Mage? Magic Engineer!

The starship’s interior was trembling violently. Strapped tightly inside the cockpit, the passengers felt their insides churn and quake with the ship’s hull. Their temples began to throb as if all the blood had rushed to their heads, and their vision blurred and darkened.

Back then, Master Kano had acted alone with no preparation. During his ascent, he had used methods like teleportation to temporarily circumvent the problems of acceleration. However, during the subsequent breakthrough of the layer flow and the return journey, he had made every mistake in the book, pushing through on his own power. This time, the squad anticipated and was prepared for these phenomena. The captain cast "Protection from Otherworldly Environments," a spell he had practiced repeatedly on the ground, and instantly the delicate systems of their bodies stabilized.

The captain was responsible for this most complex spell. With his Protection active, the other two team members cast their own magic for calming and healing effects.

The leader of this squad was the newly promoted Mage, Cavendish. He sat upright in the center, flanked by a male and a female Mage. He might have been a bit young for a captain, but his resume was impressive:

He participated in the Black Forest expedition, where he played a key role.

Other Mages knew very little about that mysterious operation. It was only in hindsight that people were shocked to discover the expedition had involved, directly or indirectly, four Great Mages (one of whom had yet to earn the title). And despite all that, Cavendish, who was just an Apprentice at the time, had still managed to "play a key role"!

Furthermore, the guy was an Istani who had studied at the Tower of Stars, perfectly fitting the "political correctness" of the Magic Guild’s current initiative for large-scale, cross-regional cooperation.

’Of course,’ he told himself, ’I absolutely earned this post through pure merit.’

’I have a solid foundation in astronomy, I’ve seen some serious action, and I’ve hobnobbed with the Masters. That Divine Abomination... it was worlds more dangerous than some measly Divine Kingdom Fragment.’

Be that as it may, Cavendish’s palms were slick with sweat. But a captain could never let it show.

He saw the velocity gauge indicate that the starship had reached the "escape velocity" calculated by Sir Isaac and had exited the denser layers of the atmosphere. Cavendish gripped the control terminal before him and infused it with Magic Power. At his command, the hexagonal panels of the cockpit ceiling turned transparent, one after another.

Through the transparent canopy, they confirmed their backs were to the earth. Ahead lay the barrier that had imprisoned all intelligent life for centuries.

The Transformation Dust Layer Flow had formed a terrifying vortex, revealing their one and only window. When observed from the Star Realm, these fragments were nothing more than a colorful filter laid over the constellations. The varied refractions of starlight revealed the extreme unevenness in the density of this "spherical shell."

Cavendish took a deep breath. "We’re beginning our trajectory change, adjusting the starship’s angle of approach to the layer flow until we break through to the upper side. As we get closer to that dangerous, beautiful stardust, our positioning, teleportation, and communication magic will all be disrupted. The entire process will take thirteen minutes."

He looked ahead, affecting a casual air. "Of course, there’s no turning back now. The interference already makes Teleportation Spells unreliable. During this window, we’ll send our final one-way communication to the ground before we cross the layer flow. What we choose to write for the history books is up to us. It could be a last will and testament, an oath of certain victory, whatever you want... Sorry for rambling. We have twelve minutes left."

The Mage beside Cavendish took out paper and a pen from a Storage Bag, but instead of writing, he handed them to the captain first. Before their departure, Kano had repeatedly stressed that the Elder Council would guarantee their safety, but Cavendish and the others couldn’t imagine what method the Elder Council could possibly use to pull someone from the middle of the layer flow. As such, they were all prepared to face the worst.

As he took the paper and pen, Cavendish had a fleeting vision. He saw his past self—the Apprentice who had once wanted to give up—and remembered the countless nights spent diligently charting the stars...

The starry sky changed with painstaking slowness, but the world moved at a breakneck pace. So much had happened since then, both across the continent and in his homeland.

And now, he was about to pass through the veil of stars, to witness the true face of the Star Realm from above the Transformation Dust Layer Flow. The terrified Apprentice shivering in the Black Forest could never have imagined this future for himself.

"6:07 AM, December 13th. Cavendish Squad reporting to ground control for the last time before crossing the layer flow. All ship systems are nominal. Morale is high!"

After writing the sentence with a flourish, he stuffed the scroll into a special protective sphere and inserted it into a copper transmission tube.

"First stage separation! Initiating trajectory change!"

The depleted first-stage propulsion unit separated from the starship’s main body as the second-stage engine, located adjacent to the cockpit, ignited.

The empty shell of the first stage stalled, lost altitude, and plummeted back into the atmosphere, where it began to burn up from the intense friction. The one-way message from the Cavendish Squad was on this jettisoned unit. As its protective sphere melted and disintegrated, it triggered a portable Communication Array preset within its core. By this point, its altitude was clear of the layer flow’s interference, and the message was transmitted precisely back to the ground monitoring station.

To ensure structural integrity, the canopy turned opaque again, and all protective measures were engaged at maximum power. The second-stage engine’s attitude-adjustment thrusters fired, sending the starship into a rapid spin. This spin would not only maintain the ship’s stability as it traversed the astronomical-scale vortex but would also minimize the surface’s contact time with the Transmuting Dust.

The main section of the ship didn’t carry much Dulled Transmuting Dust. It was designed to harvest it from the environment.

The Collector developed by Rorschach was originally a barrel-shaped device with circuits for the Purification and Dulling of Transmuting Dust installed on its inner walls. The starship’s entire outer hull was now an inverted version of this design. The mechanisms for neutralizing the crystalline particles were on the exterior. As the ship pierced through the flow, Transmuting Dust would stream from the tip of the starship backward, and some of it would be dulled in the process. This dulled dust was then siphoned into the second-stage engine for use as fuel.

Of course, a great deal of unprocessed Transmuting Dust would also be ingested. Therefore, unlike the first stage, the tank connected to the second-stage engine now served as a buffer. It featured a similar architecture to the Collector, but this time, the processing circuits were installed on the tank’s inner walls to handle any remaining raw dust.

The shaking grew even more violent. The needles on every gauge danced wildly. Cavendish clenched his fists, unable to do anything else.

He and his teammates could only have faith. Faith that the design and construction were sound. Faith in every single person who had contributed to this project.

The ship’s hull was indeed sound. It was shaking, but there was almost no noise. It was this very silence that amplified their agony.

...

"The starship should break through the Transformation Dust Layer Flow in about seven minutes..." Rorschach mused, finding it incredible. "I really have no idea how Master Kano did this on his own."

He and Caroline’s Spirit Body were in the Boundary Land. The scale of the vortex in the layer flow was unprecedented, and the Boundary Land’s coordinates, relative to the Material Realm, were inevitably drawn toward this thin point in the barrier.

By using the branches of the Golden Tree that reached toward the Supreme Heaven, Rorschach could perceive a rough map of the layer flow’s density. In this perception, the golden sands of the Boundary Land represented the innumerable crystals. He could see one tiny point with a distinctly different density moving rapidly toward the surface of the flow, leaving a faint wake behind it—undoubtedly the starship displacing the Transmuting Dust.

There was another patch of inconsistent density, this one much larger—comparable in size to the eye of the vortex itself. It drifted slowly at the vortex’s edge. This was the projection of the Boundary Land onto the Material Realm.

Caroline was also concerned for the starship. Seeing its signature steadily approach the upper surface of the layer flow, she said, "It looks like you won’t need to intervene."

"Indeed. This is their moment of glory—an achievement for the entire Magic Guild."

The first "cornerstone" of the space exploration program finally broke through the danger zone. It slowed its rotation and smoothly adjusted its attitude, settling into its predetermined orbit.