A dark-skinned ursa meticulously whittled away at a large staff, holding a thin knife in his hand. This staff was made from a fallen branch collected in the Great Forest of Sorii, supposedly having fallen from the ancestor tree itself amidst a powerful storm. While the craftsman could not verify the details of this claim, it was a fact that the wood was stronger than anything he had seen before, and even carried a faint hint of divinity.
He heard the ring of a bell, a sign that someone had entered his shop. Closing his eyes, he let out a faint sigh before setting the half-finished staff on the workbench in front of him. As he rose, he smoothed out his leather apron, passing his various crafting stations and walking to the front room of the shop. “Hello!” He called out with a smile that hid his annoyance at being disturbed in the middle of his work. “How can I help you?”
The man that had arrived was similarly a dark-skinned man, though he appeared human. This ‘customer’ looked appraisingly at the ursa, before nodding his head. “It looks like I’ve found the right place. Kiria Sorin, I’ve come with a rather special commission for you…”
The craftsman, Kiria, raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing you know this already, but my prices aren’t exactly cheap. And I’m already working on one order, so I can put you in the queue if you leave your details.”
Hearing that, the customer smiled wide. “I’m well aware that the God of Crafts is not an easy man to hire. But…” He had a somewhat difficult expression on his face. “This really is a rush order.”
Kiria shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. He had already built up a remarkable reputation at this point, even before ascending to godhood. He was known as the man that crafted the Keeper’s own weapons, the first mortal craftsman to ascend. There were few that could afford the level of item he would create, and most of those were the Maxers of Fyor. When he saw that his customer was a human, he naturally assumed that he would follow in that trend.
“What’s the request? If it’s interesting enough, I might be able to put my work on hold for now.” Of course, there were also those rare requests that were just so absurd, or used materials so rare that he couldn’t help but take the job. For those, he would always put in his best work, regardless of the pay.
Hearing that, the customer gave a mischievous grin. “I’d like to order one moon, to be delivered to Deckan in the event of an unfortunate attack happening in a few days.”
Silence fell over the shop, Kiria sure that he had misheard the request. “You want me to… make a moon? As in, an actual moon?” This was certainly the… largest order he had ever received. He had been asked to make statues or buildings before, but never anything even close to the scale of a moon.
“That’s right. To be more precise, you’ll be in charge of repairing it. Crafting the moon again with the pieces that are already there. Should be simple enough, right?” There was a challenging smile on the man’s face as he made that request.
“Repairing… what in the blazes is going to be blowing up the moon!?” The God of Crafts shouted, having a hard time believing what he was hearing.
The customer shrugged his shoulders. “Well… I don’t want to say that it’s aliens… but it’s aliens. We don’t know for sure that they’ll blow up the moon, but we don’t have enough resources to protect both it and the planet. If they do destroy it, we’ll need it repaired quickly to prevent lasting problems.”
Kiria brought his large hand up to massage his temples. “Okay, fine… the moon… okay… yeah, let’s do this.” He said, letting out a long sigh. “How long do I have?”
“I need you on standby in three days at Deckan. If they crack the moon, it’ll be up to you to fix it once everything’s settled.”
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Kiria stared up at the sky, eyes wide as he saw the ray of light pierce through the moon. Given that this was his job, he had made sure to always have the moon within his line of sight. Granted, he had not truly believed that this would be necessary. Not until he saw the night sky lighting up, a massive column of light piercing through the planet itself.
He didn’t know how the planet had survived that blast, as the mere memory of it sent chills down his back. Holy sisters, he was serious…
As he watched the chunks of the moon slowly drifting apart, he clenched his fist. Although this was his job, he could not simply journey out into space while there was a fleet capable of casually destroying planets. However, as he thought about that, he felt a hand land on his shoulder.
When he turned his head, he saw his dark-skinned customer standing there with a calm smile. “Don’t worry, we’re already taking care of the enemies. All you have to do is wait for your turn.”
Kiria looked up at the sky again, giving a small nod. “I… I can do that. But, have you thought about where you’ll get the missing pieces? That blast… the moon can’t all be there anymore, can it?”
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The dark-skinned man blinked his eyes, looking up. “Ah, right. Don’t worry, I’ll provide replacement materials. There are plenty of asteroids floating around that we can use.”
“What is that!” The sovereign of the golems shouted in shock, seeing the ‘insignificant’ black speck passing through his fleet’s ships one after the other. The barriers that it had previously erected were all shattered as soon as the attack made contact, and it appeared as if there was nothing that could stop it.
