A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 520 The First Cornerstone

The starship was trembling violently. The passengers were tightly strapped into the cockpit, their internal organs feeling as if they were churning and churning with the ship's vibrations. Not only that, their temples began to throb, as if all the blood was rushing to their heads, and their vision began to blur and darken.

Initially, Kano acted alone without any preparation, temporarily avoiding the problems caused by acceleration during the ascent phase using teleportation and other means. However, during the subsequent breakthrough of the laminar flow and return process, he had already navigated through numerous pitfalls using his own strength. This time, the team had anticipated and prepared for certain phenomena. The captain released the [Resistance to Otherworldly Environment] technique, which he had repeatedly practiced on the ground, and the intricate system of the human body immediately returned to stability.

The captain was in charge of the most complex spell, while the other two team members, with the captain's blessing, were responsible for casting calming and healing spells, respectively.

The team leader was the newly recruited mage Cavendish, who sat in the middle, flanked by male and female mages as teammates. As the leader, he might be a bit young, but his resume was impressive:

He participated in the Black Forest expedition and played a key role.

The other mages knew very little about that mysterious mission. However, when people looked back, they were surprised to find that four archmages (one of whom was not yet an archmage at the time) had participated in the expedition, either personally or indirectly. Cavendish, who was just an apprentice, was able to "play a key role"!

Furthermore, this guy is from Istani and studied at the Tower of Stars, perfectly fitting the current "political correctness" of cross-regional cooperation among magic guilds.

Of course, he said he got the job based entirely on his own merits.

He had a solid foundation in astronomy, had seen many grand occasions, and could chat and laugh with various masters. That so-called divine abomination was far more dangerous than a mere fragment of a divine kingdom.

Even so, Cavendish's palms were sweaty, but the captain absolutely couldn't show it.

He saw the velocities display that the starship had reached the "escape velocity" calculated by Sir Isaac and had left the thick atmosphere. Cavendish gripped the control terminal before him, channeling magic into it. Upon receiving the command, the top of the control cabin, divided into hexagonal grids, gradually became transparent.

Through the transparent top shell, they confirmed that they had their backs to the earth and were facing the barrier that had bound all intelligent beings for hundreds of years.

The transmutation flow at this point forms terrifying vortices, pointing them to their only window. From an astral perspective, these fragments are merely a colorful filter over the stars, and the refraction of starlight in different directions reveals the intense inhomogeneity of the density of this "spherical shell."

Cavendish took a deep breath: "Now we need to begin the orbital change, adjusting the angle of entry of the starship and the laminar flow until we break through the upper layer. As we approach those dangerous and beautiful astral dust particles, positioning, teleportation, and communication spells will be disrupted, and the orbital change process will take 13 minutes."

He looked ahead with feigned ease: "Of course, there's no going back now. With the teleportation spell already compromised, it's no longer reliable. During this time, we'll conduct our final one-way communication to the ground before crossing the laminar flow. What we write to record this history is our prerogative. It can be a will, or a vow of certain victory, whatever. Sorry for rambling, twelve minutes left."

The mage beside Cavendish took out paper and pen from his storage bag. He didn't write anything, but handed them to the captain first. Although Cano had repeatedly emphasized to them before they set off that the Senate would guarantee their personal safety, Cavendish and the others couldn't imagine what other means the Senate might have to rescue people from the laminar flow. Therefore, they were all prepared to face the worst-case scenario.

Cavendish was momentarily dazed when he received the paper and pen. He saw his past self in his memories, the apprentice who had once wanted to give up, and the countless nights he had spent diligently drawing star charts.

The stars change very slowly, but the world changes extremely fast. Later, many things happened both on the mainland and in his hometown.

He was about to pierce the veil of the stars and observe the true nature of the astral plane above the metamorphic dust stream. The apprentice trembling in the Black Forest could never have imagined that his future would be like this.

"It's 6:07 AM on December 13th. This is Cavendish Squadron's final report to the ground before crossing the laminar flow. Everything is normal on the ship. We are full of confidence!"

After writing this sentence in great detail, he inserted the reel into a specially made protective spherical shell and then fed it into the transmission copper tube.

"The primary agency has broken away, and a change of course has begun!"

The exhausted first-stage propulsion system separated from the main body of the starship, while the second-stage engines, located next to the cockpit, started up.

The empty shell detached from the main body, the first-stage engine stalled, altitude decreased, and finally it plunged into the atmosphere, beginning to experience intense friction. The Cavendish team's one-way communication message to the ground was also on the detached mechanism. Its protective shell began to melt and disintegrate, triggering the portable communication array pre-installed inside the shell. At this point, the altitude had escaped the influence of laminar flow, and the message was accurately sent back to the ground monitoring station.

To ensure strength, the starship's top hull was de-transparent, and all protective measures were maximized. The side nozzles of the second-stage engines, used for attitude adjustment, began operating, causing the starship to spin at extremely high speeds. This was both to ensure the starship maintained its attitude as it traversed astronomically large vortices and to minimize the contact time between its surface and transmutation dust through spin.

The main body does not store much passivation and transmutation dust; it will use locally sourced materials.

The collector developed by Rorschach is a barrel with a circulation loop on the inner wall to purify and passivate transmutation dust. At this time, the outermost layer of the entire starship is its flipping mechanism—the device that renders these grains harmless is placed on the outside. As the transmutation dust moves backward from the tip of the starship in the direction it breaks through, some of it is passivated and then sucked into the second-stage engine for use.

Of course, a lot of unprocessed transmutation dust will also be sucked in, so compared to the first-stage engine, the tank connecting to the second stage has now become a buffer tank, and it is also a collector-like structure, but this time it is set on the inner wall of the tank to process the last residue.

The shaking intensified, and all the gauges were twitching. Cavendish clenched his fists, but there was nothing he could do.

He and his team could only trust that the design and manufacturing were reliable, and trust everyone who contributed to the project.

The ship was indeed reliable; although it was swaying, it was almost silent at the moment. However, it was precisely this silence that amplified the agonizing moment.

"I estimate the starship will be able to pass through the metamorphic dust stream in about seven minutes. I really don't know how Master Cano did it before." Rorschach found it unbelievable.

His and Caroline's spirits were at the boundary. This laminar vortex was unprecedented in scale, and the coordinates of the boundary relative to the material world inevitably gravitated towards the weaker layer.

Rorschach, by using the branches of the Golden Tree that extend to the highest heavens, can obtain a vague distribution of laminar flow density. At this point, the golden sand at the boundary can represent countless crystals. Among them, there is a small point with a significantly different density, which is moving rapidly toward the laminar flow surface, leaving a faint wake. It must be the result of the starship dispersing transmutation dust.

There are also patches of similarly inconsistent density, larger in scale, comparable to the "eye" of the vortex, slowly drifting at the edge of the vortex, which are the projections of the boundary surface onto the material world.

Caroline was also concerned about the starship. Seeing that the starship's signal had reached the surface of the laminar flow smoothly, she said, "It seems that you don't need to take action."

"Yes, this is their glory, the achievement of the entire Magic Guild."

The first "cornerstone" of the space exploration project finally broke through the danger zone, slowed its rotation, and successfully adjusted its attitude to enter the predetermined orbit.

(End of this chapter)