On the third day since I arrived I went hunting with… *sigh* Gray. Only after that did I start with my airplane project.
The problem of flight is the lack of efficiency, even right now I could use telekinesis to lift myself, but by doing that my mana would run out quite quickly, even when considering how much mana I have compared to my weight.
It’s possible to use a spell to improve the mana efficiency, but even then it wouldn’t be good enough to be used as a method of travel, it would function more as mild levitation than actual high speed flight.
A more practical method would be to use self-strengthening combined with ‘weaken fall’ to leap high and fall slowly, this is used more commonly by knights well trained in magic.
What I want to make is an airplane that can both glide and propel itself using the driver’s mana, what i need is speed and low mana consumption. Since I haven’t made a mana engine or anything of the sort, the plane’s power will have to come straight from the driver.
So the plane will have to be as light as possible, one set of wings and one propeller… Do I even need a propeller?
This is going to take a while, isn’t it?
Should I just make something like a wingsuit or deployable hang glider to improve the leaping style of movement?...
No! True flight is one of mankind's dreams! No compromises!... Maybe later, if I get stuck on some part…
~~
“Cousin, what are you making now? A road and a carriage?” Asks Michael. He and uncle came to check out my test area near the castle. They are leaving soon.
“No, silly. I’m making an airplane!” I declare.
“A what?” Asks uncle Victor. I’m not using the english word for airplane of course, I’m using a word for air combined with a word for gliding, since the word for airplane didn’t exist before.
“An airplane. It’s like a carriage that soars through the skies.” I explain.
The father and son duo look at each other and then to me, and then to my airplane prototype.
“Are those wings, then?” Asks Michael. “Aren't they supposed to flap? And is that a… windmill on the tip?”
“Yes, no and no.” I answer respectively. “They are wings, but they don’t need to flap, since an airplane’s method for flight is different from a bird. And the thing on tip is called a propeller, it propels the airplane forward by pushing the air backwards.” At least that’s how I think it works.
“...Really?” Asks Michael with a doubtful expression. I’ll show you.
I sit on the cockpit (it’s just a chair and a handle to put mana into the propeller) and start running mana through the propeller.
Slow and steady, the prototype airplane starts accelerating. When the speed is enough I push the nose of the plane up with telekinesis.
I slowly separate from the ground. For a few seconds I’m soaring above the land.
And then the nose goes too far up and starts to loop backwards, so I jump out of that deathtrap and use weaken fall on myself while thinking ‘mayday mayday mayday’.
I walk to those two and proudly declare: “See?! It works!”
They nod while looking at the crashed prototype silently.
~time skip~
It’s now a few months since I started and I managed to make something vaguely like an airplane. It’s made mostly from wood and doesn’t have any way to control it aside from just using telekinesis to turn it or give it more or less mana to control the propeller, so it’s a poor excuse for an actual airplane. But it can take off from a runway, stay in the air without falling apart and sometimes even land without breaking when I’m careful!
I may or may not have crash landed multiple times.
Having a vague idea of how working planes look like was a great help in speeding up the process.
Now the main problems are the controls and mana consumption. But to decide on the controls I also need to know the mana consumption for each method, since adding hinges and parts might increase the weight and with that the mana consumption, or using telekinesis might be worse.
So I need a way to measure mana consumption. I contemplated about using precise measurement methods that could be replicated and compared by anyone using stuff like a specific magic tool that boils a liter of water using 100 mana points, or uses telekinesis to move an object that weighs one kilo for a meter with a specific speed and that kind of thing…
But honestly, screw that. I made a jumpsuit with something similar to a ruler on the front of the torso, when I use mana a little mark moves up the ruler. I calibrated it for when I use all my mana, the marker reaches the top. After that I just had to put numbers on it from zero at the bottom and 100 at the top.
Like this I can measure the mana I use with percentages. When I use half my mana, the mark will reach 50. Yes, it’s a completely arbitrary measurement that will change with my skill in controlling mana, but so what? I don’t need anything ultra specific. This will do just fine.
~~
When I was about to go back to work on the airplane after being done with the suit, tragedy struck. I am already seven years old, and mother decided to get me started on the sword.
My research time was crippled by having to do boring exercises. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to learn how to use the sword, but footwork and edge-alignment exercises are, in fact, not fun at all after the initial excitement passes.
When it comes to the Sylvian swordsmanship, it’s somewhat different from swordsmanship from modern earth’s history. After all, in this world you have monsters and superhumans.
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It places a heavy focus on dodges and lunges, while parries, grapples and that kind of thing are somewhat underdeveloped.
Of course, they still exist, but when fighting opponents with ten times your weight or that can drastically increase the strength of an attack, you’d rather just move out of the way too. That and normal swords (not made by me) simply wouldn’t be able to take the forces at play without breaking.
In actuality, the sword is NOT the most favored weapon for war or fighting monsters, it is normally a sidearm that one would draw if their main weapon (like a spear or bow) is broken or in a situation they can’t use it, like tight spaces or when the enemy is too close for the bow and crossbow.
However, due to being so easy to carry (relatively) and effective when compared to other small weapons (daggers, axes, maces) when one is trained with it, it became the skilled fighter’s self-defence or backup weapon.
And like how military officers would be issued handguns in modern times, people in similar positions here would carry swords and with that the sword became associated with high ranks, and then with nobility and royalty.
The only exceptions to this rule are greatswords, which are swords about as tall as the user. Short swords and arming swords (just think ‘one-handed sword’) would be used as sidearms or with a shield at least, while long swords and cavalry sabers would straddle the edge between sidearm and main weapon.
