God Of Crafting
Chapter 109 - 109: Sphere of influence

There was only one reason why I left the most precious of the metals back at the workshop cook and then boil for hours upon hours in the furnace, subjected both to the extremely hot flames of the special mixture of hot-burning gases and to the purifying influence of the spiritual flames added to the furnace.

And it was to completely change the qualities of the metal, before adding all sorts of qi-conductive materials and turning the liquid into the slurry, before encapsulating it well within the body of my scythe's blade.

It was because overheating the metal for so long while tempering it with spiritual energy, made it not only gain the ability to retain quite a lot of its heat… but with the help of the spiritual force, contain it quite well.

That's why, while the slurry would settle into a half-solid state when left on its own, with its heat hiding deep down in the core of the mixture while its outside cooled down, as soon as I agitated it by pushing spiritual energy through the scythe's circuitry…

With the power of the spiritual flame agitating the heat hidden at the core of the slurry, it would mix its temperature out… turning it into a strange, half-liquid form again.

On one end, this changed how the scythe balanced when swung, given how this slurry would now squeeze down, dragging the attacks back…

But even more importantly, as this slurry squeezed into the corner of the chamber it was locked in, all of the conductive materials inside of it, already filled with both thermal and spiritual energy, would crash into each other, rapidly releasing just enough spiritual force to leave a mark on the surface of space itself.

A mark that, by a total accident, appeared to have pretty much the same qualities as the nodes I installed all over my body to facilitate the discharges of my core!

'If the fifth stage of cultivation was about expanding the influence of one's core within their flesh, then by its very definition of the sixth stage, the only way to expand it would be to do it… outside of one's flesh.

And so, I swung my scythe again, and again. And after just a few slashes, I've figured out a simple, straightforward, and perfectly repetitive way to not only keep my scythe swinging but do so without breaking its momentum even in the slightest.

'This has to look really cringe to anyone watching,' I thought, as I just walked all over the open part of Chica camp, swinging my scythe in circles on my left, then on my right, then above my head, then back on the left, on the right and so on.

And for every swing, I would leave a lasting mark in the space where I swung the scythe's blade as if I was painting with a three-dimensional crayon on the canvas of the air itself.

Bit by bit, more and more of those nodes appeared. And what was even better, once I created a big enough number of them… the nearest nodes started to splatter out, as if reaching for each other and creating this intricate web, a scaffolding of sorts from which it continued to expand into a space that was fully within the range and ability of my core to discharge its energy to it.

I couldn't tell for how long I continued this dance, immersed by the weird feeling of omnipresence I've gained as I spread my potential influence out over greater and greater area.

At some point, when I could add no more marks over how thick and complete this net of connections became, my swings started to just… add up, causing the sphere of my influence to keep growing in every possible direction. This process, however, grew the slower the bigger the dome of my domain grew, aligning with how quickly the surface of a three-dimensional object grew when compared to its radius.

I was immersed in the process with all of my being… but that didn't mean I could miss the short, snappy explosions of Qi happening all over the place, all quite some distance away from the camp Chicka itself.

'I guess this has been going on for a while already,' I thought, quickly realizing that by the looks of things, my guess was correct.

The matter of my attempted kidnapping wasn't over yet, neither in the minds of those who organized it nor in Chihiro's own view.

And what was happening all around the camp, right now, was their response to the threat imposed by those who tried to get their hands on me!

'I wonder if any of them will slip past,' I thought, observing the reality not through my eyes alone, but through sensing the changes to the spiritual energy within the dome of my influence.

This dance wasn't the only thing I was doing, however.

Planting more and more of those points was surely the plan, as I aimed to experience what it felt like to be a sixth-stage cultivator before even attempting to gather enough energy to become one.

But it wasn't the ultimate goal. Not at all. In fact, one could say that the more of the points outside of my flesh I could connect to, the harder I made my main task!

It wasn't enough being able to connect to any of those outside points at random at all times as I was doing now simply by expanding my perception of my very self from just my body to the full extent of my sphere of influence.

No.

The goal was to figure out how to concentrate on just one of those points… and then steer my energy toward it, rather than just hoping my core's discharges would happen to accumulate in that general direction.

It was a wish…

A wish that came true right when the first enemy penetrated the defensive line set up by Claire, only to come out from between the trees and look around before zeroing in on my figure.

Just a few steps behind him, a bundle of familiar QI was rushing to cut the enemy down… But Claire, for I had no doubt it was her, was just a single bit too slow, reaching the man's back with her sword right as he rushed ahead, ready to do to me whatever he was here to do.

And so, the man rushed at me with his knives barred and ready to strike down.

Yet, the very moment he unknowingly stepped into the area of my influence…

It happened.

The one thing that I wanted to somehow figure out, revealed itself to me.

Because the moment a bundle of foreign spiritual energy I didn't recognize intruded upon my otherwise uniform sphere of influence, the energy of my core just… radiated towards it, as if creating a path of the smallest resistance that outdid the attraction of each of my points.

Yet, as I was already channeling my spiritual energy through my scythe to facilitate the process of my dome of influence growing…

It wasn't my flesh but my scythe that moved along with the flow of my mana.

And what started as me just… lowering my scythe to prepare for the attack, turned out with its blade digging into the back of the man's spine when I suddenly appeared behind him, in just the right position for my blade to reap his heart.

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