Mage? Magic Engineer!

The battle between the two armies had started a few days earlier than the Elder Council anticipated, causing it to overlap with the launch date. The Mage consulting Kano didn’t expect the chief to be so eager. "The airspace hasn’t been cleared of ’debris’ yet."

"It doesn’t matter. If anything unexpected happens, I’ll personally intervene." Kano stood up and stretched. It was already dawn. He stepped into an elevator in the Starlight Torch Tower and ascended to the top.

The original observatory had been converted into a command center and the main ground monitoring station.

On the battlefield in the outskirts of Valuva City, sporadic fighting continued. Most of the Airships had been damaged and had withdrawn from the battle, but the airspace was still not calm.

The Empire’s Airships weren’t just bombing the National Guard’s rear; they also posed a potential threat to the Republic’s capital city.

Therefore, the Airships temporarily requisitioned from the Central Port District had one very clear objective: to stop the Empire’s Airships from crossing the Laine River defensive line and prevent their shadows from falling over the people of Valuva.

Although the Imperial commander had already decided to withdraw from the battle, the Airships were slow to receive the retreat order. All the flight crews were anxiously awaiting new commands, but the reply was always that they must cover the assembly and retreat of the Imperial troops.

After all, this was a battle for air superiority. Once they ceded the airspace to the enemy, the National Guard’s air power could, in turn, drop deadly bombs on the Empire Army.

"Damn it, they’re not even treating us like human beings." The Airship pilots had always cruised at high altitudes, looking down on everyone. This gave them the false impression that the allies and enemies fighting to the death on the ground were nothing but ants, incapable of posing any threat to them.

But today, they were facing a group of daredevils willing to risk their entire Airships just to deliver a massive bomb, which struck a special terror into the hearts of the Imperial Airship pilots.

The Imperials were terrified, but the Valois people in the sky were also on edge. Among them were many Dwarfs who had been requisitioned along with their civilian Airships. For these older models, the most effective attack was a close-range, self-destructing explosion.

Just as both sides desperately wanted to retreat but were forced into a stalemate for various reasons, a strange disturbance west of Valuva City, on the far side of the battlefield, broke the deadlock.

"Hey, what’s that?"

"New development! Stay alert!"

The sudden phenomenon caused everyone to halt their attacks. They began to cautiously distance themselves from the unknown event, giving both sides an opportunity to cease fire simultaneously.

What people on the battlefield saw was a brilliant streak of light shooting upward, piercing the heavens. It was exceptionally dazzling in the gloomy, late-autumn morning.

Ascending into the sky was, of course, the Starship.

On the Starship’s hull, the Magic Circuits of the Protective Array were at work. But the main light seen by those on the battlefield and in Valuva City was the pale blue exhaust flame from the engine at the Starship’s base.

As per Rorschach’s recommendation, the vessel was designed to be as axially symmetrical as possible, resembling an over-trimmed cigar standing on its end. The crucial propulsion system was designed and completed by the Tower of Thunderstorm.

The fuel bay was loaded with processed Dulled Transmuting Dust. The primary problem the Mages faced was how to convert the energy contained within this substance into sufficient thrust.

At first, they considered the Blast Fireball Technique. While continuously detonating Fireballs could provide pulsed reaction thrust, the researchers soon discovered that the Fireball’s combustion process was relatively uncontrollable and had a low performance ceiling.

A Caster skilled in alchemy proposed an idea: the Lightweight Flammable Element produced by the Dwarfs was an excellent combustible gas before it was separated. They would need to pressurize this gas to increase thrust.

Of course, the Starship’s fuel wasn’t a heavy tank of water but was instead packed full of Dulled Transmutation Dust Crystals. These would be divided into two portions: one part would be converted into water, and the other would provide the driving force for other spells solidified into Magic Arrays.

By now, people were certain that the simplest [Water Creation Skill] was, in essence, a summoning from the Water Elemental Position. However, the Starship’s high-speed movement, or its entry into the Transformation Dust Layer Flow, would severely interfere with any spells involving teleportation.

