"Ugh! How long has it been?" As he slowly got up from the small bloody impact crater, his body was very much still in pain. He was fully regenerated but the process was a brutal one and he almost passed out on multiple occasions. While not the bone smashing pain from before, just because he fixed his body doesn't mean his nerves are going to stop signaling that something was wrong.
"It went dark suddenly 4 times so I can assume that it's been 4 days. But it feels like so, so much more." As far as humans were aware, the new world was an infinite plane of land, sea and void with no detectable end. As such, it wasn't orbiting a sun and had no moons. During the day he could see what looked like a sun but at night there were no such things.
Obviously the days and nights of the New world were different than that of the old world, but by how much he wasn't sure. What looked like only 4 days felt like a week, and he could tell by how tired he was. He had stayed awake for multiple days before and wasn't as lethargic as now.
"I don't know where I am, but I need to find shelter." He looked at the desert and then the forest and naturally walked towards the forest. "And something to eat, I'm so hungry right now I could eat a whole cow."
With heavy eyelids he wandered into the forest, falling over a few times on the roots. Because of how dense it was, it might as well be night time, not as dark as the New world night, but certainly as dark as the old world night.
After a few minutes of tumbling through the forest, he heard a truly strange noise.
"What the hell is that clicking, it's going to drive me insane." With no other option he slowly walked towards the source of the noise. He was well aware about the dangers of the new world, during his month of training that fact was practically drilled into his skull.
After only a few silenced steps he saw a clearing in the forest and a strange looking animal being ridden by an even stranger looking person.
It was what looked like an ant the size of a horse, except it had 6 mandibles and 4 eyes instead of the normal 2. It was blood red and its eyes were a deep shiny black. As it was larger than a normal ant, so were its legs, which extended out of its body and were so sharp they sunk into the rocky ground like dough.
Sitting on the giant ant was what looked like a man from afar, but up close was very different. His skin was pale green, his droopy ears were pointed downward and his long hair a bright white. From Ray's perspective he looked about as tall as him, who was average height for his age, but his body sent shivers down his spine.
It was the very definition of perfect, not too lean, not too bulky. His muscles were tight but could move explosively when needed, and were shaped so well that it looked sculpted. In the strange man's hands were a crude looking spear but he was dressed from the waist down in well tailored leather and even his feet were covered.
From just the leather alone he was dressed better than the torn baggy clothes that he had worn at home.
As he tried to use his PC to determine what exactly he was seeing, the green man's head snapped in his direction and before Ray could fully appreciate how handsome he was, the crude spear came flying towards his head.
He quickly ducked under it and looked around the clearing to determine if they were any more of the strange people, and after seeing no one else, he sprung into action.
Not knowing how strong his opponent was, he activated the body strengthening spell and his stats jumped up to 70.7. From the perspective of the green man, he threw his spear in a random direction because he felt like something was watching him and precautionarily attacked.
He wasn't truly sure but this forest was too dangerous to not act on your instincts, but when Ray came rocketing at him he wasn't prepared to defend himself. A normal beast would normally run away and those that were strong enough to threaten him wouldn't be hiding like a rat.
Before he could even lower his throwing arm, Ray's metal-like hand came flying through the air and straight through his neck. Not giving the green man or his stead the chance to fight back, Ray quickly decapitated him and slammed down with his foot like an axe, splitting the ant's head open in one go.
Before his body fell to the ground he opened his palm and with a flash of light, the body's of both the ant and the green man, except for his head which flew away into the forest, disappeared.
The moment his feet touched down, he sprinted back where he came from before disappearing himself.
Back in his soul sea it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he was sweating bullets. Had he blinked at the wrong time or looked away slightly for whatever reason his head would have disappeared.
"Holy shit, I didn't think that he was going to be so aggressive. I didn't even do anything." Looking at the headless body, he held back the urge to spit at it in anger.
"What an idiot, he should have investigated a bit before attacking, now look at you." Not knowing the true danger of the forest, he just assumed that his victim was just being violently paranoid.
Now that he was comfortably in his soul sea, he took the time to analyze the two bodies. Along with the knowledge of how to return his soul to his body, he also learned of how to transfer both items and himself back to his soul sea.
Using the sea of mana around the black island as fuel, he could stay for as long as it didn't run out. From what he understood to put more mana into the sea he had to open up another black portal, which he didn't have the capacity to do at the moment. When the spell was created it aided him by absorbing mana from his surroundings but he wouldn't get that help in the future.
So until he had enough capacity to open up a portal by himself, the current mana is all that he had access to. With his current circumstance he couldn't sit down comfortably and absorb mana so he had to work with what he had.
"It's not going down fast, but I have to make sure to save it." Glazing over the mana sea it took him some time to notice the level decreasing, meaning that he had a lot of time. "And I really need to go back and read the [Inventory] book again. I don't understand how the skill and the spell could be so different. I don't understand much about skills anyway, or much about awakened for that matter."
Shaking his head at his own ignorance, he scanned the two bodies. In his retinas the information on both of them came up.
"Hobgoblin and mammoth chima. I don't know what a hobgoblin is but a chima just looks like a big ant to me." He looked at its head, seeing the 3 pairs of dagger-like mandibles and 2 pairs of soul piercing eyes before changing his mind. "Maybe a little different."
"According to the encyclopedia, neither the goblin nor the big ant are native to forests. Chima are found in wetlands and hobgoblins in mountains. Maybe there is a river nearby but there are definitely no mountains, I would have seen it. What are these two doing here?"
Standing over the still bleeding headless corpse, he pondered to himself before hunger and pain once again clouded his thoughts. The adrenaline of almost losing his life could only last so long.
"It said that most chima are slightly toxic depending on the species but that should be fine if I cook it right?"