He shot up onto his foot and turned around to see who it was.
Behind him, hovering in the air, were two men. One old and one young. They looked human in all ways except for their long, thick tails. Seeing this, he immediately knew what they were.
'Fergati!'
They were a race that gained access to the new world about the same time as humans did via the same method. In their dimension, portals also opened up about 500 years ago, but they didn't awaken talents in the same way that humans did. For them, their physical bodies were already extremely strong and it only got stronger after the fact.
Because of their similar standing and relative position to humans, they naturally opposed each other. The most sensical thing to do would be to partner up because of how similar they are, they could even have offspring with each other, but because of the slight physical differences they detest each other.
Humans think that the tails are primitive and beastly and fergati think that the very lack of a tail is disgusting and a sign of weakness. A simple difference like skin color was enough to divide humans for ages so you could imagine what the tail bearing fergati were like to them.
Both of them were dressed in gray robes with a red skull patch on the left sleeve, but because of their physical prowess it was extremely tight, which symbolized that they were part of a sect.
A powerful clan would have an insignia on their back, a sect on a limb and an academy on their chest.
Seeing them standing there he pieced a few things together. While he was focusing on fighting, the two of them must have stumbled across this area and noticed the peculiarity of the mana. When investigating they discovered him engaged in combat and decided to wait for him to either die or kill them all and then they would swoop in and finish them off or take advantage of his weakness to claim his spoils of battle.
He looked at them before he breathed a breath of relief. The old man was at the early stage of the grandmaster tier and the young man had barely reached the ascended tier. In fact he was wobbling around in the air, meaning that he could barely control the surrounding mana enough to fly.
The old man was strong, but even in his state he could crush him multiple times over.
He looked at them one more time before saying. "I don't know what you think you are going to do here, but I'd advise against it. I know most humans don't like your kind, but I don't really care. Killing isn't a pastime of mine that I enjoy so if you want to keep your life, I'd suggest you leave."
The two of them were speechless. In their mind this human should have fallen to his knees and begged them for mercy given his condition. But here he was, giving them a warning.
They couldn't take this! Not only did they inherently not like his kind, but they were members of the red mist sect! That was a middle grade sect in the Aurelian Kingdom and there were only 130 of similarly graded sects!
Unless this human came from one of the 10 high grade sects or was from an academy, which they highly doubted, then he had no right to talk to them that way. Even the old man who was how many hundreds of years old was visibly angered.
"Arrogance! You believe that just because we let you live you think that you can speak back to us?! I said that I was taking these so what right do you have to protest? What, just because you are a little strong? So what! Look at yourself now! You can barely stand yet you have the audacity?" The young man burst out in anger as he sent a fist made out of red mist at him.
Facing this attack Ray didn't have to look at him to disperse it and he did so easily as he looked for something around the corpses.
Seeing this the two men were shocked, going by Ray's non-existent aura he should be weaker than the average fergati yet he could deal with an ascended tier attack so casually.
"Young man, don't let your shallow pride go to your head! If the young master gave you a command then you should obey! He is an inner disciple of the red mist sect, you think that you can rival that?" He sent his own red mist fist, which similarly, was also easily dispersed. Ray's strength was on the verge of breaking through to the saint stage so even while injured a mere early stage grandmaster couldn't rival him.
If they were shocked before then they were speechless now. They had truly underestimated his stamina and mana capacity and thought that even though normally more powerful than the two of them combined, his condition would mean that he would have no choice but to coincide.
But they couldn't be blamed for this. Any normal cultivator would have long run out of mana and their own strength wouldn't be enough to continue battling. They assumed that the lack of aura just meant that he was extremely weak now and naturally they wouldn't know that that's just how he normally was.
"Oh! There it is." Ignoring the looks of horror on their face, Ray stretched out his hand and a disembodied leg came flying. Naturally this was his leg and under the effects of breath of life, it ,along with the injuries all over his body, quickly regenerated. He could regrown his leg, but it would be faster if he didn't have to.
"Now where were we? Oh right! You two. You seemed oddly confident for a pair of thieves. What, just because you are a messy inner disciple of some bullshit sect you think you can do what you want when you want anywhere you go? What about if I kill the two of you right here right now, how many others would be fighting tooth and nail to replace you?" As he said this he released his beast pressure.
This forced the two of them to remain in place even hovering mid air, but they could still talk.
"N…No sir. You must have been mistaken. This is some form of severe misunderstanding. Who am I to demand your possessions?" The young man was the first to fold. Being less experienced than the old man, this was the first time he was put in this kind of situation.
The old man kept quiet. This young man was at the same major tier that he was so he didn't feel like he needed to bend his knee to greet him.
This ticked off Ray. "Hey old bastard, you see even your master here apologizing yet you as a slave remain silent. What, you think because you are a grandmaster like me I am not entitled to an apology? With your strength you are no different from a child so don't falter yourself. And if you think I don't know what you are doing then you take me for a fool."
"Then take this!!!" The old man flexed his muscles to remove the effects of beast pressure and all around him a blood red fog appeared. His strength spiked from the early stage to the middle stage as he dashed towards Ray.
'Huh? That looks familiar.' Now that Ray was fully healed his strength naturally returned to the peak so he wasn't worried. But the red fog interested him; he had seen something like this done before from a hobgoblin, but that version was much stronger than this.
He stretched out his palm and froze the mana around the old mana, holding him in place. The old man's average strength normally was around 1000 and under the effects of his cultivation method it shot up to 5000, but it was still child's play compared to Ray whose stats were all at 9,999.
At this level every point was the difference between heaven and earth, so while an impressive boost it wasn't anywhere near enough to cover the gap.
"Hey you old bastard, you said that you come from the red mist sect. Does this look familiar to you?" Ignoring the old man's pale face, he pulled out the red crystal that he didn't have the time to properly study to see his reaction.
He was confident that the two of them were related, but it didn't hurt to check. There could be a red mist sect and a blood mist sect, or a red mist sect and a red fog sect.
God knows how many sects there were and many of them came from larger fallen sects, so their cultivation methods and techniques were very similar. There were only so many unique names that could be related to your signature cultivation method when there are 40 others trying to do the same thing.
"HAHAHA, what right do you have to call us thieves when you dare steal the property of a core disciple of our red mist sect! You are dead! Dead I tell you!"
"Okay, that's enough out of you." He waved his hand and the old man's head exploded. He had a mana core so Ray simply made its stored mana go unstable and it did the rest. And since the old man condensed his mana core in his head, it was his head that exploded.
He couldn't do this normally, but a combination of beast pressure, the fact that he had a mana core and not a mana pool or heart of mana, as well as fully controlling all of the mana around him allowed him to do it.
"Now you."