God Of Crafting

Dressed in his usual, casually-official attire, he walked up to the reception with a small, aloof smile.

"The usual, if you would be as kind."

The receptionist smiled and passed the keycard, greeting him with a small nod. Hugo th hurried down the lobby hall and into the secondary staircase hidd in the back of it.

A momt later, he wt down to the bunker basemt before pressing the card against the wall and siltly making his way into the office inside.

A day like every day, a day like usual.

"Let\'s get this over and done with," the man sighed as he sat down in a comfy, gaming chair while booting up his tire arsal.

For Hugo, this was his commanding cter, his hideout, his… nest in the web.

It was with those cameras and other tools of his that he all controlled from this rted-out yet private room that he made his rather comfortable living.

With a few taps of his fingers, the cameras changed focus from the default mode… and vanished altogether, replaced by a much more useful software that Hugo sneakily booted into the building\'s network.

Now, instead of a scattered view of most of the better-known parts of the ancit forest, the wall displayed a bunch of highly-rated news, important alerts, and a geral rundown of the situation within the forbidd zone.

Hugo reached out to the nearby tourist fridge that he had preinstalled in the place and pulled a foil-sealed plate of pulled chick and rice, a carb and protein bomb that would sustain what came next.

The assigned time of surveillance would only come due in some hours, leaving Hugo with ample time to get himself ready and to thoroughly prepare his rig.

"Okay, let\'s see what we\'ve got," Hugo muttered to himself as he put the food aside and turned his focus back to controlling the rig\'s operation.

A momt later, half of the wall suddly turned into a view of roughly fifty cameras monitoring chokepoints of every single major path within the forest.

If anyone wanted to get somewhere and do it fast, they could only use those to move a, as going through the woods themselves was a death stce.

On the other half, he held up a selection of other points of view that he deemed interesting or valuable, leaving the remaining fourth of the wall to a constantly changing set of fully random cameras.

There was a limit on how much information and visual data a human brain could process, and Hugo already approached this limit.

Still, with how expansive the zone was, it was impossible to monitor every last part of it, making Hugo\'s job, spotting the zone, into one of those specialized, extremely well-paid professions.

"It\'s a pity I can\'t use any of the better systems," Hugo muttered under his nose, knowing full well the consequces of crossing that line.

Without a better integration with the system, he couldn\'t manifest any of his more powerful hacks. But with the greater integration, he was sure to alert the resort\'s staff of the issue!

And so, limited to the currt means of technology integration, Hugo drilled his eyes into the camera feed, ready to earn several months\' worth of his free, worry-free lifestyle.

****

This was the only way to describe today\'s morning.

Or rather, everything that happed up to that particular morning.

After waking up, I just cuddled with Claire for a bit on the bed before we lazily gathered ourselves up and wt to start the day as usual.

With the fancy and quirky break of the fast with the help of the private chef and servers, I was ready to take on the challges of the day…

Only for Claire to suddly announce the big day finally arrived.

And now, mere momts later, we were already nearing the destination.

"It\'s finally the day, huh?" I muttered, seduced by just caressing the long, hard shaft of my scythe to the point that I could hardly utter a single, cohert stce.

"I\'m happy to see you hyped," Claire gave me a side-eye from her seat before looking away as if pouting. "But I should be the only one for you to make that kind of face," she mumbled while resting her elbow down on the window\'s edge and looking outside with a dejected look on her face.

"Ah, sorry," I tried to laugh this off as I pushed my lovely, thick, and heavy scythe, only to move sideways on the long seat.

Before I could say or do anything, though, the car came to a stop.

And while the next few hours were likely to be the most dangerous in my life so far… I couldn\'t help but shift my atttion to the doors.

"Just go…" Claire looked back, her face now all empty, her smile void, the aura of dejection rising all over her. "Who am I to hold you from playing a with your new toy?" she made a helpless smile as she shooed me away with the wave of her hand…

Only to quickly follow as soon as I wt outside.

In my hand, wasn\'t exactly my scythe, but a small pouch, closed by a short string that was th further wrapped a one of my fingers.

Spatial rings, while existed, were heavily controlled by the state and gerally deemed too risky and expsive to use for someone to just carry them a. There was ev an official, op registry of all of those rings, strictly regulating ev their slightest move.

That\'s why, rather than bringing my scythe out for all to see, I held it in one of those temporary bags, constructed according to the latest certification of the state\'s commerce ministry.

Not only was it a temporary measure, but it directly sourced its ergy from the user\'s spiritual QI, making it extremely easy to detect and thus unusable for smugglers and other criminals.

For now, however, it allowed me to move down the hillside path without drawing anyone\'s atttion… Mostly because we hardly met anyone on our merry way.

Soon ough, we walked all the way down to the weird lodge. And it was at the courtyard right before its trance wh Claire suddly stopped me.

"Wait here for a second, I will have one of our guys get on the spotting duty," she requested, only to put me down on a public bch before running off into the building.

She wasn\'t away for long, merely ough for me to give it a momt to think about just how soon I could swing my scythe properly. Yet, for some reason, something at the back of my head just… It just kept itching in a place I couldn\'t mtally scratch.

"Are you ready?" Sporting a set of short sweats, Claire stretched her arms out to the side, weighing herself down with a rather simplistic sword in her hand.

"I was born ready," I grinned back at the girl… Only to th awkwardly laugh out. "Yeah, I think I am."

Ever since I added all the last touches to my scythe, I grew more and more obsessed with it. As if it was my crafting soul calling out with love for… my creation?

It just felt perfectly right in my hand, with me knowing how I shaped every tiniest thing about it.

I knew of all the possible imperfections, flaws, and faults. And I could reforge all of those into valuable experices that would fuel my next project with new, ev greater flame.

And now, I could finally test out its second quality, the feature that I deemed way too dangerous to manifest in the villa.

In the back of my head, however, there was one conversation that I just couldn\'t stop thinking about, ever since I first recalled it properly wh I sat down to polish the edge of the scythe and turn it into a proper, sharp tool for brutalizing anything that would find itself in this blade\'s path.

One conversation that I kept going back to, only to ever grow more appreciative of how much meaning could be shared with so few words.

"Cultivation stages, in a sse, are all about mastering dimsions."

"Okay, let\'s go!"

Done with her stretching exercise, Clarie grabbed my hand before pulling me ahead.

"You want to test it, don\'t you? So let\'s get going!"