Evan soon came back to the entrance of the Astrate city and quickly went back to the city.

At first, Evan was planning to hunt for two days but because of his earlier fight against the C rank wolf, he can't hunt anymore in the wilderness.

Because of using shadow energy Evan's entire body was aching and he was even having difficulty staying conscious.

Evan knew that if he stay in the wilderness in this condition there is a high chance of him dying when he came across a monster, so he returned to the city without any hesitation.

And although he came back early he was fine with it because with the cores he got after hunting today he can easily push his prime core to D rank.

After entering the city Evan quickly found a hotel that was closest to the city entrance and quickly went there.

After arriving at the hotel Evan booked a room and didn't even care about its price.

Just as Evan enter his booked room and saw the bed he fall on it like a dead man.

Evan was barely holding his conscience after using the shadow energy. His mind was too tired and his whole body was screaming in pain, so just as he lay down on the soft bed all of his strength disappeared and he fall asleep.

Because of how exhausted Evan's body was after using shadow energy, he slept for more than twelve hours and woke up the next day.

"It's still hurting" when the next day Evan tried to stand up he found his body was still not recovered and he was still feeling pain even while moving his body.

"Damm it I just used that energy for one second and almost died there" Evan muttered while going toward the bathroom.

Evan first took a long bath because he was still covered in blood after fighting against those monsters.

After taking bath when Evan came out of the bathroom and analyzed his body he found although his body was aching all over he can feel his physical strength increase a little bit after using shadow energy.

"On the status window, there is no change in my strength and other states but I can clearly feel my body is more powerful than before" Evan said while rubbing his chin.

'Looks like my body became more strong after using shadow energy'

After analyzing his body Evan wore some casual clothes and sat down on the bed.

"Let's push my prime core to D rank so I can once again focus on my monarch core".

Evan took out all the cores that he got from his hunt yesterday and put them in front of him.

"Three D rank cores, four D+ rank, and one C rank core these should be enough" Evan said while picking up one D rank core.

Evan started to refine D rank cores and in just five minutes refined all three D rank cores. After refining D rank cores Evan started to refine D+ rank cores.

It was the first time Evan was refining a D+ rank and when he started to refine the D+ rank core he was surprised that the energy inside the D+ rank core was more than two times that of the D rank core.

Evan continued to refine the D+ rank cores and his prime core slowly but steadily started to approach the limit of the E+ rank.

It took Evan more than twenty minutes to refine all the D+ rank cores and he can feel he just needs a little more energy to reach D rank with his prime core.

Evan picked up the C rank core and started to refine it.

"There is too much energy inside it" Evan muttered while refining the C rank core, he can feel there was at least four times more energy than a D+ rank inside this C rank core.

After fifteen minutes when Evan refined around one-fourth of the C rank core his prime core suddenly stopped absorbing more energy and the surrounding mana started to rush toward him.

Evan dropped the C rank core and focused on his prime core which was advancing to the D rank.

Everything was going smoothly and his core was absorbing surrounding mana to complete its evolution.

But suddenly a black water drop that was hovering around his heart where his monarch core was located moved towards his prime core.

Evan who was focusing on his prime core didn't feel anything at first, but when the black water drop came near his prime core his heart skipped a beat and he tried to control that black water drop.

When Evan tried to control the black water drop which was actually one unit of shadow energy it stopped near his prime core.

Swish!!!

But suddenly a strong suction force came out from the prime core and absorbed the one unit of shadow energy.

"Fu*k" Evan cursed when his prime core absorbed the shadow energy and even before he can think anything else, the mana from the surrounding rushed towards him with even more force.

A small mana whirlpool formed above Evan's head and his prime core started to absorb a large amount of mana.

Although the size of the whirlpool was much smaller than the whirlpool which was formed when his monarch core advanced to D rank, it was still larger than before

'I am not feeling any pain' surprisingly Evan didn't feel any pain, when his prime core absorbed shadow energy he thought it will break apart because it is a higher level of energy.

After one minute the whirlpool above his head disappeared and his prime core successfully advanced to D rank, even before he can assess the change in his prime core some notifications started to appear before him.

[You successfully refined one unit of shadow energy with your prime core]

[Your prime core mutated because of the shadow energy]

[Because of the mutation---]