God Of Crafting

"Safety check completed. All stations are green to go." Following this short report, the man sitting behind a huge control panel with a mess of all sorts of wires tapped into it turned his head over his shoulder, and locked his eyes on me. "Should we proceed?"

I locked my eyes on the man for a moment before looking up, to the messy factory floor ahead.

Right now, the factory was just one big mess.

Even from just my point of view, I could see at least seven different places where the concrete floor and padding of the floor were broken through to allow access to the cables running underneath the factory floor. The walls weren't treated any better, with the live wires exposed out in the open for all to see, as opposed to being hidden in the special, metal boxes.

The cables themselves ran all over the floor, connected in the easiest, most convenient manner to all the devices as opposed to having them wired properly and in a way that wouldn't expose a single cable.

By all means, this project was still far from completion. But what was lacking right now, was merely the presentation, the finishing touches necessary to bring it from a working state to an open operation state.

And judging by the rows of green lights flashing on the control panel just ahead, when it came to its actual productivity, everything was ready.

"Can you run the safety check again?" I requested, alternating my eyes between the console and the factory floor ahead. "With how things are all out in the open, it's like begging for an accident to happen."

The foreman raised his head again to take a look at my face again, before smiling a little and then raising a small walkie-talkie-turned-speaker.

"Attention, attention, attention!" the man spoke into the walkie-talkie, that connected to the very last system added to the building - a factory-wide intercom allowing one to address every floor, room, and level at the same time. "We are about to run the procedure. Evacuate the floor now!"

Waiting for no further instructions, the foreman then flicked a few switches on his control panel before raising the speaking device to his mouth again.

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"So we have the full count?" he asked only to lower his hand right away and then just wait.

And a short moment later, another diode, this time a red one, flashed on the control panel a single instant before the integrated speakers rang with a response.

"Roll call completed, all staff is off the floor. You can green-light the test."

Even though I've only met the man twice in the day, I could still recognize the voice of the architect. While the man spent most of his time chatting with Chihiro while the man was still on-site, by now, he was reduced to the role of the foreman of ensuring the safety of the working crew.

"It's all green," the foreman announced as he turned his eyes over to me again. "Should we…?"

I took a deep breath before blindly reaching out to the side and either by luck or by Claire's own intervention, find Claire's hand and give it a squeeze.

"Okay…" I muttered before taking in a deep breath, raising my head, and making myself look like a proper, overconfident scion of a high-value family. "Everyone! Eyes on the meters! I know it's all being recorded, but I want to hear your impressions as soon as we conclude the test!" I called out before sighing and turning my eyes back to the foreman.

"Let's do it."

Hearing my approval, the foreman nodded his head before reaching out for the only big leaver on the control panel and slowly, carefully pushing it up.

This wasn't a process that one could complete instantly, just by switching everything from off to on. In reality, this whole process was more like staging in a space rocket, with every inch the lever moved activating the next stage.

And so, at first, all the lights in the factory suddenly flickered out of existence, replaced by several diodes flashing up on the control panel.

'So far, so good,' I thought, fully aware of what was going on.

Given the massive energy consumption of the process, just to properly test everything out before the full launch, the electricians made sure to rewire absolutely everything that required even the slightest amperage into a new circuit, one mostly responsible for the mess of the cables running all over the factory floor.

Right now, however, the foreman's hand stopped as we all locked our eyes on just a single diode that currently flashed in yellow.

"Come on…" Claire muttered while giving my hand a squeeze, eagerly waiting to see whether the first and most energy-demanding module of the whole factory would make it through the launch phase.

And so, after a few moments of tense waiting, the yellow diode… turned green!

"Uff…" even the foreman sighed while a single drop of sweat trickled down from his forehead, across his cheek, and then hung from the edge of his chin. "That was quite nerve-wracking, wasn't it?" he admitted half-jokingly.

"Readings are good, we can continue!" someone reported from the depths of the control room located on the very same passage as the would-be office while boasting the very same benefit as that office-to-be, of a massive window overlooking the main floor of the factory.

"Good, then…"

Rather than finishing his sentence, the foreman focused on slowly dragging the level another inch.

All of a sudden, all the lights returned to the factory, showing it to be… exactly the same as back when the test had yet to start.

The first module referred to all the Qi-transformers, and then the unit of the Qi-condensers was stacked in line with it. And by all means, this was the most energy-consuming part of the whole process… No, the most energy-consuming part of the whole factory.

And while now that the readings on the control panel proved it was running… there were absolutely no visible hints of anything changing from everyone's mortal perspective.

For me and Claire, however, the effects of turning the main module on couldn't be any more obvious.

"That's… quite the sight, isn't it?" the girl muttered while giving my hand another squeeze.

"It is…" I whispered in response while reciprocating the hand squeeze and then gritting my teeth. "Honestly, I don't think I would be able to move an inch if I were to fall into that kind of mess…"

From our perspective, just by radiating out from where the module was hidden, the Qi in the surrounding areas grew to the point where it would be an actual and tall challenge to move an inch through the air the Qi infused into.

And if that was merely the radiation from where the actual magic was taking place, the scale of the effect in the core of the whole machinery had to be something on another damn level!

"Everything okay?" The foreman of the workers asked, his hand freezing the very instant he heard our whispering and took it for a hint of something bad happening.

"Yeah, we just took note of what's happening, but it's pretty much exactly what we expected, I explained while nodding my head to the man. "And actually, I think it's better if we keep going with the test. Even if we stop it now, it's going to be days if not weeks before a mortal would be safe to step onto the factory floor as it is right now."

For a moment, the foreman kept his eyes on me, as if unsure whether he should proceed with the test or not, only to end up rolling his eyes and reaffirming his grasp over the control panel's main staging leaver.

"Next step, the first phase of the ventilation, testing."

The leaver moved up just another inch. And this time, while the change wasn't as obvious as when all the lights went out or came back, only a blind mind would fail to notice it.

It started with a deep, low hum of some heavy machinery booting up and quickly ramping up to its full power. Then, all sorts of dust and smaller rubble started to move along the main air-flow arteries of the whole factory. And before long, even the thickest and heaviest of the cables started to move around as far as their slack allowed.

After the initial mess of all the dust and rubble getting kicked up by the strong flow of the air, however, the very same air carried whatever was light enough to get lifted to the air into the main air arteries, only to be either caught up in the refurbished filtration system of the factory or be sucked by its ventilation system and blown out into the atmosphere.

In less than a minute, the rows of yellow lights that appeared when the foreman dragged the lever up settled down and turned green.

"The airflow within the margin of error, appears stable, no variation of the output reading," a report came from deeper in the room where a bunch of scientists and experienced work officers carefully monitored their readings, ready to scrap the whole test the moment something went haywire.

"Good," the foreman muttered before raising his eyes to the window to inspect the factory and, after doing it for a while, gritting his teeth. "Let's test its full potential, then," he muttered only to tense his hand and drive the leaver all the way to the last phase of the staging process.

"The afterburner is live!"