He called the others 'normal' because of the appearance of the guards. They stood upright like people on two of their legs and the other four looked like that of humans.
The higher up they were, the more human-like they looked and the more intelligent they were.
He wasn't surprised by this though as this was a well known phenomenon.
Greater beasts are those who are born with human level intelligence and when they reach the saint tier, or lower depending on age, they can transform into a human form, setting them back to the apprentice tier but with a slight advantage of superior physique.
Lesser beasts on the other hand can not do this, and are as intelligent as any other random beast. But ever so often there will be a mutation in a lesser beast that would lead to human-like characteristics appearing upon birth or after they reach the peak of their strength.
These are known as pseudo-greater beasts and their intelligence will grow slowly from that point onwards until it eventually rivals that of humans.
This is supposed to be rare, but here there were at least 50 of them just guarding the queen.
He thought this was strange, but after remembering the reproduction rate of chima it all made sense. After only a year half of them were already replaced, and in the god knows how many years this colony had been around it wouldn't be strange if only 50 of them were a little bit special.
Naturally these pseudo-greater beasts are much stronger than other lesser beasts, some to the point of being stronger than most greater beasts, and the sun eaters fall into this category.
These are an ancient breed of beast that appeared a few thousand years after the birth of the great 9. Usually cross breeding between the great nine would only ever result in a lesser species, but that wasn't the case with the sun eater.
A full grown greater sun eater(Pseudo-greater sun eater) could go head to head with any of the great nine at the same level, and that's not something that can be said for most other beasts, especially lesser beasts.
The strongest part of their bloodline was naturally the ancestor of all bug type beasts, the diamond wasp, but after countless years of inter mixing they had a sizable portion of a few others.
The diamond wasp was responsible for earth and gravity, but the phoenix was the source of fire and light, the dragon the source of metal and lightning and the divine stag the source of space, time, spirit and equal to the diamond ant in gravity.
This combination leads to a deadly foe if, and only if, they could control these inherent attributes, and that's something only pseudo greater beasts can do.
This might be an issue for others, but to him it was nothing. He ran up the mountain very quickly and every time he ran into on of the guards he would knock it unconscious and pull it into the subspace before they had the time to activate any abilities, the last thing that he wanted was to be hit by a spear that could weaken the connection between his body, mind and soul all while burning, cutting and electrocuting him to death.
He had no reason to kill them, he was barging into their home after all, and it would be against his current efforts, populating and all.
He did this to about 20 of them, but it didn't take much longer after than for the greater sun eaters to figure out something was wrong. And with number 21 they were prepared.
But even then he could still easily deal with it, these were only at the early stages of the grandmaster tier, so even with their unique method of attack he could handle it.
There were no beams, or explosions or anything like that. Instead they would vomit out something that would quickly form into a weapon, which so far happened to be a spear.
They would use this weapon to attack, and because of its properties it was near impossible to break, but when it came to hand-to-hand combat Ray was unrivaled.
He made it to 30 when they spiked from early stage to mid stage, and with their special yet disgusting weapons it was enough to cover the gap. Each and every one of the greater sun eaters could rival him, as he had yet to forge a proper weapon for himself, but he could slowly defeat them using his superior fighting experience.
But even then when he reached the 40th and they spiked again to the late stage he had no choice but to put all of his effort into properly fighting them.
Even with his activated body it was difficult to fight against them, but he was taking advantage of them to polish his fighting style. This was the first time that he could properly fight a stronger humanoid without immediately being overpowered and have to resort to tricks to deal with them.
Even fighting just one had him debilitated. When he activated the power of his artifact like body, his defense shot up, and until he added more ichor and properly etched his body that's all that it would do.
Like that his defense would rival that of a mid stage saint, yet every single stab and swipe of the spears could easily damage him. And he made it even more difficult for himself since he was still committed to capturing them and not killing them.
But he took the time between each fight to reflect on the battles and correct his mistakes. He did this not because of the long term benefits that it would bring, but because having a spear pierce your stomach isn't a pleasant experience.
And to do this he invented his own method. Instead of just thinking about the fight, he simulated it in his mind. It was based on the data that he collected subconsciously during the fight; where was he hit, how hard was he hit, how many times did he get hit. Did he hit the enemy? If so, how hard and was that enough to do substantial damage. These are things that the brain takes notice of automatically and he was just using his high wisdom to call back on it.
Via mana sense he also had a third person perspective of the fights. He could see what he messed up and how.
Using the third person perspective and various data he could properly determine the missteps he took and what needs to be done to fix them.
"If I polish this enough, then I might be able to script my own fights so that I can perfect a new technique using past battles."
What he didn't notice was that when he did this his stats, specifically wisdom but everything else because of his talent, grew a slight bit; only by one or two points, but at this stage a stat point was worth much more than one could ever imagine.
His stats that were stuck at 9,999 for a whole year were suddenly pushed past 10,000. He was officially a saint, or close to one. He wouldn't become a saint until at least some of the mana in his body was either turned into or replaced by soul power.
Unlike others as one who had a heart of mana instead of creating another foreign structure to hold soul power, some of the mana already flowing through his veins would be directly converted into soul power if he wanted to become a saint.
As a matter of fact most saints wouldn't have stats anywhere near this high, as long as the body was strong enough to support the creation of a soul core or soul pool then there wasn't much benefit to increasing your stats to such a point.
At that stage those who chose to fight with their physical bodies were few and far between. Fighting like that would lead to intense injuries and there were not many spells or medicines that would heal any damage at that stage.
Even at the practitioner tier cultivators and mages would start fighting more and more with exclusively mana, be it skills, spells or talents, over using their own bodies. Head to head collisions become more and more rare the more powerful the person is.
This should be expected of mages as they do not start off by cultivating their bodies using mana, they cultivate their minds, but this was a fatal mistake for cultivators. It would be the same as laying the foundation of a house but before starting actual construction you move over to an undeveloped piece of land. The house is bound to collapse under its weight or at the slightest breeze.
There is nothing wrong with the new piece of land, it's just that the proper foundations for that line of cultivation wasn't put down. As a matter of fact it would be best to become both a cultivator and a mage, developing both body and mind, but not everyone had the talent, time nor money to do that.
That's why the guild master was going to put him into a mage course after a week of vacation even though he had been trained as a cultivator for the month prior, only by having a strong body and mind could Ray truly excavate the true potential of flow and most importantly inform them of every minor discrepancy.
Becoming a mage isn't easy, but with this faulty path that cultivators take it is easier to become stronger as a mage. The higher up someone is in the food chain the more likely they are to originate as a mage. Though this wouldn't matter after becoming a supremacy.
But cultivators couldn't be blamed for this. Not everyone could be like Ray who could get stronger through any and every avenue. Increasing stats usually take a very long time doing a very specific action. If all of Ray's stats didn't increase at the same time which allowed him to perceive and then absorb soul power before becoming a grandmaster, which in turn boosted the rest of his stats, he would at most be an ascended tier.
But having saint tier power before becoming a saint wouldn't be so simple.