May, 615
I left for the capital only a few days after Polly’s promotion. My schedule was still in effect and a Sovereign showing up to the Treehouse wouldn’t change that.
I wasn’t sure if I was happy or not to be getting away from that place when I did. I was sure that the Sovereign showing up was just the calm before the storm, a mere foreshadowing of what was to come. That meant that the first month or so after his arrival would be uneventful.
And yet I finally knew why the Scourge didn’t bother attacking the promotion ceremony. They knew there was now a Sovereign coming to the Treehouse, no doubt. That meant they were planning something far worse than what they had been. They were getting ready to attack the Treehouse with everything they had. Now, the Treehouse was really in the realm where getting sieged by 2 million monsters was no longer improbable. Apparently they were supposed to receive a few more Marshals for reinforcement as well. If that didn’t spell disaster then what did?
Well, for now it wasn’t my problem.
I was quick to get back to work after arriving in the capital. Sawn was just as eager as I was and my designs were coming together nicely.
I had two projects underway, the first codenamed Project Wright, the second codenamed Project Chopper. After I described what the projects were to Sawn he immediately tagged the projects as secret. Currently, only Sawn, myself, and Ovidius were allowed to see or work on these designs.
Project Wright was my attempt at making airplanes for this world. I couldn’t make mechanical airplanes because this world didn’t have the industry to support them. However, making magic planes was far easier anyway. If I had to redesign entire planes from the ground up, they’d be slow and weak and generally useless.
For now the Scourge didn’t have dedicated anti-air, but it wasn’t impossible to hit targets with explosive spells. These planes still had to take a hit, but so long as they were capable enough, they’d be able to avoid most if not all attacks and change the face of this world’s warfare for good. The Scourge might develop countermeasures with time, but even after that air superiority would add a new plane to the field of battle forever.
:)
More developments could come at that time. For now, I simply needed to get this thing out into the field. So long as I could get the design, Sawn would be able to develop it. The amazing thing about enchanting was that it required only four things: The design, the White Crystal, the warlock to enchant with their own skill and energy, and the materials of the device itself, usually a simple structural material like wood or metal.
There was no fabrication, no expansive industry chains, no chemistry or complex material science and development. It was such a simple and easy process that it was almost criminal. It was no wonder that despite the intelligence of summoners, normal science had hardly been developed beyond what was absolutely necessary. Magic was the greatest crutch and bias to all minds in this world, and the ordinary people were still too poor to go out of their way to make anything themselves, also thanks to magic and Magi.
That meant the hardest part about my job was simply getting the designs in order. The only reason it was going to take a little while was because these two projects were my first attempts at invention, not to mention with a pretty complex magic system like enchanting. It unfortunately couldn’t happen overnight.
But it did happen, progressing more and more with every day that I spent behind that workstation.
The airplane behind Project Wright would still incorporate mechanical plane design philosophies. I didn’t want to entirely rely on magic, so propulsion wasn’t as simple as just slapping some enchantments to a brick and making it spit out air. Apparently there were plenty of people who had done such things before and it wasn’t enough to achieve the universal human dream of flying, unless the White Crystal used was powerful enough, of course. But I wanted to make do with the bare minimum, cheapest, and least powerful materials I could. I wanted these things to be mass produced because this invention had to be widespread to be meanginful. What I was doing could by no means be insignificant and small scale. It would multiply the combat effectiveness and lifespan of all Magi by several times if done correctly.
So, the most important part of my design fell to the engine that drove the plane. In front of that, the rest of the plane itself became comparatively insignificant.
Behind every vehicle was an engine, and the more powerful the engine, the larger, faster, or stronger a vehicle could be. Planes were no different from cars in that respect. Both could use nearly identical engines, because in the end all the engines were doing was turning something, either a propeller or a wheel.
The issue with a magical engine, though, was the fact that there wasn’t necessarily an ‘engine’ to design. There would be no pistons because there was no gasoline to combust in a chamber. That alone meant I’d have to design my very own magic engine nearly from scratch.
The only thing that eased my mind was the designs I was given for the engines behind vehicles like the Steed and the Rails. Sawn naturally had ripped designs for them, and even if they weren’t full, their design philosophies were easy to replicate. However, those had problems of their own.
