God Of Crafting

"Your robe has finally arrived!"

It was quite rare for me to see Claire THAT excited. And over nothing more than a set of clothes at that.

'She's so perfect most of the time, I tend to forget she is... well, just a normal girl, even if her life is anything but normal.'

Between hearing the excitement in Claire's voice and seeing her all happy and excited, I couldn't really tell which I liked seeing or hearing more.

"Come on, come on!" Holding the huge package in her hands, Claire sprinted across the room, all the way to where I lay in bed with a random fantasy novel I had picked from her father's library.

As it turned out, his collection wasn't limited to just cultivation scrolls and spiritual treatises. In fact, his physical library was on par with, if not even greater than, my online equivalent of it!

'I guess that's what it feels like to be rich,' I thought, taking one last look at the perfectly well-maintained book before committing the page I was on to my memory, closing the book, putting it down on the bed, and looking over.

The feeling of holding a book couldn't be any more different than the feeling of holding an electronic ebook reader. There was no smell of the freshly printed pages, the distinctive smell of the ink mixing with the quality paper. There was no texture beneath my fingers other than the cold metal of the device, as opposed to the soft yet stiff padding of the book's hardcover…

'I guess being rich is all about those small, minute details most of the normal folk would never notice or bother to care about,' I thought, taking one more breath before properly following up with my attention in the direction I'd already turned my eyes to.

And to say it bluntly, the sight of Claire nearly jumping as she came over was infinitely more interesting than whatever the story I was reading from that book—the content of which the mere sight of a happy Claire was enough to erase from my memory.

"Oh my gosh, can you see those colors?!" Claire had already started to unpack the package on her way over to the bed. By the time she finally sat down on its edge, she had fully uncovered my custom-made ceremonial robe, an outfit I was to wear during my trip into the spiritual world.

Looking at the fabric in Claire's hand, even someone of a relatively peasant upbringing like me could see just how insanely expensive those few scraps of material were likely to be.

Just like there was a difference between silk for the rich and the crude, plastic caricature of a clothing material, there was a difference between ordinary silk and one created from the threads of the spiritual cousins of the bug that made the silk to begin with.

'Looking at it, the way it was made from…' I thought as I leaned in over Claire's shoulder and took a closer look at the fabric. 'It wasn't broken, huh?'

While it was nothing more than a piece of trivia I'd learned from some random educational videos I used to binge during my life, while silk was generally made from the cocoons of a special kind of bug… there were more ways to handle said cocoons than one could ignorantly imagine.

The silk used for my ceremonial robe, however, was likely the most expensive one, one that was never broken.

Which was an insanely difficult feat, given how the entire silk cocoon was made with no more and no less than just a single strand of it!

"This thing…" I muttered, only feeling worse and worse the more I thought about wearing such an expensive piece of clothing. Experience tales at m v|l e'm,p| y- r

"Too fancy and expensive for your taste?" Claire asked with a huge smile on her face, right as she turned her head to the side, bringing her face merely an inch away from mine.

From so close, I could barely handle her cuteness. And well… given how there was only one kind of situation that would warrant us putting our faces together so close, it was, by no fault of my own…

"I'm not going to deny feeling a bit… undeserving of this cloth," I admitted, pulling away before a part of my body would push my clothes to the limits of how much they could stretch instead. "But we are doing everything by the book, right?"

I pulled back on the bed, only to then freeze as I spoke out with my eyes locked on Claire's face.

The mere mention of those words was like a bucket of cold water poured down her head, forcing her out of her state of excitement and back into serious mode.

As much as it pained me to calm her down like that, especially when she was so happy and excited…

This wasn't really the time for either of us to indulge.

That, we had an entire two weeks for, starting from when the police sent us back home so that they could investigate the disaster in peace without all sorts of annoying civilians getting in their way, all the way to the assigned date on which Chihiro would be officially welcomed to the spiritual fold, with the two of us serving as both the guests to the spiritual world, his wards, and the witnesses to the ceremony on his end.

"Everything has to be by the book," Claire muttered under her breath as her excitement gave way to somber determination.

By all means, visiting the spiritual world was an honor and luxury only a select few of the modern world could ever afford, regardless of how rich or influential they were.

