Tom woke up at six am. He was glad, as it seemed like his mind was getting better and better at handling exhaustion. As he had only slept for a bit under twelve hours.

He didn't waste any time as he rushed through his morning routine and logged back into the secverse. He only had three hours to collect whatever he thought might hold value. Because his self-control had slipped yesterday, so now he had to make it up.

However, once he logged back in, he wasn't disappointed in himself and his nonexistent self-control anymore. His body felt much better than it had ever felt. He could feel how all his muscles held much more power than they had just moments before, the difference between his body in the real world and his body in the Secverse was night and day. He was sure that if he now had to sprint for a full hour while holding the core, it wouldn't be a problem. But he could still clearly tell that the power he now possessed wasn't on any superhuman level. It was more like his nonexistent strength had gone through a qualitative change. It was like he could lift a bit more than before, but he could do it for much longer, it was more like his endurance had doubled.

Tom warily turned his attention onto the core, and at least to the naked eye, it didn't look much different, but it was to be expected, as the core itself was within the ore chunk. Tom placed his hand on the rock and saw how the concentration of the brown energy was just one-third of its original concentration.

Tom wasn't sure how to feel about it. He still had the core, but its size had greatly diminished, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that its value must have come dramatically down.

But as he didn't yet know how big of a hole he had drilled into his pocket, he wasn't too bothered, as he had gotten something that was much more valuable to him, a true power. Tom already knew he had gotten addicted to the feeling of his new and improved body, so little monetary setback meant little to him.

He had checked Empire net's prices for a basic wilderness survival kit. It contained basic tools and weapons like a hammer, pickaxe, sword, steel wire, backpack, and so on, it would cost him a full credit. He had been shocked by the price, but apparently, they all were tier 0 tools. Apparently, the iron tools they had on Earth wouldn't last that long in this environment. Tom understood the value of buying quality gear, as he didn't wish his equipment to fail him in a critical moment. And it would turn into a real credits sink if he had to continuously upgrade his gear.

So he had a clear goal in his mind, but no way of knowing if he was close at all to reaching it. So the only thing he could do was collect everything he thought could have any value and hope for the best.

He took off his shirt and fashioned it into a sack of sorts, tying close all of the holes except the one meant for his torso. Then he planned to spend the next three hours collecting everything he thought might hold some value. He mostly followed the river and collected some plants from its bottom that looked different. After an hour, Tom was quite underwhelmed by his gains, so he decided that he needed to change his plan. So he looked at one of the mountains near him that was a bit higher than the rest around it. And how the river got smaller and smaller by splitting up into smaller streams nearer the river got to the mountain. He seemed to have reached the river's source.

"Maybe there's something valuable up there," Tom thought and started walking towards it. It was quite an easy environment to track through. The grassy ground acted as a gentle slope, periodically having solid rock breaking through its surface and forming cliff faces, but fortunately, they were easy to circumvent.

It did not take long for Tom to reach the point of the mountain where it started getting steeper, but he powered through it, barely even getting tired, thanks to his newfound endurance.

The closer he got to the hilltop, the more he saw more and more small streams of water going downwards.

Before him was the last rock face of the mountain before he would reach the crest. But this time, he would actually have to climb up it, not just circumvent it, by walking next to it. He could also see how there was water coming from the top, most of the rocks looked wet and slippery, so he would really have to choose his route carefully.

"Well, I have already come this far," Tom said resolutely.

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And started climbing, which was extremely awkward to do with the core. First, he would lift the core onto a flat above him, and then he would pull himself up. He was clad that he was tall enough, as otherwise, he would have used his nonexistent climbing skill. To Tom's surprise, it wasn't that hard, just very tiring repetition.

"There better be something of value up there." Tom lamented as he pulled himself up a particularly steep wall.

After one final pull, he reached the plateau on top of the small mountain. He probably had spent over an hour climbing it, and even his improved body was starting to feel the fatigue from the exertion.

