Aether Engineering

Chapter 29

Maston Academy

The Town of Maston in the Candis East District

The celebration the night before had perhaps extended a little too long. Primrose clearly knew what had happened because she asked them questions about their performance the night before as they practiced the snake step. It had been half a week since they had started practicing it, and Myles still had difficulty executing it, much less doing so with enough proficiency to be up to Primrose’s absurd standards. The whole ordeal was only made worse by the late night they had all had.

During their aether class, Myles was glad to take a break from physical training to delve his mana well. He had to remind himself that he had almost run out of mana in their earlier fight to keep himself from dozing off. Reah was there helping Kate to get a grip on her strange connector. Myles had to wonder if Reah had been watching them throughout their entire fight. That was probably the best bet as to why Primrose seemed to know every detail of their battle.

Lunch was a somber affair. The entire platoon was tired out. In the past, Myles had avoided using that term. It didn’t really feel natural to describe a group of six people. After last night though, Myles was beginning to feel that the word had started to fit them a little better.

Myles and Jane walked into their aether engineering class with six fire cores in their hands. The device they had built for measuring and storing fire mana sat already assembled on their workstation’s desk.

Even including his time at Kruezen’s job shop, this device was easily one of the hardest things Myles had ever forged. That was only from a purely mundane side too. It was very intricate with almost every piece of the design being too small for conventional methods. Myles had been forced to pull out almost every trick that he had picked up from his job to create it. Jane had managed to learn as they went. Without her help, Myles would have still been working on it.

The process of etching the runes into the metal had been perhaps even more challenging than the forging of the actual pieces. For the first few tiny batteries they created, they were forced to reforge every other one. In the end though, they had forged an even 1,000 of the things.

Right now, the device remained inactive, so, the batteries were in a bucket beside the tube that would normally hold them with pure mana. Jane activated the device and Myles began feeding the tiny cube batteries into the top of the tube. With every swing of the pendulum, the batteries would fall to the cell below and Myles would drop another one into the top of the tube.

When one finally got to the bottom of the tube, Jane pressed one of the cinderwolf cores into their feeder construct. As she did, the pair started commuting more pure mana through their armor, bringing it to the same thickness it had been when they had fought the beasts the cores had originally belonged to.

They had read about fire runes extensively and they had come across numerous references mentioning how volatile fire mana could be when evoked in its raw format. They kept their armor thick, hoping that they hadn’t messed up somewhere.

When the fire mana ran down the feeder construct and infused the battery, Myles looked up and shared a wide grin with Jane. It worked. They had actually been able to measure out and store exactly one unit of mana, at least assuming their calculations weren’t off.

The process to store all of the mana in the core took several minutes. During that time, Professor Hazel wandered over to watch their progress with a hint of amusement in his eyes. Some of the other students looked their way as well, but the process didn’t hold their attention for too long. Their device was hardly the only interesting construct in the room.

By the time the monster core was gone, they had 232 filled batteries. Each battery contained exactly one unit of mana—at least in theory. If they took into account the other five batteries, they likely had access to roughly 1,392 units of fire mana.

They had waited to design their fire construct until they had a good idea of how much mana they had access to. Now, they would need to figure out a design that could be reproduced at least three times with that amount of mana.

They also had to take into account any mana that might be wasted with a failed construct. It was nerve wracking to say the least. After what they had been through to get their hands on the fire mana, Myles was adamant that they turn it into something useful.

They looked back through the section on fire runes before starting their plan. Myles noted some of the more interesting runes.

The first rune of import was one that could convert pure mana to fire mana. There were actually several runes that accomplished this, but for their purposes, they could only use the cheapest rune. This rune was less efficient at converting mana than many of the other runes that would take more mana to power. While many of those approached what the book called a perfect conversion rate of 25%, the rune they could use was able to convert a mere 9% of the supplied pure mana into fire mana. Not only that, but the rune also took a full 303 units of fire mana to power.

If they used that rune on all three constructs, it would take up 909 of their 1,392 units of mana. That left little to work with and no hope of success if they messed up even once. Still though, without that conversion rune, their construct would have little power and no way to recharge without gaining more monster cores.

Jane eventually spoke. “I think we’ll have to include that rune. Without it, the constructs won’t be very helpful.”

Myles nodded. They really didn’t have a choice in the matter.

They continued to look through the runes. They knew from building the measurement device that pure mana containment runes could work with fire mana. That left the runes that would actually initiate the attack.

There were a number of them to choose from. Most of the runes in the book were way outside the realm of possibility they had with their quantity of mana. There were still a few sets of runes that could be used though.