With the sword’s reputation and convenience it became the weapon every noble must be trained in, but when it comes to raw power, larger weapons with greater weight, leverage and reach would be preferred.
My training is either fake sparring where no magic is allowed or some simple practice cutting. But it seems I’m not allowed to spar for real for a good while.
At least I don’t have to take sword classes together with other classes like Athena had to when she was younger, so I still have some time to research.
~~
More tragedy struck after a while.
Grandma started sending people without a limb or another for me to heal from time to time, it was all good since it was a rare opportunity for practice.
At some point, random people started coming and asking for me to heal them. Even then, it was still all fine and dandy since more practice = better. Although a couple of wanted men tried to get me to heal them, so I killed them myself.
The trouble started when the small groups became groups, and then big groups that I couldn’t heal in a single day (limbs take a lot of mana), and now to a fully fledged caravan full of people.
“This is starting to take too much time away from my research.” I muttered as I walk out of the castle towards the encampment of maimed and moribund nearby.
“Maybe you should start charging money for it?” Suggests Athena. I’m guarded by her, Gray and multiple knights, including Joey who used to be my bodyguard when I was a little younger.
“I didn’t want to decrease the chances to practice, but maybe I’ll have to. How many handicapped can exist in a country anyways?”
When people notice me I start to hear the annoying begging, aren’t you here because you know I’ll heal you? Just shut up and wait patiently for your turn.
“Sir! Sir! Please!” A young woman barges out of the crowd while carrying a young boy. “My son is dying! Please heal him!” The hell?
I quickly cast a spell to check on the boy. Yep, his hand was probably bitten off by something and the wound wasn’t treated properly, so now it’s infected. How he even survived enough to arrive here isn’t important at the moment. “Put him on the grass.” I speak clearly.
I normally heal people inside a tent the knights set up, but whatever. She follows what I say and I quickly use a force cut and start healing. All the while pulling more mana from the air.
When I’m done the woman does the usual tearful thanks, yeah yeah, i get it. “Stop thanking me and give him something light to eat.” The boy is just waking up. So I wave her away.
With so many people here, I bet there’s more people with open wounds. Normally those who come here have their wounds closed and scarred, but maybe with this caravan came some people who simply don’t have the money for both normal healers and medicine.
When they notice I’m done, the others go back to begging. “SHUT UP!” I shout with magic and the crowd recoils in surprise. “Allow the ones at risk of death to come forwards!”
The crowd just looks around and mutters for a while, but like I expected, after a while some dying people are carried to the front. ‘Don’t carry him like that you idiot!’ I shout in my mind but not out loud.
‘What a proper mess.’ Is what I think as I heal the zombie-like people.
Ah shit, that guy’s heart stopped. The family who carried him here seem to notice he stopped breathing and starts making a scene.
I don’t have time to reason with them so I just shove them out of my way with telekinesis and start trying to resuscitate his heart with lightning while healing the rest of his body. I bet this guy was mauled by a bear or dire wolf, his whole body is a mess.
I never defibrillated anyone before so I don’t know how strong the electricity needs to be, but whatever, I’ll start weak and go from there, I can heal him from any damage the lightning might cause anyways.
I get it on my fifth try and he starts breathing again with a jolt, that was quicker than I expected. I finish him up and move to the next one while ignoring the tearful family.
I sigh. I’m finally done with the critical ones and sit down on the grass to take a break.
“He’s a saint...” Who said that?
Oh no, the other people are starting to mutter saint this or saint that. “Oh no, you don’t!” I shout. “The ones who call me saint will have to pay for treatment!” The crowd goes quiet again. “That’s what I thought.”
I’m not having any of that ‘saint’ shit. Sylvian doesn’t have an official religion but I don’t want anything to do with the ones from other countries. That’s bound to be a pain.
When I recover some mana I start healing the non-critically wounded inside the tent like usual. At some point I immerse myself in the process and my actions become almost mechanical.
Breathe in to regenerate mana, force cut on the patients stump, breathe out, start ‘pulling’ on the wound with healing, breathe in, push more mana to the bone, breathe out and so on.
When I near my twentieth patient I get a strange feeling from the ground below me.
I look down while waiting for the next patient to come in. Blood. The floor in front of me is covered in blood from the force cuts I used to reopen the wounds. There’s not much blood loss since I’m quick about it, but the blood has accumulated from the large number of patients.
I can feel the mana in the blood… as if it’s my own…
I will the mana to come to me. It listens.
I take a deep breath, the red lines shined for a second there, good thing the next patient isn’t here yet.
The feeling of absorbing the mana from the blood is almost intoxicating, but I push it down and go back to healing.
Maybe I shouldn’t start charging after all.
~~
“So it’s blood?” Asks mom. I’m currently on a family meeting with everyone. Uncle and Michael went back home a long time ago.
“I think so, although I’m not sure of the specifics.” I answer. I’m telling them how my new bloodline is probably related to blood, well, other people’s blood.
“Well, that’s good to know, at least now we have a vague direction to experiment towards.” Says mom.
“That’s all fine and dandy, but what’s that about you bringing someone back to life?” Asks dad.
“I didn’t bring him back to life, dad. His heart had just stopped, I only kicked it awake with a little bit of lightning while healing everything else.” I explain.
“Lightning?”
“Yes.” How to explain this? “Think of it like giving the heart a scare so that it wakes up and remembers what it’s supposed to do.” Good enough.
I sigh. “I used a lot of mana today, so I’m going to sleep early. Good night everyone.”
“““Good night, Lance.””” They answer all together as I stand up.
What a tiring day. And here I thought healers were too greedy.