God Of Crafting

Chapter 170: Countdown

"There are a total of ten power switches and four separate circuit breakers. Not those cheap ones you used before, but proper, industrial-level breakers this time," Chihiro explained as he gave us a brief tour of all the small changes he implemented while I was convinced he would abandon the project.

"It's the kind you see in power plants, physically separating two conductors through a fully autonomous system. As for those knobs, the aim was to give the operator much finer control over the flow of energy, going from having the full might of the factory's power output on a single knob to having each of those knobs control merely a tenth of its full power. And as for the biggest change of all..."

Chihiro moved over to the window before pointing his hand toward the place where we all saw the disaster start.

The innermost chamber of the factory.

"We capitalized on there being a maintenance shaft running across the entire hall, allowing us to replace the floors at the funnel into..."

Chihiro hesitated for a moment.

"Dad?" Claire asked, slightly leaning her head to the side as she glanced at her father with slight confusion and curiosity.

'So it's not one of the faces she would regularly see him make, huh?'

"Tim, I hope this won't weird you out, but I kind of went ahead and reverse-engineered those Qi transformers of yours before having a bunch of my trusted friends engineer the reverse of it," he revealed, shaking his head, which was still pointed at the innermost room of the factory.

"In other words, we took devices capable of turning electricity into spiritual energy and made them into tools to turn spiritual energy back into electricity. After building enough of them, we pretty much filled the entire floor of the factory's core with them."

I squinted my eyes for a second, struggling to find the angle from which this whole situation led Chihiro to openly give out an apology like that.

"Ah, you mean it as in... the infringement of a patent or something?" I asked as soon as I managed to roughly figure out just what Chihiro was all about. "Because if yes, then..." I hesitated for a second.

And judging by the lack of protests and further explanation from Chihiro, I was right on the money.

"Then, while I do not endorse something like this, I'm not going to waste everyone's time with a small issue like this," I stated with a shrug of my shoulders. "I mean," I turned my eyes to the walls of the factory core, "if you didn't do so, we would have to spend time and effort doing something similar right now, so it's all good."

In theory, it was a very bad idea not to chastise my patron over this issue.

The intellectual rights to my devices were the greatest source of my value. And if they could be ripped off so easily... then what use would I be for, except for coming up with new designs and having others implement them?

In practice, however, things were actually a lot simpler.

It didn't matter if my role would be limited to just designing the prototype. It would actually be a good thing if we had enough trusted and skilled artisans to take the burden of repetitive creation off my shoulders. Most of all, we were too deep in this whole thing for Chihiro to suddenly decide I was of no more use to him anymore.

That was the harsh truth. My inventions... or rather, the potential behind them was the reason why Chihiro first got interested in me. It was what allowed Clarie to even bring my name up to him in the first place. Deprived of this quality, however, the situation could easily change.

'I know this might be naive or outright arrogant... but I don't think Claire would ever allow him to do something like this, though' I thought, stealing a quick glance at the girl before sighing and shaking my head.

"I take it everything should be ready by now?" I asked suddenly, eager to change the topic from one that was slightly uncomfortable to talk about.

"Don't ask me," Chihiro shrugged his shoulders before waving his hand at the control panel of the entire factory sitting mere two steps behind us. "Just check the diodes, confirm vocally, and you're free to get everything started."

For all the remorse and sense of guilt that Chihiro displayed while apologizing, by the time he hurried me to get things moving, all of those parts of his expression were gone, replaced with his usual stoic look.

"Beyond that, we might as well be shooting fireworks, because everyone even remotely interested in what's happening will know."

I looked down, marking the knobs Chihiro pointed out in my memory.

"Let's hope we don't go above the seventh knob, then," I added, leaning down over the console and closing my eyes, waiting for the countdown to reach its end.

As the count neared its end, a new announcement blared out every second, in between the count itself, warning everyone to get away from the active operation zones of the factory.

...

...

...

As soon as the count neared its end, the warnings stopped.

After all, if someone was dumb or unlucky enough to still be near the danger zone, there would be no point in them running anymore.

A big diode lit up right in the middle of the control panel, indicating the factory... No, all of its inner components were now live. And all that was left...

I raised my hand to the first knob, taking a single breath and gulping down my saliva.

"Here goes nothing," I muttered... before twisting the first of the knobs all the way up to... the very lowest out of its ten possible settings.