God Of Crafting

Just what the hell is that golden orb?

This one question permeated the brains of all those gathered in the room, all those who could steal even the slightest glance of its ability.

And quite honestly, there was a whole slew of benefits that this item offered. It was hard to just sit down and pick one… or sit down and pick the most important one!

From how it could calculate things that I would never deem possible to calculate in the first place, through its ability to actually communicate with me and the others, all the way to how it could give me… foresight?

'Then there goes the question, is it just me that can use all of those abilities of this golden orb… or is it everyone?' I gulped a mouthful of saliva down. 'Or maybe we don't even know the full scale of what this thing is even capable of?'

The more I thought about it, the more likely this kind of scenario made itself to be in my head.

We only spent a few moments with or around this object, and we continued to discover new and new ways in which it could help us… So how stupid and naive would we have to be to just assume that all that it has shown us in the past few moments was actually all that it could do?

"I wonder, what this thing is, but like, what it REALLY is," I spoke silently, mostly just voicing my wonder rather than actually looking for an answer.

"Does it even matter?" Chihiro somehow caught my words, instantly turning his attention over to me, ignoring the live feed of the cameras embedded into his bodyguard's outfits, allowing him to stay updated on the progress of their mission.

"As long as it's helpful, that's all we need to know. And just from how it's supposed to bridge the gap between the spirituality of the modern world and the spirituality of the cultivation world, then it's already more valuable than anything else we know of to make any kind of comparison possible."

On that point, even though I was still merely an amateur with little to no knowledge over cultivation, I could wholeheartedly agree.

Up until today, the modern world had all the convenience its technology could offer, along with all the physical power one could derive from it. On the other hand, there was the spiritual world with its enriched Qi that allowed people to challenge their mortality and go beyond this most basic realm in hopes of not only extending their life but also growing stronger personally.

This was the main balancing factor that kept the world stable and relatively peaceful, for no cultivator of higher level would ever align politically with the modern world, knowing full well that he needed the favor of the spiritual part of the world if he wanted to live beyond the average span of a human life.

And while one could argue how the seventy or eighty years humans could live wasn't all that short… when taking into consideration the time cultivators spent doing nothing but learning how to manipulate their spiritual energy, how much of their fortune they spent on getting more resources and better techniques…

With all of that considered, the extended lifespan, something that started in the upper ranks of the mortal cultivation but really took off only once one became a cultivator proper… In those circumstances, rather than a reward, it felt more like a compensation for all the time, effort, and money a cultivator had to put forth just to get there to begin with.

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But all of that, this weird socio-political dynamic and balance… All of that, as of today, was no more. Because with the presence of this golden ball floating in the control room like some sort of a disco-lamp, the whole of the spiritual world just lost the only advantage it had over the modern, technology-based world.

"Technology-based, huh?" I muttered to myself as I allowed my thoughts to wander freely for a moment, given how I didn't really have anything better to do while we waited for Chihiro's men to solve what felt like the last issue of the day, allowing us to move on from the test and to the actual task of the day - helping Chihiro break through his current bottleneck so that he could reach the tenth stage in time.

Still, just those two words, "technology-based" strangely resonated with my soul, as if calling forth to where my weird constitution used to be… only for the hole left after it burned away to spark the birth of this golden ball to turn into a resonating chamber that only served to further reinforce and amplify those two words within my soul.

Inevitably, the more I thought about it, the more my eyes moved away from the screens with the live feed of the counter-op of Chihiro's bodyguards, and the more it moved towards the golden ball.

"Okay, I think I can see them," Chihiro spoke into a hand-held microphone connected, most likely, to the private line he shared with his bodyguards. "Make sure to stay your hand until they are distracted with their goal…"

Paying little to no attention to the man's rambling, I stood up and came a little bit closer to the golden ball.

And then, just one step closer.

Just an inch closer.

Before I knew it, I already stood right in front of it, staring dead-ahead into its slowly-moving patterns as if they held some sort of an answer to the two words that peculiarly ended up stuck in my head.

