Chapter 184: Enterprise

I teleport the crate of materials with [Immaculate Translocation] into my shop. It contains the last of the mana-producing materials I need to make the flagship reactor.

I thank the deliveror and get to work. It has been another week, but fortunately, materials that produce elemental mana are far more common than the ones that produce reserved mana, so it didn’t take long for the rest of the materials I need.

Finally, after so long, the Flagship will be finished. It had saved the village when we needed to evacuate during the cursed being crisis, been buried under a landslide, and continually served to transport people in times of need, all while being unfinished, and now I will give it a heart to bring it alive… metaphorically, hopefully.

How do I do this? I ask myself. What is the best way to make this reactor?

Should I start with the elemental mana-producing materials first, inscribe the mana transforming inscription and get those out of the way? Or should I start with the best materials first?

I won’t be implanting a mana core into it; first, I don’t have the necessary breakthroughs to copy and transfer my mana core, and second I am worried [Astral Projection] is what’s draining my anima, and using it may make it worse.

For now, I start with a general sphere shape sitting on a stand, both shaped from solid vitality. Vitality helps animated the body, so it’s poetic that the reactor, which will fuel the ship giving it life, is made from vitality.

I begin to inscribe the mana transforming inscriptions on its surface, cutting out holes in the center. Since the inscriptions are coreless, they don’t use that spot anyway, and since solid vitality prevents mana from passing through it, the mana needs some way to escape this part of the reactor.

I then build another sphere around that held a centimeter off and inscribe it, but that’s when I noticed a flaw in my design. The vitality is slowly transforming into reserved mana which destroys the inscription.

I should have known this! I chastise myself. It is a complete oversight that I should have worked out already!

The solution is to make solid, reserved mana; the problem is that reserved mana is completely inert, it has no mechanism that allows that, and it’s generally a bad idea since reserved mana easily transforms into other types of mana which can lead to degradation of the reactor if it’s production is impure.

I start to pace back and forth, trying to figure out how to get passed this hurdle. Any mana structures I place this inscription on will erode as it’s turned into reserved mana which means this part will have to be made out of mundane materials.

With no other way around it, I visit my parent’s shop to get some steel and reshape the steel ingot with [Beauty Blessing]. The ingot slowly reshapes into the sphere as inscriptions etch into its surface. I take another ingot and do the same, forming a sphere around the first, held just a centimeter off. I finish it with a third sphere to make all the mana produced by the items transformed into reserved mana.

With the sphere done, I fuse each of the elemental mana-producing materials together and teleport it into the sphere and watch for over an hour to make sure it’s working properly and efficiently.

Once satisfied, I start with the rest of the reactor. I mold the rest of the materials around the sphere, the ones that produce reserved mana, and seal the whole thing with a shell of solid vitality to prevent any leakage. I make a hole where it is going to attach to the airship’s mana wiring and move on to the decorating process.

I paint over the reactor with super-solid beauty and space essence, making a design of intricate lines like that of two hemispheres coming together on a black sphere.

With the reactor now finished, I take it to the airship to finally install it, but I am not done yet. There are three more things left to do: Make the emergency thrusters, the defensive cannons and ammunition, and the final decoration and inscription.

With the reactor being a good source of mana to draw upon, I start with the cannons, making them out of super-solid mana and enchanting them to fire projectiles at high speeds. It would be bad if the airship runs out of ammo and is unable to defend itself, so I also make two laser cannons that each draws upon its own battery room, which is fueled by mana gathering inscriptions that feed mana into several inscriptions that transforms that mana into reserved mana then runs through several enchantments that turn that mana into spell mana before finally being stored in the batteries which serve as capacitors. As much as ten thick mana wiring feeds the mana into the laser cannons to draw as much mana as needed for the powerful weapons.

Each laser cannon should be able to sustain fire for three minutes which is enough to drill through all but the hardiest or most regenerative things and creatures. The only downside is that it will take at least a day to fully fill the capacitors but will likely take longer in an area of normal mana density.

With the cannons finally done, I get to work on the ammunition. The plan is to make them out of liquid mana, but the unstable mana is always hard to work with, not to mention very volatile, like nitroglycerin. However, making a shell of normal super-solid mana around it should make it safe for storage and make it fireable from the cannons.

