Once Tom woke up, he was like a rocket as he shot out of the bed. He rushed through his morning routine and stuffed himself as full of food as he could. He didn't want to waste even a second, as today would be the last full day that he had to enjoy his early access.

In no time at all Tom was done. He immediately went to lay on his bed and put on the Secverse game helmet on his head, and logged in.

Once Tom came to, He immediately took in his surroundings. He was near the river, so at least he could find his way back to the cave, as he was sure that he would be going there. Because once other players joined the Secverse, he was sure that someone was bound to find this literal gold mine. So he had to collect as much value out of the cave while he still could. He could imagine how someone who had money to buy actual gear would just be able to walk into the gave and use a pickaxe to smash the golems to pieces and steal Tom's pension plan right under his nose.

Now the only problem he had was that he had no way to kill the golems. Sure he could hit them with his stick and check out how sharp it was. But everything was relative. He did not hold high hopes for the match between wood and stone. As the winner should be pretty clear for all to see. So Tom had a limited time to figure out a way to defeat the golems.

"Maybe I should test how my stick holds out against the golems... And if it doesn't I can always just run away!" Tom reasoned. And he would be able to scout out his opponents without facing a horde of them at once, so it would be a win-win situation.

Tom spends five minutes making his way to the cave's entry point. On his way, he picked some stones that looked like he could use them as makeshift hammers. They fit perfectly into his palms, so once the spear failed him, he would still have other weapons available. He walked straight into the cave. His miraculous escape had filled him with confidence, even if it had been incredibly close, but he had gotten away. Even better was the fact that he finally had a real taste of how great it felt to be a cultivator. He was a hundred percent sure that he would have died multiple times if it hadn't been for his focused state.

He waited at the entrance to the cave until he could see a bit better. Then he continued deeper until he finally saw the mushrooms glow around the corner. Tom gripped his spear tighter as he slowly peeked behind the bend... And everything looked exactly the same as the last time. There were no stone or mineral golems anywhere in sight. The mineral veins were in a perfect state like they had been there for centuries, just waiting for someone to mine them. But Tom knew better. Well, at least now he did.

Tom placed his backup rock down and did his best to walk extremely quietly to what he believed to be copper ore. The deep azure-blue color of the ore was fraudulently beautiful. Tom felt almost bad as he was about to try to break this nature's art piece, the emphasis being on the almost. He looked at the ore, trying to figure out where the golem was and if it had the core. As it seemed to be some kinda weak spot. Because he had defeated all of his enemies by hitting it. And so had the other person who had gotten earlier into the Secverse.

He reasoned as there were no noticeable signs where the golem was, it would be smart to hit the center of the ore vein, right? Isn't everything always in the center?

Tom couldn't find the position of the golem. So he took a moment to figure out his game plan and hit the wall with his 'spear.' He put all his weight behind the spear and stabbed forwards, to his surprise, the spear didn't explode on the impact. However, neither did it do any real damage. It sank around half a centimeter into the ore. Tom immediately knew that if he were to use his spear to defeat the golems, he would be here for days before he even defeated his first golem. The spear's tip was so tiny that he would have to be able to hit a pencil-sized spot on a moving target multiple times in a row to do any serious damage to the golem. So that plan was a bust, but it was as he had expected.

Tom was quite happy with his deductions about hitting the center as he had most certainly hit the golem as it let out an angry roar. And it started detaching itself from the wall. The area around the copper ore started moving. It was like the wall itself was coming to life. It only twenty seconds to detach from the wall. Immediately after it threw its enormous hand toward Tom's head. He hadn't been idle while it was detaching from the wall. He had continuously stabbed at it with his spear doing negligible damage to it. Once it was free from the wall Tom dodged the punch, discarded his spear throwing it away from the battle, and went for his rocks.

Tom placed the rocks in his hands. Dodged another attack from the golem and performed a counter-attack hitting the golem on its mid-drift with the stone. And... Well, it was a stupid idea. Surprisingly it felt like he had hit a stone wall. He felt how the strength of the impact flowed right through the rock and to his muscles and bones. He felt like something must have broken on the impact, but Tom had to keep on dodging and disengaging.

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Tom had gotten the information he wanted. He had nothing that could hurt the golems, and neither could he come up with anything to achieve it. Sometimes one just has to admit defeat and come back later when they were more powerful.

