Tom sat on the grass, looking at his spoils while trying to do an internal damage report. He was sure that he had at least seven broken ribs, and his left arm had broken in two different spots, on top of that, his right arm must have had a couple of hairline fractures.

He also realized that this was the first time he had seen the nighttime in the Secverse. He had always logged or passed out before he saw the sun going down, It was surprisingly beautiful. It wasn't just complete darkness. No there were countless stars in the night sky and a moon shining its light over the valley bathing it in its light.

"Well, I guess I can finally find out how long it takes to recover in the Secverse." Tom thought, managing to find at least something positive about his injuries.

Tom didn't dare to log out until he did something to the gold-like ore core. He could see how it was a lot different than the other two cores, they seemed like they had no energy left and had already surrendered to their fates. But not the gold-like ore core. Tom could feel it as he moved his hand near it. It was propping its surroundings with its energy, sending it into the rock under the shallow layer of soil.

Tom could probably hit it with his hammer until it had no energy left, but it seemed like quite a brutish way of handling an object he wanted to keep as much of its value as possible.

Then Tom remembered something he had heard in a biology lesson. "when people train, they damage their muscle cells, and they heal into stronger versions of themselves or something like that." Tom wasn't completely sure how it worked, but that sounded familiar to him.

"So the last time I used the iron cores energy, I was using it to speed up the healing progress... So what if..." Tom didn't waste any more time contemplating. He moved his arms on top of the ore ball.

Then he used his willpower to draw in a bit of its energy and crushed its connection to the core. Even if Tom was tired, The core was more so, as its resistance was easily overcome.

Luckily for Tom, the impact hadn't taken his bone too badly out of place, it had only broken them at multiple locations. Tom concentrated the energy he had stolen onto the parts of his arm that hurt the most, and he willed with his willpower it to go into the bone while he did his best with his other arm to set the bone right. And to Tom's delight, it went in and started healing it. He didn't waste any more time. He started periodically drawing more and more energy into himself and guiding it into his broken bones, careful not to overdo it and overwhelm his body with too much energy.

Tom continued at it for over an hour. To his surprise, his bones needed ridiculous amounts of energy, it seemed to be doing much more than just healing them.

When Tom finally finished, the core was in bad shape, he had used much more energy than he had intended to, and over one-third of the core's energy was gone. However, now his bones were healed. The energy had also affected the muscles around the broken bones, he felt how they seemed much better than before, but just to be sure, Tom checked his status.

____________________

Name: Tom Palmer

Awakened mind 2

Awakened body 1

_____________________

And sure enough, his body had gone up another rank. However, so had his mind. He wasn't sure what he had done to earn it, but he was still happy about it. "Is it just me pushing my mental limits and controlling mana?" Tom wondered, but he had no fast way of proving it, so he decided to just pay more attention to it.

He also knew what he had to do. Well, not had to, but should do it. There was a clear path forwards. He just wasn't happy about it, nor sure he could even do it. As he had only broken and fixed a very small portion of his body's bones, yet he had gotten significant gains out of it.

Tom heaved a deep sigh as he took out his hammer, placed his hand on the ground, and just stared at it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Maybe I should consider a career change? I could probably do very well as a teacher or some other nice profession that doesn't require you to break your own bones..."

But then he found the small part of his brain that wanted to get stronger no matter the consequences, and he embraced its madness and brought the hammer down on his hand, but he didn't let the pain stop him. He didn't spare on his willpower usage as he forced the part of his brain than receives the pain signals to ignore it. He only stopped when he had managed to break every bone in his hand.

Tom hadn't even realized how much willpower he had spent on blocking the pain, but he didn't care, as he was sure that he would have stopped if he had felt it. However, he still had to fix the damage he had done to himself, or it all would have been for nothing. So Tom focused and pulled more energy out of the core, luckily its resistance had lowered to pitiful levels. He then guided the energy to his hand and watched as it started healing and improving it.

However, Tom was now too low on willpower if he didn't wish to break his bones without blocking the pain, but he hadn't reached that level of commitment to his pursuit of power.

So Tom decided to go and check on the mountain. If somebody thought that he would give up after his first excursion, they would have been horribly wrong, he considered it a great victory. He had permanently lowered their number by three, and done impressive damage to some of the golems, even if he didn't manage to get their cores. But he had seen how the golems were weaker after they had to reform their bodies.

And even better, if he could perform his strategy again, he would be able to clear the mountain in a reasonable time, hopefully before anyone else made their way here.

Of course, he was deliberately ignoring the bigger golem in all his forecasts. He firmly believed that he would be able to figure out a way to handle it before he had cleared out all the other golems.

Firstly Tom warily made his way towards where he thought the rope had fallen, but before he could even reach it, Tom noticed movement in one of the upper tunnels, and then he heard a roar as a golem sounded the alarms.

However, rather than being disappointed by this development, he was elated. His biggest problem previously had been that he had to be always wary of the golems ganging up on him, but now that there were sentries, it meant he could probably face off only against one or two golems at once, as the mountain was so massive that there was no way they had the numbers to cover it efficiently.

Tom spent a while looking for the rope, but before he could find it, the rocks started flying, so he performed a tactical retreat.

Tom Took a short break and quickly visited the real world to make sure that his body wouldn't betray him and give up at a critical juncture. Twenty minutes later, he logged back in.

This time Tom approached the mountain from a different point, making sure that he wasn't visible to the point where his rope and golems waited for him.

Tom did his best to be as sneaky as possible while not sacrificing his speed, as he realized it would take him way too long to crawl through the high grass. His 'sneaking' mostly compromised of him jumping down into the high grass whenever he thought he saw movement in any of the tunnels.

Tom had been lucky when he had selected his approach point, as when he finally reached the mountain, he hadn't heard any roars. He hugged the mountain's wall as he walked, trying to be as quiet as possible, as he circled around its wall towards the point where the golem stood guard. Because he didn't know the tunnels on this side of the mountain, he had reasoned it would be smarter to use the outside and hope none of the golems were looking straight down.

And twice in a row, his luck had delivered. Once Tom saw a familiar marking near a cave mouth, he immediately went inside, and behind the first bend, he found a golem standing like a statue guarding the entry point.

This time Tom didn't panic or get scared. He immediately took his hammer and attacked even before the golem had time to register that he was there. Tom swung his hammers with all his might, and it connected with the golem's arm. Tom wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised. Tom felt no pain as the vibrations from the hit reached his arms, and at the same time, the hammers continued on their course straight through the arm and took it with them.

From then on, the battle was already won. Tom just kept near the side of the golem that was missing the arm and delivered hit after hit until the golem finally slumped to the ground, and Tom claimed his price, another core. It had been a completely one-sided match.

"Oh, I could truly get used to this," Tom thought, impressed by his body's performance. He didn't have to limit his hit anymore, as his body could handle the stress that came with continuously hitting different kinds of ores.

"And the power I can leverage out of my arm, truly wonderous!" Tom was over the moon as he continued deeper into the mountain, and if he was lucky, there would be another single golem patrol soon responding to the last one's roar.

All he now had to do, was clear the mountain of golems.