As clays vision cleared he found that Timber was still close to him seeing that they hadn't been separated clay started to assess their current situation as he looked around and found that they were in a small clearing that was surrounded by a thin transparent barrier that had a white tinge to it as it thrummed with mana, outside of the barrier was a lush forest that seemed to house many creatures.
With all of this new information Clay was wildly confused as last he remembered he and Timber were standing outside of the giant obelisk in their destroyed city, now they were in the middle of a forest with a barrier surrounding them, the only thing Clay could think of was that the obelisk had transported Clay and Timber to some foreign location that was possibly not even earth.
Clay was thinking about it but decided that it was pointless to try and figure it out as he had no was of doing so as he was so instead he tried to get his priorities in order. The most immediate one being his and timber's lives as they wanted to continue to live, second priority was to find a way out of this place, and his third priority was to gain strength.
As Timber was sleeping Clay decided to try to work on his third priority to increase his strength his method of doing this was to work on his mana manipulation ability to be able to move and work with his mana better and also he needed to draw in mana in order to increase the amount and intensity of the mana that he has.
After about five hours Timber finally started to come to as Clay started to wrap up his training, once Timber was fully up they were about to head out to explore but Clay wanted to try something before they could leave.
Clay started to once again push mana through his palm to form a baseball size cloud of mana that was both bigger and denser than the first one he tried, feeling confident Clay started to focus on turning the cloud of dense mana into fire and after a bit it finally formed a bright fireball they he sent shooting at the barrier before it gassed through with no issue and hitting the tree behind it causing large scorch marks to appear.
Feeling confident in his and timber's abilities they set out in the forest walking in one direction trying to find the edge to the forest.
After walking for about three hours the ran into another barrier this one however was opaque and prevented them from crossing over so they had no way of knowing what was across the barrier.
Clay and Timber had decided to rest while at the outer barrier during this down time Clay picked up some stones and poured his mana into them one by one until he had around twenty stones that were brimming with mana what Clay had made were improvised mana grenades that exploded with a powerful shock wave.
With his preparations complete Clay and Timber started moving along the barrier trying to find something. After about thirty minutes they finally found an orc the creature looked just as disgusting as the last one they fought.
As Clay was looking at the beast he decided he wouldn't use his newly made mana grenades to deal with it but instead he would use a fireball.
As Clay began to push his mana and compress it to form a fireball he continued to pour more mana until a fourth of clays total mana supply was in one fireball, once the fireball was ready Clay shot it at the orcs head at a devastating speed which sent the fire ball through the orcs head completely disintegrating most of its head killing it before it even knew an attack was coming its way.
As Clay watched astonished at the power of the fireball as it killed the green eyed beast in an instant but he knew that the power wasn't reliable or sustainable until he got stronger and had more mana so until then he'd have to resort to mana grenades and physical strength to take down these monsters.
Clay walked over to the corpse of the orc and collected its core and absorbed it increasing his mana capacity by a little.
After the fight was over Clay and Timber decided to keep going to try to find something of use after a few hours of searching that had found a few more orcs and some goblins and Clay and Timber took turns killing them along the way.
After they had traversed a great amount of space they finally found the opening to a cave that Clay felt held the key to getting out of the forest they were trapped in.
Before going down however they decided to rest for a bit, they pulled a tent from clays storage ring and set it up a ways away from the cave.
Before Clay went to bed he made five new mana grenades but with these ones he had made the mana inside take the form of a raging flame so that when they explode they do so with a burst of fire, once done with the new grenades Clay and Timber went to sleep with the anticipation of tomorrow's adventure in their minds.