Boy was he wrong.
He assumed that because of how smoothly it went after the inventory spell was finalized that such a violent reaction wouldn't happen again, but he forgot to take into account what was arguably the most important part of the whole process.
While his talent would purify and defend him if something accidental happened, what he was trying to do was very much intentional. And as far as he knew, unlike most others his talent was a more passive one and he had almost no say in whether or not it activated.
This didn't mean that it wasn't possible to control it, but with a level of 1 then it was simply a pipe dream.
The first thing that he tried to make was a flat plate, it was simple so he was going to use it to familiarize himself with the process.
His first attempt was somewhat successful as he had full control of both his mana and soul power, but what he made was unsatisfactory.
It was just a crude mixture of iron and soul power, they were in no way alloyed and while it was stronger than normal iron it was far from what he wanted.
If he tried to make a comparison then it was the exact same as his crude version of body refining. With that perspective he knew exactly what the solution to his problem was.
Making the soul power and mana mix in such small quantities was easy, even if he had to deal with the slight noxious feeling, but when he tried to add some structure to it quickly fell apart.
The only way he knew of to add proper structure to something was the Golden Body Refining Technique, but that had to do with mana, not soul power.
He assumed that as they were similar in a few ways that he could use them interchangeably, but when the plate started to get hotter and hotter and glow brighter and brighter he realized how grave his mistake was.
When learning mysticism the very first thing that you are taught is to not underestimate the dangers of soul power and always treat it with respect. Many had died by their own hands, blindly trying to force soul power into submission and that's exactly what Ray was doing.
He quickly teleported back to the dessert and with all of his might he threw the unstable plate far into the distance and after a moment he heard a massive explosion
BOOOOOOOOOM!!!
Suddenly it was as bright as day and a shockwave of energy hit him, sending him flying back. Thankfully it was much weaker as it had to travel so far, because if he was a few kilometers closer he would have been practically vaporized.
Even being so far away from the center, the force of the explosion was so great that he was sent flying and landed straight in the massive crater from before. Thanks to how strong his body was he wasn't injured that bad and his high vitality made any injury that he did get heal in a flash.
"Holy shit, I need to stop f*cking around with things that I know nothing about. If I was slightly slower I would have ceased to exist. Atomized."
He was still stumbling down the side of the crater but he managed to get some form of footing. He looked up and saw nothing but sand, which wasn't surprising considering how fast the wind must be moving but strangely none of it entered the pit.
It was as if there was a massive glass ceiling above him, but that didn't make any sense to him because seconds prior he himself was pushed into it.
"Strange." He tried to remember what had just happened to him and quickly realized that something was up. Just as he was pushed into the crater he felt like he was moving through a membrane. The exact same feeling as when he was pushed into the new world or when he enters his soul sea, but nowhere as strong as those two.
He looked around him to see what was the cause of the isolated space, but the only oddity was the object in the center of the crater. Now that he was so close he could finally see what it was.
It was a 3 foot long piece of entirely black bamboo with strange gold markings all over it. From where he stood it looked to have holes in it, but he was still a considerable distance away so it was hard to tell.
He was going to go back and just settle with the crude versions of his utensils, but he wasn't going to waste this opportunity. He planned to only come back and see what it was after it turned day time but now that he was so close and had an artificial source of light he was going to take his chances.
He quickly covered the distance and grabbed onto it, teleporting away immediately.
He reappeared on the platform, but now that he was so close to it the strange feeling from the desert was exceptionally strong. If he had to describe it he would call it draining, which wasn't surprising after he witnessed what it did to the potions from earlier.
He was thankful that it wasn't the source of heat of the desert though, otherwise his hand would have melted off.
Before he could properly examine what exactly the strange bamboo was, a golden ray of light shot down from his talent orb and hit it square on. He wasn't alarmed by this as it was to be expected, but he was disappointed to think that it would be destroyed. Whatever it was it had to be valuable, but he would never know as his talent had identified it as something to be purified.
He was expecting it to turn into dust or be expelled from his soul sea, but after the beam of light dissipated he was still holding onto the object. This left him confused but he just assumed that whatever was causing his talent to act up must have been purified and he was holding what was left.
Now that he had the time to look at it properly he could see that it was an instrument similar to a flute, but not exactly the same. He had seen many instruments before and while he didn't know how to play any he was confident in how one should look.
Instead of having holes on only one side of it like a normal flute, except for the one for the thumb, there was another row of holes on the other side. From what he could see, unless someone had help, or maybe another pair of hands, then there was no way for them to properly play it.
Not that it mattered to him now, even if he wanted to play it it was much too heavy. After being purified by his talent both the draining feeling and the golden symbols had disappeared but they were replaced with a massive amount of weight.
It was so heavy that even with his unnatural strength for his age he was finding it extremely difficult to carry, much less hold it up to play.
He looked around it for a few more moments and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, except for the obvious oddity of its color. While he hadn't seen bamboo in person, he knew from similar plants from the new world that they tend to range in color from green to yellow and sometimes blue. Not even a red bamboo would have surprised him but it didn't make any sense for a plant to be so black.
But after the catastrophe such native species of the old world had long gone extinct so if there was such a strange color of bamboo back then, he would have no way of knowing.
With no leads as to what exactly it was he poured some mana into it to see if he could get a reaction.