Chihiro, however, by reaching the peak of mortal cultivation before the set date, managed to grab this opportunity and take it, finally gaining the necessary qualifications to reunite with his wife.

For me, however, a visit to the spiritual world was as much of a tourist event, as much a way to discover new and uncommon truths about cultivation… as much as it was nothing less than a job akin to a monkey in a circus.

'If the marriage standards here already disallow extra-class marriages in every practical way, then the situation in the spiritual world…'

I didn't really want to think about it at all.

In the eyes of the people on the other side of the world's border, I was nothing more than a pariah, a worm that somehow managed to steal a place by Claire's side, a place that I was simply unfit for. And while Chihiro put in great effort to either change or bury whatever history of mine the spiritual world could get…

No matter what he did, some truths were bound to drip between his fingers, reaching the ears of the people we were bound to meet.

That's why everything had to be played perfectly by the book. From my behavior during Chihiro's passage grant ceremony, through my behavior during the trip over the spiritual lands, all the way to his meeting with his wife's family, who had pretty much banished him from their ranks, refusing to let the two be together unless Chihiro somehow gained enough achievements to earn his place by his wife's side… or, at the very least, did so within the perspective of her family.

That was the second reason why everything, absolutely everything, had to be played by the book, why every detail had to perfectly fit the mold, as opposed to sticking out of it.

When it came to the third reason, however, everything else suddenly lost its meaning.

It didn't matter if I acted up or not; it didn't matter if Chihiro would seem unfit to regain his seat by his wife's side.

None of that would matter if we ended up catching the inquisition's eyes… or rather, if we gave them any reason to believe Chihiro's clan was anything more than just another victim of the power outage caused by, as reported by the police, an unidentified terrorist group that failed to make demands and sought nothing other than death and destruction.

"Come on, now," Claire spoke out, pulling me out of the gutter of my thoughts. "Expensive or not, this isn't exactly the kind of clothing that's easy or intuitive to move around in."

As much as I wanted to complain… I lost the right to do so when I decided to be with her despite knowing her family's circumstances, even if only to a degree. I only reaffirmed this decision when I decided to use their help to further my own agenda, effectively taking at least a part of the responsibility for the consequences of my discoveries and inventions making their way out into the world.

And right now, even if the current consequence of all my choices thus far was the drag of trying out clothes…

Then, was I even in place to complain about it?

'Plus, now that I think about it,' I thought as I took off my shirt, only to catch Claire's eyes instantly wander all over the naked skin of my upper body, 'changing clothes with Claire doesn't seem as much of a drag as it was back when I was trying out various jeans at a flea market, with nothing but a piece of cardboard below my feet and a flimsy piece of cloth blocking the entrance to the narrow changing room that stopped my ass from freezing off.'

Soon, my sweatpants and a simple, thin shirt were all gone, leaving me with nothing more than my underwear.

"Now, just stay still," Claire ordered me as the sense of amusement and outright happiness returned to her face when she brought the cloth of my ceremonial robe up before throwing it over my left shoulder. "I don't mean it in a bad way, but not even you can just… figure out how to properly wear this piece," she commented as she quickly started to move various folds, thickets, and openings around, arranging the robe all over my mostly naked body as if I was a mere model for her attempts at engaging with fashion.

Normally, I would find that kind of attention quite annoying. But when it was Claire putting her hands all over me, circling from my front to the back only to then do it again and again, to wrap her hands around my waist as she reached behind me to fix some part of the robe that came loose, only to then drag her hands up as she attempted to fix the way the robe adapted to the contour of my body…

Normally, I would never allow myself to spend so much time getting dressed up.

But right now?

All I needed was to see the happy smile on Claire's face as she joyfully jumped all over, more than just eager to help me get dressed.

This thought alone was enough to put a smile on my own face, rendering me simply unable to feel annoyed at the thought of just standing motionlessly in place while events moved along without any kind of direct involvement from me.

And when she suddenly moved up, pushed her hands underneath my arms only to close them behind my back as she came in for a shallow hug…

"If you stay patient now, I will be as patient as you will want me to tonight…"