In the room, Rosen was of course not sleeping. At his energetic age, having eaten his fill and dressed warmly, after only painting a few pictures, how could he be tired?

Lying on the carpet, with just a moment's focus he summoned the desktop and opened Rosen's Book of Spells, turning to the first page on Quiet Meditation and clicking to run it.

In the next instant, the noises around his ears faded away as he entered a deep meditative state once more.

This time, with no one to disturb him, he was able to meditate wholeheartedly.

At first, he felt a warmth within his body gradually grow stronger, putting him in an extremely joyful mood.

But gradually, a doubt arose in Rosen's mind.

'According to common sense, the deeper one's magical power, the better. So if Quiet Meditation can strengthen one's power, shouldn't meditating longer give even greater depth?'

'But Celest didn't seem to do this - instead he was busy running around everywhere.'

'Could it be that Quiet Meditation has limits, and longer is not necessarily better?'

At this thought, Rosen's spirit stirred slightly and he came out of the deep meditative state.

Just after exiting, he felt something was not right.

His mind was unusually excited, with all kinds of thoughts welling up that he couldn't suppress.

He felt like his consciousness had become a pot of boiling water, with thoughts bubbling up madly.

This was not a good thing.

Rosen felt a faint pain in his head, his heart was thumping violently, and his breathing became very rapid.

His body was desperately trying to provide energy to sustain his extremely excited mind, already seeming somewhat overburdened.

He was shocked, but fortunately had similar experiences in his past life.

When overusing one's mind, all kinds of thoughts could well up, with abnormal excitement, even inability to sleep soundly all night.

The way to deal with it was to empty one's thoughts, allowing ideas to arise but absolutely not delving deeper, instead letting them fade naturally.

He didn't know if this would work, but it was all he could do now.

He strove to empty his mind.

Gradually, it did have an effect.

The boiling water cooled down bit by bit, the turmoil in his consciousness gradually settled, and his internal organs also quieted after frantically providing energy to his turbulent mind.

"Phew..."

Rosen heaved a long sigh, thinking to himself: "Such risks are actually hidden in ordinary meditation!"

He felt that if he had recklessly continued meditating, what awaited him might not have been 'boiling water' but 'raging fire'!

At that time, his body might have directly shut down under the tremendous pressure, causing him to die suddenly.

'But why would this happen?'

Rosen couldn't help but ask.

With no one to answer him, he would have to seek the answer himself.

Once more gathering his focus, he summoned the desktop and opened Rosen's Adventure Log, positioning it to yesterday afternoon when he was sketching Celest's portrait.

At that moment, Celest had been reading his own spell notes, so Rosen focused the viewpoint on Celest's notes.

Soon, Rosen saw their contents.

"Basic standard spell 'Magic Missile Barrage'? That must be the dark red spheres that blew off Walde's limbs that night."

"Spell structure, mana flow paths, key points of the spell... What's with all these weird symbols? I can't understand any of it!"

The page on proper spells was very abstruse.

Rosen felt like a grade schooler looking at advanced math - able to recognize some of the characters, but many incomprehensible technical terms and symbols with unknown meanings.

It was like a completely foreign text.

After looking for a while, Rosen had to give up on deciphering the contents of 'Magic Missile Barrage'.

A single missile could blow off limbs; if he meddled without understanding, it would likely be his own limbs getting blown off.

He didn't want to be a cripple for the latter half of his life.

Fortunately, although Celest had been researching magic missiles, when he first turned the pages his notes flashed by quickly.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Looking straight through without pausing, the writing was impossible to see, but the Adventure Log could pause and freely adjust angles, even zoom in to an extent.

After some attempts, Rosen finally made out the contents of the early pages.

The title was 'Key Knowledge and Points about Meditation'.

Exactly the knowledge Rosen wanted most right now - he breathed harder in excitement, but also had some misgivings, unconsciously praying:

"The Three Purities, Buddha, Lord of Heaven, all earthly gods - please protect this world-hopping wanderer! Let it be written straight-forward for once, no convoluted symbols!"

After praying, he continued reading.

He saw the first line.

"Meditation is the foundation for mages, the only way to increase magical power. A powerful mage will certainly possess deep mana reserves, as well as a solid foundation in meditation."

"Alright, I can understand this."

Next was the second line.

'Mana has three basic attributes. First is total amount. Second is intensity. Third is polarity.'

For Rosen, a science graduate, this line was simple and clear.

The third line followed.

'Spells are driven by mana. For a given spell, its power and mana consumption are closely related, following extremely rigorous quantitative laws.'

Seeing this, Rosen's scalp tingled - he had an ominous feeling: "Please, no symbols!"

Looking further:

'For basic spells, their power generally accords with the following formula. Spell Power = Mana Constant * Consumed Mana Value * Intensity^2 * Standard Polarity^3.'

This line contained many bizarre symbols that Rosen initially couldn't understand, but after careful analysis he was able to grasp it.

Although the format differed from Earth's, this appeared to be a mathematical formula.

Although he understood it, his scalp still tingled.

"Squares and cubes, with a mana constant too. No wonder Celest said spells are rigorous power."

With math integrated so closely, how could it not be rigorous?

