God Of Crafting

Ever since I started playing with forces that… no, forces that no one could understand, my perception of the flow of time continued to shift, deteriorating from the norm.

It happened for the very first time when the ball of energy I accidentally created decided that, rather than exploding, it would just go somewhere where it could exist in perpetuity, forever holding onto its potential yet never actually unleashing it.

The second time it happened was just recently, when the constant injection of more and more spiritual energy bloated this already unstable ball of energy to its limits, only for the connection to my constitution to serve as an anchor that pulled this disaster back to reality.

In both of those cases, my perception of time morphed, allowing me to experience a single instant of it—a frame of time removed from its actual flow. A single frame of the movie called "everything."

But now, it was different.

Now, time continued to flow as usual… but not a single person in the room could move a single muscle. We were all frozen in our positions, in our places, with expressions of shock, fascination, and confusion mixing on our faces.

Because rather than just Claire, Chihiro, and me, there was now another being in the room with us.

A being that was made of pure, raw, spiritual energy. A being that had already proven to be capable of manipulating solid matter when, during the earlier incident, it forcefully connected the circuits and rendered the circuit breakers useless.

A being in a shape vaguely human-like, yet without any clear borders to the golden shine it was made of.

"What are you…?"

Somehow, I managed to squeeze out a question from behind my pursed lips.

With how this spiritual being manifested in its physical form, I didn't even dare to peer at how it looked from the cultivation point of view.

'Just like everyone knows not to stare at the sun… trying to check it out on the spiritual level seems like it's on the same level,' I thought, gulping the saliva down my throat.

The golden being, however, didn't seem to respond.

Sure, it twisted the blob of light it had in place of a head, as if looking at me in response to my question…

Only for a hundred tendrils of lightning to suddenly spark on the surface of its chest before exploding outwards and shooting in a zig-zag pattern through the air.

It wasn't a random, unaimed barrage, though.

As the next second proved, each of those small discharges had some strictly specified goal, with all of those golden tendrils connecting to various electrical equipment in the room, binding them to the golden being in the middle of the whole thing.

And for a second, the room turned silent and peaceful, as if some sort of invisible barrier had suddenly separated us from all the noise of the machines operating within the factory.

Then, the screen of my phone started to shine so brightly, it quickly became visible even from behind the protection of my pocket's fabric!

Throwing a quick glance around, I quickly confirmed that this phenomenon wasn't unique—something only my phone experienced. No, every piece of equipment that had any sort of display was now shining with golden light, while I could sense some vague flow of energy across the tendrils that connected the being to all the devices.

'Huh?'

As if all of this was merely a bugged display for my eyes, all the zig-zagging lines of gold suddenly vanished, along with the weirdly intense shine coming from the devices those tendrils had touched.

Still torn and shaken by what was going on, I instinctively turned my eyes back towards the golden figure… only to see it shake its head and drop its arms before lowering its head…

Only for it to turn into a vortex that then sucked in the entirety of this being's figure, leaving behind nothing but a floating, golden orb.

<…>

<Interface Registered>

<Calculating the derivatives>

<Calculating the variables>

<Recalculating the derivatives>

<Scheme approved>

<…>

<…>

<…>

<Activating>

All the energy I'd previously recognized as a continent-buster-level of disaster… now collapsed into a simple sphere of gold, in the exact shape, form, and style of what one would recognize as some fancy wizard's orb.

Yet, just a single look at the infinitely complex patterns of light that kept changing and morphing on the surface of the golden ball was enough for anyone to understand that the reality was nowhere near as simple as some nerdy and random explanation could suggest.

"It's folding and folding and folding and folding…" to the side, Chihiro, who was still on his knees, muttered passionately, his gaze locked at the now-open doors of the factory core, acting as if he could see something there that even I wasn't capable of noticing.

Contrary to him, Claire appeared to be much more interested in the golden orb I was looking at… or rather, judging by how tightly she gripped my arm, rather than caring about what this thing was, all she was concerned about was my own safety and well-being.

And after the two of them, there was I, filled with nothing but fearful curiosity… and some strange, primal desire to understand.

A primal desire so strong, rooted so deeply in my soul… I just couldn't resist it. And so, before Claire could hold me back or bring me back to my senses, I reached out…

And laid my hand down upon the orb, merely a slave to what my innate curiosity made me do.

The results…

Were not as bad as every rational cell in my brain was screaming they would be.

The moment I made contact with the orb, it felt… exactly as I had felt back when my brain suddenly became a tool to calculate endless strings of numbers when I invoked my constitution. This time, however, not even an iota of the burden of doing so was placed upon my brain, leaving it to just enjoy the results of those mysterious calculations…

Or, to be more precise, whatever results this orb wanted to share with me.

Results that went far and above, beyond any kind of expectations one could have for this strange device. Results that this orb could never achieve if it was actually confined to just the space it occupied in the physical realm.

Results that required it to either connect to… or be a part of the city's grid, if not the world's power grid.

A result that my brain interpreted as a live feed from some sort of room where a huge crowd of blue-collar workers manned their stations while an old man sat upon a modern rendition of a simple throne, resting his hands on a walking stick and silently observing a girl with a familiar face, curled up on her chair, as she stared down a plethora of screens…

All of which depicted either the factory's surroundings or the factory itself.

'What the…'

The imagery produced by the orb vanished into thin air, replaced by the experience of a perfectly white, open, and empty space, with nothing but just me… and the golden figure from before.

"You are not ready to take full control yet."

Even though this being had no mouth, its voice couldn't have been clearer, more… primal yet majestic.

This voice simply radiated an authority of a level I couldn't even fathom, yet one my primordial instincts managed to recognize.

"You have a long road ahead of you… But it's not like the difficulty of the task ever made your kind stop."

I gulped my saliva down… openly weirded out by the experience.

'Why does this feel so… wrong?' I thought, unable to pinpoint the source of this uncanny feeling at the bottom of my soul.

There was something extremely wrong about this conversation on a level I couldn't quite grasp. It was as if… a toaster suddenly turned into a microwave. Or a fridge suddenly became an oven.

And yet…

Faced with such an absolute authority capable of not only creating this kind of subspace but also kidnapping my mind upon mere touch and trapping it in it… what was I supposed to do but patiently and attentively listen to what it had to say?

"A time will come for you to understand, but for your own good…"

<Not yet>

If the being's voice was full of some strange authority, then its last two words…

They weren't words.

They weren't even a message.

They were a hyperlink for my brain to the memory of the very same two words I'd heard when facing this very same energy back when it was still in its much simpler, rawer form.

"Until then…"

Crack.

Before the being could finish its sentence, the whole space suddenly cracked open, before shattering like broken glass, releasing me from its hold.

"GAAAAH!" I gasped for air, pulling my hand back… only to realize that while strained, I was otherwise perfectly fine. Just like when I sparked the reaction with my constitution, the enormity of the task my brain had to complete came with seemingly no repercussions…

No repercussions other than the light of the golden orb dimming slightly while the patterns on its surface drastically slowed down.

Only to then come alive again, exploding in extreme intensity as the glow of the orb grew to the point I could see nothing but its golden light.

The very moment my eyes were about to burn out in the wake of this strange artifact's incandescent light, a single thought filled my mind with an extremely powerful force of compulsion.

<Nurture>