A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 439 Heading Towards the Stars

"What if something happens to the Archmage?"

"You can replace me," Cano said indifferently.

"Don't make it sound so easy! Okay, take a step back. If something goes wrong, who can save you? You're the most skilled in spatial magic in the entire tower. If something happens, someone needs to come to your aid, right?"

Poincaré is right. Besides Cano, Paulina is the next best option, but this student doesn't possess superhuman talent and isn't capable of handling ground-based tasks while Cano personally takes on the adventures. It's better to force Poincaré to take the lead than to have her do it.

Jules Poincaré suddenly remarked, "I think you're just trying to escape, to escape the mess."

"Jules! I've poured so many years and so much effort into this project! Success is within reach, why won't you let me take that final step? Why?" Cano raised the telegram from Rorschach: "Let me tell you, I didn't make this decision on a whim."

A genuine smile spread across his face: "Now I have a prized student coming soon, who will be there to support me on the ground when the project is underway."

"Rorschach? I think he's a complete idiot in many areas."

"You're half right. He's a dunce when it comes to spatial magic, but it's not him who came." The student Cano had truly missed for so long, whose talent rivaled his teacher's, was definitely not that brat: "It's Caroline."

Poincaré was taken aback, then surprisingly nodded: "If it's her, then that's fine."

"What? You're not coming with me?" Caroline looked bewildered as Rorschach, who had suggested going back to Valuvana, suddenly changed his mind.

It's better not to tell you that you'll be forced to work by your former master as soon as you go there. Rorschach crumpled the newly received telegram into a ball: "I suddenly have something very urgent to deal with. Andrei has already gone to find Hannah and the others."

"How about postponing it for a few days? Things have been quite peaceful between Valois and the Empire lately."

That was a strategic stalemate. Rorschach shook his head: "Master Cano has already prepared the other end of the portal. Let's not break our promise. If I can handle my affairs here quickly, I can come and find you later."

"Alright, thank you for your hard work." Caroline, unsuspecting, prepared for the teleportation ceremony according to the coordinates sent by the telegram, with both locations simultaneously preparing to open a temporary teleportation portal.

After watching Caroline disappear into the light of the portal, Rorschach turned and left the studio. He instructed Andrei, who was waiting, to make sure to preserve the studio's equipment, otherwise Caroline would not be able to return.

How many of our transmutation dust extractors can be deployed?

"Two units are under maintenance, and the remaining twenty-five can be used," Andrei said, listing them off as if they were his own treasures.

Rorschach unfolded the crumpled telegram and handed it to Andrei: "Keep four machines running, and use our reserve crystals to adjust the parameters of the others. Under the guise of an emergency drill, suspend the production lines involved."

"But that would cause enormous losses. All three main plants would need to be restarted and shut down again."

"There's no other way," Rorschach sighed. "Andrei, if your mentor asked you to help with something within your ability, would you refuse?"

Andrei assumed that "mentor" was Rorschach referring to himself: "Of course not."

"That's it." Rorschach pointed to a long string of characters in the telegram: "All twenty-one extractors that were shut down have their extraction points and material collection rates adjusted according to the parameters on the telegram."

The collectors in both locations now form a powerful array, and have been adjusted several times over the course of a decade, much to Andrei's dismay. However, Rorschach is quite excited, as it's a project he once participated in, and being able to help Master Cano achieve his goals again is something he, as a student, can be proud of.

"That way, I won't be the only one in the world who has seen the scenery of the astral plane. No, no, that sounds too pretentious," Rorschach mentally reprimanded himself.

As night falls, it's a rare, cloudless day. Despite the approaching summer, Byrne doesn't have a "rainy season" and is gradually becoming drier and hotter. The clear sky is an indigo dotted with stars.

"Teacher, the data acquisition unit adjusted according to the fifth set of parameters is ready." Andrei was a little resentful because every time it was adjusted, the monthly production capacity of the steel plant, Basif, and the food plant would be reduced, and the data acquisition unit maintenance team would have to work an extra shift.

"Okay, got it. Turn it on."

Rorschach looked up at the starry sky, and after Andrei gave the order, he also looked up at the twinkling stars.

"Look over there." Rorschach pointed to a small area in the northeast corner. As the twenty-one collectors began to extract from the correct positions, the macroscopic shape of the transmutation laminar flow changed in that small area.

Carnot's conjecture was correct, Poincaré's calculations were correct, and all the machines were functioning flawlessly.

Where Rorschach pointed, a few dim stars began to shine. "The starry sky twinkles because of us," Rorschach murmured.

"..." Andrei was speechless with surprise at first; he hadn't expected this effect. After a long while, he finally said, "How was this achieved?"

"Mmm." When it was Rorschach's turn to be speechless, the telegram's transmission capacity was truly limited; he simply followed the instructions relayed by Cano. Rorschach stretched his aching neck and said, "Why don't you ask Mage Caroline when she returns?"

In the suburbs of Valuana, Caroline's former secret site of the Alchemy Department has now become a launch site, where three extractors power the teleportation device of the levitation capsule.

Everything was normal at the Tower of Stars, so normal that as soon as she stepped out of the portal, she was dragged back to the time when she was still in the Kano Research Group. The only difference was that the route between the Tower of Stars and the Research Building had changed to the route between the Research Building and the secret test site in the suburbs.

As for Valuwana, she had no chance to observe it for a while, only occasionally seeing crowds gathering around strange wooden frames along the way.

Paulina saw her "senior sister" again. When she first joined the group, she had always lived in her senior sister's shadow, until that "shadow" drifted north. Now that she was back, she quickly took over some of her and Master Kano's work, and did it even better.

"Sigh," Paulina sighed and continued inspecting the airship.

Are you alone?

"With just me, the load is minimal." Kano turned to Caroline: "After my signal disappears, activate the teleportation again after a 15-minute countdown."

"Five minutes!" Poincaré wanted to shorten the time for Cano's adventure.

"If the protection truly fails, it won't take me more than five minutes to be engulfed by the metamorphic dust." Kano calmed down at the last moment: "In that case, why not give me a little more time?"

"Let's begin." Caroline presided over the teleportation ceremony on the ground.

The blue light barrier reinforced by the airship lit up, and the teleportation array, powered by the three collectors, directly sent it to the highest point that the research group's teleportation array could reach, which was even higher than the current location of the transmutation dust collection point.

Based on the angle of starlight deflection, Poincaré estimated that, starting from the location reached by the teleportation energy, Cano would need to ascend vertically for more than 23.1 kilometers to penetrate the transmutation dust stream and reach the pure astral plane.

Blue light flickered and wailed until no medium other than the transmutation dust could transmit sound. The environmental magic within the laminar flow was distorted by the dense fragments of the divine realm, and Kano could only rely on the magic within his own body to sustain himself. The flames at the tail of the floating pod lit up, quickly swallowed by the light from the activated fragments.

Accelerate. Disintegrate and sprint. Having lost its air pod, Kano supports the barrier enveloping its body and heads towards the stars.

(End of this chapter)