After kicking around and harvesting the twenty-two Venomspitter Ants Insectoid Cores, he found the jewel he had been looking for, a brilliant cut pink sapphire, large enough to fit both in his palm and into one of the sockets.

  Throughout his time killing and harvesting the Venomspitter Ant cores, he’d been circulating his vital energy around him, preventing the weakened rot from affecting him, something the ants had neglected.

  The ants in their evolutions seemed to have evolved around the focus of having stronger and larger physical bodies, whilst evolving to have venom that they could spit out. , Archie mused as he placed the pink sapphire in his back satchel as he was unable to place it within his spatial storage.

  Before jumping out of the pit of now-dead ants, Archie looked for the locust he threw down but only found bits and pieces of its flesh before calling it a lost cause.

  Now out of the pit, Archie harvested the Chameleon Locust Insectoid Cores and made his way toward the main room. But along the way he took notice of the yard from the glassless windows in the hallway.

  It showed an army of Venomspitter Ants and Chameleon Locusts facing down a group of Lizard people. “Hey!” Archie yelled, but nothing happened, none of them moved.

  He tried to Identify them but, nothing popped up.

  As Archie moved toward the next glassless window the still armies moved, getting closer to each other.

  Briskly walking down the hall, Archie saw the scene playout in front of him. Venomspitter Ants tearing through a race of lizard people and some in far back spat out venom at their frontline. Chameleon Locusts latching onto the faces of the healers and mages in the back, and either shoving their long snouts down their throats or cutting a part of them open before shoving their snouts into the opening.

  Archie mulled over as he passed through the last glassless window in the hallway and entered the main room.

  As Archie peered out from the open door, the Venomspitter Ants, Lizard people, and Chameleon Locusts were absent. However, old splotches of acidic stains were now scattered across the temple yard.

  Facing towards the last hallway, Archie noticed a similar layout, where a couple dozen flying vital energies roamed the hallway while a large blob of vital energy with many similar-looking vital sparks constantly moved around. But unlike the ants, these vital energies were on the same level as the hallway.

  Peeking from behind the hallway frame, he looked to see what the hallway held.

  [Hemostinger Wasp Lv 88]

  The red and black coated wasps stood in groups of threes, each the size of a pitbull. Their black translucent wings produced a soft hum as they flew across the hall. The other half of their bodies were wickedly barbed stingers, each the size of his forearm. They were the same color as their red compound eyes and their sharp-looking mandibles.

  Archie mulled as he stared and counted the wasps. "Twelve," he noted.

  Reactivating Adrenaline RushThornscourge Expansion

  He smashed his fists into the torsos of the two wasps flanking the three-wasp swarm, then drove his knee into the middle wasp's head before finishing it off with a crushing blow from his fists.

  Landing on the ground, Archie flicked his arms, letting their corpses fall onto the ground. His eyes trained onto the nine remaining wasps that were charging at him.

  Archie quickly backstepped away from a barrage of stingers that embedded themselves into the Laterite floor. Quickly activating Savage Charge

  Crushing their torsos with his fists, Archie saw the large blob of vital energy in the other room at the end of the hall rush toward him. With them now out of the dark room, Archie was able to see what they were.

  [Ashcrawler Termite Lv 91]

  Their grey, bulky bodies were covered in heavily plated exoskeletons that glowed faintly with fiery orange cracks alongside the edges of its plated exoskeleton. Their mandibles constantly twitched with every step they took and dripped ash-colored drool onto the floor.

  , Archie noted before sending a surge of nature mana into the vines around his fists, before they exploded outward, and latched onto another three-wasp swarm. With a flood of more mana and stamina into Adrenaline Rush

  Archie landed on the head of a termite before kicking off and landing on the hallway wall, dodging another barrage of stingers that sunk into the exoskeletons of a few termites.

  Kicking off the wall, Archie lunged towards the last three wasps; piercing through the torsos of the outer two wasps and kneeing the middle wasp, whose head was crushed between Archie’s knee and the hallway ceiling.

  Kicking off the ceiling and flipping upside down, Archie funneled even more mana and stamina into his right fist, simultaneously activating Savage Charge

  Archie quickly flipped himself right way up before activating Relentless Flurry

  Deactivating Relentless FlurryNine dead.

  Stretching his arms behind his head, Archie made his way towards the three paralyzed termites that were bleeding out from their eyes from the stingers lodged into their bodies.

