A few hours later he managed to cut out a sizable hole in the boulder, from his estimation he was about half way through. He kept digging because it hadn't turned day yet, and from his timer it had been about 15 hours since it turned dark.
Now he was sitting at the cave entrance recovering his mana and stamina, digging for as long as he had was not easy, not to mention that he didn't stop practicing mana for a moment. The entire time he had a string of 9 orbs following him, so along with using the steel skin spell and empowering his arms he was going through mana fast.
Thankfully the chima meat seemed to increase his stamina recovery so didn't have to stop for as long as he thought.
He went back to digging for another few hours, before he finally managed to break a small hole through the other side. It had turned day time while he was still digging but he determined that he was too close to stop now. He was much too deep in the cave to see the daylight but mana acted differently under the intense light. It was much more active and behaved in a way he could only describe as hot.
Checking his timer the night time cycle was approximately 20 hours, almost a full day in the old world. From experience he knew that the day and night were about the same so a full cycle was about 40 hours.
This had been his 5th day in the new world since he woke up so that meant that it had been at least 8 days since he was forced through the portal.
"A week huh, but I can't really complain. It would have taken me at least half a year to get as strong as I am now." While he had increased his stats by 15 in the first month, getting stronger got more difficult the stronger you were. So that 15 a month wouldn't have been sustainable.
"But that doesn't mean that I want to stay here, I am nowhere near ready to explore the new world. A measly hobgoblin almost killed me, twice, and even if I am much stronger now, it's nothing in the grand scheme of things."
Ray may be much more mature than others his age because of the circumstances of his life, but at the end of the day he was still only 15. No one his age should be as comfortable taking lives as he was, much less be as calm as he was when he was forced into the new world.
Anyone else his age would have curled up into a ball, hoping that someone would come and save them from the predicament that they found themselves in. But he had been in similar situations in the past, albeit not as severe as this, and had experience taking care of himself.
Putting his depressing thoughts behind, he opened up the hole he made to be wide enough to let him pass through. And what he saw was awe inspiring.
The cavern was giant, much farther the range of his mana sense, thankfully for him the abundance of the mana generating flowers provided enough light for him to see.
In the center of the cavern there was a large hill that stretched into the sky, much too high for him to see under the dim light. Planted all around the hill were the mana flowers that he had sensed earlier. There were so many that it would have been much too difficult to count.
"Holy shit. I wasn't expecting this many. If I can sell these I'd be set for life." Not wasting any more time, Ray dashed to the foot of the hill to start collecting the flowers. He was surprised at how fast he could run even if he wasn't going as fast as he could. Even with all of the buffs that he could give himself before he couldn't get this fast and he was practically jogging.
At this intense speed it didn't take him long to clear the 400 meter distance so he could see the flowers properly.
If he had to use only one word to describe them then it would be beautiful. They looked like roses but were translucent and entirely blue. From the petals to the leaves to the steam and even the thorns, all of it was a light blue.
Mesmerized by the beautiful flowers it took him a moment to snap out of the daze he was in and he started to collect them. He still didn't have enough mana to open a portal strong enough to pull things into it but even if he did he wouldn't use it. The flowers looked extremely fragile so he didn't want to damage them.
He wasn't sure why the generated mana but he figured that they might need to be alive to do so he carefully collected them one by one.
To his delight instead of having to enter his soul sea and hand plant them, when collected they disappeared roots and all and re-planted themselves in the land mass made out of soul power.
He didn't really understand why they did this but he wasn't going to question it. It helped him so he wasn't going to complain.
From what he observed the flowers generated slightly more mana than they used up in his soul sea, they were still alive so they used up the mana from the ocean but put back just enough to make a profit. If they used 100 they generated 101.
"Thank God, if they used more mana then they made then I would have to kill them before I move them. Moving my physical body to my soul sea is too valuable an ability, not something that I want to wake up one day to and not be able to do any more."
Looking at the countless mana flowers that he still had to collect, he shut himself up and got to work. He could see so many just from where he was standing and he still had the other sides of the mountain as well as the areas above him he still couldn't see.
A few hours later, he was still picking the glass like flowers. Thankfully, he was resourceful enough to not waste his time, while picking he was still practicing his control as well as mana sense, not to mention that his mana capacity was increasing at an increased rate.
He finally broke through the 10 orbs and was now at 15, the difficulty seemed to spike every 10 so he assumed the next bottleneck would be around 20. As mana sense was still always active even though he could see, the range also increased.
He had been doing it for more than a whole old world day so at this point it felt more natural to have it active than not and he could now perceive 150 meters around him, but he assume that if he was not in this cave then it might be more because the mana here was even more dense than outside.
There was no telling how long these flowers were here producing mana so it was naturally more dense here. To him the air felt heavy and his breathing felt stuffy, but he wasn't complaining because he was absorbing so much mana that he was slightly afraid that he would explode.
It even got to the point that when he was half way up the mountain he saw clouds made out of condensed mana.
"That being said, how much are all of these flowers finding space in my soul sea to plant themselves into." It had been a while since he entered his soul sea, but from what he could remember there was nowhere enough space for all of the flowers to be planted.
He knew the exact number of flowers planted, which was just above 500,000, but he estimated that there should only be enough space for 100,000.
A bit concerned he entered his soul sea to see exactly what was going on.