God Of Crafting

"I couldn't be more proud of you."

This wasn't just lip service on my end, not by a long shot.

I myself knew how hard it was to overcome the feelings of jealousy directed towards others, a task that grew all the harder the closer one was to the people they were feeling jealous towards.

On my end, I felt jealous over my uncle's wealth and status, I felt jealous over my father's strict moral standards and discipline when it came to applying them… But also towards the favored coworkers back at the grocery I used to work, all the more when comparing our paychecks and giving in to the imagination and thinking just how much easier my life could be if I could work as many hours as they did…

With all that in mind, seeing how Claire managed to correctly identify the problem of her jealousy over my seemingly random enlightenment and then quickly strike it off her thoughts, to say that I was proud of her was less of a lip-service than it was an actual understatement!

"Thanks…" Burying her head into my chest, Claire muttered… Only to then suddenly collapse, as if the exhaustion from all of her mental strain finally caught up to her, dragging us both down to the floor up until the moment when I finally managed to catch some fleeting stability and pull us both to the back, softening my landing with my ass and then making sure Claire would fall down on me rather than the questionably hard floor below.

"All better?" Lying down on the floor, I moved my hand down to Claire's face, shooing away the hair that shielded her cheek so that I could find and then gently get a hold of her chin and pull her face up a bit.

Looking up, Claire snorted a bit only to then raise her own hand and wipe the tears out of her wet eyes. For a moment, she just stared me up like some sort of a fearful animal, only to then bat her eyelids a few times as she attempted to remove any excessive moisture her hand failed to catch off her eyes.

Still, rather than replying, she lightly nodded her head only to then bury it right back into my chest, seeking the warmth of my flesh as a form of physical reassurance to counteract her emotional instability.

"There, there…" I patted the girl's back while closing my eyes down and stealthily holding my breath down a bit, doing my absolute best to hold back the extremely satisfying sensation.

As much as I hated seeing Claire cry…

I couldn't think of a better feeling than just holding her close up, trying to cheer her up while she sought me out for support.

"You really know how to tickle a man's soft spots…" I muttered as the feeling continued to uncontrollably grow, filling my entire soul with a sense of satisfaction so intense, just its degree alone was enough to make it feel perverse.

"Hmm?" Moving her face up just enough to peek her eyes out from my chest, Claire gave me a slightly confused look, indicating that while she tried, she couldn't really see through the meaning of what I'd said.

"This is stupid, don't worry about it," I shook my head and patted Claire's back again, trying to ignore just how small it felt underneath my hand.

As a cultivator, those small muscles of hers were capable of exerting way more strength than a non-cultivator body-builder could ever dream to achieve. Yet, in this precise moment, she just felt… frail.

"Why wouldn't I worry about it?" With her face still all teary, Claire looked up again. She also moved her hands up, once again pressing them down on my chest just below the point where she previously pressed her forehead against. Then, before I could even attempt to answer, she managed to put on a small smirk. "Isn't it all about how it makes you feel when you are there for me?" she asked, only to then lean her head over to the side with her smirk evolving into a small, cheeky smile. "Why wouldn't you want me to know about it?" she then asked, only to use her hands to climb up my chest, all the way to the point where her mouth reached half an inch away from my ear, "and what if it makes me happy to help you out too?" she whispered straight into my ear canal, making me not only hear her words, but also feel the touch of the air that carried her voice with it.

Feeling the chill moving up my spine, I could feel my eyes moving to the back of my head for a bit. And in this distracting moment of visceral pleasure, I failed to notice one of Claire's hands vanish from the upper part of my chest only to reappear…

"Claire!" I cried out a little, more surprised than I was dissatisfied or shocked when I felt her hand sneak down towards the belt holding up my robe again… Only to then completely ignore it as she opted to sneak her hand through my clothes instead.

"Hmm?" With her smile growing so bright it appeared to evaporate all the leftover tears from her face, Claire continued her efforts to somehow sneak her hand past all the different layers of my complex robe. As she did so, she also started to shift her position on me around, soon mounting me in the one position that she has long since registered into my brain to interpret in just the one and only way.

