As a species on par with the big 9, having a large body and living long weren't the only things that high humans could do. Just like the dragons and phoenixes of myth, high humans had many magical abilities native to them and while most of them had yet to develop because of his young age, what he was doing now was as easy as moving his arms.
In the blink of an eye his previously 8-foot-tall body shrunk to slightly over 6 foot. This is how high humans could go unnoticed for all of human history. He didn't know how it worked but for the time being that didn't really matter. Without the existence of mana there was no way to tell the difference between a high human that shrunk their bodies and a normal person.
Even now there were still a few high humans that hide in plain sight as humans still didn't have the capabilities of detecting their oddities.
As beings capable of reproduction, high humans and modern human ancestors have definitely had children in the past, meaning that every human has some high human in them. Though the farther away you are from your high human ancestor the less likely you are to be born as a high human.
Sometimes this extremely faint bloodline would randomly awaken leading to two humans giving birth to a high human.
These people hide themselves very well so Ray had no idea what was going on, but with a quick look at his stat screen he could make a few assumptions.
[Name: Higan R Hart
Age: 17
Race: High human.]
"High human? Did I just go through a racial evolution." While the term high human was foreign to him, he knew what race changes were. A fine example of one of them was going from a goblin to a hobgoblin.
Evolutionarily they were not that far apart so it was relatively simpler to do such an upgrade, but it was much more difficult to go past that. The kejin, what Itz'tal is, was the step up from hobgoblin and it was practically the end of the line for goblins. There was something above that, but it was totally impractical to become such a being so the only ones in existence were those who were born as such.
The thing that led to high humans being so rare that there was almost nothing known about them was that on a scale of sorts, kejins, humans and even fergati were all on the same level.
Meaning that it was almost impossible for a non-natal high human to come around. Not only that but in the absence of mana prior to the catastrophe the large size of high humans was more of a downside than an advantage.
Much of the increase in his body was developed via mana so even with becoming so much larger he didn't feel hungry, but if there was no mana then he would need to rely on the chemical energy from food.
But the problem is that the food in the old world prior to the catastrophe was so poor in quality that there was nothing that was nutritious enough to support their growth. Unless they could afford to spend most of the day eating, they would die of starvation very early on, so only a handful of high humans in the past could live longer than 50.
But Ray was, as for most things, different. Not only was he not lacking mana, his body was entirely saturated with the stuff. Even if he needed to eat to support his growth in the future, which he was sure he would need to do, he had more than enough wyrm meat to last him a few decades.
He still wasn't too sure what was going on in his body so he looked into himself to investigate further.
Everything looked the same except for a few striking differences.
The first thing he noticed was that he had an extra heart, and along with it there was an extra set of blood vessels stuck to the original ones. As a large being, one heart wouldn't be enough for high humans so they developed two of them.
It was situated in his lower abdomen and as if to make space he had much less intestines than before. But this wasn't the reason, it's just that high humans had a much more efficient digestive tract than humans so there wasn't a need for as much of it.
Each of his blood vessels were much wider than before, excluding his capillaries, meaning that he had an even higher base mana capacity but what shocked him was that the newer blood vessels didn't carry any mana in them.
As someone with immense knowledge of the new world via Itroth's soul he wasn't shocked by any of the other changes that happened to his body. Not even the extra heart was a surprise, he knew of a few humanoid species that had innate divine strength and had up to 9 hearts to supply enough blood flow to support their bodies. But the lack of mana in his other circulatory system left him lost.
From what he knew it should have also been used as a mana store and eventually a soul power store, but the lack of any mana whatsoever was out of his expectations. He knew this because the race that Itroth was had 5 smaller hearts instead of one large one and also had 5 circulatory systems.
For him, each and every one of them stored mana but as he was different he was concerned as to what to do.
But just because he was unsure as to what to do now, that didn't mean that his enemies were.
Instinctively he tried to duck to avoid the attack that was coming at him, but after a bit of consideration he decided against it. In one simple motion he caught the spear that was rocketing towards his head.
An attack that would have sent him flying before looked like it was lightly thrown at him. And that wasn't even due to the weight increase from the Golden Overlord body.
After his race change and partially because of the increase in the size of his body so suddenly, most of his progress in the golden body refining technique and subsequently the golden overlord body was erased. Though his features external features remained golden looking.
Because he had already done it, it would only take a few hours of ichor production to get back to the same stage, but he naturally had no time to do so now.
Meaning that through only the power of his physical body he trumped all of his previous power. A saint was 100 times stronger than a grandmaster meaning that the difference between 9,999 and 10,000 wasn't one grandmaster tier stat point, but 990,001 grandmaster tier stat points. And Ray was currently at 10,100 adding another 10,000-grandmaster tier stat points.
The extra 100 that seemed like an insignificant amount was greater than all of his previous power.
This is why a saint is considered an entirely different being.
No matter how weak a saint is, if even only one of their stats manage to reach such a high level, they would be able to completely and entirely trump any and every grandmaster regardless of how strong.
There is no such thing as jumping ranks to battle your enemies. The strongest ant and the weakest elephant couldn't possibly be compared.
But even with such a strong body holding such a weapon was no small task. The spear in his hand was extremely hot, even though he had only held it for a few seconds before dropping it the flesh was charred black and sliced into mush
A combination of attacks from various elements all at the same lead to even more dangerous effects inside his body.
A searing and cutting pain ran up his left arm, it became incredibly stiff and was so heavy that even his blood flow slowed down. With a simple flex all of the effects were forced out of his body.
"If I was hit with that before then I would have died instantly. I was dancing on the boundary of life and death, and I didn't even know it." he sighed.