God Of Crafting

The second floor of Leila's private cultivation garden was as devoid of spiritual energy as the common spoiled kid's brain was devoid of the concept of consequences.

It was unnatural. It was weird. But…

But, unless it was just some sort of massive prank, there had to be some purpose for us to be here; otherwise, Leila wouldn't invite us.

'Still, if that's how the situation looks like on the second floor, then I don't think we are ready to face what awaits on the third one…' I thought, looking up to the garden's ceiling, struggling to even imagine just what kind of environment awaited us there.

"Do you want to climb even higher?" Clarie asked, most likely too startled by how this lack of interference from the world's spirituality only served to enhance our bond to the point where we didn't even need to open our mouths to have a proper conversation.

Still, even though our minds couldn't be any closer, she continued to hang on to my arm, as if she feared I would somehow vanish into the thin air the moment she let me go.

"No, I was just curious what it's like there, if this floor is already so weird," I explained, only to sigh out before pulling my arm out to the front, all in a bid to have Claire face me properly. "For now, though, I need you to make your decision. Do you want to redo your cultivation from scratch with me, or would you rather opt out of it?"

The fact that I wanted to start everything from scratch was quite the fresh idea that I didn't really consult with Chihiro or anyone who could give me proper feedback on it.

It was merely a product of my own logic and reason, prompted by the gut feeling I could feel somewhere deep at the bottom of my soul.

Whether this was the correct course of action, however, I would only find out once I was done. Or, in other words, the only way for me to find out was to mess around with my cultivation first.

"Yeah," Claire vigorously nodded her head while giving me the look of disbelief, as if merely asking what I just did was enough to actually insult her. "Or did you really think I was going to let you do it all alone?"

At first, Claire squinted her eyes as she stared down at my face with burning suspicion, only to then relax her face and sigh out.

"You are still too modern of a man to properly endorse cultivation. Without me, I bet you would fail right at the first or second rank!"

For a second, I enjoyed the idea of arguing about it. While it was true that sleeping… or rather, dual cultivating with Claire gave me the insane boost in cultivation ranks, who was to say I couldn't achieve all of it on my own?

'From this perspective, even this attempt at redoing everything right now is just another method through which I can prove the supremacy of my own way over the traditional path to strength.'

I took a deep breath before closing my eyes for a moment, taking some time to calm myself while pushing aside all the thoughts that were irrelevant to the process ahead.

"So be it, then," I spoke softly, only to cross my legs before lowering myself down on my knees, all the way to the point where I just sat on the ground with my legs crossed.

In front of me, Claire did pretty much the same, perfectly mirroring my movements only to then go the extra mile as she sat down by doing her own routine of clearing her mind.

"Are you ready?" I asked once she pushed her eyelids up and gave me a calm, somewhat distant look.

"…" Rather than answering my question out loud, Claire merely nodded her head before taking a deep breath in…

And vanishing.

She didn't do so physically, of course. Her body was still there, and by all means, once shaken hard enough, she would surely wake right back up.

Yet, rather than rushing to bring her out of the state of concentration so perfect that to the outside world she appeared to fall asleep… I followed her example and focused on my inner self.

The raging fire of endlessly collapsing nuclei of my spirituality, this endless, chaotic process of energy flaring up in one place, time, and angle only to collapse in and on itself, reappearing somewhere else at some other time.

This was the truth about my cultivation. The amalgamation of all that I understood about it and all that I took in by trusting the words of those who taught me about it.

It was a cultivation as full of ingenious ideas that I'd already seen work on a practical basis, as it was filled to the brim with extremely basic, underdeveloped, and outright simple steps.

For every great idea that I came up with, be it by a total accident, as a result of thinking hard, or even thanks to that constitution of mine that, for some reason, refused to work ever since the waking of that golden orb… For every last one of those, there were at least a dozen or so aspects, elements, and concepts that made my cultivation nothing beyond the rudimentary level of what mortals practiced back in the modern world.

But this wasn't all.

Now that I've nearly completed my second day on this side of the border, I could quite confidently agree with the idea that the spiritual energy here was of an entirely different league when compared to the mana I could encounter back on the correct side of the border.

The spiritual energy here was… so much more than just the spiritual energy back home. It was more wholesome, more full of itself, more…

Keeping my eyes closed.

Now that I thought about it, any word I would add after 'more' would only dilute the meaning of what I felt. And so, save for the aspect of its quantity, which was an entirely different topic, in every other area, the spiritual energy on this side of the border was simply… more than its modern counterpart.

And now came the time to take proper, full advantage of that fact.

"I'm ready," I announced out loud, even though I could just as easily pass my intent over through my thoughts, or rather—the bond that connected me with Claire.

"Let's do it, then," Claire softly replied, only to then grow as silent as she became still.

I could only feel Claire's sudden lack of even the smallest movement. And even this only lasted for the short moment before I dove into the depths of my consciousness… before collapsing all of my thoughts and refining them all into but a single wish.

'Free me.'

The spiritual energy, at its core, was supposed to empower humans who dabbled in it.

For most, it would slow down their aging process, improve the ability of their muscles and senses, raise the processing power of their brain…

Whatever it was that the people desired most, the spiritual energy would be there to answer the call, doing its own thing in ways humanity could hardly understand.

Right now, however, my entire consciousness, my entire self—all of it boiled down into this one intrinsic desire to rid myself of what I clearly knew to be broken.

And just like that, my cultivation flared up for the very last time… before using its own energy to demolish and remove every part of my cultivation that was entrenched in my flesh and soul way too deep to just dissipate according to my wish.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

For just a few moments that felt like an eternity and then some, I could feel my own energies clashing with each other, each with the purpose that opposed the other.

In the end, however, I was as much the lord of my body as an armed homeowner would be the lord of their own castle. And as my wish remained the one and only desire that persisted in my head, my spirituality continued to dry out, all the way to the point where I couldn't push it out anymore, for there was nothing left for me to push aside.

"Haaaah…" I released a long, heavy moan when my shoulders dropped under the sudden emergence of the weight of the universe itself, the weight that I nearly forgot about thanks to all the reinforcement the spiritual energy offered me before.

"Phew!" In front of me, Claire opened her eyes only to moan a little as she looked down at her hands with a complex expression on her face. "So that's how it felt to be just a… mortal."

For a moment, I just looked at Claire, adoring her for all that I knew about her, now that our bond—just like the rest of our cultivation—simply dried out and then vanished. Strangely enough, however, now that my thoughts and feelings couldn't reach her… For some reason, just looking at her profile, adoring her curves, or even admiring the smoothness of her skin… All of it simply felt…

I squinted my eyes.

'It feels… more than before?' I thought, taken aback by the sudden comparison to the state of this garden of a room as my mind recognized the pattern—even if there was no such pattern to begin with, merely a coincidence.

'Well, that's another point to consider for later,' I thought, shaking my head a little before breathing out and looking up to Claire's face, only to see her do the same as she locked her eyes on me.

"And now, the other way we go, right?" she asked, forming a frail smile on her lips as the burdens of cultivation-free living continued to bear down upon her mind.

"That's right," I nodded my head and smiled, only to then close my eyes again right as I reached out and gently grabbed Claire's hands. "Now that we did away with it, it's time to do it all from scratch."