Tom had found a nice place away from prying eyes, hidden by vegetation. Everything around him was nice and peaceful. In front of him was a lake that's surface was completely still, not even one ripple on its surface, birch's branches were hanging over it, its leaves trying to touch the water's surface.

And then there was Tom, trying his best not to scream as he hammered at his own bones, breaking the serenity of the environment.

He did his best to dance on the edge where the pain was still handleable, and the willpower expenditure wasn't too much for him to handle, as his mental battle with the core needed all the willpower he could spare.

Tom had a weird feeling from the core. It was almost like the material got harder as mana was channeled into it. Tom wasn't quite sure how good it was to the current him. But he had fought the big bastard, and he had seen how much potential it had. He could only hope that when he somehow manages to create a core for himself, he could use his body to its full potential.

As far as he had understood this cultivation system, a core was just a place inside one's body where one could store mana. But how could one ad another organ inside of themselves? The whole idea seemed ludicrous to him.

The body was the easiest for him to understand. He just needed to feed his body energy after it had been damaged, and slowly forge it into something better.

The mind was a bit more confusing, he needed to combine his will and mana to generate willpower, but all the finer details were still mysteries to him. However, he was quite sure that his path to advancing it lay in what he had done at the end of the golem fight.

_____

As Tom was working at breaking his leg bones, he noticed that they weren't taking that much energy into them, almost like they had already gone through this. However, he quickly realized that when he battled the big golem, just before he had wholly focused on just concentrating on the space inside of his mind, making sure that his willpower didn't dilute, he had forced some of the energy out of his mind into his body. At the same time, Tom tried to remember more of the time he was stopping himself from dying. He had no recollection of how long he had done it, he only knew that it had felt like forever. However, he couldn't remember it clearly, it was almost like he had dreamed the whole thing like there was a foggy glass between him and everything that had happened inside of his mind during those three days.

After an hour, Tom finally finished with his easily accessible bones. He had also broken some of his bones again, as there was no way that he could break them completely with just one attempt.

The only bones he still had left were his spine and skull, and he was quite nervous about them. What would he do if he broke his back and wouldn't be able to get close enough to a core and fix it? Or he broke his skull too aggressively and somehow damaged his brain?

However, he had a possible fix for breaking his spine, he took out a rope and tied the core around his chest, and warily took the hammer into his hand. Tom spent over five minutes just gathering courage, it was one thing to break his arms bones and a completely another to break his spine. Even with modern medicine, spine injuries were extremely difficult. Of course, they were fixable, but they were extremely lengthy and expensive processes. So naturally, he was scared to break his own spine, as if he somehow couldn't fix himself, he wouldn't afford the procedures to fix it. But he soon overcame his fears remembering that this was a game.

Tom took a deep breath and aimed for the lower vertebras. He heard a disturbing crunch as the hammer landed, and at least some of the vertebras broke, as he lost the feeling in his legs.

He quickly started drawing energy from the core. It was clear that the core was a good one, as even after an hour of almost constant usage, it was still fighting against him with all it got, and he had barely made a dent in its energy stores.

Tom continued slowly working upward his spine, one or two vertebras at once. He was gaining confidence with each hit, as nothing grew one's trust like experiencing it for themselves.

But, once reached the point where he lost his ability to use his hands, he had a short panic attack. However, he quickly got over it. Even though it had been a horrifying couple of seconds, he had tried to move his hand, but he just couldn't do it. However, he started to calm down once he felt the presence of the core around his chest, just waiting for him to access it.

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He quickly enforced his will over it and used the energy to fix his spine. Then he continued upwards, getting more used to the feeling of losing his ability to move after each vertebra, but never comfortable with it.

Soon enough, he had only his neck left, but as he had already experienced full-body paralysis, he just pushed forwards, wanting to be done with this.

Once he finished repairing the last vertebra before his skull got in the way, he had a hard decision to make. Either he would roll the dice and see if he could somehow break his skull without losing consciousness, or he could look for someone to help him with it. But who could he trust to break his skull? As he was sure he was not going to leave it to chance and hope that some monster would bash his skull in just the right way. The idea of damaging his brain while he played amateur surgeon just sounded like a bad idea.

"But wouldn't my brain be already more durable thanks to my mind rank, or does the brain belong to the body? Do I have to do the same to it as I did to my muscles? How could I damage my brain controllably, without, you know, destroying it? Math? Drugs? " Tom wondered, not having any ideas nor that eager to find out. It was one thing to play with one's skull and completely other with the brain.

Tom was just confusing himself. However, he was glad that the secverse was a thing, as he could not even imagine doing any of this in the real world. Well, at least not without first experimenting with them inside the Secverse, he could clearly see why it was so highly valued.

Tom came quickly to a decision, he trusted the sturdiness of his body enough that he might as well do it now, and if he failed, he could only blame himself. As they say, there is no time like the present.

However, this time he didn't use his hammer as he still was not that excited about concussions. So he took some nails he had purchased from Sandy's.

He had decided to be broader in his acquisitions, as he had a bigger budget, so he might as well use it. He had gotten a lot of material that could be used in trap making, such as some Empire's version of a fishing line and nails. Because while he had planned his attack on the mountain, he had come up with multiple trap ideas that he just couldn't execute. Oh, how he would have liked to drive some of the nails into the tunnel's walls and connect the fishing line to them, then he could have just watched as the golems came down like timber, waiting for him to claim their cores. Alas, he didn't have the right tools then, but now he had rectified the situation.

Then he got to work. Firstly he broke and fixed his jaw, but then, the real test started.

He placed the nail at a slight angle on his skull, he had made its head blunt, so it wouldn't go straight into his brain. Then he started hammering extremely carefully, like he was breaking open an egg, carefully adding force after each failed attempt to break his skull.

He was starting to get worried, as the power behind each of his hits was starting to reach dangerous levels. However, he didn't dare to stop, as he was sure that if he did so, he wouldn't be trying to do this again anytime soon.

After spending five minutes slowly adding power to his hits, something finally cracked, as his skull finally broke, and to his relief, he didn't lose consciousness, nor did he drive the nail into his own brain.

He didn't immediately try to fix it. Instead, he continued to break the area around it, as there was a starting point, and breaking the edges around the already broken area was a lot easier. His advancement speed continued growing, and as he got the technique down he never wished to learn.

He broke around a fist-sized area, before he finally drew energy from the core, and started fixing it, not daring to play too much with his luck. And as the skull started fixing itself when it came into contact with the energy, Tom could finally relax, the last of his concerns fading away. Even if he had intellectually known that there was nothing different about his skull than his other bones, he still had held small fears that it wouldn't work.

At the same time, Tom tried to send some of the energy into his brain. However, the result was disappointing. It did indeed take some of the energy, but only a tiny bit, like it was sampling it, and concluded that it wanted nothing to do with it. He got the feeling that he was missing something important. However, he didn't dare to experiment anymore or dive any deeper into the topic, as it was just too scary to play with one's own brain like it was some guinea pig.

He continued carefully breaking his skull and fixing it for the next five hours and somehow managing not to damage it, well, at least not too badly. But he was finally done. His whole skeleton had been broken at least once and fixed. This whole operation had spent over half of the core's energy, as he had done the skull at such high precision so that he wouldn't have to do it again, and it had eaten a lot of the energy. The only question left on Tom's mind was, had it been worth it?

So he quickly said status.

___________________

Name: Tom Palmer

Awakened mind 5

Awakened body 5

__________________

The elation Tom felt almost made him continue to break his bones. However, he quickly controlled himself, as he knew that the results would be diminishing, and he badly needed to take a break.