The entirety of his arm was a mass of cut and burned flesh, the only things that were left untouched were his extremely strong bones and blood vessels. He felt nothing in it and there was immense pain radiating from his shoulder.
If it was just this then he wouldn't have worried as his high vitality should have healed him almost instantly, but in the presence of the space, time, spirit and gravity elements it wasn't that simple.
Naturally, as a high human, he had a natural affinity to all of them except for time, but that didn't mean that he had any form of resistance.
What it did mean was that while he would have it slightly easier when using these 3 elements, he had comparatively weaker defenses against them, like a form of trade off. An affinity and a resistance are two entirely different things, and many had lost their lives confusing the two.
Normally he would have depended on his talent getting rid of these foreign elements before he would even notice, but after almost two years of constant use it finally failed him.
In the presence of the spirit element his talent completely deactivated. There was no weakening, no gradual loss in effectiveness, no in-between. It shut down in its entirety when a foreign source of the spirit element was introduced into his body.
This was why he had to force them out of body before he could start to heal. The metal, lightning, earth and fire elements would out damage his natural healing and the spirit and light elements interfering with it. The others had their own different effects that only made his life worse.
And all this was only after he held it for a less than a second; if any of these weapons pierced his body then he might instantly die with no clue as to what happened.
Even his saintly body was nothing in the face of these berserk elements formed into a spear. He finally realized how close he was to death and how clueless he was.
He was even using them to spar and increase his fighting experience, one slip up and he would have been deader than dead.
He wanted to further investigate these weapons as he found it strange that they gave off such an unassuming aura, but before he could entirely shift his focus to the one on the ground another one came flying for his head once again.
Not repeating the same mistake, he used mana to freeze it midair and he finally had time to observe who it was that was throwing these at him. In the short amount of time it took for him to go through his transformation, 25 of the greater Sun eaters had gathered just outside of the range of his mana sense.
All of them looked like ant-human hybrids with each looking more like a man than the last. The one in front was the one who threw the last spear, and it was near impossible to tell him and a normal human apart, ignoring the four arms of course.
He was clearly stronger than the rest, somewhere near the very peak of the grandmaster tier and with the aid of their natural weapons and affinity to so many powerful elements it's no wonder he could injure Ray, even though he let it happen.
There is no such thing as jumping ranks from grandmaster to saint but that's only when compared to raw stats. Things like the sun eater's spears could allow them to battle against the weakest of saints with no issue. It would be only the weakest as such weapons could only be effective if they got hit, and only the weakest of saints could get hit by such things. Though Ray was of course an exception as he grabbed onto it himself.
As such he felt no more danger from these Sun eaters, even though they seemed to perfectly counter his talent. Now he was more curious than anything else; a mere grandmaster tier should not be able to handle such weapons, much less create them at will and throw them with such force.
Ray himself was technically a grandmaster as he had yet to take in soul power into his body, but he was a Bonafide saint in all other ways. He didn't have the double reserves of power, but his mana was more than enough to cover that discrepancy many times over and his physical body would absolutely crush even the purest of cultivators. Yet not even a freak like him could create such a powerful attack so easily.
Seeing that this intruder was ignoring him and focused more on his weapon, the leading Sun eater was furious. He was the grand general of the queen's guards and had dealt with many threats in his long life, but such disrespect could not be tolerated. But before he could charge up and throw another spear, he paused.
Others might have not been able to see what just happened, but with his heightened senses Ray could tell that some message was passed directly into this sun eater's mind.
Visibly pissed but having no other choice than follow the command he just received he put down his spear and spoke up.
"Intruder. The queen has informed me that you are permitted to speak with her. It is an honor for scum of your kind to gain such an opportunity, so I'd advise that you take it seriously. And do not try anything stupid, or I swear on my name of Julius Ferty Num'Pery that I will cut you down where you stand." The queen's orders left him confused, jealous and angry.
This intruder used tricks and schemes to force his way up the royal mound and yet she called on him to speak with her. Even with such a high position he could only speak with her when the hive was on the verge of destruction, and he alone could not handle the situation. Yet this weakling could just walk in, kill his brothers using dirty methods and he speak with her so easily.
Though such intense emotions were running through Julius' head, Ray was going through his own roller coaster ride.
"You can talk?" This had truly been a shock to him, as far as he knew those beasts who were classified as lesser would not gain such intelligence no matter how strong they got.
The older and more powerful might be able to compare to a human 3-year-old, but the sun eater in front of him was speaking in such a clear and concise way that it shattered his previous world view.
If he knew that the greater Sun eaters had such intelligence, then he would have used diplomacy to deal with them; he only wanted to observe what it was that was blocking his mana sense and populate his subspace.
If he could have spoken to them then he wouldn't have dealt with this situation in such a barbaric manner, not for nothing was he the one barging into their home. They had every right to defend it.
This slip of the tongue caused Julius to practically go insane. Not only was this weakling invading their home and killing their members, but now he was insulting his intelligence. But before he could flare up again another message was sent to his mind, and he had no choice but to calm down.
"I will not argue with you intruder. The queen has commanded that you speak with her and if you dare refuse, I will kill you immediately." The message that he got was nowhere near this domineering, but he had to add his part, otherwise he might explode from anger.
Any other time Ray would have immediately annihilated anyone who dared speak to him this way, he was no push over after all, but for some reason he just couldn't take the threats from Julius seriously. It was as if he was looking at a child playing around and not a powerful grandmaster who had the capabilities of ending his life if caught off guard.
He didn't know where it came from, whether it was from being a saint or a high human, but he had no way of isolating variables to properly determine what was the cause of this feeling. But considering that he was the source of this misunderstanding he just went with the flow.
"Then I will oblige your queen and speak with her immediately." He even bowed all royal like as he tried to appease the Sun eaters.
"That's more like it, continue acting like that and you just might keep your life." Julius tried to mock him further but seeing that Ray only looked at him with a smile he only got more furious.
He turned around quickly, and all the other Sun eaters made way for them as he led Ray up the mound.