God Of Crafting

Chapter 20: Ways to distract myself from the vivid memories

"What the hell was that?!"

I screamed out right into the soft cushion of my pillow in hopes of muffling what would be otherwise a desperate scream.

That's right.

What the hell was that?

A question that many philosophers pondered over the ages, a question that many young men would often find themselves asking after stumbling on their chance with whatever girl they had a crush on.

In this particular case, however, I genuinely had no idea what the actual fuck was that!

'Was she coming onto me? Or am I just projecting my instinctive wishes over something that was mere coincidence, a side-effect of her actually trying to help me out?'

I gritted my teeth before pushing my face even deeper into the pillow... Only to sense the faint, distant aroma of the same scent I could feel around the girl, likely, of her perfume or shampoo or something.

'Oh right, she was on this bed just until recently...' I thought, throwing my mind for a loop once again as I started to recall the details concerning the fairy-like girl who just so happened to be straddling my lap while hugging me tightly and sucking on my...

"Shit, this isn't helping at all," I muttered to myself as I rose up from the bed, too scared of the possibility that if I allowed my thoughts to wander for any longer, I would end up sniffing my sheets with passion in hopes of catching just one more whiff of Claire's scent.

'Keep it together, man! Aren't you a grown-ass adult?' I thought, trying every avenue, every angle, every possible approach to get myself to calm down.

I even went as far as to consider going to the bathroom for a moment to clear my body and thus mind... Only to end up gritting my teeth and abandoning the idea.

There were only a few things that I've learned during my five years at the institution... But the consequences of giving to one's desires, self-satisfying them, and then falling into a state of lethargy afterward...

'Eh, I never thought things would end up this way just because I tried to seek some damned help...' I thought, sitting down on the edge of my bed, only to then slide down to the floor and stare ahead at quite the mess left after my crafting process.

By now, most of the beginner sets were either fully exhausted of their resources or left with just a tiny bit of scraps. The only exception to that rule was the runesmithing and formation-making sets, each consisting of a bunch of tools and, in the case of the formations, a pretty much untouched vial of thick, dark ink.

"There isn't much left of anything, huh?" I summed my findings out... Before patting my hands down against my knees and getting to work.

But...

I couldn't go to sleep when all my thoughts only served to make my junior stand at attention, right? The risk of me turning over to my stomach and ending up with the sort of injury that just the thought of was enough to make even the toughest man shiver in terror...

"Normally, this would be an excuse to laze around, but..." I gulped my saliva down before taking a deep breath and picking up my phone again. "But I guess I can do something unhealthy every once in a while, can't I?"

This time, rather than just allowing the feed of the app to dictate what I would be watching, I've actually searched for the general term "simple crafting recipes" before scrolling for as long as it took for me to find something I could create with whatever materials and tools I had left.

Rather than rushing into action, though, I rested my back against the bed's edge and watched the video manual of the process again and again, all the way to the point when I memorized every single detail included in it.

"Now, just in case I start to meditate again," I muttered to myself as I switched the mode of the app from a consumer of the content to a producer before setting my phone down and hitting the record.

'Now then,' I thought, glancing over to where I've left the half-opened pamphlet about formation marking, open on the page with the dictionary of runes - not all that different from the runes used in rune-smithing - to confirm whether or not my memory served me right.

'Okay then.'

I started by picking up a formerly scrapped piece of cardboard, one of the few leftovers from when I turned the emptied pizza boxes into an actual material, before grabbing the painting brush and dipping its hair into the thick ink of the formation-drawing set.

Before long, I could sense my consciousness fading away as I started to cover the piece of cardboard with intricate markings, all the while arranging them in a mathematical-formula-like arrangement. A moment later, I whipped out my scissors and separated the painted part of the cardboard from the rest, before repeating the process. And then again. And again.

This idea came from what little I learned about programming back in school. An idea to turn simple runes into actual expressions... functions of sorts. With those at hand...

As I concentrated more and more, falling into the rabbit hole of creativity and active creation, my body started to give out signs of exhaustion.

Yet, at the same time my forehead covered in sweat, sweat that soon started to fall all over the place, on the floor, on the phone, and, if not for my quick save, even on the function plates I'd already prepared, my consciousness started to fade away, pushing the task of creativity onto the unconscious part of my brain.

More and more half-products came out, only for me to pile them up to the side. My phone flashed, likely my sweat messing up with its touch-screen. My consciousness reached the point where I was pretty much about to fall asleep...

Only for this last step never to happen.

Just like when Claire sat down on my lap and sucked on my neck, I failed to fully lose my consciousness, ending up in a half-awake state of meditation, with my hands doing whatever they wanted all the while my mind was reduced to just a passive observer of the events.

'At least I'm recording everything,' I thought, perfectly aware of just how little I could grasp of what my meditating brain was actually conjuring up only to then push my body to turn its ideas into a reality. 'This way, I will be able to go back and try to learn more of what I did than just grasping at the straws in the state I'm in right now!'