“What the hell are you doing?” Greed yelled as Ben’s cupped palm was lowered to him as it slowly filled with blood.

“Hopefully getting you food. Now come on and drink up. Worst to worst I can cut off some skin if you need it, but let’s see if a liquid diet can sate you for now.”

“Legs, you’re being crazy! I can’t just drink your blood!”

“Greed, for our best chance you need your strength. I’m going to be relying on your buffs and healing almost constantly while we’re stuck in here so I need you to be in good shape for casting magic. I’m not just asking you to do this for you, I’m asking you to do it for me.”

Positioning it as something for his own sake as well helped break down Greed's resistance as he leaned in and started drinking.

Ben’s first instinct was to ask how it tasted, wanting some confirmation on his belief that he might just be unusually tasty, but held back in consideration for the other man. He wasn’t lying after all, he needed Greed, so he didn’t want to do anything that would put him off of eating.

It was only as he had his fill that he stopped, giving an impression of being deeply conflicted as he did and healed the cut on Ben’s hand before buffing both his mana and mana regen at his request.

With that done, Ben walked up to the pile of items again, this time taking what seemed to be a broken fragment of something, a piece of metal about as large as his palm, and sat down to stare at it. He was determined to survive and that meant using everything at his disposal, so with that goal in mind he’d decided he would figure out how to use his newest skill, material user.

He was all but certain it had to be a non-affinitied magic skill. The fact that he hadn’t heard of it before meant it was on the rarer end of the spectrum, but that didn’t matter. He had read hundreds of books on magic at this point, even without a guide, he could figure it out.

From the name alone, it sounded like a magic that could be used on anything like telekinesis would, the main question was how. He ran his mana into the piece of metal in his hand, and with an effort of will, made it rise up about a foot above where he was holding it, bringing a smile to his face until he almost immediately felt the effects of mana exhaustion, only stopping in time to keep himself from passing out.

Well, that’s not good.

Just how costly doing something as small as that was proof enough that whatever the magic did, it probably wasn’t meant to be used for combat. While it was common knowledge that non-affinitied magics had significantly steeper mana costs to do the same thing as an equivalent affinitied magic, with that difference only growing depending on how good of an affinity a mage had, that still felt unusually steep. He was being buffed to the extreme and had almost run out of mana in seconds, if he’d attempted it without the buff who could know how long he would be out for?

Well, it’s a zeroth-level skill, but still, if I compare it to a zeroth-level telekinesis then I still think it’s five or ten times worse mana-wise. I need a different way of thinking about it, it’s called material user and I got it as the bonus skill for awakening my crafting so it has to be deeply related. When I’m making something, how do I use my materials? What would I want to be able to do with anything I’m working on where mana could help?

When he asked himself that, the answer became obvious. There was only one way he would really want to be able to use his mana for his crafting. In fact, he already did, just to a significantly lesser degree compared to what he thought he was going to get as he once again filled the piece of metal with his mana, only this time, instead of trying to move it or raise it in the air, he tried to change it on a deeper level. He looked at it in his hands as he focused before closing his fist around it and squeezing, the now far softer material gushing out the sides of his fingers like dough as his eyes lit up.

He stopped running his mana through it and it held its new shape while returning to its original solid properties.

Okay, this is incredible and I’m so happy. System or world or whatever I’m supposed to call you, I love you.

Having a magic he could use was incredible enough, but it also aligned perfectly with what he would want to do with it. It could enhance the things he already enjoyed, namely his crafting, and he was all but certain he’d be having an easy time getting used to it.

I have nine jobs giving it bonuses to one degree or another, three blessings from gods, and Greed around to buff my mana. Tie that to everything I know about magic and I’m going to fly through the first couple levels at least.

He continued to experiment from there as the hours rolled by, testing what he thought would work and learning what wouldn’t with each attempt, getting more and more acquainted with his skill as he did.

Despite how annoying its mana cost was, he just needed to take a few breaks on occasion if he used too much, taking the time to reflect on what he’d figured out, as well as look closer at the trial, trying to glean whatever he could with his growing knowledge pool on the nature of the way it was made. His mind was a mass of theories, even when he was trying to learn the ins and outs of his newest skill, and as time went on he felt himself grow and progress.

He thought he was on the edge of something with the trial, but he couldn’t quite make the final leap to whatever his brain was picking at. His magic though was a different story. As the hours wore on he’d learned many things.

On top of changing the consistency and material properties of something, he’d learned that he could affect the degree to which they changed, altering them in ways that suited him best. He didn’t need to change the entire thing either, being able to focus on only one area to selectively change its properties, while the rest of the material was left unaltered.

More important than that though was the discovery that he could alter it to a greater extent than he’d originally thought. After rolling the metal he was testing into a ball in his hands, he worked and manipulated the mana he was using to pull it out, stretching it and molding it to give it features until it was a clumsy approximation of a face. It wasn’t as good as if he’d done the details by hand, but it was still plenty exciting, and with little else to do he trained the skill as hard as he could as the time limit ticked down.