Aether Engineering

Chapter 58

Maston Academy

The Town of Maston in the Candis East District

“I don’t see how a construct with a composite of fire and earth would be useful though. I read that Fire mana is really mana dense. Its best used as an offensive weapon.”

Jane shook her head in exasperation, moving her hands around to emphasize her points, trying her best to get Myles to understand her vision. “That’s exactly why it would work so well. You would be forced to dodge the fire, then when it solidified, you would be trapped. We could set them on a delay…”

Myles sighed. They had been debating the best way to create an aether construct with the composite mana types that Primrose had mentioned that morning. They had started the moment they stepped out of the library, and now they were still talking about it beside their aether forge.

It was frustrating. Jane was adamant that composite mana was the way to go, but Myles didn’t see the benefit, at least not with fire and earth. “It would be far more useful to look into other composite types.”

“Oh?” Professor Hazel was standing over their station, arms crossed behind his back. The man was like a walking dictionary for aether engineering. Myles wouldn’t be surprised if he could spout off more information than was in the aether index, the huge book they had been given at the start of the year.

“We were just discussing composite mana types.”

The look that suddenly entered Professor Hazel’s eyes made Myles regret what he had said. “Fascinating. Aether constructs with composite types are generally more useful on a smaller scale.” The professor looked them over. “It’s an advanced topic, but I can see the passion in your eyes. Alright I’d like you to work out a prototype.”

Myles felt himself deflating. For the most part, Professor Hazel was content to run his classes like a workshop, thinking it was fastest for his students to learn by doing. Typically, he would make rounds, giving each group pointers to keep them learning. When he grew interested in something though, he would occasionally give a group an actual assignment.

Myles had seen what these assignments were like. Last month, the pair working next to them had been given an assignment. They had been pestered almost constantly by the Professor and driven to work on the project for long hours. They had worked even more hours than he and Jane had last month, and they had been building the fireball spear constructs.

Jane gave her brightest smile. “We only just heard about it in passing this morning. We only know of the composite of earth and fire mana.”

The smile had no effect. Professor Hazel wasn’t deterred in the slightest. “Ah. That can be a useful combination in a construct.”

Myles felt Jane prod him with her elbow. Glancing over, he saw her give him a victorious smile, her point from earlier vindicated. He ignored her.

“I don’t believe that its all that effective without the proper support though.” Professor Hazel frowned. “I don’t think you have the knowledge to create a useful construct with that composite yet.”

Myles gave Jane an elbow of his own, accompanied by what Myles was confident was a perfectly innocent smile, no gloating involved at all. Jane gave him a slight glare.

“Ah!” Professor Hazel snapped his fingers. “I think I have the perfect composite. It should be more beginner friendly, and the right construct could help you out quite a bit on your next mission I should think.”

Myles felt his curiosity rising. There was another composite that would be easier for them to make a construct with?

“A composite of sound and ice mana will do the trick I think.”

Myles considered it. How would those two mana types work together.

“Sound mana is exceptionally useful for constructs intended to distract or stun enemies.” Professor Hazel smiled slightly, probably remembering some construct he had designed before. “It takes an exceptional amount of mana to deal any real damage to an enemy though. That’s why composites are so useful with sound mana. You see, when sound mana is evoked, it has a tendency to expand outwards rapidly. That makes ice one of my personal favorite types to work with for a sound composite.”

Myles was starting to get a picture in his head. He remembered how Primrose had made them try to shock each other into losing focus and dropping their commuted armor. A sound mana construct could achieve the same effect, probably far better than any of the surprises they had come up with. Sound mana drops the enemy’s commuted armor, explodes outwards, then loses energy, transforming into the more stable part of the composite, ice. Without commuted armor, ice would coat them, trapping them in place.

Professor Hazel walked over to their copy of the aether index, flipping to a section towards the middle of the book. It was a point that was noticeably further than anything Myles and Jane had looked at before.

“Please see me at the end of the day. I’d like to see what design you come up with.”

Myles and Jane pored over the new section of the index. Everything there was more intricate than they had imagined. The runes had more lines running off them and required more mana to power than anything they had seen before. From what Myles could tell, they would need to carefully time the arrival of the two types of mana and the quantity they arrived in. The book described how different ratios of the mana types would interact differently, producing a mana that would lean toward one type or the other.

If they added three units of sound mana for every one unit of ice mana, the resulting burst in sound would be too great, expanding farther than they wanted before turning to ice. The ice, too spread out would be ineffective for restraining the target.

Myles frowned. He had been anticipating them using some kind of projectile as the body of the construct. That seemed difficult though. The burst of sound would need to be small, likely not reaching even a full body in size. It would also need to reach the ear of whoever or whatever they were fighting. It seemed too much to ask for him or his other dormmates to suddenly gain enough skill with whatever projectile they created to hit the exact right spot potentially in the midst of combat. No, a projectile wouldn’t work for this.

“We could create it as a form of trap.” Jane mused, seeing the same problems Myles had.

“I don’t think so. We would need to secure the construct at height off the ground. Triggering it would also be a problem.”

Triggering a construct to activate was almost always a crucial problem. Here, it was looking to be even more challenging than usual. Not only did they need the construct to be in a practical vessel, but they also needed to match the timing of when the mana combined.

Myles considered trying to make the construct into a spear again. The range the spear offered gave certain advantages for the type of mana they were using. A user could move the spear into position with more accuracy than a projectile. It would also allow the user to have some distance, preventing the burst of sound mana from reaching the construct’s user. There was a glaring problem though. Timing.

According to the aether index, they would need to guide mana into the rune used to combine the two mana types, this was most efficiently done by using two different metals. In theory, a single metal could be used, but in order to get the right ratio of composite for their attack, they would need to bring more ice mana into the rune than sound mana. This could theoretically be done by using containment runes to limit the flow of sound mana. The problem was one of efficiency. As more mana is added to a small area, it becomes more costly to push mana into the space. The base power needed to activate a rune remains in the metal, meaning the more runes on a construct, the less efficient its mana use.

A spear is effectively one metal slab. The runes would need to be focused on the point of the spear to reduce the time between triggering the construct and when the attack is actually made. After all, in a fight, a spear that you had to prime several seconds in advance would do little good. If you weren’t able to land an attack at the exact time, everything would be lost.

“Do you think we could store the mana after we combine it into a composite?”

Jane shook her head, pointing to a section that Myles had missed. “Look here. Its says that storing composite mana for long will decrease its effectiveness, the sound mana and ice mana will gradually destroy each other, losing mana and corroding the metal itself.”

Myles pursed his lips. This was going to be an interesting challenge.