God Of Crafting

'Home sweet home…'

I never knew how quickly I would come to consider Claire's villa to be my home. And yet, even though I've lived there only for a few days by now while spending pretty much all five years of my miserable past back in that animal cage of a rental apartment…

By now, I could hardly even remember anything about that place.

Not like there was anything special about it to make me remember it by, as opposed to pretty much everything about the mansion.

"I bet you wanna go and craft a bit, so go get yourself ready and I will join you soon," Claire said, only to quickly escape deeper into the house as she vanished in the corridor leading up to the daily living area.

I, on the other hand, moved down the familiar route only to end up in the place that was most central in the entire villa for me.

The workshop.

Huh?" I stopped as I opened the doors, staring at a small pile of boxes I didn't recall moving inside. "That's new…" I muttered as I moved closed and took a look at the labels.

"Spiritual tonics, Qi-gathering array in parts, reinforcement potion…"

As it turned out, I didn't even need to check each and every box, before grasping the general idea.

"Oh, so you've seen it already!" Claire called out, appearing at the doors not that much later and with her eyes instantly moving over to the box.

"What are those?" I asked, despite being able to guess already.

"My countermeasure for the problem with your cultivation," Claire replied without even a moment of hesitation, proving my guess to be right on the money. "With all of those, you won't need to worry about running out of spiritual energy while you craft. And I will be here to make sure it all works… and just in case you run them dry without realizing it yourself."

"I mean, suit yourself?" I replied while fighting off the desire to laugh it off.

In reality, we could just remake my recent discovery to make it slightly more potent before plugging it into the wall socket and forgetting about the issue. But now that Clayton came to know about its existence, or rather, now that we openly drew attention to ourselves by interacting with him, we had to be on our best behavior, leaving no traces for anyone to find.

And so, rather than just making a simple device and then using a bit of electricity, Claire ended up ordering a fortune worth in resources and tools… all to achieve pretty much as much if not less than what we could with my recent discovery.

For the moment, however, I couldn't care less about it. Ever since I joined hands with Chihiro, money was no longer of issue for me, meaning, I couldn't really be bothered even if Claire just went ahead and wasted quite a bit of it.

In the long term, however much she spent on the content hidden in those boxes wouldn't amount to anything more than the rounding error. And so, rather than wasting my thoughts on it, I allowed Claire to take care of the newly arriving boxes instead while moving to my own tasks.

'Now that I have the handle, what should I do about the blade?'

This was the question of utmost importance… and yet, despite just how much time I had to think over it, only now I realized that actually… I never did.

'What should I draw my inspiration from, then?' I asked myself while leaning against one of the many machines present within the room.

'The possible parts?' I thought, looking over at where my floor collection remained as I left it after Chihiro left yesterday, with pretty much every possible base resource displayed for my eyes to see and analyze.

'Maybe I should look for some sort of an end goal, a purpose this weapon will be supposed to achieve?'

I gritted my teeth and clenched my ass… but no random idea came to my mind, regardless of how hard I tried.

For some reason, my creativity continued to elude me, only ever appearing when least needed it.

'Or maybe…'

With my eyes turning empty while staring down at the resources I've displayed, my thoughts went back to the discussion we had with Claire's dad back when he paid us a visit at the mansion. And between all sorts of materials on the ground and the man's take of what was his take on the sixth stage of cultivation…

'Actually, wouldn't it be possible to use external tools to achieve what is apparently the next level of one's own cultivation?'

With the concepts Chihiro planted in my head now starting to bud out into flowers, my vision changed a bit.

While I saw everything exactly the same as before, rather than just looking down at a huge mesh of different materials, I was now searching for things that fit certain criteria. And soon enough, quite a few of them left a mark in my mind, making me remember their position and label as I looked over them only to then look for anything else that could be of use.

"Okay, I think I've got it," I muttered to myself as if to lock in that sentiment in reality by voicing it out.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to need a few more minutes," Claire called out in response, currently bogged down by the task of arranging formation stones in just the right way to turn them from a bunch of worthless scraps into an actual device that would contribute to our effort at holding my qi-exhaustion issue at bay.

"Ah, I still need to gather the materials up, so you are free to take your time without worry," I threw back before turning my attention right back to my task.

The job ahead wasn't going to be easy… which was something I'd already established by overengineering the mere handle of a weapon and thus setting a rather high bar to just how high-grade its blade should be.

And just like the staff of the scythe-to-be, I wasn't going to settle on just a simple blade, even if made with the greatest materials accessible and refined to their limit with the best techniques that existed.

No.

If I wanted to be fully satisfied, the blade itself had to have some sort of purpose.

And it just so happened that after recalling my talk with Chihiro, I had just the right purpose for it in my mind!