Tom appeared in Sandy's shop and made his way outside it.

Then he immediately said status, wanting to find out how much he had advanced.

___________________

Name: Tom Palmer

Awakened mind 5

Awakened body 3

__________________

Tom was happy beyond belief. He had advanced three ranks of his mind at once. And on top of that as an added benefit, he had gotten one rank into his body.

Tom started wandering around this burgeoning city. There were buildings appearing on the outskirts of the city at a rapid pace. Each of the factions attempted to claim the governor position for themselves, so they wanted to participate in the city's development and earn merit points for themselves while doing it.

There were clearly camps forming as people had limited options. Most people were earning money by collecting basic materials such as minerals and wood for building or selling them to traders.

Tom spent most of the hour walking around the city, watching how it was forming at a record-breaking pace. There were countless tools and materials he didn't recognize. He could only presume that they were some advanced construction methods from the Empire.

Then he visited the Training town, checking if there were any good options for him, as he was about to come into a fortune. However, the way the AI had recommended using a broader approach, and how the weird-looking people had entered the Cultivations basics shop just after it, the whole situation just felt too fishy to be a coincidence. He decided that he might as well spend most of the money buying the cores for himself, and upgrading his gear.

Soon enough, Mike arrived, and they got straight to business. Both had decided on the same course of action, so they had to roll for each of the higher-quality cores. However, as they were on good terms, they decided that if one of them got the more expensive core, the other would get the next expensive one.

Tom got lucky as he got the bigger golems core, and Mike got the three next expensive ones to make it fair. After that, Tom got two more cores, and one credit out of their venture.

Mike had already sold his City merit point to the US government for 1,1 credit, apparently, 50 merit points were worth quite a lot. Mike also told him how he was part of a team that was currently controlling the central area of the wooden zone. Apparently, the useful cultivation resources were being quickly divided up. Mike had only managed to join the team controlling the wooden area without joining the USA faction because of his strength and as he had sold his merit points to them.

Tom didn't like how the bigger factions were starting to monopolize all the resources, but then again, he hadn't expected anything else. There was just a limited amount of resources in the zone's around the Main City 1, so naturally only the strong would be allowed access to them.

Tom knew that the three days had cost him dearly, as the teleporters in the middle of each zone had become public knowledge to the bigger factions. They had claimed them and were farming them for the monsters, letting the abundant elemental energy gather and generate a new monster, then killing them for the cores.

Mike had already hurried back towards the wooden zone's center, as the tensions were already rising between the factions. Each day there were fewer and fewer high-value resources left to claim, so it was only a matter of time before they started "borrowing" them from each other.

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Tom quickly understood the situation and realized that the zones were becoming quite crowded places, as people had nowhere else to go. However, he remembered that his friends had talked about the wilderness beyond the zones.

There was a whole planet waiting for them to claim it, but they were busy fighting against each other literally for the best of the worst that this planet could offer. Tom was quite clear on his plans, as he understood that the zones couldn't offer much to him anymore if he didn't wish to fight through a whole faction, or join one, and he wasn't at all interested in either of those options

So he upgraded his gear switched his weapons to better quality ones, and this time purchased more than three meters of rope, having learned from his previous experiences.

Then Tom started making his way toward the lake zone, as one of his friends was in the town connected to it, just outside the zone. Now he just needed to travel 50 kilometers, so he started running.

But before he managed to leave the area left for the city, he saw how a group of four people was blocking his way, clearly waiting for him to stop.

Deciding that he might as well see what this was about, he stopped.

In the lead of the group of four was a tall slender woman, and the three other people were clearly just goons.

"Hey, do you happen to know Mike?" The woman in the lead asked.

"Yeah," Tom answered curiously. Not really sure where this was going.

"And, might you have been the one he cleared the mountainous zone with him?" the woman asked, almost in a demanding voice, clearly used to giving orders and expecting them to be followed.

Tom had a bad feeling about where this was going, but he had new wound confidence in his own abilities, so he answered. " Maybe. What is it to you?"

"Well, the thing is that I would need you to sell the merit points to me. What do you say? Hmmm, let's say 0,3 credits, that would be quite a fair price wouldn't you think so." She said, while her goon showed a different kind of weapons from under their clothes.

Tom knew that if he sold his credits now, he could equip himself a bit better, and that would make his life a lot easier in the wilderness. However, the woman's offer was just insulting, as he had just heard from Mike that the going rate for merit points was 0.05 credits for one merit point, and usually there was a price increase if one was selling a lot at once. And top it all off, she had tried to threaten him.

He shortly juggled with the idea of holding an auction for his merit points. But he reasoned to himself that they would surely become more expensive once people started earning more credits and not just spending them. So he might as well sell them then.

So he just started running again, ignoring the woman as he circled around them, not even demeaning to answer the woman's angrier and angrier threats and demands. When he had passed them, he heard the woman's skrill shriek as she screamed." Catch him!!!" However, at this point, Tom was already past the group. He didn't even look back as he kept on running, he knew that at this point if someone wanted to catch him, they would have to be a professional runner, so he wasn't at all worried. He listened for a while as the woman and the goon demanded that he stop as they tried to chase him, but soon they had to give up as he was just too fast.

Once he was nearing the start of the lake zone, he realized that he should have probably asked which faction the woman represented, so he could avoid dealing with them in the future. But then he just shrugged, there were bound to be bad apples everywhere one went, especially in a chaotic place like the city.

Tom had to admit that the lake zone was by far his favorite. It was least like a copy-pasted environment. The lakes nicely broke the monotony of just repeating birch forest, and well, clear water looked the same in the outside world, so it didn't stick out to his eye. He was almost enjoying his run only problem was that he had to take countless detours as the lakes blocked his way.

But he did have a productive way to spend his time while running. He took out the biggest golems core and drew a bit of its energy into himself. And he soon realized why just a bit of it had put him in such peril, he had to stop running, as he wrestled for control over the energy with the core. This time he had to face its whole concentration, not just some energy leakage. He realized why the golem had been so hard to defeat, as even as just a core, it had forced him to spend over five minutes mentally wrestling with it for just a bit of its energy.

But once he had the energy, he knew why it had been worth three expensive cores. The moment his muscles touched the energy, they were instantly satisfied. Just a bit of it had been enough to counteract all the run's effects on his body.

He quickly decided that just maybe he wasn't in such a hurry and looked for a good place to post up for a while, as he still had quite a few bones left that he needed to break. Even if he wasn't looking forwards to it, he knew that there was no point in delaying it any further. Because once he arrived in the wilderness, he would surely need every single advance he could create for himself.