God Of Crafting

When it came to crafting my simplified, ring-shaped wand, I couldn't really use the techniques for crafting rings or wands.

Those were designed to make the most out of the material while putting it into a specific shape, while my design strayed way too far from either of the options to mimic them.

That, however, didn't mean I couldn't take any inspiration!

'First, let's start with the base.'

Rather than rushing to the hardest part straight away, I simply grabbed the box with the prepared materials before fishing out the Ruband oil.

It was a thick, extremely viscous liquid of great magic conductivity that, when heat-treated, would solidify. And those qualities made it just the perfect fit for the base of my ring.

The next bit I pulled out from the box I'd prepared in advance couldn't be more ordinary. It was pretty much the standard casting clay, just moldable enough for me to squeeze it into precisely the shape I wanted and extremely brittle once heat-treated, making it rather easy to crush away once the casting process would be completed.

And so, for what felt like but the next few minutes, I just squeezed down at the piece of casting clay, at first with my entire hands and by adding in the strength of my shoulders, only to then move to using just my wrist and finally just the thumbs as I had to move to making the finer details.

In the end, however, rather than a ring, the cast for the Ruband oil ended up the size of a solid, clunky bracelet with the opening just a tiny bit too small for a human hand to fit through.

Yet, as soon as I placed it down on the table, covered it with a simple wooden plank, and then pressed down on it for a bit with my bare hands, the whole thing flattened, turning the empty inside to be just the right size and thickness to fit my purposes.

'Now, to shave away the unused parts…'

Even if casting clay was cheap, there was no need for me to just waste a huge chunk of it away, especially when we couldn't really resupply ourselves while in this workshop.

'Heck, even if we tried to do so in between the cycles, I dare to doubt there would be even a single package of it anywhere in the clan's estate,' I thought as I used a simple carving knife to shave away the majority of the mold before throwing it right back into the plastic box I pulled it out from.

The next step was even simpler, for it required nothing more than patience from me.

I grabbed the bottle with the Ruband oil before slowly, carefully dripping it down into the mold, or rather, the special indentation on its inside I made by simply pressing the tip of my thumb into it before filling it with the viscous liquid.

Obviously, this kind of makeshift, hasty, and imprecise molding would lead to an uneven outer shape of the final product… But rather than a detriment, it was something I was actually looking forward to.

After all, what I was crafting right now wasn't the ring itself, but merely the inner part of it.

Bit by bit, I dripped drop after drop of the thick oil into the indentation of the mold, gently rubbing it with my fingers to keep it from spilling out.

This seemingly endless process came to a surprisingly quick end, however, thanks to just how sensitive this oil was to heat, even if as little of it as the skin of my fingers could provide.

"Now, off to the oven you go," I muttered, gently grabbing the full mold before leaving my workspace and then going on a trip around the workshop in search of the proper furnace.

When I finally found the cabinet-sized device, I couldn't help but laugh a little.

'She's really desperate to prove how helpful she can be, isn't she?' I thought, melting down on the inside when I saw that the oven was already turned on and preheated just to the right temperature necessary to cure the Ruband oil and brittle the clay cast it sat in.

Still, as much as I wanted to just go find the girl and give her a long, tight hug, I carefully placed the mold on a special tray before inserting it into the oven's mouth and then setting the program in accordance with the manual attached to the box full of Ruband bottles.

'That leaves me with about an hour to get the next part done,' I thought, making a mental note of the timing as I returned to my workstation and sat right back down… Only to lean back and close my eyes, gathering my mental strength for the next part of the process.

So far, I'd dealt with two out of the three easy parts of the crafting process, leaving the two hard parts for later. Now that the time came for me to face the first of the tough parts of the job, however…

"No one ever said crafting was going to be easy," I spoke to myself, eager to discard my feelings of bother and annoyance.

No one said crafting would be easy. And so, rather than focusing on the difficulty of what lay ahead, I opted to put all of my attention on keeping my hands moving.

And so, I pulled out the cheapest out of all the materials necessary for the wand-ring, one that was treated as little more than a weed growing in the areas that the clan's gardeners opted to slack off.
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Still, for what it was supposed to do, it had all the qualities I looked out for.

Out of the entire plant, however, I quickly cut out its roots.

As if by a touch of a magic wand (a/n hehehe), the perfectly still root base of the plant suddenly all slacked, as if whatever held their shape suddenly ceased to exist, turning them into extremely rubbery, thin noodles that just… hung down from my hand.

It was precisely this quality of those roots, besides their ability to easily conduct small amounts of mana, that made me pick them out. After all, when it came to putting a number of arm-long mana routes and then cramming them all into a small ring, they were just the perfect fit.

But while getting my hands on those was easy…

"Now, for the hard part," I muttered to myself, glancing over at the blueprint before sighing and starting the weaving process.

For my idea to work, I had no other choice but to tangle a total of twenty of those roots, each around thirty centimeters long and quickly withering to a thickness just slightly greater than that of a hair. And tangle them in a way that would prevent any and all knots, all the while ensuring each of the strands would come into contact with all the others at least once!

Yet, for all the power and spiritual energy that I'd obtained up to this point, all I could do was just sit down, lean over the table, and start to carefully weave the threads together, doing nothing but moving my fingers, cursing just how thick they were for such a delicate process…

And then cursing myself whenever I would momentarily lose the grip and helplessly watch as the entire weave would just come apart, forcing me to start all over again.

'No one said crafting is going to be easy,' I thought again, gritting my teeth in silent frustration as I picked up the strands for the twentieth time, hoping that maybe, just maybe… the next try would work out better than the last.

Only for the entire thing to come apart in my fingers yet again, forcing me to resist the desire to just throw those accursed strands across the workshop, scrap this damned project, and just move on to the part that both Claire and I were excited about.

To move on to crafting the twin swords of last chance.