Now that I think about it, I should add another battery room that I can draw upon strictly for making more ammo, but this leads to another issue, it can’t be fed by the reactor since that is solely for the flight, spatial enchantments, and normal operations of the airship. The weapons are being powered by mana being drawn in by inscriptions which leave no room for this battery to be fueled… unless I increase the surface size of the ship. If I add huge sails not for the flight of the airship but rather as a mana scoop, then they can be deployed for faster recharge of the airship’s emergency resources!

The more I mark off on my to-do list, the more gets added to it, but that’s normal in pioneering technologies like this.

Over the next day, I add deployable fans with layers of mana collection inscriptions. These are made of mundane materials, so I can use the most efficient inscriptions without destroying the mana structure. When fully deployed, the fans will double the rate at which mana is collected. Te mana isn’t transformed into reserved mana in the fans but in small rooms made to be capable of transforming the amount of flowing through it. Also, if the fans are broken off, I only have to worry about one inscription, not two.

Now that is out of the way and drawing in more mana for me to work with, I get back to making the ammo. This is the part that takes the longest, a whole week! Liquid mana is already incredibly dense and uses a ton of mana to make but not only that; I needed to make hundreds of them for several types of spells that can be used to target an attacker’s weakness.

With the defenses made, the last addition left to do is the emergency thrusters. I have been planning their design ever since I completed the mana transforming inscription and have settled on a design that I like. It works a lot like a plane engine where, through the use of enchantments, it compresses air before feeding it into a heating chamber; the heating chamber mixes liquid fire mana with the air to superheat it, causing rapid expansion for maximum thrust.

The most difficult part of the design is conserving as much liquid mana as possible and not dumping it out with the heated air, but unfortunately, I was unable to make a perfect design. There is still a significant loss of mana, but due to the nature of the heating chamber, there is no way around it.

The thrusters have to be compact enough to be practical, and this means that the fastest way to heat up the air is to use liquid mana; running it through a mesh of solid fire mana is not enough for the intended use of the thrusters.

That doesn’t mean I won’t use less powerful, more efficient thrusters. I make four of them on the sides of the airship for redundancy of the normal operations; if anything happens to the thrust sails, the backup thrusters, which produce less thrust, will at least keep the airship moving, and since they are compact compared to the sails, they are perfect for the job.

This leaves the final touches, the decoration. This ship is going to be traveling all over the place; it should have a design most would appreciate, a non-offensive and neutral design. I settle on a sleek and modern style that accentuates the shape of the ship. I incorporate the inscriptions on its surface into the design of the decorations, with swirling patterns forming from the bow of the ship, which repeats along the length of the airship.

With that done, I take one last look over my work, but something nags me; however, something is missing.

“What’s wrong?” Kadona asks. She and Uloru have been keeping an eye on me while I work on the airship to make sure I am not draining my anima, and so far, they haven’t noticed anything.

“... It needs a name,” I say after a moment of pondering the issue. “It’s the most important airship we have ever made.”

“I see,” Kadona says, adopting a thinking pose. “What about… Fu… Fo… Ash?”

Fufoash… Fall refusing boat? Really?!

I give Kadona a dissatisfied look before glancing at Uloru

“Umm,” Uloru says a little bashfully, “Ka… amash?”

Kaamash, great sky boat? You literally want to call it the great airship?! At least it’s better than Kadona’s suggestion.

Kadona and Uloru’s naming sense needs some work, but I can’t really blame them. The airship should have a name that really describes what it’s all about. It’s about exploration, trading, and meeting new people. It kind of reminds me of a show about exploring space.

Entylamo? I ponder. Frontier, explore, greet people. It basically means “to seek out new frontiers and meet new people,” which is its mission. It’s as close as I can get it to calling it the Enterprise in the Runalymo language.

I write the name on the back of the airship, and for a split second, everything is still, as if the calm before the storm, then mana starts to fall into the Airship, rushing in faster and faster. Recognizing the transformation of a magic item, I scan my magic framework, looking at my cursed skills to see if any of them are activating, and to my horror, [Astral Projection] shines brightly, a clear indication of its activation.

“To intentionally make a magic Item, you need a sacrifice” Kayafe’s words echo in my mind; the sacrifice has always been my anima. The condition of the skill’s curse is clear to me; anything I create receives a portion of my anima to literally project my life into my creations.

More and more mana is sucked in, so much so that a growing field of depleted mana covers the entire village! I don’t know if it’s because of its tier or its size, but the airship has consumed the most amount of mana of all of my magic items so far.

That’s when I feel something being torn away from me as a coldness washes through my body and soul. I fall to my knees, and the world seems to fade in and out, and finally, the cold darkness takes me.