God Of Crafting

"It's done."

Chihiro reported as he lowered the mouthpiece of his radio and looked over toward the two of us.

"Both of their groups?" I asked, just to be sure, only for Chihiro to shake his head.

"We didn't have the time or the angle of approach to get them on the surface, so I had my men set up in the service tunnels, waiting to pounce the moment they tried to cut the cables. So no, they took care of only the first group."

"That's…"

According to the golden visions I'd received from this golden entity, there were two groups dedicated to the mission of cutting the flow of electrical energy.

One group was to cut the cables, while the other was set up all around the perimeter of the target, securing both the way in and the way out for the strike team.

The only direction the second group couldn't protect… was exactly where Chihiro's men came from. Yet, while that allowed them to surprise the strike unit, taking them on right as their pants were down… it also meant they were right in the middle of the second group's attention, making it outright impossible for them to advance anywhere beyond the service canal itself.

"Well, it doesn't seem like that much of a big issue," I said as I ended up shrugging my shoulders and rolling my eyes a bit. "Whatever they planned to do, they clearly took their time to prepare for the execution of their plan. And now that we've spoiled it, I don't think there's any chance they could pull the second team off their position and make them mess with us any further, especially not when we are already on full alert from everything they did so far."

I took a breath to refill the stock of oxygen in my lungs after this rather lengthy elaboration…

Only to then shrug my shoulders.

"Well, that's what I think, but it's not like I know how military or paramilitaries operate, so don't take my word for it."

On the outside, I was calm. On the inside, however…

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'To think a day would come when I'd use the legendary "but you do you" just to shed any responsibility if my words led to a bad outcome…'

"What you spoke about makes sense," Chihiro admitted with a sigh, either ignoring or maybe not even noticing my little play. "And you don't need to have experience in the military or in conducting special operations to use common sense."

Chihiro moved away from the console before sitting back on the sofa in the rear of the room, where he leaned forward and hid his face in his hands.

"What now?" I whispered lightly to Claire, hoping she'd give me some insights on what to expect from her father now.

Claire, at first, looked up at my face only to then smile a little before shaking her head slightly.

"We just need to wait for him to sort his thoughts. And with the danger now gone, there's no more rush, so…"

Just like I did a mere moment ago, Claire shrugged her shoulders as if to emphasize that what she said was merely her opinion, or, in other words, a sentence she had no intention of taking any responsibility for.

"Yeah, there's no rush," Chihiro chimed in, revealing he wasn't deep enough in his thoughts to ignore our whispering. "Especially because those attacks are most likely not over yet."

'That…' I squinted my eyes, taken aback by Chihiro's sudden reveal. 'But if it's not over, then what else do they have in store?'

Puzzled by this question, I couldn't help but venture down this path in my thoughts, trying to crack the code of what Chihiro could possibly mean.

"Don't even try to reason it out, son," Chihiro quickly added in a slightly amused tone as he shot down my attempt pretty much as soon as I started it. "It's not logical or pragmatic, but it has everything to do with the nature of who we're dealing with," he explained before heaving a long sigh, only to then bring his eyes up and lock them on my face. "But you already know who that is, don't you?"

I stared back at Chihiro's face for a moment before slowly nodding my head.

"I don't really know who she is or what clan she belongs to, but I'm quite sure it's the woman we encountered on our trip to the cultivation district," I revealed what I'd seen in one of those golden visions of mine.

Sure, the face this girl showcased back in town was nothing like the face I saw in her vision… but when taking into account all sorts of makeup, hair extensions, and fancy clothes, I was pretty damn sure it was the same person.

The difference was simple.

Out in the district's streets, she had an image to maintain, whether to avoid shaming her clan with a lousy appearance or to rub her sense of style in the faces of all those she deemed inferior.

But back in the headquarters, from where she oversaw the entire, complex operation?

Back there, rather than focusing on her looks, that girl went with the most comfortable outfit she could pick: simple gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt, allowing her to focus her full attention on the action rather than getting distracted by nice-looking but uncomfortable clothes.

"What was her name… Cessia? Cesna? Cassie? Carol?" I tried to recall this relatively distant and already quite vague memory.

