God Of Crafting

"Before we go back, do you want to see just how far we can travel up this path now that we've cultivated for a bit?" I suggested pretty much as soon as we picked ourselves up from the garden's floor with the clear and articulated intention to leave. "I know we've been here for quite a while now, but a few minutes more in this place shouldn't hurt, I think."

Clarie took only a moment to think through my question.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to check," she replied with a small smile forming on her lips as sparks of competitiveness fired up in her eyes. "And I refuse to believe it's still going to be as hard to move here as it was before, now that we've improved by so much!"

Even though we didn't really get the chance to test it in practice, we could both feel it.

The power brimming in our cores, the surges of it between the supercritical center of our cultivation and all the anchors we set up, the ease with which we could move our limbs…

All of those small, fine details, while not as accurate as the results of extensive medical check-ups combined with rated exercise, were more than enough for us to guesstimate the limits of our current strength.

And while we didn't really have anything reliable enough to compare our current limits to, when it came to the state we were in before entering the garden and now that we were finally ready to leave it…

'I wonder if we will have the problem of crushing the handles of the doors we simply want to just push open,' Theo thought, gulping his saliva down at the mere thought of doing something like this only to then deal with all the mocking and ridicule that was bound to follow.

This wasn't the modern world where pointing that kind of thing out was considered to be a faux pas, something only those uneducated would engage in.

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No.

In the modern world, the phenomenon of failing to properly control one's strength, for as long as it didn't come at the cost of harm to others, wasn't something to be ashamed of. In fact, as a sign of near-certain growth, it was deemed to be a badge of honor that many liked to wear for as long as possible.

The whole mess around the concept of one's cultivation pushing their strength above what they were able to naturally control grew to the point where there were even some people who would pretend to be affected by this happenstance, all to elicit certain types of reactions from those around them.

But here? In the spiritual part of the world? Where cultivation was taken much more seriously than back in the modern world?

'While it's not something I studied hard enough to confirm with any degree of certainty, it's pretty damn obvious that in here, losing control over one's physical strength isn't something to be proud of but something to be ashamed of!'

This was a simple result of reasoning out the world from the perspective of those who put cultivation at the front and center of everything.

The phenomenon of one's body failing to adapt to one's rapid growth would only happen to those who grew rapidly, at a pace exceeding the rate of adaptability of their very own flesh.

In other words, it could only happen to those who refused to take their time to grow their cultivation at a rate that matched their potential, matched the ability of their body to adapt.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Within this kind of enclosed, hermetic society, rather than proof of one's talent, it was evidence of one's lacking mindset, where greed and hastiness triumphed over patience and steadiness.

"I'm so not looking forward to our return," having all of that in my head, I muttered pretty much right as we picked up our pace and started to stroll down the path, eager to find out whether or not we could even approach the stairs towards that third floor Leila mentioned.

At first, it appeared as if this goal was within our reach, given how the pressure of the garden simply refused to increase to the point where we could feel it again, even after we walked as far as we did to reach the spot where we just finished cultivating.

While I only had the picture of the outside of this garden in my head, as far as I was concerned, there wasn't much more room left for us to cover, even if the garden's insides turned into the very labyrinth we were trying to cross right now.

At some point, we were bound to finally reach this maze's end. And simply by following the rule of always sticking to the left-hand wall and following it regardless of the temptations to do otherwise, we were quickly approaching the limits of just how far a singular path through this maze could take, given the limitations on the space imposed by the garden's outer walls.

Yet, as if to spit in the face of all our efforts thus far, just when I thought we were just one more corner, a few more steps away from reaching our destination… The pressure of this place returned. And unlike how it was before, where we would have to walk for quite a while before realizing this pressure was back and already slowing our steps down to a crawl… Unlike in the past, the return of the garden's pressure this time was much more sudden than it was gradual.

At one point, we were casually moving ahead with little to no resistance from the garden, only to then take a step and find ourselves in a thick slurry of air, where merely pushing our leg to take another step started to prove challenging.

'Fuck!'

Not wanting to make a grave mistake right at the last leg of our trip, I managed to shoot my hand out and grab Claire by her shirt and pull her back, right as I switched my own gear and, rather than stepping ahead, I forced my body to take a step back instead.

"Huff, huff, huff…"

Even though I'd been in that pressure-filled part of the maze for less than a second, it was still enough to drain most of my energy from my body, leaving me desperately trying to catch my breath and regain some of my strength.

"Should we cultivate just for a little bit more?" Claire suggested while giving me a slightly concerned look. "Not to advance but just to… you know," she cutely leaned her head over her shoulder, "restore our fuel tanks?"

"Didn't you claim that we were already lingering for way too long?" I winked back at her, only to lightly shake my head and turn around, open my arms and then step into Claire, collapsing my arms over her as I brought her into a bear-like hug.

Normally, to cultivate in this place, we would take our time to sit down, get in the position we were habitually most comfortable in, and then take some time to regain proper focus before finally allowing ourselves to focus on the task.

Right now, however, was different. For as we had no designs to try to push our cultivation status any further than it was right now, we simply hugged to make small use of our bond, sinking into each other's warmth to soothe our minds and regain whatever little focus we could on the spot.

What followed didn't fall out of the norm we established in this place, with us stirring our cores to induce an attractive force on the spiritual law energy present in this place, sucking it into our bodies only to immediately cast it down upon the face of our cores, giving it even more fuel to burn through and thus accelerating the flow of energies within ourselves.

This process, while not instant, didn't last longer than just a few moments, a few minutes at the longest and roughly half a minute at the shortest.

'In here, it's pretty damn hard to judge how much time is passing, all the more when we focus not on counting seconds but cultivating,' I thought, taking note of this problem to later verify just how off my natural sense of time was when compared to the actual passing of time one could check with a simple clock outside.

"Okay, I think we are ready."

A few moments later, we pulled away from each other, with our bond strong enough to indicate what I'd just said was pretty much the same thing that Claire just thought herself.

"Shall we go back, then?" I suggested as I courtly offered Claire my hand, more than happy to keep up physical contact with her, even if it was to be something as simple as holding hands.

A motion that would be overly romanticized in fiction, but also an option that allowed us to keep in literal touch while strolling back to where we came from.

"Oh, with pleasure, my good sir," Claire chuckled a little but still played her part as she did a small yet dignified curtsy before slowly bringing just the tips of her fingers down upon the open palm of my offered hand.

The fingers that she quickly collapsed as she pushed them between mine and tightly grabbed on my hand only to then add a tight squeeze to the mix.

"Something wrong?" I asked, puzzled by this slightly out-of-character moment from Claire.

"Not really," she smiled back at me before shaking her head and sending her hair flying, turning it into a messy, chaotic, brown flurry. "I just thought that we don't really go around holding hands all that much. Heck, I think I held your dick for quite a bit longer than I did hold your hand," she then added, clearly trying to land a joke… Only to fail miserably at it, given the awkward moment of silence that followed.