The special water-creation method that Rorschach had once shared with the Mages of the Tower of Stars in the Sub-plane now proved useful.

Inside the Starship’s engine, approximately one-third of the Transmuting Dust fuel was converted into water. This water was first injected into an electrolysis chamber to undergo the baptism of the Six Ring Spell [Chain Lightning]. These high-voltage electric arcs efficiently and rapidly converted the water into hydrogen and oxygen. As the gases expanded within a restricted volume, they had already undergone an initial stage of pressurization.

However, this was not enough. Before entering the combustion chamber, the mixed hydrogen-oxygen gas was funneled into a pressurization chamber forged from Fine Steel. A second Six Ring Spell, [Compression Magic Ball], would then take effect, raising the combustible gas to an extremely high pressure before ignition.

Then, they would surge forth, rushing into the combustion chamber to finally unleash their full thermal and kinetic energy.

Originally, [Compression Magic Ball] was a lethal spell used to create a pocket of compressed space to crush a target or suffocate a living creature. Here, however, it had become the core Magic Array of the engine, taking the place of the turbines found in the rocket engines of Rorschach’s past life.

After this series of conversions, the perfectly-proportioned hydrogen-oxygen combustible gas finally reverted to its water form within the combustion chamber.

The resulting water acted more like an intermediary. The process of its electrolysis, pressurization, and ignition served to convert the energy released from the rest of the Transmuting Dust into thrust. Both its energy density and propulsive effect far surpassed those of a rocket fueled by liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

Of the remaining two-thirds of the Transmuting Dust, seventy percent was successfully converted. The other thirty percent was needed to maintain Protective Spells on all the engine’s chambers and to cast high-frequency [Repair Skill].

Of course, the Mages had not yet developed complex and systematic aerospace technology. The prototype Starship’s design philosophy was essentially "brute force makes a brick fly." This engine, composed of the three major components—the conversion-electrolysis chamber, the pressurization chamber, and the combustion nozzle—was built with the sole aim of producing maximum possible power.

At the same time, the array of Transmutation Dust Collectors was coordinating with the Starship, opening an "eye of the storm" for it. The Starship was hundreds of times larger than the flight cabin Kano had used when he ascended alone, and the array at this moment was, in turn, over a hundred times larger than before.

The refineries behind the Empire’s "Wall of Sighs," the Collector clusters in Bayern, and every Collector within the Valois territory all received a notice to adjust the targets of their Magic Arrays. Some engineers were unaware of the true purpose, but others had an inkling and looked up at the sky after finishing their adjustments.

Unfortunately, it was no longer night, so they couldn’t see the twinkling stars. Nevertheless, the sky was still changing. It seemed the violent shift in the Transformation Dust Layer Flow was distorting the refraction of the sunlight, causing a startlingly bright patch of light to appear.

Bathed in this light, the Starship continued to ascend until its pale blue exhaust flame merged with the sky and the patch of light. It, along with its passengers—the dauntless pioneers among the Mages—passed beyond the atmosphere of the Prime Material Plane and arrived above the firmament.

And below the firmament, there were soldiers engaged in a life-or-death struggle for their respective nations, as well as Ground Station personnel from all corners of the land.

This project involved the entire Magic Guild. Besides the Mages from Valuva, there were naturally Casters from other Magic Towers collaborating. In fact, since most of the personnel from the Tower of Stars had been committed to the battlefield, there were many faces in the Ground Station that were new to Kano.

In addition to the Mages, there were young people from Bayern who had been seconded from various universities and the Engineering College. They were an important part of the project that Rorschach supported. Even without any Casting Ability, they possessed basic literacy, numeracy, and engineering skills, allowing them to handle many of the minor, detailed tasks.

For these students, this was also an unforgettable "internship experience."

Of course, launching into the sky was only the first step. The next and most dangerous test was passing through the Transformation Dust Layer Flow. Both the passengers inside the Starship and the participants on the ground monitoring them in real time could only hold on to their utmost confidence and patience, and wait in silence.