Archie blinked and realized it had started to rain. Enough to sheen his armor, slick his face, and mix with the blood that streamed from his shoulder as his fist remained clenched against it in order to stop himself from bleeding out.

Archie glowered, his body trembling faintly from the loss of blood. Options flickered through his mind. Fuck a new plan.

Vital Metabolism surged once more. He felt it working beneath his skin – fiber stitching to fiber, sinew drawing taut, the wound knotting closed into a meaty, puckered stump. Glossy and twisted like the end of a boiled sausage.

Still leaking a thin stream of blood, he pulled out a steel plate no larger than a knuckle and pressed it against the wound. Then, he let Vital Metabolism heal over it.

No point in making a new one, just gonna have to modify my current one.

With a flick of his wrist, three reinforced steel rods dropped out of his spatial storage and in between his left fingers, their slick steel catching the light, each imbued with mana. Runic Archive activated along with Runic Amplification, a pulse of blue light streaking down his arm as the Delayed Detonation runic scripts flared to life across the rods' surfaces.

Without pause, Archie flung them forward in a tight arc – then launched after them, sprinting across the sodden battlefield with reckless speed. Mud sprayed from his heels in contrast with the glowing green steam around him, flaring like wildfire in the rain.

As the steel rods tore through the air, bright blue mana pathways etched along their length flared brighter until they glowed molten red. A searing hiss filled the space between Archie and the hulking troll, and in that moment, the Delayed Detonation scripts activated.
The mountain troll grunted and shifted. With an almost lazy twist of its bulk, it raised its massive left arm, the hide of it so thoroughly fused with craggy stone it resembled a slab of a living mountain.

Crack – CRACK – CRACK!

The rods struck hard and embedded themselves deep into its stone armor with a vicious crunch.

A heartbeat passed as Archie continued his sprint towards the mountain troll.

BOOM!

A blinding flash erupted from the embedded rods, followed instantly by a torrent of flame and pressure. The shockwave rolled out across the mud-choked battlefield, scattering debris and steam in every direction. Rain hissed against the sudden heat, and mud shot upward like geysers from the force of the blast.

But Archie never stopped moving – even as the blast of steam smacked against his body and hissed against his exposed skin. Eyes locked ahead, his pace never faltered – not even as he saw the smoke parting.

The troll stood tall.

Its left side was now scorched, stone armor pockmarked and slick with glowing slag where the rods had melted into its surface. But aside from a few fractures and glowing embers caught between the stone plates, it looked no worse for wear. It was still smiling with his arm still in between its teeth – mockingly.

And that's when Archie saw it.

Its massive left arm hadn't been raised to shield against the reinforced steel rods laced with Delayed Detonation runes – it had been lifted to conceal something.

Then, without warning, the troll twisted hard and fast.

From beneath its other arm, a rock the size of Archie's torso came hurtling forward like a ballista firing out a stake, launched with incredible speed.

Archie's eyes went wide as the first projectile hurtled toward him like a meteor. He thrust out his left hand, casting Spatial Pull – a concentrated tether of spatial mana wrapped itself around the rock mid-flight and attempted to pull it towards the right, toward a different direction.

It barely budged.

The spell snapped a heartbeat later, overwhelmed by the sheer force behind the throw.

Gritting his teeth, Archie conjured a shimmering mana platform just ahead of his next step. The moment his boot struck its solid surface, rather than sinking into mud, he launched himself upward, vaulting ten meters into the air.

Below, the massive stone slammed into the ground with a shriek, carving a deep crater into the mud, a couple of meters away from where he had leaped up.

But the troll wasn't done.

As Archie formed a second mana platform behind him and kicked off, his body rocketing toward the troll like a cannonball, a second boulder shot through the rain-soaked air – this one flying twice as fast.

It came from the troll's left hand.

That's when Archie noticed a detail he'd missed earlier – two large, unnatural gaps on the back of the troll's rock-coated arms; its triceps were bare of any rock-like defenses.

The troll had torn chunks of its own stone carapace and used them as projectiles.

This time, the boulder wasn't just faster, it was also closer. And it was heading straight for his face.

As the massive boulder was less than ten meters away from colliding with him, face-first, Archie's eyes shone with excitement. This was go time. The weight of his anticipation pressed down on him.

With a single, sharp motion, he flung his remaining arm forward. The mana that was surging through him was now allowed inside his bracers, and in an instant, he activated Igneous Deflection for the very first time.

As the boulder was less than a quarter of a foot away from crushing its hand, time seemed to slow.