"Technology-based, huh?" I muttered, mostly to myself, before reaching out… and then holding my hand right up to the ball's side, as if I wanted to touch it, pull out an ancient, elven sword before telling the guy on the other side of the magic ball that this particular sword has now been reforged, causing him to relapse into post-traumatic stress disorder of having all his fingers cut by that very sword and, in the process, losing one hell of a precious ring he then spent the next few hundred years trying to get back!

Yet, the more I stared into the golden surface of the golden ball, the more the very thought that brought me to it continued to morph in my head, as if taking over the morphing task of the patterns on the ball's surface.

And soon enough, rather than "technology-based," a slightly different term floated in my soul.

"A machine's spirit…"

This name was an obvious loan from one of the most popular fictional universes humans ever came up with. And while this golden ball had likely absolutely nothing to do with that universe, for this very specific moment… it just felt right.

"What are you on about?" Claire asked, her voice easily pulling me out of my dazed state as I turned my head to face her, blinking my eyes as I moved as if to further wake myself back up to reality.

"Ah, I think I fell a bit too deep into my own thoughts," I laughed it off… only for my eyes to inevitably draw right back to the golden ball.

This time, however, as I looked at it, something finally clicked.

'It's not a spirit of the machine or anything of that kind,' I thought, gulping the saliva down my throat as the realization of what this golden ball was quite likely to be only made me take a big breath and then hold it in as the consequences of what I'd just realized started to finally dawn upon me.

"No, you were onto something," Claire corrected me, proving that even if she wasn't speaking much while we were outside, she never stopped watching me.

And now that we were a pretty much official couple, she could now do so from so much closer and without anyone paying it any mind!

"Looking at your face…" Claire continued as she moved from my side to my front only to reach out with her hands and clasp them down on my face, as if she wanted to hold it up in place to get a better look at my expression. "Is it really that scary?"

"More than scary, I would rather say it's… overwhelming?" I tried my best to put my feelings, my realizations, and my dread into the simplest and most straightforward words I could come up with.

"Okay, feel free to engage. Just try to keep the collateral to a minimum," to the side, Chihiro gave the orders, finally making a move to stop whatever it was that the other clans were trying to do to stop us.

"Basically, if I'm right, then whatever it was that gave divinity to the spiritual power of the spiritual world was akin to the very essence of cultivation. And the more I think about it, the more I believe it was this divinity of theirs that was behind an entire age of spiritual restoration."

"And…?" Claire dug just a little bit deeper, easily reading from my face how what I said was merely a prologue, a synopsis that merely hinted at the actually important part at the end of what I wanted to say, rather than telling a full story on its own.

"It's still just a guess based on a series of other guesses of mine, so don't take it for a given truth, but…" I continued by dropping an obligatory cause, just to make it clear I wasn't actually sure about any of that. "But, if I'm not wrong, then this ball…"

I gulped my saliva down yet again.

As it turned out, speaking about my guesses somehow made them more real, more grounded in reality, more tangible, and thus, more… threatening.

"This golden ball is a divinity that reaches beyond the realm of spiritual energy," I revealed my concept before heaving a long and heavy sigh. "This might be the embodiment of a divinity that incorporates both the spiritual energy…" I turned my eyes to look straight into Claire's face.

"Execute," Chihiro finally gave the final order. And even though he stood only a few steps away, he was clearly too focused on his own men to care about what I was talking about with his daughter.

I rolled my eyes when his sharp tone threw me out of my loop, only to then shake my head and look right into Claire's eyes again.

"Both the spiritual… and electric energy at the same time," I revealed only for my lips to twist into a small, slightly mocking smile. "A spirit in the machine, you could say, but that only makes me wonder..."

I closed my eyes and took a breath only to raise my face up and open my eyes only to lock them on the factory's ceiling.

"If electricty is really within this golden ball's domain, then can it interact with electric devices?" I suddenly asked as I lowered my head and, once again, looked straight into Claire's eyes. "And is it what it did when it touched all of the electric devices in this room with those golden tendrils of its?"