Even though my first meeting with that girl was quite memorable… she represented the kind of person I was more than happy not to have any real memory of, prompting my mind to quickly erase all the marks she left in my brain.

"It's Cassie," Claire confirmed the third of my guesses before turning her face over to her father. "Meaning, it's the Theya clan that's behind all of today's mess."

At this notion, Chihiro merely nodded his head.

"That's right. And while I don't know much about that girl you brought up, I surely know a fair bit about her grandfather," Chihiro stated before closing his eyes for a moment, taking a short breath, and then opening his eyes again as he focused them right on my face. "While he's certainly a genius of his generation and the only one in the city who managed to perfect his tenth stage of cultivation while relying on modern QI rather than abusing his right to cultivate back in the spiritual world… he does have his own faults."

Chihiro's face suddenly lit up as his mouth curved into a small, somewhat wicked smile. And before a single moment could pass, rather than keeping us in the dark over the meaning of his recent words, Chihiro didn't seem to mind sharing his thoughts at all.

"Theya's patriarch is quite the gambler. It was with gambling that their ancestor made their first fortune, allowing them to lay the foundations for the later creation of the Theya clan. But while his luck in any sort of gamble is a quality to actually be fearful of…" Chihiro's smile only grew, "it also makes him quite vulnerable to all sorts of manipulations that are the bread and butter for those behind the gambling."

I squinted my eyes even further as my mind raced to extract the meaning that Chihiro danced around with his words.

"And that is?" I asked, opting not to waste time trying to prove my awesomeness and instead to move the discussion along.

"Sunk cost fallacy," Chihiro replied with just three words.

Three words that were pretty much self-explanatory for those who didn't know their meaning in advance.

For me, however, those three words could pretty much describe the whole of the five years I spent in the institution, smashing my fists against the target in what was pretty much an attempt to smash my head into the wall in hopes of one day breaking it.

'Looking back, my determination to make it work… was it any different from me just refusing to give up because it would invalidate all the efforts I put into cultivation for five whole years?'

"I think I can sympathize with the man a bit…" I muttered, even though I knew just how wrong it was to sympathize with someone we were quite openly at odds with right now.

"I'm aware," Chihiro pointed out while raising one of his eyebrows, as if I managed to catch him off-guard by admitting both to my feelings of sympathy… but also how I myself had fallen prey to this mental trick.

"And that means…?" This time it was Claire's turn to put a stop to the two of us just staring at each other with weird, knowing smiles and to move the conversation along.

"They've gone too far to go back now. And even if it means burning bridges behind them or going a lot further than they were initially willing to, there is no way they are going to give up now."

Chihiro slapped his hands down on his knees as soon as she finished, before standing up from his seat and moving forward, all the way to the point where moving any further would mean breaking the window with his face and then dropping down to the factory floor.

"Regardless, while I'm quite sure they aren't going to give up, it doesn't mean they can mount any further resistance right away."

I stared at the back of Chihiro's head for a moment before it struck me.

"I understand," I followed the man to the outer edge of the room, only to then turn and stand by the console.

A quick glance down at the controls proved that even now, after everything that had happened, the whole of the factory was ready to go.

"All green," I reported before raising my eyes and looking to the side at Claire's dad as he looked out the window and overlooked the factory floor.

"Good," Chihiro quickly responded before turning on his heel and energetically walking to the doors of the room. "There's no use trying to figure out what they are planning to do, so rather than waste time doing so, let's just get this whole thing over with. And…" The man turned his eyes toward the now peaceful and silent golden orb that continued to float in the control room.

In the end, however, whatever Chihiro was about to say, he opted to keep to himself.

"Don't worry," I called out after the man right as he opened the doors and was about to leave the room… only to descend down the stairs, walk across the factory floor, and take a position right where we'd recently given birth to this golden entity, the very place where he was supposed to challenge his current bottleneck from the start.

Seeing the man stop, I glanced over at the golden ball, only to see the patterns on its surface shift a little, as if it were trying to tell me it was listening.

"I will do my best to make it cooperate."