God Of Crafting

The factory machines slowly started to come alive, repeating exactly the same steps and thus the process as when we ventured to confirm my theory of the formation of the divine.

Strangely enough, however, even though the death of one man, no matter how important that man was, was nothing when compared to unleashing the nuclear-like disaster of a magical nature that could wipe not only the man himself but also pretty much the entirety of the city with him…

Strangely enough, it was now, not before, that my hand grew all the more careful, slowing down the rate at which I twisted the knob through its steps.

The reason for that was simple enough, though.

Before, we were already on the verge of the disaster. And while we remained as careful as we could get… things were so potentially bad, it would be actually challenging to make them even worse.

"Good to go for the next step!" Chihiro called out, although only loud enough for the microphone to barely pick his voice up.

'He's starting to get focused, I guess,' I thought before pressing the comms button on the console.

"Go for step… First knob, third step done."

And a moment later…

"Good for next!"

I raised my eyebrow, not expecting Chihiro to so easily change the phrase we agreed to use, just for the sake of saving half of a second he would otherwise waste on spelling it all out.

Yet, while a deviation, it was tiny enough for me to just roll my eyes over it and move on.

"Go for step…" I gently twisted the knob, "first knob, fourth step!"

Bit by bit, I raised the power output of the factory. And just like it happened when we experimented with birthing the divine sphere of floating gold light, the more power we allowed to flow through, the louder the machines started to get.

"Go for step…" I called out again a mere moment later, "first knob, completed!"

This was pretty much the first checkpoint of the ongoing experiment, the moment when most of the machines had now reached the level of the bottommost stable operation.

All the fans were now working within the lower limit of their efficient power cycle, circulating the fresh air through the Qi-transformers, feeding the mana-rich air straight into the chamber where Chihiro was quickly settling to properly cultivate.

"Go for the second knob."

I took a deep breath before stealing a sideways glance at Claire.

"Just keep going, dear," Claire spoke softly while running her fingers up and down my arm, as if caressing it to help me get it steady.

I took another breath.

"Go for the second knob, first step," I echoed Chihiro's words as I turned my hand over the second knob and slowly turned it up.

A moment later, I did it again… and again… and again.

Bit by bit, I continued to raise the power flow through the factory, reaching the third knob within five minutes of starting the procedure, the fifth one no later than fifteen minutes later, and ultimately maxing out the sixth knob a total of forty minutes after we began, effectively reaching the second and far more important checkpoint.

"Right now, he gets around twenty times more Qi than we did when cultivating with the help of the previous generation of the devices," I pointed out while straining my eyes to see into the factory, even though I knew full well my eyes simply couldn't pierce the solid walls of the devices and reinforced cardboard divisions that turned the factory's formerly empty insides into their current design.

It was also at this point where Chihiro no longer provided us with feedback, indicating that we'd reached the stage where the factory's output matched what he desired.

"Now, we just need to wait," Claire muttered, easily as tense as me if not even more.

Chihiro was her biological father, after all, while for me he was merely a father-in-law, so it only made sense for her to be considerably more worried about the whole process than I was.

"Actually…" I muttered, as my eyes glanced away from Claire and towards the gloating orb of the solidified golden light, "there is one more thing that we can do that doesn't involve raising the power any further…"

Claire's eyes followed after mine, only to then linger on the divinity present in the room for a moment before turning back to my face.

"Are you sure?" Claire asked, her face filling with a look of concern, "we still know so little about it, there's a chance it's going to be rather… risky…"

Seeing how Claire averted her eyes, I couldn't help but smile.

"At this point, we are beyond worrying about risks like that, are we not?"

With the corner of my lips raising up, I patted Claire's hand before sliding my arm out of her hold and taking a step away from the console, turning towards the golden sphere.

'It's risky… but what is life without a bit of excitement in it?'

I took a deep breath, calming down my thoughts and removing all the emotions that were not absolutely necessary for me. Then, once my mind cleared out, I breathed out before reaching out…

RING!

The familiar, annoying sound mixed with the slight sensation of something vibrating near my ass.

'Come on, what's with this timing?' I whined in my head when the call distracted me, causing me to lose the focused state of mind I absolutely needed if I were to risk it and touch the divinity.

Still, as annoying and untimely as it was, I reached down to my back pocket before fishing out my phone and taking the call.

"Tim speaking."

"Boss, we have here a guy claiming to be the big boss's close affiliate," the familiar voice of the leader of the factory's guards rang from my phone and directly into my ear. "I've checked his data and well…" the man hesitated for a second, "it sticks."