  With three quick stomps, Archie ended their misery and quickly scanned the hallway and empty room beyond that with Vital Sight

  Deactivating his skills, Archie went to grab the cores of the insectoids he’d killed, but as he tried ripping through the Ashcrawler Termite’s exoskeleton, he felt heavy resistance.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Archie thought before covering his hand in a mana blade and easily cutting open its torso before taking out its core. Archie wondered.

  *[Hemostinger Wasp Lv 88] has been slain – XP has been given. 1144 Tutorial Points given*

  ***

  *[Hemostinger Wasp Lv 88] has been slain – XP has been given. 1144 Tutorial Points given**[Ashcrawler Termite Lv 91] has been slain – XP has been given. 1274 Tutorial Points given*

  ***

  *[Ashcrawler Termite Lv 91] has been slain – XP has been given. 1274 Tutorial Points given*

  *Your Race has reached Lv 72 – Points allocated, +3 Free Points*

  Nice, Archie commented as he skimmed through his notifications and looked inside the room where the termites laid in. Confused at the absence of another jewel, Archie activated Forgesmith’s Flame

  Archie questioned.

  As Archie walked back into the hallway, paying attention to the yard from the glassless windows.

  The Venomspitter Ants and Chameleon Locusts burst through the glass windows of the left wing of the temple as a giant lizard dressed in loose-fitting robes sent a large burst of fire, that razed the front yard of the temple.

  But as the battle continued, the Hemostinger Wasps and Ashcrawler Termites joined into the fray and eventually slaughtered every lizard person, with the giant lizard ripping off its robes, revealing tattooed flesh with a brilliant pink sapphire in its chest.

  As it was covered by Venomspitter Ants, Chameleon Locusts, Hemostinger Wasps, and Ashcrawler Termites the lizard’s tattoos that weren’t covered glowed in a vibrant pink color before creating a giant explosion that killed all the bugs around it, sending cracks along the temple and ultimately killing itself.

  But as he passed the last glassless window, an even larger swarm of insectoids swarmed the temple.

  “Damn,” Archie muttered as he took in what he’d just witnessed.

  Walking out of the temple and to where the giant lizard man took his last stand, Archie stared in silence. Weirdly enough even though perhaps hundreds if not thousands of years passed since the battle, judging by the ruined state of the temple, he could still see the outline of the giant lizard.

  As he turned around to see if he could jump to the other floors of the temple a glint appeared in his peripheral vision.

  Walking towards the glint Archie picked up the last brilliant-cut pink sapphire, smudged with dirt and congealed blood.

  “I don’t know who you were,” Archie muttered as he stared at the giant lizard’s outline. “I know you’re not a Tharki, but some other lizard person. I’ll do what you wish and become your temple’s exterminator.”

  Standing in front of the sealed door, Archie was about to put the pink sapphires into their sockets but remembered about his Spirit Nucleus.

  Taking out his Spirit Nucleus and sitting down in a meditative pose, he activated Spirit Link

  Archie’s vision went dark before thousands of deep green spirits hovered around him, flooding his sight. The sheer number of nature spirits around him took him aback. This was more than he’d ever seen before.

  Normally there would be a good amount of nature spirits mixed in with elemental ones, but the spirits around him were purely nature ones.

  Archie smiled before funneling the nature spirits into the Spirit Nucleus.

  Henry dropped to the ground in a crouch, his armor in tatters, and eyes glazed over. The left side of his body was covered in third-degree burns and cuts, which steamed and bubbled with dark mana before sealing shut, and replaced by fresh pink skin.

  His shield and sword fell to the ground, both shattering the moment they touched the ground.

  Lifting his head, Henry looked around and found himself back where he’d just barely killed the Ember Hounds. It was so long ago now that he thought about it. The past few days he spent within the Trials of Ragnar were…exhausting, to say the least.

  The Trials of Ragnar were seemingly endless waves of monsters that rushed him until nightfall, where he was given time to rest. When he evolved…everything changed.

  Monster waves never ended even after nightfall, and he was expected to learn how to use his new Class and all the skills that came with it until Ragnar approved of his progress.

  Getting off the ground, Henry gave one final look to his broken sword and shield that lay on the ground in pieces. They’d barely been hanging on, their Self-Repair had long since been destroyed from the amount of times they’d been damaged and repaired.

