His alarm woke him up, and after dressing himself and eating the rest of the food he made the night before he made his move. He still slept next to the two eggs, them being the only other practical forms of life in his soul sea left him feeling comfortable in their presence.
That or it was the influence of the soul mark, but either way the only other living things were the flowers and he didn't want to trample them.
He quickly teleported back to the crater and noticed a few things. The isolated space was no longer there and there were a few people in the area.
"They moved faster than I thought, it's not even day time and yet they are already here. Can they see in the dark? Or is it the light from a few hours ago?"
He expected them to only investigate after it had already turned day time, but for them to be here meant that either they had seen the explosion that he caused, which wasn't exactly unlikely, or they had already investigated the sudden stop in shipments for the flowers.
"But if that's the case then why are there so few of them? I'd expect a few hundred, but there are only about 10." He thought to himself.
"Oh, I didn't expect a human to be the cause of this. You are costing my liege a lot with your little antics. Unfortunately for you we are not particularly in a position to allow such things, otherwise I would have allowed you to run around for a little more. It's quite entertaining."
BOOOOOOOM
With no hesitation Ray used all of his might to jump away as high and as far as possible causing a massive explosion where he was just standing.
For someone to evade not only his natural ability to detect living beings, but also his extremely sensitive mana sense meant that either they specialized in stealth or they were much stronger than him.
Which one of these was the case in this situation, he wasn't inclined to stick around and find out.
"Oh? You are pretty fast for a monkey. Unfortunately for you, you can't run from me."
The person behind him stretched their hand forward, but instead of charging up some form of attack or using a spell, the air around their hand started to ripple.
"And you were using a unique form of spatial magic too, I really am a bad matchup for you."
Before Ray could reach the apex of his jump, a hand appeared out of nowhere in front of him that grabbed him by the neck. The person behind him punched a hole through space to catch up to him!
"That demon flute took a lot of funds that we can not spare, so I am going to ask you nicely to return it. I don't know what type of spell you are using and I'd rather not risk it. I'll even let you keep your life, maybe."
The hand flew back to its owner and Ray was now hanging there face to face with him. The man that captured him with such ease was another one of the strange tall people that he saw in the forest settlement, except this one looked much more mature.
His skin was a lighter shade of brown than Ray's and his horns were much larger. The very tip of them were dark purple in color and his eyes and hair were the same shade. He was dressed in a red combat robe with gold armor plating. There were two line-like tattoos that dripped down from his eyes and of course he was devilishly handsome.
The first instinct that Ray had was to teleport back to his soul sea and teleport to another location far away from here, an ability that he had access to as he had a lot more mana now.
It was restricted to places that he had been before and would leave him bone dry, but it was better than being choked out and dying. Unfortunately he seemed to not be at the level of crossing dimensions yet otherwise he would have teleported immediately back to the old world.
But after calming himself down and listening to his attacker he realized that that might not be a good idea. He didn't know how hard it was to use spatial magic, but he was certain that it wasn't easy.
Not only did he immediately manage to identify that he used spatial magic, but his control over it was so great that he could rip a hole in the fabric of reality and grab him through it.
If he could move through space and enter his soul sea then there was no telling how much damage he could cause. There was no way that Ray would take such a chance, especially since he seemed to be perplexed by the inventory spell.
Ray wasn't going to give him more chances to properly analyze it.
"I'm only going to give you one chance to answer me, so use it wisely monkey. Don't waste my time."
He loosened his grip on his throat so that he could speak properly. Before he could feign ignorance and claimed no wrongdoing he was strictly warned.
"And don't bother lying to me. I don't know how you managed to get rid of the curse, but I can smell it on you. If you make any attempt to deceive me in any way then I will snap your neck with zero hesitation."
'A curse huh, so that's what that feeling was. Thankfully my talent could purify it since it was in my soul sea, but I have no idea what he's talking about with smell. And why is he calling me monkey? If anything he looks more like a beast than me, that being said I don't know what a monkey looks like.'
Although he appeared to be struggling to breath on the outside, the truth couldn't be any different. With how strong his body was, the chokehold he was in was more of a light tickle than a life threatening situation.
He was just startled by the fact that a hand appeared out of nowhere and almost teleported away in a panic, something that would instantly be detected.
'But how do I get out of this situation, I suspect that even if I hand over the flute he still would try to kill me. While he might not be the strongest physically, the fact that he seems to be an expert in spatial magic scares me. What if he can pull my heart out of my chest, or flatten my brain with a thought. Either way I don't want to find out.'
He looked around to get a proper view of his surroundings and noticed that there was a distinct lack of personnel. From his short exchange with the man in front of him he assumed that all of them would be powerful, but that was far from the case.
Besides him and the one holding him by his neck, everyone else were goblins! Not hobgoblins but short, weak and green skinned goblins!
Coupled with what he heard him say before he tried to run away he instantly made a few conclusions.
'If what he said was true then whoever this guy follows is not in the best of situations, otherwise they wouldn't be pouring so much of the funds that they seem to be short on to acquire a cursed object. Even if they could satiate it, the curse would still be there and from how he reacted to not being affected by the curse, they didn't have a way of purifying it. While I don't know if the effect of a curse from inside my soul sea could be felt outside of it, he doesn't know that either.'
After a bit more deliberation he decided on his course of action.
"Rather than that, I think that I have something more valuable to you."
A look of surprise overtook his face, not only had this weak monkey stolen from him, he tried to negotiate when he got caught. "Oh? And what might that be?"
"Me."