Tom's break was a ridiculously short affair. He just took care of his body, exercised a bit, and logged back into the Secverse. He noticed that he wasn't experiencing any mental exhaustion, even if he had been mentally exhausting work, but he quickly linked it to his new and improved mental rank.

Once Tom was back inside the game, he did some basic movements, getting used to his improved body. However, the improvements weren't that impressive. Naturally, all of his movements felt faster and better, but he also felt like he was missing something, and he was quite sure he knew what it was. After all, he had seen the bigger golem's insides and the energy lines that were inside of it. He now had to add another goal to his rapidly growing to-do list. But before he could get ahead of himself, he knew that he needed to complete the first step, and get a core for himself.

After that Tom was back on the move, following the rivers downwards. While he ran, he started to think about what more he could do to his body to gain five more ranks. He naturally immediately placed all of his organs on the list, but how could he do anything to them without opening himself up and trying to hit them? " Maybe I should read a biology book..."

The only thing he thought he could currently affect was his skin. He was sure that Mike had advanced his skin because how it acted was just too absurd otherwise. He was quite disappointed that they never managed to finish their talk about cultivation, as he would have gladly learned how he had done it.

Tom started thinking about what he had inside his backpack that could help him to damage his organs or skin. But then it hit him. What had he placed in his pocket? and later moved into his backpack? Because they just weren't worth it to sell.

He quickly dug a ball of moss out of his backpack, and to his relief, he found the dead juniper berries still intact. He crushed one against his arm, hoping for the best. And sure enough, it started corroding his skin. However, once it reached his muscles, its advance came to an immediate stop, almost like it had run into an unpenetrable wall. But apparently, it wanted only to consume, as it quickly changed its trajectory from downwards to sideways, and it started eating more and more of his skin.

Tom quickly thought about it and decided that using the biggest golems core's energy on his skin wouldn't be a bad idea, as the ability to turn his skin harder would be perfect. The only problem was that he had no idea if that would happen, as he had no core to call his own. But he believed that it would work, as he had seen how the golem acted, and on top of that, it was the feeling he was getting from the core.

He continued smashing the berries against his arm, he had only enough of them for his forearm, but at least now he knew what he had to do. He was sure that finding other corrosive berries or such wouldn't be that difficult, and he could probably buy them once he reached the other city.

So he continued on his way.

While later, he was starting to see a massive circular lake in the distance. As he got closer, he started seeing a surprisingly high amount of human activity. Out of curiosity, he continues forwards, wanting to see if the bigger factions were truly monopolizing the central areas. As he wouldn't mind getting a core or two as a sovereign from the lake zone while passing by. Who wouldn't like to get something out of their trip and not just run for 50 kilometers for the sake of transportation?

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As he got closer, he noticed more and more people milling around the lake. There were some boats and rafts on the lake, but none of them were more than one-fifth into the lake, clearly avoiding the middle areas. People were on the boats, wielding what looked like tridents and nets presumably they had figured out some method to take care of the water elementals.

But before Tom could move closer to the lake, his way was blocked by a group of people.

"Sorry, this area is under China's control, so you won't be allowed to go any further if you don't join us."

"Sure, I understand. How are they defeating the elementals?" Tom asked curiously.

"Can't tell you that, unless you join us." the person answered, clearly already getting annoyed with Tom, as he hadn't left.

Tom took the hint. He knew that his stop at the center had been for naught. However, he didn't mind it, as it was literally on the way as this was the halfway point of his journey.

So he just started circling around the lake, making some distance between himself and it, just to make sure that he wouldn't have to waste his time on pointless stops.

Tom was in a sense lucky that he was poor, as other people didn't bother him. Because his gear was nothing special, he looked more like a backpacker than some great warrior. He was just carrying a backpack filled to the brim and wearing basic leather armor with short swords on his belt, as most of his money had been invested into his body.

He saw quite a few people walking in fancy gear nearer the lake, they had clearly spent a lion's share of their credits on it. By the looks of it, they had formed into some kind of defacto leader, as people seemed to naturally flock to those who were strong or at least seemed strong.

But as Tom looked like he was nothing special, he could travel in relative peace, because other people didn't feel the need to approach him.

Of course, his travel speed was out of the ordinary, he speeded along while carrying all of his gear.

The navigation got much harder as he started the latter half of his journey. He couldn't just follow the rivers as they flowed toward the center from all over the zone and even from beyond it.

Tom tried to best to use the sun's position to select targets far in the distance that were in a relatively straight line. He ran from one target to the next while doing his best to account for the sun's movement.

However, his goal was a relatively large area, so he wasn't at all worried about missing it. If it came to the worst, he would only have to run a bit more if he just made sure that he was constantly going upwards.

After he had run for a bit over an hour, he started seeing more and more people walking toward him, so he was sure that he was getting closer to the city.

After asking for directions from a couple of people, he finally could see where the lakes came to an immediate stop, and what looked like a real forest started, not just some copy-pasted farse.

Soon after, he spotted a smaller version of the circle that was cleared for the Main City in the forest. There were a couple of buildings already built. They were much closer to the center than inside the Main City, clearly, the price of the land was much cheaper, and the number of people was much smaller.

Then again, most people were probably exploring the zones, and or they had transmigrated to the Main City in the hopes of joining a bigger faction, and gaining access to the resources they had monopolized.

Naturally, Tom saw some of the same factions' flags on the buildings, but that wasn't that surprising, as when the race was fought on a planet-wide scale the main players were bound to be ridiculously big.

Then he started making his way toward the city, determined to meet up with his friend and maybe leave him with some small nudges of wisdom, so he could get started on cultivation. And naturally, he wanted to see just how much the AI limited knowledge sharing.