The first taste of success was a cruel lie. Ren had discovered the method, the key to the forge, but that single, agonizing filament of absorbed lightning was merely the first grain of sand in a desert he now had to cross on his knees.
He returned to the heart of the storm above the Anvil, his spirit burning with a fierce, stubborn resolve. He would not be broken. He would endure.
He repeated the process. He flew into the churning black clouds, his senses attuned not to the chaotic wind, but to the deep, steady keynote of the Fulminate island below. He synchronized his soul's rhythm with the Anvil's hum, a living metronome in a symphony of destruction. He felt a charge build, and with a precision born of fresh, painful memory, he used the Tempest Breathing Method to "inhale" a thin stream of power from a passing lightning bolt.
The energy that flooded his channels was not a gentle river; it was a torrent of molten glass. It was raw, untamed, and utterly alien. His Aetheric pathways, which had been so perfectly healed and tuned, screamed in protest. The pain was absolute, a fire that consumed him from the inside out. He managed to hold his concentration for three seconds before the agony became too much, and he was forced to sever the connection, tumbling out of the clouds to crash, gasping, onto the black stone below.
Faint, lace-like patterns of red, angry scars—Lichtenberg figures—blossomed across his arms, a physical testament to the violent power he was trying to tame.
"This is the price of true power," Zephyrion's voice offered, devoid of sympathy. "This is the First Ingot. It is useless to you in this raw state. You have taken the ore from the mountain. Now, you must hammer it into shape. You must make it your own."
Ren dragged his trembling body to a small, shallow cave he had found at the edge of the plateau. He collapsed into a meditative position, the world a swimming haze of pain. The "hammering" process was a battle of wills fought within his own soul. He had to use his own, controlled Aether to surround the chaotic, foreign energy, to smooth its jagged edges, to break down its wild, untamed will, and to purify it, one agonizing molecule at a time, until it could be safely integrated into his core.
The first day was a grueling cycle of torment. He would fly up, endure a few seconds of agonizing assimilation, crash back to the Anvil, and then spend hours in a painful, meditative trance, "hammering" the tiny speck of raw power into a usable form. He managed this three times before his body and spirit gave out completely, forcing him into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
The second day, he returned to the forge, his body still aching, but his resolve harder than the stone beneath him. He was stronger. He could now endure the connection for five seconds at a time. He learned to adapt his Aegis of the Storm, not as a shield to block the lightning, but as a focusing lens. He would project a small, reinforced section of the lattice to "shave off" manageable streams of energy from the larger bolts, a dangerous act of high-precision control where a single miscalculation would mean oblivion.
By the fourth day, overconfidence had become his new enemy. He grew accustomed to the pain, his endurance building. He saw a colossal, forked bolt of lightning tear through the sky and, in a moment of arrogant pride, he decided to absorb a stream of power far larger than anything he had attempted before.
The stream of raw energy that hit his Aegis was too much. His control shattered. The chaotic power overwhelmed his defenses and flooded his channels, a catastrophic backlash that felt like his very soul was being torn in two. He didn't just fall from the sky; he was blasted out of it, his armor blackened and smoking, his body convulsing.
He lay on the Anvil for hours, unable to move, his Aether in a state of self-destructive turmoil. He had not just failed; he had inflicted serious internal damage, "scorching" the very channels he had worked so hard to perfect. He was forced to halt his training completely for a full day, his entire focus now on a desperate, painful act of damage control, using what little controlled Aether he had to soothe his ravaged spirit.
He returned to the forge on the sixth day, humbled and more cautious. He now understood. This was not a trial of power or even of pain. It was a trial of patience and discipline. He developed a new, sustainable rhythm. Absorb a small, manageable amount of power. Retreat to the cave. Spend hours in the painful, meditative forge of his own soul, hammering the raw ingot into a polished piece of his own spirit. Heal the minor damage. And then, and only then, repeat the cycle. It was a brutal, monotonous, one-step-forward-half-a-step-back process.
After a week of this relentless, unforgiving grind, he felt a change. His body had begun to adapt. The pain of assimilation, while still immense, was no longer a debilitating agony. His Aetheric channels, repeatedly scorched and healed, had become tempered, more resilient.
He flew into the heart of the storm one more time. A bolt of lightning, smaller than the ones he had been courting, arced towards him. He met it head-on. Using the Tempest Breathing Method, anchored by his unwavering will, he absorbed the entirety of the bolt.
The influx of power was staggering, a tidal wave of pure, chaotic energy. The subsequent "hammering" process was the most intense yet, a full-body convulsion that felt like his soul was being ripped apart and reforged. But he endured it.
When he finally recovered, gasping on the floor of his cave, he reached inward. He had not ranked up. But for the first time, he felt a tangible, measurable result from his torment. The vast, empty ocean between Rank 26 and 27 now had a single, new drop of water in it. He could feel his core's capacity had expanded, if only by a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
It was a glimmer of hope in an ocean of pain.
Exhausted but resolute, he flew back down to Aerion's Rest to give his battered body a full night of true recovery before beginning the cycle anew.
Anya met him as he landed on the crystalline grass near the Nautilus. She said nothing. She didn't need her sensors to see the toll his training had taken. His magnificent Raijin armor was scorched black, its runes glowing with a dim, tired light. His exposed skin on his arms and neck was covered in a fine, fresh, angry red tracery of Lichtenberg scars. And his eyes, though filled with a new, unbreakable resolve, held a universe of pain and exhaustion.
She looked at him, her scientific curiosity clashing with a feeling she couldn't quite identify—a mixture of horror, awe, and a strange, grudging respect.
"By the ancestors, Ren," she finally said, her voice a soft, stunned whisper. "What in the name of creation are you doing to yourself up there?"