12 Third Energy

A groan resounded from Lucas's twitching mouth. His lips had barely a reddish color, making it obvious that he was pale right now. His hands were placed on top of his body while he was lying down on a bench.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a light from a stone on the ceiling. His eyes ventured to check the area, and he saw himself on a bench that was supposed to be for receptionists.

The receptionist's area wasn't crowded; instead, only a minimal number of personnel were standing before him facing their backs.

As he groaned again, a staff noticed his presence and looked at him before speaking.

"You're finally awake. Please stand up and pay for the excess payment. You overstayed." A male staff member glared at him with a disdainful eye. Though Lucas wasn't intimidated by it, he just nodded before sitting down and caressing his temple.

He remembered that before he passed out, he was drilling his body to make a passage for his third energy; now, at the present, he had three kinds of energy flowing inside his veins.

He checked his new pool to see if there were any abnormalities with it and smiled when he saw none.

'Even though it is still green and can't be compared with my dantian and core, it is still helpful since I can double up my speed in cultivation.'

His body had an energy absorption ability that gave him ease in absorbing energy. However, it existed inside his core, which makes it questionable whether it could absorb spiritual energy. Thus, he concluded that the reason he had reached the peak of the Apprentice Spirit Realm was because of it.

If the other half of his absorbed spiritual energy just went straight to his dantian, maybe he had already reached the mid-level of the Warrior stage.

He sighed before looking at his cultivation base.

"2nd level Warrior Spirit Realm. Surprisingly, it was fast." He mumbled.

However, there was still one thing that he couldn't measure; it was his third energy. If he could somehow measure it and know its purpose, he might be able to find a use for it.

Since he already knew that it was a result of mana and Qi, into which category should it fall? For cultivators or mages?

The only difference between cultivators and mages was the specific use of their energies. Mana was for magic, while spiritual energies were for extraordinary abilities and attacks. But the difference between them, especially for Lucas, was quite vague since he only had a little grasp of being a cultivator.

He stood up slowly and asked a staff member about his excess payment.

"Excuse me. I was from room 14. Can I ask how much time I overused?" He asked a lady who was passing by.

The female staff stopped and checked his record. "It was five hours."

"Shit." He swore, realizing that he didn't have enough money to pay.

'Wait… if I was right, I haven't used the monster cores. Maybe I can use it for payment since it has value with it.' He thought.

"Do you accept Monster Core as a payment? I kind of used all my money on my order."

The staff widened her eyes and was speechless by Lucas's words. When Lucas noticed it, he instinctively took back his words.

"Oh. Sorry if I requested to pay using my monster cores."

"No, it's okay." The staff spoke. "I can accept it. What cultivation base was it?"

'Oh, so they accept?' He thought.

"It's at least at the 7th level of the Apprentice Spirit Realm."

"I see. Please wait a moment. I will get a recorder for it. Just prepare the monster core and I will have an appraiser check for it." The staff said before leaving him.

'Thank goodness I asked for it!' He smiled and took out a monster core from his storage magic secretly.

Moments later, the staff came back with an object in her hands.

"This… Please place the orb to check the quality of the core." She said.

Lucas nodded, then put the monster core inside the object that seemed to have a resemblance to a bowl. Even though it was a ridiculously strange object, Lucas didn't mind it as he had more to learn about the world's objects.

Minutes later, the appraiser glowed yellow. "This is average quality. You can have the equivalent of 50 hours for it."

Lucas raised his eyebrows when he heard the staff. He asked to know why she calculated it by hours.

"Hours? Can't it be exchanged as money?"

The staff shook her head. "No sir. We exchange resources for service hours. If the cultivator didn't have money to pay, they can exchange using their resources without service. This appraiser calculates the stored spiritual energy within the resources."

"I see… That was knowledgeable. So what happens here?"

"I will deduct your overused time from your exchanged hours so I can give you 45 hours of service." The staff said.

"Okay… So… I'm good?"

"Yes, sir. Please take this recorder. You have 45 hours there." She said before handing out a card-like object that resembles more of a jade slip. "Just swipe it on a vacant room's door and the 45 hours will be transferred to the room for you to use."

"I understand. Is there more that I need to know?" Lucas asked.

"If you want to have another trade, just present that recorder and we will transfer the time on it."

"Thank you for explaining."

After that, the staff left him with a bow. Since there was nothing that Lucas had to do, he searched for a vacant room and used his time.

Inside the room, he sat in lotus form and looked at the properties of his third energy.

He inspected it to see if he could use it for magic. Thus, he activated a spell using his third energy.

After a few seconds, he successfully conjured a small ball of fire as he wanted.

"This is awesome. I still don't know if I can use it for cultivation attacks, but this is still awesome. My stocked mana can be used to produce this type of energy while I absorb spiritual energy!"

However, a problem emerged after celebrating his third energy; it was the secrecy of it. If other people got to discover his unknown powers, it would be worse to handle them.

Since there were people living in this vast world that was stronger than him, he couldn't be complacent about using it in public. Furthermore, he could be used as an experiment or used by others to acquire his third energy.

Thus, what needed to be done was for him to be vigilant with it. Leave the mysterious aura that could be felt from him, if somehow, he gets into trouble, he could just use magic to escape them.

An idea just didn't get into his mind. Everything could be reasoned out by saying it was an effect of a treasure. However, he still didn't know the vast use of treasures in this world.

In his previous world, the common term for treasures was artifacts. Seemingly, it also appeared that he unconsciously took things into account, making him learn things without being aware of them.

Even though it was too late to be wary, he thought that even though he was still in the lower heavens where immortals didn't exist, he still didn't know how the world worked with plenty of cultivators.

"So, I need to study this world's standards of power. Then there are powerful people who can fight me. This is not the same world that I lived in; this is wider than it. Even if I don't have a purpose and am just enjoying experimenting, I can't let a tragedy happen before enjoying this life." He mumbled fiercely as his teeth gritted against each other.

"I need to increase my cultivation and find a way to hide it from others. While I observe my core to be sure that it won't reject spiritual energy, I have to live with vigilance before settling for good." He continued before focusing on cultivating.

Two days later, he finally finished cultivating. The doors of the room opened, and he stood up, leaving the room.

Within those two days, the process of his cultivation became slow. He only got to break through to the 3rd level. However, his third energy's cultivation reached higher than his cultivation base.

If measured with the cultivation standard, he was currently at the 7th level of the Warrior Spirit Realm.

Leaving the building with a smile, Lucas finally decided the next thing he should do was earn money to buy some martial arts techniques.

Since martial arts were his weakness in his previous life, it wouldn't be the same since cultivation enhances the martial arts abilities of the individual.

Thus, he left the city and went straight to the forest nearby to hunt for monster cores. Even if he didn't know where he could sell monster cores, he still had a clue that he could sell them somewhere since there was a building that was selling lower-quality versions of them.

"I need to buy martial techniques, that's my goal right now. If I could use this third energy in martial techniques, it would be crazy! Let's go travel the world after this!"

Though it was unwanted, he still remained vigilant until he had a good foundation for his cultivation. He couldn't just use magic every time, now that he knew that this place was the lowest among the other heavens.

And if he wanted to live with other immortals, he needed to improve his cultivation and preserve his mana, which was in short supply in the world. And because he lacked the specialization that most people require to live in this world, he was forced to try to convert into a cultivator while also remaining a mage because that was where he came from.

Now, he was only left with the idea of blending the knowledge of magic with the knowledge of cultivation, which he was about to learn.