A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 519 Towards the Heavens

The battle between the two armies began a few days earlier than the Senate had anticipated, thus coinciding with the launch date. The mage who sought Kano's opinion hadn't expected the chief to be so impatient: "The airspace hasn't been cleared of 'debris' yet."

"It doesn't matter. I'll take action if anything unexpected happens." Kano stood up and stretched. It was already dawn when he stepped into the elevator of the Starlight Torch Tower and reached the top.

The original observatory has been transformed into a command center and the main ground monitoring station.

Sporadic fighting continues on the battlefield near Valuana. Most of the airships have been damaged and withdrawn from the battle, but the airspace remains turbulent.

The Empire's airships could not only bomb the National Guard's rear, but also threaten the Republic's capital.

Therefore, the airships temporarily requisitioned from the central port area have a very clear objective, and only one one—to prevent the Empire's airships from crossing the Lyon River defense line and to prevent their shadow from looming over the people of Valuwana.

Although the Imperial commander had decided to withdraw from the battle, the airships had yet to receive orders to retreat. All the pilot crews were anxiously awaiting new commands, but the response remained consistently that they must cover the Imperial forces' regrouping and withdrawal.

After all, this is a battle for air supremacy. If the airspace is ceded to the enemy, then the National Guard's air power can drop deadly bombs on the Imperial Army.

"Damn it, they really don't treat us like human beings." The airship pilots used to cruise from high altitudes, which gave them the illusion that their comrades and enemies fighting desperately on the ground were ants that posed no threat to them.

Today, however, a group of fearless individuals are willing to risk their entire airships by sending themselves to their deaths with massive bombs, causing great panic among the Imperial airship pilots.

The Empire was terrified, and the Valuwa people in the sky were also uneasy. There were many dwarves among them who had been conscripted along with the civilian airships, and the most effective way to kill an old-fashioned airship was by detonating it close to the face.

Just when both sides were eager to retreat but were forced into a stalemate for various reasons, an unexpected event from the west of Valuana, on the other side of the battlefield, broke the deadlock.

"Hey, what's that?"

"New situation, be on alert!"

The unexpected event caused everyone to pause their attacks. They began to cautiously distance themselves from the unknown, giving both sides an opportunity to cease hostilities simultaneously.

On the battlefield, what people saw was a dazzling light that streaked across the sky from bottom to top, particularly bright in the dim autumn morning.

What took off was naturally a starship.

On the ship's surface, the protective magic circle's magical circuits were at work. But the main light seen on the battlefield and by the people of Valuva was the pale blue exhaust plume from the starship's engines at the bottom.

Following Rorschach's suggestion, the ship should be made as symmetrical as possible, like an over-cut cigar standing upright, while the most important propulsion system was designed by the Tower of Thunderstorms.

The fuel tanks are filled with treated passivated transmutation dust. The primary challenge facing the mages is how to convert the energy carried within these substances into sufficient thrust.

Initially, they considered the Exploding Fireball spell. While the continuous explosion of the fireball could provide pulse-like thrust, researchers quickly discovered that the process of the fireball's explosion was relatively uncontrollable and had a lower ceiling.

A spellcaster skilled in alchemy proposed that the light phlogiston produced by the dwarves was an excellent fuel before separation, and that they needed to pressurize the fuel to increase its thrust.

Starship fuel doesn't carry a heavy tank of water, but rather a full tank of passivated transmutation dust crystals, which are divided into two parts: one is converted into water, and the other provides power for other magic that is solidified into magic arrays.

It is now generally accepted that the simplest form of water creation is essentially a summoning from a water elemental. However, starships, whether moving at high speeds or entering transmutation dust streams, severely impact spells involving teleportation.

The special water-making method that Rorschach had taught and shared with the mages of the Tower of Stars in a secondary plane had come into play.

Inside the starship's engines, about one-third of the transmutation dust fuel is converted into water. This water is first injected into the electrolysis chamber and subjected to the sixth-circle spell, Chain Lightning. These high-voltage arcs efficiently convert the water into hydrogen and oxygen at an extremely fast speed, and the expansion process, due to the volume restriction, already completes one pressurization cycle.

However, that's not enough. The mixed hydrogen and oxygen combustion gases are gathered into a pressurized chamber made of high-strength steel before entering the combustion chamber. The second sixth-circle spell, Compression Orb, will then come into play, raising the pressure of these burners to extremely high levels before they are even ignited.

Then they burst forth, rushing into the combustion chamber and finally releasing their heat and kinetic energy.

Originally, the Compression Orb was a murderous spell that created compressed space, crushed and destroyed the target, or suffocated living beings. But here, it became the core magic circle of the engine, replacing the turbine in Rorschach's previous life's rocket engine.

The already perfectly proportioned hydrogen and oxygen combustion gas, after this series of transformations, finally returns to the form of water in the combustion chamber.

The generated water is more like an intermediary substance. It is used in the process of electrolysis and then pressurization and ignition to convert the energy released by other transmutation dust into thrust. Its energy density and propulsion effect are far superior to rockets fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Of the remaining two-thirds of the transmutation dust, 70% was successfully converted, while the remaining 30% was used to maintain protective spells on all the chambers of the engine and release high-frequency [repair spells].

Of course, the mages have not yet developed complex and systematic aerospace technology. The prototype starship is designed to be powerful and fly like a brick. The engine, which consists of three main components: a conversion electrolysis chamber, a pressurization chamber, and a combustion nozzle, is designed to generate maximum power.

At the same time, the transmutation dust collector array was also working with the starship to open a "storm eye" for it. Compared to the flight deck when Kano took off alone, the starship was more than a hundred times larger, and the array at this moment was more than a hundred times larger.

The refineries behind the Empire's "Wall of Sighs," the harvester clusters in Bain, and all the harvesters within Valuwa were all notified to adjust the targets of their magic arrays. Some engineers did not know the true purpose, but others already understood. After the adjustments were completed, they looked up at the sky.

Unfortunately, it is no longer night, so the stars cannot be seen twinkling. However, the sky has changed. It seems that the dramatic change in the metamorphic dust flow has distorted the refraction of sunlight, and a brighter spot of light has appeared.

Bathed in light, the starship ascended steadily until its pale blue tail flame merged with the sky and the speckled light. Together with its passengers, the fearless pioneers among the mages, it traversed the atmosphere of the Prime Material Plane and arrived above the heavens.

Beneath the vast sky, there are soldiers fighting for their respective countries, risking their lives, as well as ground station staff from all directions.

This project involves the entire magic guild. In addition to the mages of Valuwana, there are naturally spellcasters from other magic towers who came to assist. In fact, since most of the people from the Tower of Stars were engaged in the battlefield, there were many unfamiliar faces in the eyes of Kano at the ground station.

Besides the mages, there were also young people from Byrne, who were seconded from various universities and engineering colleges. They were an important part of Rorschach's support project. Even if they did not have spellcasting abilities, they had basic literacy, arithmetic, and engineering skills and could handle many trivial tasks.

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

Of course, sending them into space was only the first step. The next challenge was to pass through the metamorphic dust stream. Both the passengers on the starship and the participants on the ground who were watching them in real time could only maintain their utmost confidence and patience and wait silently.

(End of this chapter)