God Of Crafting

"Document inspection?" the guard asked after scanning the papers for a moment, raising his eyebrows high over his forehead as he spoke. "Did something happen for you guys to come again so soon?"

Dickins twitched a tiny bit.

"It's a new procedure," he claimed before heaving a deep, long sigh. "Trust me, man, we hate it as much as you do, but that's what happens when the new boss is desperate to provide results to secure his cozy seat…"

In all honesty, I could feel the drag in Dickins' voice, making the excuse of some internal politics being at play all the more believable.

"Ugh, I know that kind of pain…" The guard's face darkened, making it quite clear that the circumstance Dickins brought up wasn't all that out of the norm. "Either way, the top brass is out, so the archives are closed, but feel free to inspect everything else to your heart's desire," he then proclaimed, only to pass the papers back and click one of the buttons inside his kiosk, signaling with a loud beep that the small, personal gate could now be opened.

The policemen didn't even look at each other, opting to just follow their leader in silence, with grave looks on their faces, befitting government officials who had to bear the brunt of their new boss's ambitions.

Thankfully, from there on, most likely due to the lanyards the guard gave us as we passed the gate, we continued into the power plant unobstructed, with no further encounters or troubles slowing us down. Just to be sure, we even made a small detour through the plant's cafeteria, where one of the anti-terror officers and the driver split up from the group, while the remaining three of us grabbed some empty cups before following the original route designed by someone from the main battle group and then wirelessly transferred while we were still back on the ringway.

"That's the control room." A moment later, Dickins half-spoke, while still pretending to only care about the papers he held in his hand, taking sips from his empty cup to match the whole ruse.

A single knowing look later, the two of them discarded their outerwear, revealing all the gear they came with, while grabbing their weapons.

Seeing this, I took a deep breath before driving the spiritual energy within my core, readying myself for whatever could happen next.

Ready for battle, we moved forward.

On the other side of the main hall, I could see the other group appear and prepare just like we did, only to then wait a few seconds while watching us before moving on ahead, timing their approach to stagger our arrival times a bit.

As we arrived by the control room doors, not a single word was said.

What would be the point of talking now? We all knew what the job was.

If everything was perfectly normal, we simply had to ensure there was no act of sabotage going on. And if there was an enemy… well, then the ten of us would have to keep him occupied until the cavalry would arrive.

'I really wish Chihiro was here with us,' I thought, perfectly aware just how futile and impossible that wish was.

Then, with Dickins turning the handle and opening the doors, there was no more time for me to ponder just what else I would ideally want.

The doors swung open.

Wasting no time, we rushed inside, ready to blast whoever would dare to stand in our path… only to then slow down as the momentum of our charge carried us forward, allowing us to stop several feet deep into the room.

Both Dickins and the other officer quickly looked around, ready to raise their rifles at a moment's notice.

On the other end of the room, the second set of doors opened up, allowing the other seven to enter as well.

Throughout this process… I merely stood frozen in place, sensing some sort of extremely upsetting dissonance in the air.

"What the hell?" Dickins cursed out loud, looking across the power plant's control room, currently free of any human presence.

Most likely sensing that something was wrong, he continued deeper, soon followed by all the other policemen, as they searched for any signs of forced entry or battle that would indicate just what happened for all of the engineers expected to be working here to be missing.

As they walked in, however, I didn't take a step.

The sense that something was wrong… was simply too much. And so, to ward it off, I instinctively pushed my Qi into my eyes, ears, and brain, habitually seeking help and refuge from the one thing that made me special, my constitution, momentarily forgetting that I could no longer wield its might.

Pumping my head full of spiritual energy, however, did achieve the purpose. Whatever it was, now that I looked at the control room through my Qi-infused eyes, the veil of illusion shattered, revealing the true horror of this place.

"Oh my fucking…"

I couldn't even finish my curse before my upper body convulsed, with a powerful torsion sending me down on all fours, making me contaminate the hidden, bloody scene with the contents of my stomach.

"WHAT THE…" To my side, Dickins and the other officer jumped back, escaping from the splashing of my vomit.

On the other side of the room, people just… stared at me with disbelief and simple surprise.

"Wait, is that…"

Rather than finishing her words, Cassandra simply took a breath before rapidly cutting the air with her hand, as if she wanted to karate-chop the neck of an invisible dummy sitting down on its knees right in front of her. Then, her eyes widened, and she followed my example, falling to all fours and vigorously emptying her stomach at the sight of the control room turning into a slaughterhouse with bits and pieces of what used to be humans scattered all over the place.

It was as if someone took their sweet time to split all the engineers in the room into ten pieces or more each, before creating a tornado inside of the very same room to scatter the results of their macabre work all over the place.

"It seems," Dickins gulped down his saliva, only to lower his gun as he looked over to the side, at a row of flashing red lights, then at a huge display, split into several dozen camera feeds, revealing the true state of the power plant, as opposed to the illusion we all fell prey to.

The cable park of the power plant was now a scorched mess of sparks and burning power poles. One of the plant's blocks simply… evaporated, leaving behind nothing but empty, naked ground with only a hint of foundation concrete left. The cafeteria where we split up was just as bloody as the control room, while the gate… just like the southern block of the plant, simply wasn't there.

The scale of destruction was so great, it was only by some miracle that we've managed to actually get to the control room without falling into some random, several story deep hole!

"It seems we were too late."