For one, they were expensive, as I quickly discovered. A normal Steed required an Authority 9 White Crystal to move it. I understood that they were heavy and armored, but that was an absurd amount of power being used for something so simple when an Authority 9 Knight was capable of putting out so much more force than a Steed was. The only advantage was the lifespan of a single charge. Those things could drive for over half a day at its full speed unceasingly if you didn’t mind draining the entire thing. Proportionally it was better than a gasoline truck was, and the White Crystals, the power source, were tiny and light, unlike the gallons and gallons of gasoline as well as the weight of a chassis and engine to run a truck or APC on Earth.
White Crystals were amazing, but converting their power into mechanical force was challenging even for the best Magi of the Kingdom. The only reason they were investing so much into such things was because Steeds and Rails were strategic tools, and teleporters were far too expensive to use on a large scale.
The magic ‘engine’ within a Steed worked by using earth magic to push on something nearby. It could almost be considered anti-gravity, an invisible repelling force being exerted by enchanted conduits that carried the earth magic. The way they applied this was by putting teeth on the wheels of the Steeds and making the magic push on those teeth similar to how gears would operate, turning the wheel and making the vehicle roll. The reason they had to do this instead of just making the vehicles levitate was because that kind of earth magic was apparently really, really weak for how much power was demanded. In other words, it was horribly inefficient.
That’s when I wondered if it was possible to simply make a Crystal create torque directly. That would make my engines insanely simple, simply slapping a White Crystal to the end of a pole and turning it on to make a plane fly or a car go vroom.
As for whether it was possible, I looked toward the Rail designs for inspiration.
The Rails worked almost the same exact way as the Steeds did with their wheels. However, the tracks themselves were supplemented with conduits throughout their length, repeating crystals being installed all the way through, making their construction prohibitively expensive. It was worth it though because a Rail car could compound its own power with the power through the rails, propelling it across long distances faster. It just couldn’t stop, or risk taking a long time to get back up to speed and wasting a ton of energy. Rails had dedicated acceleration Crystals for that reason, completely separate from the other Crystal that powered everything under normal use.
Either way, the important bit was how the car compounded its power with the conduits through the rails. Something about that made me think that my idea wasn’t insane. From the little I could glimpse from incomplete enchantments, it was more than just adding the power of two crystals together. It was a push and pull that worked together.
I felt like it could be the answer to my question, but I needed to know the enchantments behind it if I wanted to use it. I might be able to reverse engineer it but that would take too much time.
That’s also when I remembered something.
It was halfway through the month of May that I shot up from my workstation. Sawn and Ovidius jumped from my sudden motion as I suddenly sprinted out of the room.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to talk to someone!”
I left with those words, rushing out of the Magic Spire as fast as I could before nearly sprinting toward the Hotel like a madman.
The Key Master’s eyes widened when I slammed through the front doors, “Having a breakthrough?”
“I think so? We’ll see what my mentor has to say about it!”
I hit the elevator with that and arrived at the market where I full sprinted to the Polaris Family headquarters.
I skidded to a halt in front of Maxwell’s study, blasting through the door.
“Old Man!”
Maxwell glared at me, unsurprised by my appearance, “I could feel your dreadful presence barreling toward this place miles away. What has you so excited? I just got here.”
“You said you worked on the Rails, right?”
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“I didn’t work on them, I invented them. Why?”
“I need to see the designs. Pretty please?”
I stopped in front of his desk and smiled, Maxwell narrowing his eyes.
“Do you know how much trouble I could be in if Gearworks found my designs in Sawn Industries vehicles? I’m not going to give up my free income just so you can make some chump change.”
“I’m not going to copy it. I have a design of my own in the works and I just need to know how the Rail stuff works. I can show you the final product and everything before I hand it off to Sawn! But I need the enchantments. It’ll save me months if not years of research!”
I almost begged, something I very, very rarely did. I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough and Maxwell’s designs were the key.
He sat there, staring at me, contemplating for two full minutes before letting out a loud sigh.
“Dammit boy, you’re testing my trust.”
“What do you mean? I’m the most trustworthy man there is!”
“Hah! We’ll see about that.”
Maxwell went to the side room where his own workstation was, turning it on and pulling up the designs, offloading them onto an Orb.
He threw it at me, and I caught it with great coordination.
“Your work better be revolutionary. If I find that you made some cheap derivative of my design, I’m going to wring your neck and disown you.”
“Trust me! You know I’m smart.”
