As he felt the familiar feeling of moving through a thin membrane, he opened his eyes to see something far from what he expected.
Like every other time he teleported here, he appeared next to the floating black orb in the center of a flat piece of land. But the scale of everything here was much larger.
From the previous few hundred meters, the flat ground grew to just over 1 kilometer. From where he was standing, he could tell that he was far up because he could see the ocean of mana glowing in the distance.
"Just how much has the island grown?" Walking over to the edge, he looked down to determine just how much more land mass there was.
Standing on the edge of the platform, he could see that he was standing on a mountain. But it wasn't the only one, there were many smaller mountains in his field of view that were impressive in their own right but weren't anywhere near as tall as the main one.
All around the smaller mountains were the sparsely planted mana flowers, illuminating what would have been a very dark land mass.
"Why is there so much land? I didn't think that my soul power grew that much. The stat is only at 99.99, not even 100." Teleporting from mountain top to mountain top, he observed more and more of the land to see just how much there actually was, and from what he could see it wouldn't have been an exaggeration to call it a small continent.
"Is it because I absorbed soul power from those two hobgoblins? Just how strong were those two anyway?" He had no way of determining the power level of his opponents so he had no way to know the difference between him and them, he could tell if there was something alive there but not what it was.
"Well I'm not complaining." Shaking his head in amazement at the amount of land he had to himself, he teleported back to the cavern to continue to collect the flowers. He was determined to claim every single one of them and now that he knew that he could take them all even if there were 10 times as many, he collected them with zero worries.
Another few hours later he was almost finished collecting all the flowers on the first side and was now at the summit of the mountain, but he was too confused to continue collecting.
"What the fuck happened here?"
In front of him were 5 skeletons, all of them an even deeper blue than his, except for one of them that was golden. 3 of the skeletons were human-like and the other two looked like strange animals.
One of the beasts looked like a giant bird and the other like a strange snake. The bird skeleton towered over him but was nothing compared to the snake like one. Its head was even bigger than that of the bird and its body stretched far into the distance, its tail resting on the other side of the mountain. Its head looked nothing like that of a snake but the only other animal he had seen shaped like this was a snake, except for the arms of course.
From what he could see, it had two giant arms in the front but he couldn't determine if there were any other limbs.
Compared to this skeleton he was like an ant in front of an elephant.
Just in front of the bird and the giant snake, two of the human-like skeletons, both dressed in very elaborate looking robes, sat peacefully. They were much taller than any human that he had seen, even taller than John. If he had to guess then he would say that they were around 8 feet tall.
He assumed that the two blue human-like skeletons were female because their hair were very long and had hair pins in them to hold them together.
These 4 skeletons sat across from each other, but facing the other skeleton.
Compared to the others this one looked to be much more destroyed. It looked to be about 6 '4, tall by human standards but not impossibly large. Its left arm as well as its right foot were missing, and all over its body were fractures of different sizes.
Even as dilapidated as it was, it still gave off a feeling of power and stability, something that seemed impossible to Ray.
"How can it look so stable but be so damaged, that doesn't even make any sense. Even some of its ribs are missing."
Looking away from the golden skeleton, his attention was shifted to the 2 beasts.
"What the hell are these two anyway, I didn't know that monsters could get this big."
He touched the giant bird and aside from being very cold nothing changed, not even the encyclopedia had any idea what it was and it was no different for the giant snake.
"I don't know what these two are but I'm not going to leave them here. They might be important in the future." Touching the skeletons, he teleported them both into his soul sea. The giant snake coiling around one of the largest peaks and the bird resting top of the same.
He was about to continue collecting the flowers and move on with his life before he felt the sudden urge to take the human skeletons with him. Specifically the gold one.
He wasn't sure why he felt this way, but he figured that it wasn't going to hurt to take them with him.
"I don't know how or why the three of you died, nor do I know how you lived your lives. But at the very least you deserve a proper burial."
He had killed many people in his life and seen many friends die, but if there was one thing he didn't do, it was disrespect the dead.
If he killed someone he left the body in relatively one piece and when an ally died he made sure to have a proper burial, even if it was small and only he was the one who attended.
He made sure to carefully move the three skeletons and rested them next to each other on the main mountain.
"I don't know where but I'll find somewhere to bury the three of you."
Looking at what was left on the summit, he was initially confused before getting very excited.
The two beasts dropped what he assumed were eggs, they were both extremely large, taller than himself, and had veins that came from the bottom and stretched to the top.
"I don't know how old these are, but if they are still alive then I'll try to hatch them. If I can get a mount or a pet from these it would be a huge boon."
Having some sort of beastly companion or mount wasn't uncommon. Until one could fly on their own, they had to find some way of moving around the new world quickly, or have an aid in battle if they found themselves alone.
Even after learning how to fly, many would still use their mounts because if they were raised properly they would be many times faster than if a person tried to fly by themselves, and have a lot more stamina.
If he entered a portal normally then it wouldn't be an uncommon site to see many people soaring through the sky or jetting through the seas on beasts that could only be described as mythical.
Touching the snake egg to teleport it to his soul sea, he felt a sharp pain accompanied by the nausea of having small amounts of soul power suddenly used.
Almost immediately the egg started to absorb massive amounts of his mana so he made the tactful decision to move it into his soul sea.
Shaking his head to remove the sickness he felt, he did the same to the bird egg and disappeared himself.