Just before impact, the surface of Archie's bracer flared with molten-red runes. The air between him and the incoming stone shimmered, reminding him momentarily of the heat that rises from when metal gets taken off an anvil and plunged into a vat of water.

Then, impossibly, the massive boulder vanished.

It happened in less than a second – too fast for the mountain troll to fully perceive, but just slow enough for Archie himself to be able to perceive.

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A pulse of molten-red mana rippled across the bracer as the runes spiraled inward. From the seams of the bracer, a viscous, liquid-like metal spilled out, stretching forward, grabbing onto the boulder and consuming it.

The stone twisted, folded, and collapsed inward on itself, its jagged mass melting and compressing into the swirling, liquid metal.

Within moments, the liquid recoiled and sealed shut with a sharp click, retracting into the shape of his bracer – now bulkier than before.

The gauntlet hardened, locking the transformation in place. At its center, the Earth rune blinked with a deep crimson glow – once… twice… then held steady, now charged with the weight and momentum of the absorbed projectile.

The troll, for the briefest of moments, hesitated. It stared at the now transfigured projectile, shock clear in its eyes, not understanding what had just happened. That hesitation was all Archie needed.

Archie's lips curled into a savage grin as his blood-spattered face glimmered reflectively in the light of the moon hanging just above the Sloughshade Woodlands. Let's see how you like this, he thought to himself, before activating the second half of Igneous Deflection and creating another mana platform to regain his lost momentum.

With a burst of speed, Archie charged forward, launching himself at the mountain troll, propelling him even faster with his Savage Charge. The world around him became a blur as the force of his passage propelled him through the now torrential rainstorm.

The large rock, now armed and fully retaining its momentum and power from when he initially captured it, shot from the bracer like a cannonball. The stone hurtled through the air, spiraling as it shot toward the mountain troll's head.

The mountain troll, realizing too late what was happening, tried to raise its arm in defense, but it was too slow.

The rock slammed into the troll's forehead with a sickening crack, the sheer force of the impact snapping its head backward and most definitely giving it immense whiplash as its massive neck strained under the sudden attack. The troll's jaw clenched shut as it stumbled backward. The force of the collision left a deep dent in its stone skull.

As the troll staggered, the once vice-like grip on Archie's arm faltered. The troll's teeth, which had been clamped down on his severed bicep, lost their purchase and fell away with a violent jerk. Archie's arm dropped, free-falling into the mud beneath him, the limb now hanging by a sliver of bone, muscle, and steel.

With a wet slap, it dropped into the thick forest mud, limp and covered in mountain troll slobber.

Archie saw his opening.

A surge of light red coated his body momentarily as he shot forward mid-air – Savage Charge flaring to life. He crashed his knee directly into the troll's slack, backward-tilted face with the force of a battering ram. Its skull crunching against his reinforced steel legguard's kneecap.

Teeth and blood spewed out of its mouth.

Now dazed and reeling, it then slammed into the mud with a thunderous impact that sent dirt and water spraying in all directions.

At the same time as Archie flipped through the air on account of momentum, a thin, thorned vine – bright green and shimmering within the rain – snapped outward from Archie's stubbed left shoulder. It coiled through the air like a whip, wrapped around his severed arm where it lay in the mud, and yanked it back toward him.

Archie crashed into the mud a moment later, tumbling end over end before skidding to a stop on his side.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself upright, breathing ragged, drenched in blood and rain. With a grunt, he grabbed the patch of sealed skin that wrapped around his nub of a shoulder, tore it away, using the small steel plate he placed behind the skin as a grip for him to use against the loss of friction the rain was causing.

He aligned the mangled limb to the now-open and bleeding socket.

Vital Metabolism surged far greater than before as Archie pushed it to its limits.

Muscle convulsed, tendons whipped into place like living threads, and bone drew to bone with a sickening but precise snap. Veins knitted, skin bubbled, and stretched over the raw mass of reconstructed tissue.

Archie held back a scream as the pain lanced through him, his shoulder spasming momentarily as the nerves and muscles reconnected with his shoulder. Within seconds afterwards, the fingers on his right hand twitched.

Vital Metabolism is overpowered.

The troll was already groaning, pushing itself back up, mud and blood sliding off its cracked form as it rose.

Archie didn't wait.

He took off at a sprint, his still-healing arm twitching with phantom fire, fresh muscle fibers flexing beneath its half-sealed skin and fully repaired Wardenplate of the Briar Sleeve as he sprinted across the muddy battlefield toward the recovering beast.

Archie surged more power into his frame, veins lit with the raw glow of Vital Metabolism and Adrenaline Rush as he twisted the troll's massive, battered head to the right. There was a meaty crack as cartilage and bone gave under the force, and the troll's left forearm, braced beneath it for leverage, slipped in the mud, its massive hand digging a useless trench in the mud.