When it passed through the first ship, the giant golem still had hope. The damage it inflicted seemed quite minor, enough so that it didn’t even register on the sensors for several moments. It was only when the second ship was struck that the first showed signs of… decay? Deterioration? It seemed more apt to call this a spreading disintegration.
It was not only the ships themselves that were being destroyed. Even the golems that stood upon the ships, anything that was in physical contact with the affected area became a target. The sovereign watched as the first planet-sized ship turned to dust, the residual energy within its systems erupting and causing that cloud of dust to scatter into space.
At this point, the attack had grown to be a full foot in diameter, but even that was practically nothing compared to the objects it was destroying. Nonetheless, when the sovereign saw that attack heading for his own ship, he turned his vessel abruptly.
He neither knew or cared how many golems had been crushed by the sudden momentum of turning the ship, fully employing fourth-tier magic to reposition it and complete the charging process for the main cannon. Despite the advanced nature of the ship’s sensors, he was unable to determine what exactly was the cause behind everything disintegrating as it was. All he knew was that physical substances did not impede its movement at all, so logically energy attacks should work.
At the same time, though, the shields formed by mana had been effortlessly broken. Thus, it could be seen that either the attack was more powerful than his fourth-tier defensive spell, or it also had a restraining effect on mana. With that in mind, he planned to destroy it with the same attack that had shattered this world’s moon.
The core of the ship let up, a blinding white beam shooting towards the black sphere. The sovereign knew that he would be unable to determine what was happening within the beam, as its intensity was enough to block their scanners. Instead, he began preparing a fourth-tier teleportation spell. He was ready to abandon this battle altogether if the beam failed to remove the danger.
Even before the beam faded, the golem was forced to pause. Darkness expanded from within the beam of solar radiance, capturing it and seeming to feed on it. The black ball that was previously only a foot in diameter had almost instantly grown to be over a thousand kilometers wide. It was only then that he understood what was happening, and why his ships had disintegrated in the manner that they had. Even his mana barriers had only been destroyed because they emitted a brilliant glow, light having been integrated as one of their functions.
If there was a silver lining to be found, it was that the increased size of the ball had caused its speed to decrease drastically. What was previously a whizzing bullet between ships had instead become a massive, slow-moving ball of destruction.
The sovereign was of the mind to hit it with another beam to slow it further as he fled with his ship. However, after a quick calculation, he realized the beam would likely cause it to expand to the point where it would impact his ship before he could escape. Grinding his gears, he immediately cast his teleportation spell, abandoning everything that he had built over his long career as the ball of darkness descended on his greatest creations.
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Chel grimaced as she saw the black sphere rapidly growing in size, looking over at Tsubaki. The larger it was, the greater the burden it placed on her. Even though she was borrowing power from the Keeper, it couldn’t keep up with the drain, which forced her to slow the speed of her attack. “Once the last of the larger ships have been destroyed, dismiss your attack. We can settle the rest with our fleets.”
Although Tsubaki was unwilling to give up halfway, she knew that she had no other choice. She could only nod her head in acceptance. If she really tried to crash that ball into the rest of the enemy fleet, she would die from the energy drain long before she had even touched them.
Unfortunately, with the way she configured her attack, she was not able to simply release some of the built up energy. If she did so, the energy would just be immediately absorbed by the star of oblivion again. If she wanted to make use of this attack in the future, she would need to modify it and make sure that it would not drain her too much.
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They really did it… Kiria said as he saw the last of the ships being cleared away in orbit. For some reason, the fleet had suddenly become disorganized after one of the largest ships had been destroyed. Some of the ships turned to flee, while others became more aggressive. Did they not know how to operate without a commander?
Either way, it was now his turn to act. He nodded towards the man next to him, who immediately used a teleportation technique to send them up and onto the surface of one of the broken moon fragments. Lifting his hand, Kiria summoned his divine hammer, the holy relic that he had created with painstaking efforts.
Unlike other craftsmen, Kiria refused to register his skills with this new system. He had been skeptical at first, waiting to see what the effects of the system were. Once he found out, he believed it to be the bane of a true craftsman.
While the system appeared beneficial, helping craftsmen to remove the smaller imperfections in their creations, that seemed more like a trap to Kiria than anything else. It was the imperfections that gave an item character, and gave a direction for the craftsman to improve himself in the future. Without such things, the growth of a craftsman would stagnate, and they would be limited by their own ability.
Thus, Kiria did not register his crafting skills, treating every item he made as if it were a new challenge to overcome. He would continue to maintain his position as the God of Crafts even without the ‘help’ of this new system. With that thought in mind, he struck his hammer down against the giant rock beneath him. It was time to get to work.