Seeing this information, Rosen's first reaction was shock, followed by joy.

Why?

Because in his past life he had also been a hot-blooded youth, aspiring to become a scientist.

For this dream he had studied Fundamental Mathematical Sciences, an unpopular major, doing quite well and nearly continuing straight on to masters and doctorate.

Unfortunately family circumstances later changed, forcing him to go into business to make money.

Recalling studying all kinds of knowledge in university - math analysis, advanced algebra, analytic geometry, real and complex variables, etc...

Rosen's head tingled, also deeply thankful.

After over twenty years in business, he had forgotten most of the concrete knowledge. Fortunately the Adventure Log let him relive his college days.

He kept reading the next line:

'For novices, Quiet Meditation is fundamental, but it only increases total mana, with barely any effect on intensity or polarity.'

This was understandable, so he continued.

'Thus, adepts explored more advanced meditation methods on the Quiet Meditation foundation - namely, Visualization.'

'Visualization uses concrete imagery to guide meditation, improving all three key attributes of mana. But two points must be noted.'

'First, Visualization can impart specific polarity to mana, but unexpected conflicts may occur between different polarities. So the choice of imagery must be extremely prudent!'

'Second, the more powerful and primordial the visualization, the faster mana improves, but also the more dangerous. For life safety, carefully choose the visualization.'

These were also easy to grasp, so Rosen kept reading.

"Different visualizations give different mana polarities. Theoretically, mana of completely identical polarity doesn't exist."

"Based on the visualization method, mana can be divided into two types - material, and divine. The former become mages, the latter priests."

This explained things very clearly, and Rosen read more attentively.

"The sun, the origin of fire, is my visualization - Celest Gagoriel."

"Many years of cultivation have granted me fire polarity mana, maximizing my fire spell power. Unfortunately lacking talent and resources, growth stagnated in recent years, forcing me to choose something different... Alas~"

The notes ended there on that page.

Rosen reflexively tried to turn over, but found several pages stuck together and flipped past, naturally unable to see the contents. By the time he could, it was inscrutable again.

With no other option, he exited the Adventure Log.

Opening his eyes, he gazed blankly at the dancing flames in the nearby fireplace, and asked himself:

"So what is my visualization?"

Celest said more primordial visualizations give faster improvement but are also more dangerous.

He did not fear danger, already being in peril.

He needed power!

What was the most primordial and powerful, closest to the origin?

The sun?

For mortals that was indeed boundlessly mighty, easily qualifying as the origin of fire.

But for Rosen, a scientifically-educated transmigrator, the sun was just a very ordinary yellow dwarf star.

Before the Milky Way, let alone the universe, saying it was a drop in the ocean or grain of sand was enormous exaggeration.

'Then... a supernova explosion?'

'The black hole at the galaxy's center?'

'This galactic cluster?'

'No no no, none of those are primordial enough. If I'm going big, I'll directly visualize the singularity of the Big Bang!'

In the nothingness before existence, an infinitesimally small point containing the energy of the entire cosmos.

Due to some tiny fluctuations, this singularity exploded in an instant, giving birth to a whole universe!

Only after that genesis instant did concepts like time, space, energy, and laws gain meaning.

In the instant after the universe's birth, temperatures were so extreme even atoms couldn't exist - the entire cosmos was a concentrated quark soup.

And across billions of years since the Big Bang, its echoes still reverberated in every corner.

The myraid things born of the Big Bang became the stars, emanating their nearly eternal radiance across the night sky.

Of the images Rosen could envision, none was more concrete, powerful, or primordial than the singularity.

But this was still insufficient!

For an even more concrete, precise, and profound aid to his imagination, Rosen opened the Adventure Log and viewed past life memories - the logical scientific description of the cosmic genesis.

As he strove to envision the singularity in his mind, a stream of information flowed through:

'Set visualization to: primordial singularity?'

"Yes!"

'Rosen's Book of Spells has logged meditation: primordial singularity.'

Rosen immediately focused to summon the desktop and opened the corresponding page in the spellbook, staring at it for 2 seconds to bring up the run option.

'Run?'

"Yes!"

In an instant, a presence appeared in Rosen's mind, infinitesimally small yet infinitely bright, hot, and dense - the primal origin.

In the next instant, he felt the weak inner warmth strengthen with unbelievable speed, becoming scorchingly hot, seemingly about to reduce his body to ashes!

Enduring for less than a single breath, under 2 seconds, Rosen felt he couldn't take it and desperately exited the meditative state.

In that short time he was gasping for air, heart pounding, drenched in sweat, even his head giving off wisps of steam.

Even more terrifying - his mind had become boiling lava once again!

No - this time it was erupting magma!

Rosen's head throbbed agonizingly, each arising thought like a blade condensed from raging flames, viciously stabbing his brain.

He tightly clutched his head with both hands, striving to empty his mind and calm his thoughts.

This was extremely difficult, many times harder than before.

At many moments Rosen nearly felt he was about to die.

But finally, he endured!

When the mental volcano stopped erupting and all stilled, Rosen clearly sensed a pool of concentrated warmth gather within.

His mana really had greatly grown.

Many times stronger than before meditating!

Brushing against death several times, his courage was 'rewarded' by the spectre of death.