After Ed's first failure, came the second failure, and the third, and the… well, many.
'Let's do this one more time…' Ed told himself while opening the flood gates except that this time only a trickle of blood came out of the 'flood gates.' Ed had made the faucet significantly smaller with each explosion.
As the drops of blood started their descent into Ed's umpteenth small cauldron, Ed shielded his entire body while wearing a solemn expression. After so many beatings at the hands of alchemy, he knew to protect himself from the likely result.
'Kaboom?' But even though Ed was already picturing the explosion in his head nothing of the sorts had transpired. Instead, his ears were met with the sound of bubbling water.
'Ah! I need to stir it!' Ed quickly got on it as he stirred the pot with swift yet delicate movements. It was what he saw to work the best. Plus, the system also corroborated it.