God Of Crafting

Normally, our heart-to-heart conversation would likely lead us to quite the intimate moment in which we would physically reaffirm our love and affection for each other.

But there was absolutely nothing normal about our current situation.
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"This really feels… wrong," Claire muttered, pouting slightly as we sat back over the blueprint of the items that were the actual goal of this whole situation. "To get each other so heated up and then do… nothing…"

I looked away from the blueprint I had pretty much finished by now and to Claire's dissatisfied face.

To make things even weirder, it was Claire herself, not me, that pushed for this kind of a solution, judging it to be a waste to put our own desires over the practicality of saving our encounters for the green crystal.

After all, it had already taken us quite a while to get the wand-o-ring completed. And while the goal of making it was to speed up the process of crafting everything else, it did provide us with insight into just how long crafting anything else would take.

And the twin swords I'd almost finished drafting the schematic for were near infinitely more complicated than the wand-o-ring, even if none of its parts were as complex and difficult to make as the weave for said ring.

"Isn't it?" I tuned in to Claire's words, holding myself back from the legendary 'I told you so.' "But that's the sacrifice we are making to make this…" I looked around, as if to point at the whole of the workshop, "happen, right?"

Even though Claire knew about it, I still nailed down this point.

This was the ugly truth of being a cultivator… or, actually, a person of importance in any field. The cost of all the privileges we got to enjoy was that there were times when we had to put our duties and obligations ahead of our personal wants.

Just like politicians had to take into account future elections, the influences of other countries, and the costs of implementing the policies they promised to the people, just like merchants had to take into account potential changes to the tariffs, taxes, or even something as vile as piracy… As cultivators who suddenly found themselves exposed to all sorts of family and political scheming, we had no other choice but to make small sacrifices now in order to avoid big sacrifices later down the line.

"Well, nothing we can do about it now," Claire sighed away before resting her elbows down on my drawing table and then resting her head in her hands. "Looking at it from another angle, however," suddenly, a sheepish smile crept up on her lips, "you could take our situation to be a kind of kinky, edging play!"

Hearing this, I couldn't help but glance away from the blueprint, nearly ending up smearing the otherwise orderly lines of it with the side of my hand when I glanced over at Claire's wicked smile.

"Which will make it all the harder for us not to get the whole thing over and done with once we get to it, huh?" I rolled my eyes before turning them back to the piece of drawing paper.

Thankfully, with only a few more lines, I finally completed the whole picture, allowing myself to pull away from the desk and then lean back in my chair, stretching my hands up and closing my eyes to let them rest for just a bit.

For some reason, drawing a blueprint was a task far more tiring than I would ever expect it to be. In fact, it could be just the most exhausting part of the whole crafting process, even though it only involved the heavy use of my brain and a slight use of my hands.

Now that the heavy part of the process was done, however, I allowed myself just a slight moment to rest before shaking my head, opening my eyes, and then standing up.

"Good. Now that we have the whole thing mapped out, let's gather the materials first!"

Contrary to what Claire suggested, we didn't really get to edge ourselves by pushing our desires for when the time-stopping crystal would need a recharge.

With so many tasks at hand and the prize of the time we took to complete them only growing more and more apparent, we simply didn't have the spare thought in our minds to commit to how we felt or how much we wanted to touch each other.

Instead, we focused on the preparatory steps of the crafting process, going down the list written to the side of my blueprint as we continued our rounds, gathering more and more various materials to the side of the workstation I'd used back when crafting the ring.

"That's…"

Pretty much as soon as we crossed over the last item on the list and stood above the huge pile of various boxes, crates, and flasks and the like, Claire took a step back as she nervously gulped her saliva down.

I followed her eyes, only to land my sights on the very pile we had created.

"What about it?"

Puzzled, I raised my eyes back to the girl's face, not exactly sure what made her so… shocked? Puzzled? Weirded out?

Despite how well I thought I knew her, right now, I couldn't quite crack just what emotion hid behind this slightly distant look in her eyes.

"This pile…" Claire muttered before raising her eyes and locking them on my face. "How is it I'm the one stunned by just how expensive this project is going to be?"

I slightly raised my eyebrow before squinting my eyes as I looked back down at the pile of resources, even going as far as to rub my chin while I took a moment to think about it.

"Oh, I think it might be quite simple," I quickly came up with a proper idea. "Do you know why people hardly care when they hear how politicians are wasting away billions upon billions of bucks? Yet, when they hear of someone getting several tens or even hundreds of thousands in bribes, they are so appalled, they are willing to take to the streets until said person gets booted out of politics?"

This was a question I once asked myself. Upon finding no answer, however, I turned this inquiry over to my uncle, a man who dabbled heavily in politics, be it the politics of the underground early on, or the official politics of the state a bit later.

And the answer he gave me was as depressing as it was eye-opening.

"That's something I didn't really give much thought to in the past but…" Claire squinted her eyes as she thought about my question. "But indeed, it's weird. Why would they care more for a smaller sum?" she asked, turning her lovely, brown eyes back to me.

"It's pretty much the same as with the situation right now," I smiled while glancing over at the blueprint I tagged to the nearby machine to keep it within my view while working at my station before picking out the first set of resources outlined in the schematic.

"You were born rich, so you've learned to understand the values those resources represent. Most mortals, however, simply have their sense of scale attuned to much smaller numbers," I shrugged my shoulders as I explained.

"For you, the value of this pile is enough to make you raise your eyebrow. For me, however, someone born into an average family?" I shook my head. "This value is so damn high, it simply goes over my head. And while I can guess just how big of a number is floating in your head, I simply have no means of internally conceptualizing it."

I shrugged my shoulders before arranging the resources down on my desk, then bringing out a small, diamond-coated mortar and dropping two blue crystals, one green one, and then a fistful of an extremely viscous, sappy substance into the bowl, before smashing the mortar's diamond-laced weight on top as I started to grind away.

"That's why, rather than wasting time and headspace thinking about what those things are worth, I just put them to the best use," I concluded my explanation while already working the base of the pestle to grind the crystals down and then mix them into yet another portion of Ruband Oil.

Then, before Claire could even speak up, I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

"I don't react because I was born poor, you do react because you were born rich," I revealed before shrugging my shoulders again. "In all honesty, that's all there is to it."