"Dear, seriously…" I gritted my teeth when I felt her hand reach its destination, only for her fingers to grasp at my junior and start gently massaging it pretty much in the same way that countless farmers would massage the teats of their cows to get the bucket worth of milk out of them.

"Don't you like it?" Claire stopped her hand for the short moment as a sense of doubt flashed in her eyes, soon to mix with panic as she realized the potential consequences of her action when seen from the different angle…

"It's not like I dislike it…" I failed to tell her off, unable to lie right to her face. "But I really don't want you to think of intimacy as something you can use to…"

"I'm not trying to compensate for what I thought," she stated right in my face, her doubt replaced by seriousness in her eyes. "If I got it right… You enjoyed cheering me up quite a lot, didn't you?" she pointed out the very thing I ended up failing to admit. "Why is it suddenly wrong for me to be the same? It's okay for you to make me feel safe, appreciated, welcomed, and worthy, but it's wrong for me to make you feel good?"

For a moment, I could do nothing but just stare at Claire's serious face… Yet, as soon as I raised my hand with the intention of caressing her cheek as I replied, my thoughts all froze.

"Tim…?"

Before Claire could say anything else, I tensed up only to then push myself off the hard floor of the training room, sliding from underneath her and then jumping to the back, only stopping when my back struck the training room's wall.

"What's wrong?" Baffled and with first hints of fear flashing up in her eyes, Claire just… stared in my direction, completely clueless as to where my excessive reaction came from.

"Claire… Before you came here, I did figure out a tiny bit of how my cultivation works after my breakthrough," I stated, knowing full well that bringing this topic up right as Claire barely managed to recover from her fragile emotional state wasn't the best of ideas.

But there was something much more important right now, something that she couldn't know as she has yet to advance herself, and something that I'd realized right as my hand came into my sight.

"What is it?" Torn between anger, frustration, disappointment, and grief, Claire cried out.

"Right now, my cultivation…" I took a moment to think, searching for the right words to use. "No, right now, my emotions… They do affect my cultivation. And before you came in, I'd only managed to figure out what anger does!"

Claire squinted her eyes.

At first, her face relaxed a little when she realized I was just concerned about her…

Only to then twist in confusion again as she looked down on herself before raising her eyes back to my face.

"But I didn't feel a thing?" she pointed out in a confused protest, spreading her arms out as if to showcase the perfectly well condition of her entire body, still clad in the armor of her soft, cute pajamas.

"That's the thing…" I groaned through my clenched teeth. "I think right now, my lust…" I averted my eyes to the side. "Well, I'm not really sure what it does, but for just a moment, I could clearly feel my spirituality interacting with yours. And on a level much deeper than when we united through dual cultivation…"

Claire squinted her eyes again, only to then open them wide as she finally understood the source of my sudden panic and the reason behind my rapid retreat.

"Just to make it clear," she raised her hand up as if to gesture at me to stop and not say anything, lowering her head down as she took a moment to think. By the time she raised her head again, however, there was only a big, fat smile plastered on her lips while sparks of amusement danced in her eyes. "You were worried you were accidentally seducing me? Or rather… doing so forcefully?"

Faced with the truth of what I was worried about, I could only avert my eyes.

Only to then quickly look back when I heard Claire giggle, only to then see her turn her back before dropping on all fours and looking back over her shoulder with a lecherous smile as she reached out to the edge of her pajama pants, only to pull them up as much as she could, stretching the material to the point it pressed tightly against her ass, revealing pretty much every last detail of her rear to my eyes.

With a solid amount of my blood already following the earlier guidance of her hand, I simply couldn't tear my eyes away from her ass, now turning into a mix of the sexiness of her curves and the adorableness of the fluffy, pink material pressing tightly against her skin.

Seeing my reaction, Claire's smile only grew.

"Tell me, dear," she asked while still peeking over her shoulder, only to then reverse her action and, rather than pulling her pants up, pull them down instead, just low enough to reveal absolutely everything there was to reveal. "Do I really look like I still need to be seduced?"