Archie didn't let up. He immediately whipped the troll's head in the opposite direction with a harsh punch from his recently reattached right arm, the motion snapping the creature's neck like a whipcord and forcing it to groan in agony.

Then came the flurry of sickly green glowing blows.

Archie rained down arcing punches, each one slamming into the troll's face with jarring force. The sound of flesh on stone echoed through the forest, each strike carving deeper into the monster's features, blood and shards of mineral-like plating flying with every hit.

Left. Right. Again. Again. Unrelenting.

But then he felt the telltale hum of earth mana suddenly pooling directly beneath him.

Archie froze for just a fraction of a second, Sixth Sense screaming at him to get away.

And that was all the troll needed.

With terrifying speed for something its size, its right arm lashed out from its side, plowing through the muck and slamming around Archie's left leg. There was a crack, and pain bloomed like wildfire. The troll's grip crushed his limb in one movement, then, without hesitation, it hurled him away like a ragdoll.

Archie flew across the clearing, skidding and tumbling through slick mud and broken branches. His vision rattled. His breath caught. And pain lanced through every nerve.

But he wasn't done.

Even as he rolled, he kept supercharging Vital Metabolism. Green mana surged down to the mangled limb, knitting splintered bone, restoring tendons, reversing the damage even as he skidded across the forest floor.

He ground himself to a stop by clawing at the mud, his good leg and hands digging deep trenches into the wet earth.

Fresh flesh bubbled over exposed sinew, muscles twitched back into place, and his nerves in his arm and shoulder reconnected themselves. Pain roared in his brain, but he shoved it aside.

Quickly rummaging through his spatial storage, Archie yanked out his second-to-last Vial of Fatigue Relief and stabbed it into his neck and injected its contents into his body.

Then he launched.

With a feral growl, Archie kicked off, each step carving through the muck as he clawed forward like a beast unleashed. Rain pounded his back, steam hissed from his skin, and his gaze locked dead ahead on the troll now trying to rise again.

Archie closed the distance like a missile – fast and brutal.

His boots tore through layers of mud, muscles fueled by Vital Metabolism surging within him, straining the skill to its limits as Adrenaline Rush was liquifying his innards.

With every breath, the air escaped from his lips sizzled the raindrops that touched it, every heartbeat thumping in his ears like the beat of a war drum.

The troll had barely gotten one knee up when Archie slammed into it like a thunderbolt, his shoulder crashing into its midsection with a wet, sickening thud that sent the creature staggering back.

Archie didn't let up.

His newly reattached arm coiled with taut muscle, skin still partially glossed from rapid regeneration, and drove up under the mountain troll's jaw – an uppercut that snapped its head back and lifted its front foot off the mud for a split second. With that brief lift, Archie ducked to the side, driving both fists in a punishing one-two barrage into the troll's side, ribs cracking beneath the force.

The troll roared back, stumbling again, blinded by blood and rain.

Archie's left hand snapped out, with the thorn-wreathed vines from Thornscourge Expansion whipping forward, coiling around the mountain troll's neck and shoulders. Using the momentum and bracing against the mud with his legs, he yanked, slamming the beast face-first into the ground again with a quake that made the trees around them shiver.

He leapt.

Boots arcing through the air, he came down hard, both feet slamming onto the back of the troll's left shoulder, forcing its massive body half an inch deeper into the mire with the sheer weight and force of impact. A sickening pop cracked through the wet air as tendons strained, ligaments screamed, and bone ground bone.

In the same instant, his left fist cocked back, knuckles surging with deep red mana – Hyper Impact punch igniting like a molten steel, that was wreathed with the writhing thorns of Thornscourge Expansion and sharp quills that were materialized by Shroud of Thorns.

The thorns and quills slithering over his forearm, growing, hardening, forming a brutal spiral of jagged protrusions from elbow to knuckle.

An arm for an arm, Archie thought, his eyes bloodshot.

He drove the punch down, straight into the joint between the troll's shoulder and upper arm.

The impact landed with a deafening crack, echoed by the thunderclap that echoed in the storm above the Sloughshade Woodlands.

The thorns exploded forward, boring into flesh, corkscrewing through muscle and tendons. Mana detonated in a tight burst, rupturing the joint entirely, severing the arm at its root with a twisted, brutal precision. The troll's bellow turned into a high, garbled shriek as the limb tore loose in a spurt of dark, steaming blood and shattered sinew.

The arm dropped into the mud with a splat, massive and twitching.