“You’re a reckless fool with balls for brains. There’s no other way to describe a summoner who actually fights, or a commoner who pines after high nobles.”
“Yes yes, I’m insanely awesome. Gotta go!”
I waved and rushed out, Maxwell’s eye roll almost audible.
I rushed back to the Spire, heading back up to my workstation where Ovidius still lingered. Sawn had left at some point.
“I have the key, Ovidius,” I spoke while bringing out the Orb.
Ovidius tilted his head, “What’s on it?”
“For now, I can’t tell you.” I tossed the Orb onto one of the several cradles on the workstation, “In fact, although I don’t want to be rude, I’m gonna have to ask you to give me some time alone. Sawn might guess what I have but I can’t risk this information leaking. Project security.”
He was looking at me as I turned around, clearly refusing to upload the designs until he wasn’t able to see them.
He rubbed his beard and nodded, “Very well. If you need anything from me, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks.”
With that he left, leaving me alone in my office. I quickly uploaded the designs and got to work.
Over the next week I crunched the data, going over the designs and even notes that Maxwell included. It was invaluable information and yet again, I struggled to make sense of Maxwell’s labors. The man was crazy smart and his designs reflected that.
But I had the knowledge of Earth on my side. I wouldn’t denigrate the man’s work but it was impossible for me not to surpass him with all my advantages.
And so I took his designs for the Rail and conjured up what would be known as the WC2 Mana Engine Mk.1.
Finally, when there were only 4 days left of my time in the capital, I managed to finish the design.
……
Sawn scribbled his signature on some litigation before leaning back and turning his attention toward a large schematic on the screen of his workstation. Highlighted was a small improvement to an existing design from one of his summoners.
He sighed when he saw the supposed efficiency improvement of 4.4%. It was a painfully small number. Normally he’d take it and reward the summoner for a job well done, but now it seemed so inconsequential after he saw what John had made. Right now he was just waiting to apply John’s efficiency design to everything he could.
Unfortunately John had been locked away in his room, working unceasingly on Project Wright. He was excited about it though, waiting patiently for John to present his work. He had even prepared the raise he was going to give him once it was done. Ovidius had wondered why he was already preparing such things, why he was so excited for John’s work.
The answer lay with John’s mentor, Maxwell Albarain. Few knew the name of the summoner who developed the Rails and Steeds, paving the way for all magic-driven vehicles they knew today.
John was actually able to pull on that man’s knowledge, his personal designs! Sawn didn't know how much money he spent on trying to reverse engineer those designs, but John was able to snag them for free and without restriction.
Then he said he was going to make something better. He didn’t know what was brewing in that kid’s head, but he knew it was going to change things.
He was preparing to spend a lot of gold.
Sawn looked down when he heard a sound on his Aerial. It was from John, and the words made him jump out of his seat and rush out.
Ovidius was jogging over as well, the two making their way into John’s office.
John was sitting on his seat behind his workstation, the big screen displaying a massive schematic. He swiveled and smiled at them, standing.
“Gentlemen. I present to you, the WC2 Mana Engine Mark 1.”
“What is it?” Sawn asked, walking around to scrutinize the design. Ovidius remained silent, doing the same.
John smiled wider, “This, sir, is the answer to all my problems. This device turns the power from White Crystals into mechanical force, specifically rotational force. Basically, it turns things.”
John spun his seat, the chair spinning on the shaft that held it. Sawn thought about how simple that concept was, rotating something.
Yet it had demanded John’s full attention and genius. He knew why, but it was still humorous to think about.
John took a step, tapping his screen a few times, “Vehicles are great, but the biggest issue is delivering power to them. You have to move a lot of weight, and fast, and since you guys want to use magic to do that, the biggest problem, the most foundational problem, was how to turn magical power into mechanical, or kinetic, energy. Well, I’ve officially solved that problem, and in the best way possible.”
John brought up the big schematic, zooming in on one part. It was an image of two White Crystals attached to two different structures, the crystals facing each other.
“This right here is the answer. I’ve managed to scrounge up the enchantments to make it work. In its simplest terms, these two White Crystals push against each other and make each other rotate. After that you just attach one to the foundation and the other to a free object. The free object will rotate. Even better, the force exerted is the sum of the force that both crystals output, not just one. At first it was only one but I figured out how to tune them to each other and sum their forces. Either way though,” John stood back and waved to the schematic, “This is it. This is the Mana Engine.”
