Standing on a larger branch of a tree, he was looking out into the distance, observing what was making such loud noises.
It was two beasts battling each other, and for the first beings that must have been native to the forest that he had seen, they were exceptionally impressive.
The one that seemed to be the attacker was a giant coiled snake that was thicker than the tree trunks and even longer than the earthen wyrms. Except for a few red markings on its head, its entire body was pitch black and around it was a disgusting looking dark green fog. The fog spread out, and while not as potent as directly around the snake it still left a green haze in the area.
The one that was defending; however, was much more difficult to describe. While not as big as the snake it was still extremely big, standing at around 10 meters and from head to tail was about 30 meters. Compared to the two of them he was more of an ant than a man.
The strange beast looked like an amalgamation of many different animals. It had 4 horns, two pointing forwards like a bull and two curving like a goat. Its face was like that of a lion except for its 3 pairs of pitch black eyes, and its teeth were so long that they poked out of its mouth. Its body looked like a cross between a tiger and a bear and was covered in black fur, excluding its 4 limbs and spiked tail that had many small red scales. On its back was 2 pairs of wings which resembled that of a bat, and while when extended it would have a wingspan of 45 meters, he found it difficult to imagine such relatively thin looking wings carrying such a large beast anywhere.
While others would have issues identifying these two colossal beasts, even the encyclopedia didn't have any knowledge of them, he could identify them instantly. While different looking, the snake should be some what related to what is known as the swamp tyrant, the gigant frayer which was a greater draconic beast that used poison and water magic to kill its prey.
While an impressive beast, the other one left him speechless. Its blood wasn't as pure as the snake, but the nightmarish amalgamation was undoubtedly the descendant of a behemoth!
The behemoth is one of the many offspring of the mother of all beasts, the ancient behemoth, and was on par with true dragons. While not the real thing, and nowhere close to the ancient behemoth, its heart blood would certainly help him in creating one of the major parts of the ancient behemoth body, the behemoth physic.
Even with an only 2 word difference, the power difference between the two was indescribable. The word physique refers to the body, mind and soul, and naturally the word body had to do with only the body. At the same level these two were nowhere near each other, but the ancient behemoth body was so much more potent than the behemoth physic that even after being combined with other equally as powerful inherent talents, it could only reach the level of 'body'.
The issue; however, is that the pseudo-behemoth was on the losing side. The swamp tyrant isn't like other snakes, and even with such a large body it uses magic, specifically poison magic, and stealth to kill its opponents. As they grow bigger they really less and less on stealth and more and more on magic and this one was exceptionally talented in that field, as seen by the poisonous fog around its body at all times.
While the pseudo-behemoth should be more than powerful enough to instantly kill the snake, not only was it poisoned, if he felt it correctly then it was in an even more of a weak state that the snake was taking advantage of.
There was a massive cave in the ground behind the behemoth and in that hole Ray could feel that there were 3 extremely weak and frail life signatures that weren't all that different from the behemoth.
Not only was it snuck up on, it was poisoned and had to protect 3 newborn babies! The ancient behemoth gave birth to live young, and the only one of its offspring that held on to this trait was the behemoth, and this was carried onto this beast. The only other one that did this was true dragons, and only true dragons, every other dragon laid eggs.
While giving live birth allowed it to move around as it pleased when pregnant, after giving birth their life force would be temporarily damaged and they would have to go through a process of healing.
This state of weakness was naturally sensed by the snake and it took advantage of that. Behemoths usually stay in mating pairs until their young have reached a certain size, but the fact that there was no male meant that the mother behemoth took a gamble on where to nest and lost.
"If it was fighting any other beast then I would just wait for it to die, but not against a swamp tyrant. If things continue like this there will be no behemoth left."
The way the swamp tyrant ate was truly interesting. It would first inject their prey with a paralyzing poison and follow it up with an extremely corrosive one. If the paralysis didn't work and its target started to move again, then the corrosive poison would only act faster.
Coupled with the poison cloud around its body, as well as the long range poison attacks that it could use, unless one was immune to the specific type of poison that was unique to every member, then it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to the corrosive poison. When that happens it would use water magic to directly suck the nutritious fluid out of the skin of the animal, which at that point was more of a balloon.
This unique method of feeding is why they try their best to not engage in physical altercations and try to kill their prey as fast as possible, if the skin gets damaged and the fluid pours out of a wound then it would have wasted its precious poison for no reason.
"Luckily the defenses of the snake aren't very strong, if it wasn't for the behemoth needing to stay in place to protect its babies then it would have been killed almost instantly."
The behemoth isn't the best magic caster and because it was limited to weak ranged attacks it couldn't do any damage to the snake. The snake was a master of magic itself and dispersing the incoming magic was very easy for it.
"That seems like a rather convenient ability to have, when using a spell the mana flows in a certain way, and by flowing the mana counter to that as long as it is powerful enough it can counter any magic spell."
He wanted to observe it in action a few more times but unfortunately he wouldn't have enough time, the longer the corrosive poison was present the more damage it would do and because of the poison fog in the area more and more of it was added every second.
He activated stealth and using all of the power in his body he dashed in its direction and appeared above it instantly. Now that he was so close it could easily notice him even if he was in stealth, it was a rather low ranked spell so the snake could see through it.
Unfortunately for it, it was much too late, before it could even think about moving a blade covered in fire cut its head clean off. Fortunately for Ray its body still had a lot of mana in it so the fire was put out easily, but the snake was already dead so it couldn't fight back. He might be here for the behemoth but the body of the snake was bound to be valuable, especially its poison. For a part of the ancient behemoth body, strong poisons would be needed and the corrosive poison would barely count.
He turned around to look at the behemoth, which quickly collapsed under its own weight. The poison wasn't magic so it wasn't dispersed after the death of the snake and the muscles in its legs had deteriorated to the point of no return.
From where he was standing he could see inside the massive cave and could see that besides those 3 baby behemoths, there was also the body of a fully grown one. Undoubtedly the male that must have died after being ambushed by the snake in its sleep. The poison of the snake didn't hurt so one wouldn't notice what was going on before it was too late.
At first he was going to simply kill the weakened mother and take its heart blood, but seeing the look on its face and knowing that unless he took the 3 of them then he would be leaving them orphaned and waiting to die he had a change of heart.
He sighed and shook his head. "I really must have gone soft." He had killed his fair share of people and sometimes in front of their kids, but the loneliness he felt after being stuck in the new world and the memories of his early life made him think twice.
The kids whose parents were killed were often privileged enough to have a family member wealthy enough to take them in, or to be sent to a proper orphanage, but he wasn't the same.
After the death of his father, and his mother soon after that, he was left alone and forced to wander the streets of the slums for months before a sorry excuse of an orphanage begrudgingly took him in. He had been working for gangs for a whole year before that, and even after that the conditions were so poor that he had no choice but to continue.
He was 8 years old at the time and had to mature fast. With the introduction of mana into the old world, people started to mature faster than they did before, but not even that could account for how fast he was forced to see the world for what it was.
He looked over to the behemoth, while on its deathbed it was still strong enough to kill him instantly, so unless he truly wanted to orphan its young ones then he had to be careful with his next steps.