The tasks given to Damien weren't all life-threatening things.
Actually, the trials weren't always meant to be life-threatening.
The Gehenna Tribe was made up of a variety of peoples. Some of them had incredibly unique trades, while some worked in more common occupations that contributed to the well-being of the tribe.
Regardless, everyone had a role. When they all came together, they formed an amazingly functional society.
The trials Damien was to undergo weren't special to him. Rather, every youth who was set to enter Gehenna had to do them.
However, they already had their roles.
Their trials would be within the role they'd chosen.
They would still be extremely complex and difficult, but not every youth had to risk their life in the jungle to earn the privilege to enter Gehenna.
That was the job of hunters.
Damien had been acting as a hunter since he came to the tribe, and with the talent he'd shown in the trade, everyone accepted him as one almost immediately.
However, Damien technically didn't have an assigned role. More than that, just being a hunter wasn't enough to earn him the same privileges as the native tribesmen.
He was still an outsider. No matter how much the tribe accepted and loved him, not all of them would allow him to intrude on their sacred internal traditions just because of that.
Damien's trial was harder than his peers. That was because his trial was a combination of all of theirs.
The man the Saintess sent him to meet was a blacksmith.
His first trial was in the forge. It was one he was particularly happy to partake in.
Damien had a great deal of experience in front of a fire. When he was stuck in No Return Pass, he used both liquor and forging to appease his boredom.
He'd been using his alchemy skills to make liquor relatively consistently since then.
He hadn't done much since the last one he made for Grand Heavens Boundary's Universal Core, but he was still touching up on his craft whenever he found the time.
His forging skills hadn't seen the same attention.
Mirage broke on the Ancient Battlefield. Since then, Damien had slowly become someone who didn't need to use weapons, so he never got around to repairing it.
He didn't plan to start using weapons again any time soon. He didn't think they'd be able to handle the power of his Existence Law no matter how much he enhanced them.
But he did plan to bring Mirage back.
It was a sword that accompanied him for a very, very long time. Decades upon decades of experience, the blood of millions or even more enemies, and the memories of those times were all contained in the sword.
Plus, it wasn't soulless like the Devourer he used when he was young.
Mirage had a rudimentary consciousness. Damien couldn't just let it die and be done with it.
That sword meant a lot to him, but if he wanted to fix it after it was shattered by something as esoteric as a chaotic mixture of everything he had, he needed a forge worthy to do so.
Void Palace didn't have one.
Well, they did, but it wasn't enough. Void Palace's forge wasn't meant to repair weapons like Mirage.
There was an ethereal aspect to it since the sword's sentience had to be restored as well.
When Damien walked into the Gehenna Tribe's forge for the first time, he got that feeling.
Feeling the heat of the flames, the sound of metal clanging against metal, the smell of ash and chemical reactions, Damien understood it with his body.
This was a place blessed by spirits.
There was no place better than this to restore Mirage.
It lined up with his trials too.
Basically, Damien needed to obtain acknowledgement from the professionals in these fields so they could support him later. That was the nature of his current task.
It was easy when it was put like that.
Because all Damien needed to do was show off a little.
In front of blacksmiths, he was more than happy to flex his skills.
Damien got in front of the forge. He took out the anvil and hammer he received in the Ancient Battlefield, and closed his eyes.
"Huu…"
With one breath, his mind and body became one with the forge.
Pieces of mirrored material almost like glass but far too powerful to be glass appeared in the air along with the frame of a sword, and Damien went to work.
The main materials he used were already part of the sword, but Damien had quite a collection of resources after spending decades in the Heavenly World.
He was working on instinct, mixing metals and creating alloys to test. However, he trusted his instinct more than anything.
And more importantly, Mirage did too.
Every move he made was like a work of art.
The flames in the forge left their owners, swallowing him in an inferno as he harmonized with their motions.
The Law of Fire.
Damien was familiar with its form in his home cosmos.
But only now did he understand it in this one.
Damien thought they'd be different because he changed cosmos, but as he'd learned over the past year, the base structure was the same.
The laws here were chaotic. They seemed twisted to be more oriented to chaos, burned away from their original forms, but at their core, they maintained the same formula.
First came Creation and Destruction, followed by Space and Time, Life and Death, and the Five Elements.
Was that the formula for existence?
Or was there something more to it?
A seed of thought entered Damien's mind.
It was a question that didn't seem to hold much weight, especially since Damien had a sub-universe of his own, however…
'Can I create Existence?'
Standing in front of the flame, experiencing the miracle of creation occurring naturally, he wondered.
And as he wondered, he dreamed.
'A new goal…'
A goal he'd never imagined before.
It wasn't attainable anytime soon, or perhaps anytime in the future, but he would make it happen.
'But before that…'
He had to focus on what was happening in the present.
Damien spent hours in the forge. He impressed and astonished the onlookers long ago, having gathered a crowd that had gone beyond just the blacksmiths, but he wasn't putting in effort just for them anymore.
Still, they stood there watching his every move, enamored by the beautiful performance he'd unwittingly put on.
Time passed. The flames died down slowly, and Damien's fluid movements became clear to all again.
Like a dance, he floated around the forge. Each step of the process was accomplished with utmost precision, but more importantly, the loving hand of a blacksmith who cared for his creation.
And when the process finally came to an end, not only did Damien pass his first trial with flying colors…
…he once again held Mirage in his hand.
A pure sword made with his heart, a sword that meant more to him than just its role as a sword.
That sword now stood in front of him again, blessed with the power to slay Gods.
