Lin Yuan quietly crept to a spot not far behind the Great Pirate.
Only when he was less than thirty meters away did Lin Yuan suddenly strike.
"Shell Pump Propulsion!"
In an instant, Lin Yuan appeared behind the Great Pirate like a bullet.
The Great Pirate had only just sensed something wrong when he turned and saw a fist the size of a cooking pot hurtling straight at his face.
Then he knew nothing more.
"Done!"
Lin Yuan killed a Great Pirate with a single punch, then conjured Mirage Mist beneath his feet, moving himself and the Great Pirate's body into a blind spot screened by skeletal remains.
"Hmm, three D-rank cores and five E-rank cores. Not much of a haul."
Lin Yuan searched the Great Pirate and took his spoils, muttering with some dissatisfaction.
He had used C-rank transcendent energy in that punch, suppressing all the Great Pirate's abilities and killing him in one hit.
"My maximum capacity is ninety points now. That strike used some up, leaving eighty-five."
"Three D-rank cores and five E-rank cores are equivalent to 3.5 points of C-rank energy. I took a loss on that."
"Not to mention, I need ten lower-rank cores to compress into a higher-rank one before I can refine them. Feels like I'm spending more than I'm earning."
Lin Yuan looked at his C-rank transcendent energy storage tank, which read 85/90, and calculated inwardly.
Of course, strictly speaking, refining new cores increased not only his transcendent energy reserves but also his maximum capacity, so he was certainly coming out ahead.
But C-rank transcendent energy took over an hour to recover a single point naturally. In a situation like this, where he sustained himself through fighting, that haul was not enough to cover his expenditure in the short term.
*This problem