But failure had never stopped me before, if it had, I never would have made it through 700 attempts at unlocking the Godforger class. This was just another puzzle to solve, another system to understand and exploit.
I sat back down and began to strategize. The problem wasn't that I lacked magical power, I could feel the mana flowing through me like liquid electricity. The problem was control. I needed to heat water gradually, carefully, not blast it with fireballs that would either do nothing or turn my dinner into steam.
"Think, Ren," I told myself. "What did those scrolls actually teach you?"
I closed my eyes and sifted through the knowledge that had been forcibly implanted in my brain. Basic flame manipulation, yes, but also... water affinity? That seemed counterintuitive, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Cooking wasn't just about applying heat, it was about controlling temperature, managing the interaction between different elements.
What followed was perhaps the most educational few hours of my magical career. I sat in the throne room, alternately manipulating small amounts of water, of course, after a painful absorption session from a water affinity scroll, and attempting to control the temperature of the air around them. It was exhausting work that left me with a series of progressively worsening nosebleeds and a headache that felt like someone was using my skull as a bell.
But gradually, painstakingly, I began to understand. The scrolls had given me theoretical knowledge, but magic—real magic—required practice. It required building muscle memory, training your body to channel mana in specific ways until it became as natural as breathing.
Hours passed. My nose bled. My head pounded. My mana reserves emptied and slowly refilled, only to be drained again as I pushed myself to the limit of my newfound abilities.
But eventually, I achieved something resembling success. I could manipulate small amounts of water, not much, but enough. And I could heat the surrounding air in a controlled, gradual way that wouldn't instantly vaporize everything in sight.
I wiped the blood from my nose with my sleeve and grinned despite the pain. "I'm a goddamn genius."
The actual cooking process was almost anticlimactic after everything I'd been through. I carefully poured water into the noodle cup, handling the plastic container like it contained liquid gold.
I sprinkled in the spice packet with the reverent precision of a master chef preparing a dish for royalty. Then, using my hard-won magical skills, I gradually heated the water until it reached the perfect temperature for instant noodle preparation.
When I finally took that first bite, it was like tasting heaven. The cheap, processed flavours that I'd eaten a thousand times before had never tasted so good. I devoured the entire cup in what felt like seconds, then drank the remaining broth like it was ambrosia. When I finished, I drank the rest of the water bottle and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
"Alright," I said, rolling up my sleeves with renewed determination. "Time to get to work."
The meal had done more than fill my stomach, it had given me perspective. Through trial and error, I'd begun to understand something fundamental about this place and my situation. Knowledge from scrolls wasn't enough. The body had to adapt, had to learn to channel mana as naturally as it channelled blood. Skill wasn't just information crammed into your brain, it was muscle memory, instinct, the kind of understanding that came only through practice and repetition.
I looked at the summoning circle that was meant to activate the Astral Crucible, the divine forge I needed to complete my trial. I didn't truly understand what I was supposed to do, the scrolls had given me theory, but this was practical application on a scale I'd never attempted.
But instinct guided me. I sat cross-legged in the centre of the circle, closed my eyes, and began to meditate.
Minutes passed. Hours. In the timeless void of the throne room, it might have been weeks for all I knew. But gradually, something began to change. In the darkness behind my closed eyelids, I started to see threads of light, mana, flowing through the air around me like luminous spider silk.
At first, I could only observe them, but slowly I began to understand how to interact with them. I reached out with senses I didn't know I possessed, gathering the glowing threads toward me like a weaver collecting material for a tapestry. The mana flowed into my heart, my core, creating patterns of power that felt both alien and utterly natural.
[Congratulations. Mana Circle Acquired.]
The system notification appeared in my vision, but I barely registered it. I was too focused on the sensation of power flowing through me, the feeling of being connected to something vast and eternal.
I opened my eyes and stood, my heart pounding with purpose and anticipation. This was it. This was the moment I'd been working toward.
"Summon: Astral Crucible."
The words left my lips with the weight of command, and the universe responded. A divine forge erupted into existence before me, its form both beautiful and terrible. It was forged from starlight and shadow, its fires burning with colors that had no names in any earthly language. The anvil at its heart pulsed like a living thing, and the tools that hung around it hummed with barely contained power.
The warmth that radiated from the forge wasn't just heat, it was potential, possibility, the promise of creation and destruction balanced on the edge of a hammer's strike. It felt like standing next to the beating heart of something that was either dying or about to be reborn.
I picked up the star-iron hammer, feeling its perfect weight in my hands, and looked into the cosmic flames of the Astral Crucible. Somewhere in those fires, I would forge a divine hammer or die trying.
I narrowed my eyes and smiled grimly. "Let's begin."