No matter how strong he may be, a kick like that would always send him flying, unless he weighed much more than he did now.
The kick was unexpected, but sensing the killing intent before he was attacked he had ample time to properly defend himself. Thankfully it seemed like that was far from hurting him because less mana was absorbed than when he teleported at the wrong time.
Using mana to adjust himself and slow his fall ever so slightly he caught a glimpse of his attacker, another hobgoblin. This one had a bow and arrow in hand and was currently drawing it back, taking advantage of Ray's position.
The arrow came fast but a spear came faster, there was another hobgoblin in the cavern which also took the initiative to attack him.
Twisting midair and slightly guiding his descent, he kicked off of the spear and used his newfound speed and strength to dodge the arrow and close the distance between him and the archer.
Unfortunately he underestimated just how fast the archer could shoot and an arrow struck him right in the chest, going straight through him and barely missing his heart. A lot of mana was absorbed by his body, but he was losing control over it fast due to his injury.
Taking over, he regained his masterful control and his veins started to glow, which just made it easier for the archer to spot him. Unfortunately for the archer, he wouldn't give him a chance to injure him again.
In Ray's hand, an orb of his mana formed which quickly turned into a fireball. Adding rudimentary elements to mana is easy, so by combining flame and his usual way of practicing mana, creating a simple but deadly attack was a natural next step.
Using another spear that was thrown at him as leverage, Ray put his all into both throwing and guiding the flaming ball using both his physical strength and mental strength.
As it was flying through the air it was growing bigger and bigger as Ray kept feeding it with mana, and while the archer hobgoblin tried to dodge it, Ray made it follow until it reached its target. Any arrow simply burned up and he had no other way of attack.
At the same time that he threw the fire ball, he dashed through the air towards the other hobgoblin. He didn't need to look at the archer to track him because everything was already in his range of detection.
The only way that he wouldn't notice and track someone is if they were much, much stronger than him or could hide their presence by making mana flow naturally around them.
When the fire ball hit its target, Ray's fist made contact with the head of the spear hobgoblin, shattering it like a watermelon.
With both of them dead he took the time to properly observe his surroundings, all over the mountain were the goblins that were collecting flowers. At first they were screaming in their weird language at him, but after his quick skirmish they were too terrified to move.
Ignoring them as they seemed to not be a threat, he looked over to the entrance but couldn't see through because there was no light and it was too far away. Even with his enhanced vision he couldn't see anything.
As a matter of fact, almost all of the flowers were already picked with the only practical source of light being him. He was still consciously controlling his mana as the hole in his chest was still there, and while it had long stopped bleeding and started to heal, thanks to his vitality, the injury was still messing with the flow. Especially since it was so close to his heart.
He activated regeneration and while the wound started to heal a little faster and the pain went away, it was negligible.
He glanced back over to the petrified goblins and turned to walk away while he collected the headless body of the hobgoblin as well as the soul orb. Seeing that it only increased his stats by 1, he didn't bother trying to find where the other one died.
This one was many times stronger than the other, so if the increase was so small for this one then the meter might not even move for the other.
He still collected the body though, he didn't know why, but he might need a corpse sometime in the future and it wouldn't rot in his soul sea. Plus there was no punishment in doing so. It wasn't alive so it wouldn't take up any mana.
Dashing away, he closed the gap between him and the entrance in an instant. Had it been under different circumstances he would have taken the time to kill all of the goblins and collect their soul power, but he still didn't know the situation and didn't want to be ambushed.
It might take a while, but it would add up. From what he could tell there were about ten thousand of them. But there was nothing saying that he couldn't come back. They were too afraid to move even if they wanted to.
The entrance of the cavern was much wider than he dug out initially, so he assumed that it took a long time and a lot of effort to do so. It was barely as wide as he was before but now 4 grown men could walk comfortably shoulder to shoulder.
Between the large numbers of goblins, the effort it took to dig out that much stone, and the hobgoblin patrols in an area far from where they are known to live, in a part of the forest that seemed both dangerous and empty at the same time, he suspected that they might have been looking for these flowers, or something similar.
It shouldn't be easy to move that many goblins and from what he could sense there were a lot more outside of the cave.
That would mean that not only did he kill 5 of what looked like the ring leaders, but he also stole half of their expected profit long before they could. But that didn't matter to him, the moment he put his eyes on the vast field of flowers he already claimed them for himself, regardless of what plans others had.
He didn't know how easy it was for these flowers to grow, but he suspected that they were not very common. Otherwise he would have heard of something like this in the old world. Human beings take advantage of everything in their grasp, especially so for something that would solve so many problems.
He couldn't afford to lose half of such valuable assets for no reason. It's not like he ran into them and decided to steal what they had, he found them first and as far as he was concerned that meant that these were his.
He ran though the first cave, passing many goblins. They tried to attack him, but he was moving too fast for them to aim properly and any attack that did hit only served to help temper his body further, even if just slightly.
It didn't take long for him to reach the entrance of the first cave and with a combination of mana sense and his enhanced vision he quickly analyzed what he was seeing.
There were many hundreds of thousands of goblins all doing various miscellaneous activities, from packing the flowers into boxes, loading them up into carts and pulling the carts into the distance.
Spread amongst them were thousands of hobgoblins wielding various weapons that seemed to serve as managers, overlooking the processing of the flowers and making sure nothing out of order happened.
The goblins in the cave were getting closer and closer, and their voices louder and louder so he was easily spotted.
With no other choice he raised his hand and prepared to attack.