Sitting on a rock deeper in the forest, Ray was calming down himself in an attempt to increase the rate of absorption of mana. He couldn't do this in his soul sea as except for the ocean of mana that served as a fuel source, there was no mana in there.
When making his bones absorb his mana they absorbed it at an unusually high rate, as if he threw a dried sponge into the ocean, but there was no flash of golden light so he assumed that nothing was wrong. They quickly emptied his reserves, so much so that his tattoos didn't have the time to show up.
With no other option he left his soul sea and after running further into the forest for a few hours, he found a cave in the mountain that seemed to pop out of nowhere that he claimed for himself. Now relatively safe he decided it was time to do some housekeeping.
He had to absorb more mana, make his bones absorb more until they were saturated, adjust his own mana, increase his control over high density mana, and increase the range of mana sense back to 100 meters or even more.
Thankfully the first 3 objectives were simple, when all of his bones absorbed the first bit of mana it was like a flood gate had opened, all of the mana in his body was being eaten so when his body started to absorb more and more new world mana, all of it was taken up by his bones. After a while it slowed down and his mana levels were rising so he was readjusting as it increased.
Thankfully he noticed that his stats were rising with every drop of mana absorbed so he gleefully let it happen.
Now sitting on the stone he had 9 white orbs spinning around him to increase his control, but these orbs were different. Instead of his own mana, he was controlling the thicker new world mana.
As his focus was split between practicing control, readjusting his mana and increasing his range of perception, 10 orbs were by far his limit. When he tried to go to 11 the other 10 dissipated so he stuck with 9.
10 was too stressful to maintain so he wasn't as calm, leading to the absorption of mana slowing down so he decided to stay at 9 until it was as familiar to him as using his own mana.
One could see the difficulty of controlling dense mana from the numbers that he could form. Using his own, thinner mana, reaching 400 was trivial but controlling thicker mana he was struggling at 9.
Thankfully he quickly increased the range of his perception back up to 100 meters, so he could focus more on control. He could have gone further but didn't see the point of doing it now.
Sensing mana is many times easier than controlling it. One is simple observation and the other is interfering with its natural flow.
Feeling that the absorption of mana by his bones practically stopped, he looked at his stats and saw that they increased from 55.55 to 75.75, a twenty point increase not including the extra 1%.
"Nice. The increase seems like a one-time thing but I am not going to say no to a month and a half's worth of progress practically for free."
Looking inside himself he saw that all of his bones were a bright blue instead of the usual white. An obvious side effect of absorbing mana, but one that seemed more cosmetic than a negative.
"That looks really cool, but that doesn't matter since hopefully no one has to see my bones."
Looking up he tried to tell the time based on the position of the sun, but he quickly remembered that above him wasn't the real sun and as such didn't move through the sky. There was no dusk, no dawn, no sunrise or sunset. There was light or there wasn't, that's it.
"It should be night time soon, but I'm not sure how much more time I have."
As if on cue, it suddenly turned pitch black, leaving him blind. "Speak of the devil. But I do wonder how long the days and nights are."
As he was rubbing the high tech ring on his finger, he thought of something. "I know that this can't do much as there is no network for it to connect to, but something as simple as keeping time should be simple right?"
After a little bit of browsing he found a time keeping function and activated it. As his pc wasn't connected to the internet or similar network, many of its functions were inactive. Most of them weren't saved to it so he only has access to a few simple functions, or the ones that he had already downloaded, like the encyclopedia.
Looking around he naturally couldn't see anything so he closed his eyes and activated mana sense. He didn't know when the sun would come back and from experience he didn't want to go blind when it did.
Using mana sense, he could clearly perceive everything in a 101 meter radius around him. It was a lot at first but he slowly got used to it.
It was much more detailed compared to sight, but naturally didn't have the same range. Everything appeared in different shades of blue and had a spectral vibe to them. Not quite opaque but not fully transparent.
Like a high definition radar with him at the center, as long as something didn't actively disperse mana he could 'see' it and even if it did, it would stick out like a giant sore thumb.
In the new world such things practically didn't exist so he had a 101 meter radius 360 degree vision.
"I really need to increase the range of this, I like it but I don't see enough. Especially if a fast moving ranged attack is sent at me. By the time I sense it I might be too late."
He had tried many times to increase the range of mana sense but he felt like he hit a wall. He just assumed that he had to practice more with control so he wasn't that bothered by it as he was always improving in control.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence controlling the 9 orbs, he started to get bored. He had decreased the amount of mana per orb to make them invisible so that he wasn't just announcing his presence. Controlling them didn't take up too much mental energy as his brain practically took over so he had only his thoughts to occupy himself with.
"F*ck this I'm bored. But I don't want to move around, I still don't know just how dangerous the forest is at night. I've seen many traces of animals but I have yet to see any of them so I assume that they are nocturnal, or whatever you can call it."
He wasn't sure if these beasts could see in the dark, but he assumed so because if they hunted in the pitch black then they had to have some way of perceiving their prey. Not wanting to be one of them, he moved further into the cave so that, if anything, they could only attack him from one direction.
This sealed off any path of retreat, but he wasn't confident in out running them any way.
Sitting in silence for a few more minutes, he looked inside to marvel at the site of his now blue bones, and while doing so he had a wild thought that didn't occur to him before.