God Of Crafting

Everything happened much faster than I ever imagined a moment like that to pass.

In one second, the massive monsters barely arrived on the line of the horizon, only to then appear just nearby, threatening to squash everything under the hooves of the raging horde.

Next...

Next, the stomping of the raging horde made the ground shake hard enough to disturb the concentration of the mage attacking us, allowing me just enough leeway to finish up my preparation.

The horde was too big. There was no escaping from it. By the time we would rush to one of the horde's edges, those beasts would stomp us down over and over again.

Not even jumping with the use of my scythe's ability would allow me to move fast enough to avoid those beasts... and that would be under the assumption I still had enough strength to actually pull it off, which, by its very self, was quite telling.

No.

There was no escaping, avoiding, or defeating this horde consisting of beasts that were each no less than a field boss entire groups would prepare for a long time just to try challenging.

The only way through this horde... was exactly that, to make it through them.

And so, sensing the moment when their charge would reach my position, I braced against the ground...

Before forcefully expanding my sphere of influence out, as if to meet the charging beasts head-on.

The time appeared to slow down mere moments before the charge reached us, allowing me to watch, in full detail, how those beasts that broke through the massive trees with ease, didn't even slow down when they stomped upon the very man who nearly claimed my life. Yet, as they rushed ahead with just the force of their momentum...

The charging beasts suddenly parted to the sides, creating an extremely narrow and short corridor where the effects of their charge were limited to nothing more but the shaking of the ground.

THUMP!

If I wasn't braced, just the aftershocks of the horde passing would be enough to throw me first up to the air and then somewhere to the side, right under the mass of massive limbs crushing everything beneath them.

No.

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If I lost contact with the ground and moved around in space, I could no longer extend this kind of protective film created with my sphere of influence, removing the one and only reason why those beasts didn't stomp us down up until this point.

And so, the struggle continued, with me doing my absolute best to maintain control over my now heavily tested sphere of influence while waiting for a meager hope that I could keep going for as long as it would take the horde to pass.

Which happened much sooner than I expected, with the entire experience amounting to no more than half a minute.

"Haaaa..." Letting go of my strained spirituality, I breathed out a long sigh as I fell down on all fours, having just enough strength in me to make sure I pinned Claire under myself as if to protect her from anything that could still attack us.

"Are you..." Claire slowly reached up with her hand, placing it down on my chest while giving me a look of extreme worry and concern.

"Don't worry," I forced a small smile as I looked down and tried to shallow out my breathing. "I'm just a wee tired, is all," I added, pushing myself a bit just to raise my right hand off the ground and use it to caress her face a bit.

"Then..."

"FUCK!"

A powerful shout shook the air from just nearby... just...

Just where I saw that fucker of a spiritualist get stomped down to the ground.

'Shit,' I thought, gritting my teeth as I pushed myself again, this time to reach down and grab Clarie's neck with my hand only to then grit my teeth and call out to my sphere of influence...

"No, you fucking don't!"

Dropping his mystical act from before, the spiritualist simply waved his hand... and dispersed the sphere of influence that allowed me to become, albeit only temporarily, akin to a god on this battlefield.

'Shit, what now?!'

What was the use of knowing what this wave of Qi was? What was the use of knowing just what kind of disaster it was going to bring out to the world?

What was the use of any of that... when I was faced with someone just strong enough to just deny it all?

'Come on, move!' I urged my spirituality as, in an act of desperation, I tried to enter the very same state of half-awakedness that saved me from the prior kidnapping attempt. Yet, no matter how hard I tried...

It just didn't work!

And in this scenario, there was only one thing left for me to try.

'It sucks to be me, I guess?' I thought as I took a deep breath... Only to lean my hips to the back and pretty much sit down on Claire's crotch while raising both of my hands in a sign of surrender.

"It's me that you want, right?" I called out to the damned spiritualist.

Looking up at my face, Claire's expression froze for a second only to then fill with desperation and unwillingness. But by now, it was too late for her to do anything. "Leave her alone and I will..."

"That's quite commendable but totally unnecessary," a familiar, extremely reassuring voice reached my ears, right as the rising pressure of this hostile cultivator suddenly vanished as if cut off by a perfectly sharp knife.

Or rather, one pressure was replaced with another, much stronger one... this replacement, however, was free of any ill intent aimed at me or Claire, turning into nothing short of a nourishing tonic!

And with all of this said and done, Chihiro calmly appeared at the edge of the clearing, still quite some distance away from us.

'He's still so far away and yet... the mere aura of his power is so fucking strong?!'

This was... quite the eye-opening moment, besides all the other qualities I could attribute it.

The cavalry arriving. The hero's party appearing right when the hour was the darkest. Deus ex machina...

'No, let's not get that deep into it,' I thought, doing nothing but watching how Claire's father calmly walked over the open plain, totally unbothered by the very cultivator that I nearly surrendered to.

"You..." the cultivator in question slowly turned his eyes over to Chihiro, cleverly ignoring me in favor of the much more dangerous party.

"Javier," Chihiro called out with a pristine smile. "It's been what, six years?"

On one side, there was this seemingly powerful cultivator that managed to overcome not only my current cultivation but also the boost from my scythe with nothing but his raw power, only further augmented whenever he had his illusion raised.

But on the other side, there was a bonafide powerhouse, a man mere inches away from reaching the absolute peak of strength a mortal could ever dream of.

And in this stand-off, I didn't have to be a genius or an expert to pretty much see how things would play out from now on.

It was also at this moment that I realized that I was still sitting down on Claire's hip, putting my weight on her when I was more aware than anyone else how she had her leg heavily injured!

"Oh, my bad, sorry for this," I chatted the girl up as I lifted my hips and rolled over to the side, eager to release her from the burden of my weight as soon as possible.

But as I rolled away, as I took a deep breath of the air filled with the aura of Chihiro's nourishing spirituality... the fuel for my innate ability that I just couldn't muster enough of anymore, suddenly filled my tanks.

The movement broke my concentration and shifted over from desperate measures to merely observing how the events would play out.

And right as Chihiro put all of his attention to the opponent before him, only for the hostile cultivator to do the same, readying himself for the clash with a clearly stronger opponent...

I've managed to do what I've set out to do just moments before. This time, however, as I nourished myself off Chihiro's spirituality, my aura of influence returned in a single instant.

And with it, my brain suddenly exploded with all the precise information about even the tiniest particle that dared to intrude upon my domain.

It was from those particles that I've seen the true nature of the Qi wave that I've already believed to have figured out before.

But now...

Now I could tell.

This wasn't just some sort of spiritual circuitry going awry and sending all the spiritual beasts of this ancient forest into a frenzy.

This wasn't even some random disaster of the level that humanity could never really control.

No, this thing, this tangible being that existed within every particle of spirituality in the zone...

It was clearly manmade.

It was clearly conscious.

And right as my own consciousness lay down to the rest, replaced by the godlike instincts I still failed to properly understand...

I've realized just one more aspect of this being that suddenly appeared in every part of this ancient forest all at once.

It was a spirituality with a mind of its own. A spirituality that was anchored in the very spiritual power that created it, just like one could argue a software existed not on memory storage but within the flowing current that brought it to life.

And right now...

It was burning with hostility towards everything and everyone within the forest!

The hostility that, for some unknown reason, appeared to wash over me, which only amplified this entity's focus on those around me instead!