Two of the cultivators that had come along with Jace grabbed hold of Nate. The other two kept their eyes on the girls, while Nate was brought close to the first of the duffel bags.

He carefully opened the bag, while keeping his eyes on the nearby cultivators. He was more than a little leery of people interfering while he was in the middle of this process. Nate didn’t remember anything from the last time, but he still knew how it had ended. If at all possible, he would like to avoid that happening again.

Dying, or at a minimum, becoming an invalid for several more months, were very, very low items on his list of things to do anytime soon.

“How am I supposed to use these?” He asked, holding up one of the energy cores. It vaguely resembled the orbs he would get from inside the dungeon, except it wasn’t rainbow-colored. It also wasn’t automatically absorbed into his body like it would have been there either.

Jace growled and stomped towards him, stopping only when the girls got in his way. “You put it in your mouth, idiot! It’ll gradually dissolve into energy then.”

“He’s right. That’s the easiest method for this process. Once someone becomes a proper cultivator with a core of their own, other methods become available. However, without a core to aid you, this is the quickest method.” Angie agreed, the action obviously leaving a bad taste in her mouth.

Nate exchanged the orb for a slightly smaller one that would fit in his mouth easier. He did have the backup core at his disposal, but he hadn’t had any time to explore what it could do yet. He didn’t even know how to control it, or if he even could. It might not be of any help to him in this situation.

Frankly, it was better to assume that he was on his own this time around.

He glanced at the orb and then at the others in the bag, seeing if any of them called out to him. Mostly, he was just trying to trust his gut, and it was telling him the core in his hand was not right for him.

Placing the core on the ground next to the bag, he thrust his hand into it and began blindly feeling around. He wasn’t trusting his eyes, but his other senses. That ephemeral sixth sense that had told him the first core hadn’t been a good fit for him in the first place.

Nate ran his hand back and forth for a few seconds, feeling the people behind him shifting nervously. Finally, he felt the backup core in his chest react, pulsing almost happily as his hand encircled one of the cores.

Pulling it out, he saw a core with hints of darkness in the very center. Space, void, or some other sort of dimensional energy at the very least, he was guessing. Before anyone else could see what kind of core he had pulled out, he popped it into his mouth.

Quickly settling into a comfortable meditative position, he closed his eyes and began concentrating.

Almost as soon as the core hit his tongue, it melted away, and the energy started flowing throughout his body. In a lot of ways, it was similar to the way the energy orbs reacted when he absorbed them in the dungeon. However, in his actual body, instead of an avatar, it was a far more violent and unrefined process.

The dungeon or the wrist computer, something, did a lot of work in the background to make those orbs more palatable for him. Then again, maybe they were just different, and not even the same thing in the first place. All he knew at that moment, is that the surge of energy flowing through his body was filling his body to the maximum.

It poured through his meridians and into the dantian before overflowing into the backup core like a safety valve.

Still, he couldn’t forget why he was there, sitting on the floor. It was going to be a waste to create his core now, but he had little choice in the matter. At least he had good compatibility with the energy. If he was lucky, he might walk away with a core better than the absolute bottom grade.

Unfortunately, the bottom grade was all the energy he had gathered before this. So even that might be asking too much.

It was a good thing he at least knew the process of creating his core, otherwise, this would have been really awkward. Thankfully, the process wasn’t actually that difficult, it just required a lot of concentration. It was the sort of procedure that was easy to mess up if you weren’t careful, however, as long as you were, then you’d be fine.

Of course, most people didn’t try to create their cores with a group of angry cultivators standing behind them. Nate wanted to trust the girls, but the fact of the matter was that there wasn’t a lot they could do if Jace really wanted to hurt him. All he could do was complete the process as quickly as possible.

With that thought in mind, he cracked his neck and began creating his core in earnest.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

For such a low-quality core, it went quickly and the energy he had gathered began to compress into an orb. With a cough, he spat out some blood as he pushed it even faster. His chest was aching from the strain, but he refused to give up at this point.

Nate was not going to give Jace or his minions time to mess with him.

The energy continued to circle around his dantian as it compressed into a sloppily made core. By this point, he had entirely given up on the possibility of raising his core a grade. All he wanted to do was finish its creation as quickly as possible.

Something that he was close to doing already.

The sound of someone being thrown to the ground made Nate force his eyes open. Both Angie and Lindsay had been tossed aside by the cultivators as Jace made his way over to Nate. His fists were clenched and an ugly, vicious smile that promised pain was on his face.