He had so little time to collect something worth selling. Because he needed to earn some credits if he ever wanted better weapons that stick on a stick. It pained Tom immensely to give up, but it was that or waste what little time he had left. So regretfully Tom decided to leave the cave and hope that he would have better luck elsewhere. Tom dodged another attack, deciding that he had gotten enough dodging practice out of this golem and it was time to leave. But just then, he saw how the iron golem was almost out of the wall, but there was something off about it. So Tom decided to observe it for a while longer. Then he spotted it. The iron golem had a big chunk missing from its side.

Tom looked at it in confusion, but the massive fist coming for his head snapped him back to reality. He dodged backward as he needed space to think. Then he remembered it. How he had used the iron golem to block the copper's attack as he was running out from here.

"Oh, I am truly a genius. I just hadn't realized that my subconscious mind had already defeated these golems." Tom laughed. Now he just had to reproduce his heroics from the last time without dying.

However, he did not let greed blind him. he dodged one final attack and rushed out of the cave to recoup and form a plan. As he rather not dance between two massive golems in the hopes that they would only hit each other, as one of their hits could turn him into a meat paste.

After Tom was out of the cave and sure that the golems weren't following him, he stopped and started planning. Now that he had a way to hurt them, he could actually plan something other than just hope that they stay still while he poked them with his spear.

"What do I know about them... They are slow and clumsy and most importantly dumb... But they won't leave the cave... And the Iron one came out of the wall must slower, maybe because I hurt the copper one, and it had a proper motivation to come after me..."

Tom thought out how things had played out and started formulating a plan.

Once he finally settled on a plan. He spend half an hour collecting everything he would need, or rather anything that could be even remotely useful, and transporting them to the entrance of the cave. Then he went back into the cave to check if the golems were still roaming around. But to Tom's relief, they had gone back into the wall.

Nothing made one truly respect humanity's advancement in science more than trying to achieve anything using only natural resources in a limited quantity. He would have been ready to give up all of his preparations only to have a bit of rope. But one had to work with what they were given. So his only option was to make what he had count.

Tom went to the space where the copper and iron golem were hiding and started setting up his trap, hoping that if he didn't touch the ore they wouldn't come out. To his relief, he was right.

"This is the definition of spawn camping," Tom thought after he finished setting up. It was surprisingly nice to be able to set up whatever you wished exactly on the spot from where you knew your enemy would be coming.

"Well, it's time to test if I wasted my time or not."

Then Tom started his grand performance. He went next to the place where he thought the iron golem would be. Then started throwing stones at the copper golems hiding place. It didn't take long before the copper golem had enough of his little tricks as it started detaching itself from the wall. And Tom's first gamble in the plan paid off, as he hadn't truly hurt it stayed quiet as it freed itself, like the golems who had responded to other's battle cries.

Once it was free its head, a larger stone full of clearly purer copper ore, followed the trajectory of the rocks to Tom. It immediately let out a roar and charged toward him, which woke up the iron golem that started moving right behind Tom's back. But the copper golem closed the distance before the iron golem detached itself from the wall. And the copper golem threw a punch toward Tom and the iron golem, but Tom jumped to the ground at the last moment, and the punch land on the iron golem and broke off one of its arms. However, this had made it mad, truly mad, it freed itself from the wall in one swift movement and prepared to crush Tom under its feet. However, before it could step forward Tom's preparations paid off, as it ran into his spear, that was stuffed into a small hole in the ground supported by rocks. It didn't hold the golem for a long as the golem punched the spear into smithereens, but it had held for long enough that Tom was able to scamper back to his feet.

Tom had won the first round and delivered a devastating blow to his opponent. The iron golem was in a horrible state. It was missing one of its arms, and its side had a massive hole in it, and it clearly had problems moving around. But at the same time, he had burned through most of his preparations. The only thing he had left was that he had placed a large rock around the cave floor in the hopes that the golems were as clumsy as they looked.

Tom made some distance between himself and the golems, and let them come to him. To his immense pleasure, the iron golems missing arm was on the side of the wall. Tom didn't have to think about what he was going to do. No, he charged straight for the space between the iron golem and the wall. Once he neared, it seemed like the iron golem finally understood that it didn't have its arm, so it started to turn its body just as Tom was next to it. But before it could finish turning, a fist smashed through what remained of its midsection. The iron golem couldn't handle the abuse anymore and it collapsed to the ground, leaving behind a pile of stone and iron ore.

Tom kept on running, only turning his head enough to make sure that he had won. Then he continued straight out of the cave.