  Reorienting himself toward where he remembered the camp being, he sprinted. Excited to tell his fiancée the good news he learned from Ragnar.

  He’d met Ragnar every nightfall, he’d always appear in front of him in the form of a crow. Something about how this was the only way for him to have a physical form within the Tutorial under system regulations.

  Nevertheless, from their talks with each other, he learned that Ragnar was some sort of Dark Mage Knight god that for some reason took interest in him. He wasn’t sure why, the first few days he took the trial, he kept yelling at him demanding answers.

  It was really embarrassing whenever he thought back on it. Ragnar was helping him out and he was having a temper tantrum. No matter how many times he apologized, Ragnar brushed him off telling him that it was fine.

  On the final day of the trial, he completed the last objective: killing a Darkflame Knight twelve levels above his own. When he finally killed the knight, Ragnar finally answered a question he had previously refused, and his answer both shattered and rebuilt his world—his child was still alive.

  As Henry approached the camp, his smile slowly disappeared, and a frown took its place.

  The log walls that previously protected the camp were razed to the ground, the tents were turned to ash, and corpses both charred and covered in ash littered the camp. People covered in ash walked around the camp aimlessly. A few others picked up the corpses of others before loading them up on a large wheelbarrow.

  “The hell!” Henry shouted before rushing towards his tent, where he last saw his fiancée.

  Henry’s heart was erratic as he rushed towards where he last saw his fiancée. Along the way, he saw broken blades and arrows littering the ground, burnt tents, and more corpses.

  No…No…No…No!

  Henry fell to his knees as he arrived in front of where his tent previously stood and found it razed to the ground. Tears welled up in his eyes as he wailed.

  Henry cried, his voice cracking as he pressed his head into the dirt, fists pounding the ground in anguish.

  Suddenly, a voice cut through his torment, sharp and resolute. "She was taken away,"

  Henry snapped towards Liv with enough force, he cracked a few bones in his neck before dark mana both steamed and bubbled around his neck briefly, healing the bones he cracked. “Liv…If you’re fucking with me…You’re not gonna like what’s gonna happen.”

  “Fook off, Henry,” Liv spat. “I ain’t a fookin liar.”

  Liv stared at Henry and Maria’s tent before looking at Henry. “While you were out doing fook all, we got raided by Kate and Brian’s camp… They took all the healers, alchemists, and smiths with them, saying how we need to earn our keep.”

  “Then why are you still here,” Henry glared. Liv was the best smith in their Tutorial, why would they pass up on her? “They wouldn’t give you up.”

  Liv’s face scrunched up before biting down on her lower lip, hard enough for blood to trail out. “That bitch, Kate refused my refusal before leaving me with a gift.” Liv turned her palms to reveal fingerless palms, their ends cauterized. “It took me until yesterday till I recovered from my other injuries.”

  “Is Maria alive?” Henry asked, staring at her fingerless hands before intensely staring into her eyes. “She was in a coma last I saw her.”

  “I was watching over her when we got raided,” Liv replied staring at the burnt-down entrance gate, before shaking her head, as if trying to erase the memory. “It…it was like…magic” Liv scoffed before continuing, “Moments before we got raided, she woke up and gained a frantic look on her face before grabbing her wand. But by the time she got her bearings together, Kate caught her, and… they took her with them.”

  Henry was quiet as he tried to listen for any signs of deceit from Liv, once he heard none, he spoke. “Are they still eastward of the Assistant village?”

  “You can’t do shit,” Liv hissed at Henry. “This ain’t no fookin movie. You’re just one man… What the hell can you do!”

  Henry got up from the ground and stared intensely into Liv’s eyes, “Are they still there?”

  Liv turned to the ground, trying to grab her left arm with her right, but bit down on her teeth harder as she was reminded yet again of her missing digits. “Yeah,” she croaked.

  Henry snatched up two fallen blades and sprinted toward Kate and Brian’s camp. He had an entire camp to raze, and god help any soul that stood in the way of a man who was on the mission to save both his lover and child.

  Thanks for Reading!

  Read ahead on Patreon: 10 ahead for $5 and 30+ ahead for $10

  Patreon:

  Don't forget to follow, comment, and favorite if you are enjoying Adrenaline Junkie!

  Let me know your thoughts, theories, and cool ideas that you'd be interested in seeing in the comments—I read every single one!