One of the rune sets that they seriously considered created a constant but relatively weak stream of flame. It would certainly be an effective weapon, but it was hardly the game changer that they had been hoping for.

The one that they eventually settled on was the simplest of the rune sets, one that produced a basic fireball. The core rune set cost 155 mana, which was barely within their pool of 161 units per construct. The only problem was that the optional connected rune that allowed for control over setting the amount of mana used in each fireball costed an additional 17 mana.

Without it, they would be forced to make a choice. They could use the attributes of metal to limit the power of each fireball by carefully controlling the mana flow to the runes, or they could ignore the limiter entirely. If they went for the second option, their weapon could only be used once. It would make one massive fireball, depleting all of its stored-up mana at once.

That wasn’t ideal, but Myles leaned toward that rather than the alternative. The last thing that they wanted was to create a construct that would only be useful for a month or two until they grew strong enough to make whatever level of power they limited it to obsolete.

They debated over the topic for a while, but ultimately, they both agreed not to set a hard limit to the constructs power.

The design of the runes was by no means simplistic, but since they had no need to regulate the mana flow within the construct, the actual shape had little importance. If they really wanted to, they could just put the runes on a slab of metal and make that the construct.

Jane joked about how funny it would be to deliver the basic slab of metal to the nobles as their reward for risking their lives. Myles had laughed good-naturedly, but that brought up a difficult point. The three nobles had genuinely been excellent partners. It somehow felt disrespectful making their construct without any input from them.

They spent quite some time talking about the best shape to create the construct in. Eventually, they settled on using a tested favorite, a spear. They quickly realized an ironic problem though. They had used so much basium to create all the tools to get the cores and measure the mana that they were running up against their limit on basium for the month. With what they could still get from the academy, all they could make were spear tips.

The constructs that they had spent so much time creating would end up looking just like the shoddy spears they had made earlier. Myles ran the math in his head again to make sure that he wasn’t miscalculating, but the hard truth remained.

The two of them drew in the wooden spear shaft in their meticulous design document with heavy hearts.

“What is this!?”

Jane cringed beside Myles as Alfred exclaimed at the design they had shown him.

Myles swallowed deeply, feeling his dry throat. “We’re sorry, but we ran into a limit with how much basium we can use from the academy’s stores.”

Alfred looked apologetic. He seemed to be uncomfortable with how much he had scared Jane. “I apologize for my outburst. I was surprised by the physical design, but for the record, I find the construct itself to be quite intelligently designed.”

Jerald nodded along. “My only concern is that the construct will have limited utility in its current form. It also makes me nervous that the construct is so fragile. Would it not be possible to protect the construct itself with a coating of pure mana?”

Myles shook his head. That was an idea that they had discussed, but they didn’t want to risk limiting the power they could use by crowding the construct with pure mana shields. They didn’t want to hit the mana capacity limit if they didn’t have to. “We can’t do that without more metal to use.”

Jerald nodded. “Hypothetically, what would you be able to accomplish if we were able to supply enough basium to make the spears entirely of metal?”

Myles considered for a moment. “For starters, we could add mana shielding to the construct itself. With care, we could make sure that the mana shield would go down when the construct is fired. That would prevent the shielding from decreasing the power of the fireball. We would just tie the trigger for the shielding in with the ones that activate the fireball. We would also create an independent trigger for the shielding to save mana. The last thing that we want to happen is for the shield to be constantly draining mana when it isn’t needed.”

Jerald nodded. “How powerful could you make the shielding?”

Myles smiled. They might actually pay for the basium. “It could be made as powerful as needed. With the entire spear made of basium, there would be plenty of space to store mana. All you would have to do is infuse it with more pure mana.”

Jerald nodded seeming pleased. He had probably seen how effective their shields had been in the battle yesterday. “I think we will pay for the basium provided you can grant us two requests.”

Myles could feel Silas frowning from where he sat behind him. They were striking a hard bargain it seemed.

“The first is that you come to us first for any future proposals like this.”

Silas nodded, smiling. “We would have done that anyways. You have proven yourselves to be reasonable people.”

Jerald smiled back. “The second is that you use the control rune for our spear. If my calculations are correct, there should be just enough fire mana leftover to power that rune on one spear.”

Myles hesitated. By their estimate, that was true, but not all monster cores had the same amount of mana in them. He didn’t want to promise something he couldn’t deliver.

To Myles’ surprise, Jane quickly explained that.

Jerald smiled. “Very well. We will take our chances then.”

Silas stepped forward and gave each of the nobles a handshake. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Vance smiled ironically. “I never though I would be buying basium.”

Alfred laughed. “At least you’ll know where to get it.”

Vance nodded. “That I do.”