With a grunt of effort, Nate forced the core to complete forming, feeling it click into place in the center of his dantian. Despite the extremely haphazard method that he had used in its creation, he could tell that it had almost made it to the next stage. It was possible to upgrade your core, though it wasn’t exactly easy.

However, since his core was only at the lowest grade, it wouldn’t be too hard either. As its grade increased, so too would the difficulty until the cultivator needed outside reagents to make progress. Thankfully, he was a long way from needing to think about that sort of problem.

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Still, it stung that he had been forced into this position in the first place.

There was no reason that he should have needed to create his core at this time instead of in another few weeks.

It was infuriating!

Keeping that irritation in mind, Nate rolled under Jace’s punch and grabbed his family jewels with all his strength. It was a low blow, literally in this case, but it was also a debilitating one to any man with some sensitivity there.

He squeezed and pulled with all his newly enhanced strength. It was nothing compared to what someone like Jace, who might not even be at the lowest cultivation level or even realm anymore, could do. Yet, it was a universal male weak point, and the other boy would need to be much stronger before he could overcome it.

With a scream of pain, Jace tried to recoil, only to halt in his tracks as that made the pain worse. Tears streamed from his eyes as his voice stuttered weakly out in an incoherent babble of meaningless words.

Angie looked up from her spot on the floor in surprise. At the same time, Lindsay wiped some blood away from her nose and got to her feet.

The four cultivators that Jace had brought with him were watching the two young men in stunned surprise. The sudden turn of events had been so completely unexpected that they hadn’t even had a chance to react.

“Uh, Nate, are you okay?” Angie asked while climbing to her feet.

He spat a wad of blood and phlegm to the side. “Not really. My core is a piece of junk! It is of the absolute lowest grade available and it’s all because of this idiot. If I had simply had more time, then I could have gathered all the energy I needed to create a perfect core. Now my future is limited because of what he made ME DO!” He finished in a scream, his arm tugging with all his strength.

Truthfully, Nate wasn’t even playing around or faking what he was saying. He was furious at the moment. He had somehow managed to get a second chance at life, and now this man-child had managed to ruin his future as a cultivator.

The amount of work, money, and resources he would need to put in to upgrade and fix his core was frankly mindboggling.

Jace fell to the floor, a wet spot appearing on the front of his pants as he temporarily lost control of himself.

Biting back his revulsion, Nate kept a firm grip even while his stomach roiled and threatened to make an appearance all over the floor.

“You are going to need to burn that hand in sanitizer,” Lindsay muttered, coming over to his side.

He grunted in agreement, his eyes stuck on the four proper cultivators. “How are we going to get out of this?”

Either they found a way out, or eventually, they would be captured again. There was no third option. No one knew where they were, so no rescue would be coming for them.

Angie gingerly reached into Jace’s pocket and pulled out his slightly wet phone. She wiped it dry across his shirt and face and then used his fingerprint to unlock the screen. “I am not putting this thing next to my face.” She told them with a disgusted face.

“What are you doing? Stop them!” Jace finally managed to scream out at his hired help.

Nate twisted the soft gonads through the annoying boy’s pants, sending him all the way to the floor. His eyes had gone blank, and there were hints of foam around his mouth.

Finally, he released him and flung the wet substance from his hand in the direction of the cultivators.

Thankfully, Angie hadn’t gotten distracted while this was going on and had managed to continue her call. In the background, behind the noise of his thumping heart, Nate could hear her talking to someone.

Lindsay came up beside him, her fists were held at the ready as she valiantly faced the enemy with him. They were cultivators that were completely out of their league. A fact that was proved a moment later as both of them were thrown to the side as though they were nothing more than bugs.

The only thing that had been holding them at bay before was Nate’s hold on Jace. Now that he had released him, the proverbial dogs had been let loose.

Nate flew into the duffel bag of cores, feeling them dig painfully into his back. If he had more time, then he would have tried to store them all in the wrist computer’s storage. He hadn’t used the function very often, really only to withdraw his bracelet of healing the onetime. It was a function that he had almost forgotten about and ignored as a result.

However, now he really wanted to know if it was possible to put items from the real world into the storage. He already knew he could while in the dungeon and in his avatar form, but he didn’t know if the storage only went one way. Regardless, he was a little busy being pummeled at the moment.

Rolling off the bag, he staggered to his feet and was immediately met with a fist to the stomach, lifting him several inches into the air.