But now he had finally reached the top, and to his relief, there was a perfectly circular pool of crystal clear water at the top. He could see how the pool was leaking over its edges, releasing water from itself to the environment around it, clearly feeding the river below.

At the bottom of the pool was some strange blue rock. But to Tom's dismay, there was nothing that he could just take with him.

Tom felt like cursing. He was sure that what he was seeing must be worth something, but he had no way to collect any of it.

But he refused to give up so easily, so he tested the water in case it actually wasn't water. However, it felt and smelled just like normal water. The only complaint he could raise against it was that it may have been a bit colder than he would have liked. So he took off his clothes and dived into the pool, then he tried to pry the rock loose. However, they wouldn't budge.

Just as Tom felt his desperation rising, he had an idea. The core was clearly looking for something... Could it be that it was looking for rocks to form its body? As Tom had already made it all the way to the top of the mountain, he decided that he might as well try.

So he took the core, dived back down, and placed it on top of the blue rocks. Then he concentrated on what it was doing. He felt how it sent its energy out. It was clearly much more careful than before, apparently Tom had traumatized it. But once it came into contact with the blue rock, Tom could feel how the energy shot toward it, as if it had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tom felt how the energy started entering the rocks, then the core's energy had some kind of a conversation? With the weaker energy inside the blue rocks. Tom didn't know how else to describe it, the energies swirled around each other, keeping up a respectful distance from each other. And once they were done communicating, they started mixing together.

Tom had to stop his observations as he was running out of breath. So he kicked himself back to the top and filled his lungs up with the mountain air.

Then he dived back down, and to Tom's surprise, the core worked extremely fast. It was almost like, it was desperately putting everything on the line, to escape from Tom's grasp.

The core's energy had spread abound thirty centimeters (about one foot) around the core, mixing with the energy inside of the blue stone. The core itself was almost void of any energy, as most of its energy was in the rocks around it. Tom instinctually knew that if he wanted to drain the rest of the core's energy, he wouldn't face any resistance.

Tom went back to the surface, debating what to do. He was sure that if he had to face a similar golem he had faced in the cave, his hopes of defeating it wouldn't be that great. But Tom stopped himself there. His line of thought was out-of-date, he was now in much better shape, and he had a sure way to defeat it. All he had to do was just push it over the edge, and it was not like he would be facing multiple enemies.

Tom managed to get his thinking on the right track and adapt it to his newfound strength. So Tom let the golem do whatever it wanted. As he was curious about what it was going to do, and he had a newfound confidence in his own abilities.

After twenty minutes of periodically diving down and checking on the core, only to see how it had spread its energies further and further from the core. Tom was starting to get a bit bored of the waiting. And to be honest, a bit worried, as the cores energies now covered a circle with a diameter of 1,5 meters.

Then something happened. The surface of the whole pool started shaking like it was in the mids of an earthquake. Tom peered into the pool and saw how the blue rocks in the area the cores energies had encased started moving and encompassing the core. The progress took only a couple of minutes, and then out of the pool climbed a meter-tall golem made of blue stone, water continuously dripping from the rock.

It didn't waste even a second before it rushed at Tom, clearly extremely mad at him. This time there was no epic battle. No, once it came at Tom, he easily dodged it, ducking under the golem punch, and as it was turning around, He jumped toward it and delivered a devastating kick with both of his legs. The golem flew over the edge of the plateau and exploded into hundreds of pieces as it crashed to the bottom of the cliff.

Tom looked at the pool and how it had a perfectly circular hole of missing the blue rock at its bottom, but nothing else seemed to have changed. So Tom climbed back down where the blue golem remains lay. He had no idea what the stone was, but he hoped it would be valuable, as it still was leaking water from its pores, so it must be at least a bit special.

Tom packed as much as he could of the stone into his shirt, then he took off his pants, tied its legs into knots, and filled them also up with the blue rocks. Tom soon found the core or what remained of it. Once he probed the insides of the core, he could feel how there was barely any energy remaining. The color had also changed from brown to a mix between blue and brown.

After collecting as many of the blue rocks, as he could carry on his body, he logged out.