Tom looked at his former body, which he had killed. He didn't know how to feel about it. On the other hand, he was happy that there wouldn't be some creature running around looking like him.

"Does this count as suicide?" Tom wondered as he technically had killed his old body.

Tom took the spear out of the body and saw a dark grey glow coming from inside the body. His mind immediately thought of the bear and how he saw a similar glow inside its skull before he found the core. Knowing that it could be another core, Tom didn't hesitate to blunge his hand inside the body and fish it out. The body felt much softer than regular wood, almost like it was half rotten.

When he finally pulled his hand out of the corpse. He felt just disgusted, he had violated his own corpse, and on top of that, his whole hand was covered in black sticky mucus. But it was all worth it. On his palm, he held a gem half the size of the original, and it was shining dull dark grey light.

Tom quickly realized that the black liquid was corroding his hand. It was quite a nice wake-up call to reality. Just maybe it was not the smartest idea to shove your hand into a corpse that had somehow come back to life.

"Why am I this dump?" Tom asked himself as he started wiping the black liquid off his hand with moss. Tom watched with a mix of horror and curiosity as small black lines began spreading through his hand.

"What am I supposed to do now? I rather not die and waste time... And most importantly, the pain..." Tom shuddered as he thought back to the last time he died.

When the black lines spread to his wrist, he felt how it started hurting more and more as it got further from his arm. It was almost like something had numbed the whole of his hand. Tom thought of amputating his hand, but he just couldn't do it, as he had nothing to do it with, and he was not metal enough to slowly use the spear to do it. And even if he could do it, he wouldn't, as it would count as giving up.

"Am I going to turn to that?" Tom thought while looking at the corpse. Tom forced his mind to focus on the problem and tried to ignore the pain, but it was always there, constantly increasing and making him focus on it.

"This is similar to the last time," Tom thought. At the same moment, he dropped the core. And immediately, he realized that the pain had subsided greatly.

"Huh?" Tom looked at the core now on the ground, dumbfounded. "It really was this easy to solve this..." He thought, almost disappointed? It was like his mind wanted it to be some great challenge that he would have to solve in order to survive. " What is going on with my mind? When did I become this hungry for adventure?"

Tom looked at his arm and noticed that the black lines had stopped advancing, but they weren't receding either. "What did I do last time? Oh yes, I focused my whole mind on my body, wanting to know what was happening." Tom got right to work. He focuses his whole mind on feeling his arm. While trying his best to ignore the pain, which was much easier now that he had dropped the core.

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He kept staring at it for ten minutes straight, but nothing happened. Then he suddenly felt it. Like there was something foreign in his hand. He could see it with his mind, hazy black lines spreading from where he had held the core in his hand. At the center, there was a bigger cluster of the black energy.

But no matter what he did. He couldn't see anything else. He also tried to focus his mind on the black lines and force them to leave his body, but nothing happened. He felt like he was missing something. Like he needed something similar to the black lines that was entirely his own. So that he could use it to force the other energy out. Tom remembered that in his hyper-focus state last time, he had seen the blue energy in his mind, which had defended him from the invading energies.

This time he focused on his mind and tried to find the energy, but it was like it didn't exist. No matter how he tried to think of it and to focus on different parts of his brain, nothing happened. Tom finally had to give up, even if it pained him to no end.

Tom could feel how he was close to the solution. It was so close but so far. So he tried to remember every last detail of it. "Last time, the blue energy defended me. Almost like it was my body's natural defense mechanism against the invasion... At that time, I could feel it, but it was like it wasn't placed anywhere in my brain. It was almost like it was superimposed on top of it! It started to lessen as I focused my will harder... what if..." Tom could feel his excitement growing as he thought of a possible solution.

Tom remembered what the system had said.

"MIND, BODY, CORE"

"WILL, FORGE, CENTRALIZE"

He was fairly sure he had figured out the first piece of the puzzle.

Tom thought how last time his whole being wanted to survive. He had not thought about anything else, as if his whole being wanted the same thing. And then he had seen it. The ball of his will, almost like he had created it to fulfill his wish to survive. And later, there was no sign of it while he looked for it. So just maybe, there was yet no place for it in his head? And it had just been temporary power, like he had borrowed it from somewhere but not harnessed it fully for himself?

Tom focused his whole mind on his own head and superimposed a ball of willpower on top of his brain, like it was in a different layer of reality. At first, nothing happened. But Tom felt that something was resisting his attempts to do it. Almost like there was a wall in his mind that did not wish for this to happen. So Tom pushed harder. There was blood flowing out of his orifices, but Tom had no brain power left to even notice it.

The wall did not wish to move, no matter how hard he pushed. Tom needed more power. In this hyper-focused state where his whole mind was focused only on a single goal, he did not even think about what he was doing. He only released a scream, and he could feel that there was some power in his hand. He did not care what it was. The only thing he cared for at the moment was power, so he used it. He could feel it trying to resist him, but the energy was strange. It felt like it was his, but at the same time, it wasn't. But he had no time to focus on it. He felt more of the same power near his feet and did the same to it. This time the resistance was much greater, he could feel the baby bear inside of the energy sleeping, but he did not care. He took the energy surrounding the bear and forced all of it onto the wall. All of the energy dispatched with, and so did the baby bear, like they never even were there. But he could see how a small portion of the energy stuck to the wall and started spreading around like it had done with his hand. It was like the great wall in front of his eyes was rotting from the inside. Pieces of it started to fall, and in no time, it shattered.

Now he could finally see space where there was a minuscule ball of blue hanging in the air. As he watched it, the last bit of the blue energy disappeared from the ball.

And then he saw only darkness. His last thought was, "Not again..."