God Of Crafting

The factory filled with the familiar noise that we'd all heard just a little moment ago.

The noise of the machinery booting up and starting to move, filling the air with the low hum of its parts defeating the force of resistance as they stirred into action.

The factory-wide air circulation units woke up first, once again pushing the air inside to move along specific, predetermined paths. Then, the power module filled the air with spiritual energy it produced from the electrical energy. Next, the condensers made sure to pack as many units of Qi as they could into a single unit of air, before the QI-rich air.

Next, the condensators in what used to be a freezer stirred into action as well, introducing a proper source of fresh air, one that first had to go through the barrier of first passive and then active filters, removing all the possible impurities from the air itself before it was used as a carrier of the spiritual energy down the line.

And finally…

Finally, my hand shot up, reaching not for the factory kill switch that somehow connected despite the breaker burning off.

No, what I reached for with my hand was the circuit breaker for the afterburner, the switch that either closed or opened up the circuit responsible for feeding the already mana-rich air right back into the power module to stack even more energy into it!

Tick!

The switch clicked underneath my fingers. Worried it wouldn't be enough, I… pinched at the control panel, shearing parts of its cover off before physically removing the circuit breaker from its slot, just for a good measure…

Only for the same spark as before to appear right in the place that I've just quite brutally modified, drawing an arc between the two open ends of the circuit and forcefully closing it down, allowing the energy to flow through it again.

'Chihiro…' I turned my eyes to the man, no longer having any power, idea, or ability to stop what was going to happen next.

'If he pushes for the breakthrough now…'

I could feel the static in the air growing all the machinery behind the workings of the afterburner stirred into action.

Now, it was only a matter of the air moving through the backflow channel for the very same scenario as before to occur.

This time, however, we no longer had control over the circuit breakers, removing the one and only way in which we could stop this factory from turning nuclear.

"I'm sorry," I whispered as I turned and wrapped my hands around Claire, enclosing her within my embrace while turning my back to the core in the futile, naive hope I could somehow shield her from the blast…

Only for no blast to occur, even as all of the machines reached the point where their noise grew to be constant and perfectly uniform, indicating they'd now reached their full operational speed.

By all means, this was the moment when the spiritual energy would be stacked into a singular point ad infinitum, all the way to the point where the energy would grow so dense, that it could directly affect the material world.

Or so, that's what I imagined, calculated, and assumed to happen. Yet, judging by how I could still feel Claire relaxing in my arms as she followed my example and just accepted the coming end…

Nothing exploded.

'No, it's not like nothing exploded,' I suddenly thought, opening my eyes wide as I rapidly turned my head to look toward the core. 'It's as if…'

I couldn't even finish the thought when all the air in the factory suddenly… just stopped.

The fans were spinning, the condensators blew high-pressure air into the two layers of filters. By every right and physical law, the air should keep moving…

But for the slightest of moments, it just stopped, as if the law of speed, movement, and inertia all lost their meaning and purpose.

In this single instant of existence, I could now observe the unleashed might of the electric-born spiritual power, growing bigger, thicker, more powerful by the second…

But with the air not moving, this energy couldn't change either. And the very moment the air picked up the slack and once again acknowledged the supremacy of the physics, the whole factory filled with a sense of… presence?

This presence took over the spot I'd formerly noticed this seemingly endless endless energy occupy as if it was a result of instantaneously burning all this spiritual factory could produce.

And yet…

'In that single instant, there clearly was a whole ocean of energy growing here! But now, it's nowhere to be seen?'

This whole thing was weird. It appeared not to follow any of the laws I was aware of. And judging from Chihiro's face, it wasn't something that he could comprehend either!

And yet…

A short moment later, the sparks that forcefully closed the two circuits suddenly vanished, killing the flow of power throughout the factory and once again grinding all the machinery to a halt.

And it was only when everything came to a complete stop that the spiritual energy appeared once again, although as no more but a mere leftover from when some of the machines continued to run on their inertia while the others already turned off.

Breathe in, breathe out.

In the face of the unknown, that was all we could do at the moment.

The common sense, or maybe the survival instincts made it clear to me - it was best to be grateful for the disaster that we somehow avoided. So grateful, in fact, this entire place should be scrapped for parts, parts that should be then encased in concrete and buried at least ten kilometers apart from each other, never to be assembled again.

But the pervasive curiosity in my head…

It just wouldn't let this topic go, relentlessly knocking at the gate of this mystery in a desperate, irrational drive to peer into its secrets.

"Do any of you have even the slightest idea of what happened?" Chihiro asked as he gulped his saliva down his throat, as powerless against the forces I've unleashed as was I or Claire.

"Not at all," Claire replied while cautiously taking a peek over my shoulder before glancing over to the side, to where the thick walls of the factory core hid the most affected part of the place from everyone's view.

"All I know is that something happened. And while the factory was going right now, the energy it produced was both here… and not here."

I gulped my saliva down under the immense weight of the annoyed look Chihiro gave me.

It was clear he wasn't satisfied with my answer… But well, neither was I.

"Well, whatever happened, it's clearly done and over now," I then said, taking another deep breath before slowly rising up from my knees which I fell when I thought the core was about to go nuclear. "We just need to make sure to better control it during the actual attempt," I announced only to then allow a perverse smirk on my lips.

"All this mess and unknown… I guess this is what we did this test for, right?" I then noted, trying to twist the narration into one that was, at the very least, slightly more favorable. "In this way, we can learn what could be the problem in advance…"

For a moment, Chihiro looked at me in a way that, if looks could kill, would instantaneously claim my life. And yet, when I had no other choice but to acknowledge the fury in his eyes… The look on the man's face softened.

Even though I expected him to lash out, to have him chastise everything that we did and achieved here over what clearly was a disaster we've only managed to avoid by some unknown luck or outright divine intervention, and yet...

"Well, this is an unknown field," he stated as he crossed his hands over his chest and sighed. "I would be in the wrong if I blamed you for a hiccup like that, especially when you are pioneering this whole field," he added while shaking his head.

Yet, before his line of thought could break, Claire's father raised his eyes again only to squint them as he locked his stare on the walls of the factory's core.

"I just can't help but wonder, what has actually happened here?"

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