It had taken him two minutes to fix his bones, it had been the fastest healing he had managed to do so far, but the amount of energy he had to use to achieve it was ridiculous.

He had spent as much energy to heal a couple of bones as he had spent on advancing the whole of his lower body's bones, the expenditure was ridiculous, but at least he was back up in time.

He could still hear the gecko's step echoing through the tunnel walls and bloody trail leading deeper into the cave.

He quickly strapped a light stone to his head and started following the trail, running down the tunnel, not daring to give the gecko any time to do the exactly same thing he just did.

He was running as fast as he dared, marginally slowing down each time there was a turn, not willing to plunge into the unknown head first. The tunnel's seemingly erratic turns happened everywhere from a couple of meters to ten meters forcing him to slow his pace quite often.

But he was starting to realize that something wasn't right. The air was heavier, and after each turn moving his body was harder and harder. However, Tom had ignored this in the hopes that he could catch up to the gecko in time, but reality forced him to acknowledge that maybe his biggest current threat wasn't the gecko.

He felt it as a shock passed through his skin, making his whole arm spasm, and the very next moment, the floodgates were opened, the same occurred all over his body, reducing him into a spasming mess writhing in agony on the tunnel's floor.

He realized all too late what his opportunism had inflicted upon him. He had wholly ignored the very factor that had led him into the cave, the electricity mana.

He quickly focused inwards, trying to ignore the pain. He saw how the electricity mana had pushed through his skin and burrowed into his muscles like tree roots, spreading deeper into his body from the initial holes in his skin. The mana was slowly burning through his muscles while confusing his nerves, robbing him of his body control.

The same thing happened all over his body as the mana punched through his skin from multiple points. The mana around him noticed the path of the least resistance into his body and quickly funnel in through these holes.

As soon as he realized the gravity of the situation, he quickly focused all of his willpower on the electricity mana inside of his body, trying his best to force it out. However, he struggled to get even a tiny portion of it under his control, it was the strongest mana he had so far run into, and to top it all off, there was already so much of the energy inside of his body.

The electricity mana was resisting his attempts like he was a kid fighting an adult, and all of his advances amounted to nothing, as even if he brought a portion of the energy under his control, an even greater amount of the mana would burrow into his body. He continued to resist the energy's progress to the best of his ability, but it was pointless.

After some time, he saw as two separate root systems connect inside of his muscles. Then greater and greater amounts of mana started cycling through the freshly created path, entering his body and destroying everything in its way, leaving before he could even try to affect it with his will.

This gave Tom an idea, maybe he could somehow imitate the mana's functions?

Tom abandoned all of his focus on his limbs, allowing the energy to do whatever it wanted to them, focusing on the parts he needed to survive. Then he took all of the mana he had managed to get under his command during the whole ordeal and guided it to one of the biggest channels that had formed into his body that was connecting two points on either side of his torso.

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Then he guided the lump of energy under his control out of his body, and a lot of the energy followed the path it created. But it was pointless, almost instantly, just as much mana flooded back in from the environment. Crushing his last non-suicidal ideal, now all he had left was despair.

He knew he was on borrowed time.

And he had only a single mad idea left.

The only thing he could think of that could possibly save him was if he couldn't get it out of his body, then what about storing it? Using the energy's own power to save himself?

He took the same ball of energy under his control, and this time he didn't make a path out of his body. No, he drove it straight to the center of his body, right where he had thrown the neutral mana at for the whole of yesterday. A lot of the mana followed the clump under his control, and then he used his willpower to guide more of it to follow it.

He connected more paths to the center of his torso and did his best to contain the mana with his willpower, somewhat reducing the speed of his body's destruction by funneling most of the mana into a single point.

He was doing so many different things at once that he knew that he couldn't continue it for long, so once he had connected them, he focused all of his willpower on containing the energy. It was now much easier, as he had a much smaller area to cover and didn't have to split his focus into countless points around his body. No, he just had to focus it around a coin-sized area in the center of his torso, letting the energy pass in but not letting it escape.

It was also much easier to wrestle the control of the mana to himself as the outside influences had so much less electricity mana around it and it had to travel all the way to the center of his body and not just affect the energy that was only skin deep.

The amount of electricity mana kept rising, but the space stayed the same. Tom could feel how it was starting to push against his willpower walls harder and harder, but he gave up on everything else, focusing on everything he had containing it. He could see some light at the end of the tunnel. The energy wasn't disappearing anywhere, clearly having oversaturated whatever limit there was on the body, but at this point, Tom wasn't that excited about it, as the amount of energy in the center was just rising.

He used all of the energy he had gotten under his control to help his willpower, creating a barrier to retain the energy in the center of his torso. He could feel it as the pressure kept on building up and pushing against his walls, but he held firm, not giving up any ground.

He knew he needed to do something, he had only so much willpower, and he was steadily reaching his limits.

He decided to go with one of his earlier theories. The only one that fit his current situation in a way that could help him. He used the mana under his control with his willpower to push the mass of energy together, hoping beyond hope that his theories about pressure and crystallization were correct.

Tom kept pushing it together for over a minute. He was using the very last of his willpower to push the ball of energy further in. The resistance he felt while pushing didn't increase as much as he had thought it would, the smaller area he had to concentrate on helping him a lot, and it was almost like the energy had started lessening?

Finally, Tom saw it, under constant pressure, it started slowly taking on a real form. He kept on pushing, not relenting at all, moments later, the energy fully crystalized, and in the very center of the ball of energy, a fingernail-sized crystal formed, achieving a solid form.

The crystal, or should he say core, started drawing in all of the electricity mana around it. Tom watched in relief as the energy that had just moments ago tried to kill him was now feeding the core in his chest.

He had finally achieved it. He had stepped fully into the cultivation ranks, crossing off all of the boxes, mind, core, and body.

Now he only had to survive, and as he looked at his body, he knew that he would need another miracle. His legs and arms were basically completely destroyed, countless different holes going through them having consumed most of the flesh in them. His only saving grace was that they had cauterized his blood vessels on their way, stopping him from bleeding out.

His head was the only thing holding on much better, his skull and willpower having mounted a respectable defense, as his willpower automatically stopped the mana from approaching its kingdom. However, as he tried to open his eyes or hear anything, he realized that he couldn't, he was completely limited to the world inside of his body.

His torso wasn't in much better shape. It had countless holes running through it, but most of them had mana running through them and were feeding his core.

He didn't know how it worked, and at this moment he didn't care. He wasn't going to question the only thing keeping him alive.

He felt so tired and was almost tempted to give up and fall asleep. However, he could feel how the amount of the energy was reaching critical levels, and cracks had started forming on the surface of the core.

He could see nothing good coming from the only thing keeping him alive breaking. So he used the energy inside of his core for the first time. He channeled it through his body, it came to him almost instinctively. For the first time, he used the ability he had gained from the bigger golems core. He empowered the straps of flesh and bones his arms and legs still had, pushing their broken state to a barely functional one.

Then he immediately started crawling, going backward toward the cave's entrance, trying to get further away from the electricity mana. None of his limbs really worked, he had to improvise with each of his movements, compensating for the parts of them that were missing. However, his core was drawing in energy, remedying for the energy he was throwing away in droves, just to allow himself to move a bit.

He pushed his body beyond its limits, periodically bumping into a wall, struggling to navigate all of the turns blind. He continued on moving, until he finally reached his body's limit that he couldn't just push beyond with willpower and determination.

Then he fell to the ground and passed out.