“Amazing…” Ovidius stepped up and looked at the design. The larger structure had dozens of enchantments, but the main part, the only part that really mattered, was horribly simple. It demanded a singular complex enchantment, but otherwise, there were only two white crystals and the two structures they were attached to. That was it.
It could be applied to nearly anything. Anything where you wanted to make a rod rotate, this was the solution. And how many things could be done by simply making a rod rotate? Sawn couldn’t count the applications in the industrial sector alone, let alone transportation.
The only other question was how efficient it was. As for sheer power, that would be determined by the Authority of the White Crystals being worked with, not the design.
John looked over at Sawn, “I couldn’t let you see anything before because I was using my mentor’s designs, but these are almost completely original now. I’ve only used one application from the Rails which is how to resonate the force applied by the crystals, which isn’t even the backbone of this design. Other than that, it’s all my own.”
“Don’t worry John,” Sawn smiled, “There’s nothing Gearworks could ever do to try and de-legitimize this design. What are the downsides to it?”
“There are three. The first two problems have to do with the mounting. First, is the fact that you have to mount the Crystals at all. It has to be attached to the structure directly so that the forces the crystals put out can be applied to something. The second downside is the fact that the mount has to bear the stress of the force being generated, creating a point of failure. Third is mounting the two structures and their subsequent parts together and combining them into a singular frame that a vehicle can be built upon.”
“That third point is hardly a downside, just a consequence of design, as is the first point, because of course you have to mount the Crystals,” Sawn waved, “That means the only downside is the point of failure, the point at which the Crystal is attached to the structure. Say, do both the two structures have to bear the force? Why isn’t the free structure the only one that bears the force? Why does the unmoving structure have to bear the same force?”
John shrugged, “It was the only way to get the design to work. The crystals have to act against each other to get the rotational force. Basically, the two crystals are pushing on each other and by making those forces slip past each other, we get rotation. Unfortunately, that means the force is applied to both.”
“Interesting,” Sawn rubbed his chin, smiling even wider, “Do you have any vehicle designs yet?”
“Of course,” John rapidly tapped the workstation, “This is my almost finished design for Project Wright.”
The image came up, Sawn seeing one of the ‘planes’ that John designed. It would fly by producing power through the blades at the front, the wings keeping it aloft as it moved at high speeds, just like a bird.
Another simple design, no more than a body with wings and a tail fin. Sawn wondered how it had never been made before.
John pointed, “The Mana Engine will spin this propeller, which draws in and pushes out air. To control it, there is a system of fins that can be adjusted to push the plane up and down, side to side, and make it spin. These dynamics are known as pitch, roll, and yaw, and they allow the pilot to have full control over the plane’s movement during flight. And since these planes won’t carry hardly any weight besides the frame, pilot, and maybe passengers, even with payload they’ll be able to climb to altitudes around 30 thousand feet easily. And if I can figure out how to make turbine designs work, then we’re talking 50 thousand feet plus. The only limit then would be keeping the pilot alive at those altitudes. We’ll need to get measurements on the force White Crystals can generate in the Mana Engine at different Authorities, and then see if we have to worry about torque and horsepower, see if the crystal takes different when it comes to simply rotating fast or under load…”
Sawn looked away when John started delving into his own world. He knew Ovidius would listen, and most importantly, he knew that everything John had on paper would require testing. He had simulated it and it supposedly worked on screen, but that didn’t always translate to the real world, no matter how often Sawn tried to get those simulation programs accurate.
Either way, now they had a prototype of a Mana Engine. It would be the backbone of everything else they created with it, the single most important piece to the puzzle of transportation and magic to mechanical force output they had.
John was right about this changing everything. Sawn could already see it.
That night, he personally went to work on manufacturing the mounts for test products, ordering refits for an entire section of his lab within the Spire.
At the same time, he was putting together a pitch in his mind. As soon as they had a working product, a working plane, he knew they’d be selling like every other weapon out there. Not only that, according to John’s designs, the White Crystals didn’t have to be powerful to achieve the necessary power output to provide a plane with ‘enough lift’. Like his previous designs, the Mana Engine was terribly efficient. That meant they would be as cheap as dirt to produce. It may very well become their most valuable product.
Sawn smiled. He was about to sell flight itself. What was more coveted than that?