The Runic Alchemist

The construction was simple—a large wooden box supported by thick pillars. Damian deliberately kept it basic to avoid wasting mana. Besides, the wall-making wood-style spell was the most common spell shared by everyone present.

With their permission, Damian took control of their spells using his mana threads. He shaped and sized the effects precisely as he wanted, utilizing their mana to do so. The resulting workshop—a box-like wooden structure with a dirt floor—wasn't meant to be durable or secure. Its purpose was simply to provide a workspace protected from the weather.

Once the basic structure was complete, Damian added essential storage areas, seating, and large tables for their blueprints. It took half a day, but finally, they were ready to begin building the design they had been planning for months.

After lunch, Damian and Reize, with help from Elias and Lumi, began constructing the base skeleton of their blueprint. Transferring tools and the many prefabricated parts Reize had already made was easy and straightforward, thanks to multiple spatial storage devices.

They had a month to finish. Damian aimed to dive into the dungeon once the students returned from vacation. If he could use this month efficiently, the project might be completed on time.

This was the largest and most ambitious build Damian had ever undertaken by pure complexity and size. In its simplest form, it was a massive hovercraft designed to carry over 100 people or a load of up to 10,000 kilograms. If everything worked as planned, it could potentially reach an altitude of 15,000 meters. However, Damian hadn't told Reize about its full potential; she believed it was just a hovercraft capable of moving across any surface—land or water—powered by his mana generator system.

Of course, that last part, just like many other parts of it, still needed to be worked on.

The craft's primary function relied on a gravity-reversal spell, supplemented by a weight-reduction spell and an air-platform spell Grace had demonstrated during their first test. The gravity-reversal spell was the core of the system. After researching and testing dozens of flight mechanisms, Damian found this method to be the simplest and most mana-efficient—at least in theory.

The mana requirement for lift was massive but mostly a one-time expenditure. After achieving lift, maintaining control and steering the craft was relatively straightforward. The main challenge was that the gravity-reversal spell worked only on living things, not inanimate objects. While it was technically possible to reverse the gravity of non-living objects, the mana cost was prohibitively high. Even with his mana core, the craft would become impractical to use after a few attempts.

The solution Damian found came from the most unexpected source. He had noticed a greenhouse class student carrying a peculiar plant, unlike anything he had seen on Earth. Intrigued, he observed the swaying, vine-like greenery, which resembled a money plant. Using his analyze spell, he discovered it was classified as a type of creature—too adorable to be considered a monster, but who knew what it would become after leveling and evolving.

This gave him an idea—trees. Since plants were technically living things, they might also have IDs that allowed them to be effected with the gravity-reversal spell. Testing the spell on a small plant in the academy grounds confirmed his theory. Small plants were uprooted easily, but larger trees remained grounded, with only a slight strain. Their roots anchored them to the ground.

Damian and Reize delved into botany and agriculture texts to find a way to integrate plants into their design. They discovered a light-element spell that accelerated plant growth. While Damian's vine spell didn't work because it created artificial plants without IDs, only naturally grown plants and trees had IDs.
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Evrin demonstrated the spell in action, showcasing her expertise in wood-style magic, a staple of Elven skills. Having a divine tree in her home, she had mastered all the essential spells to nurture it if ever became necessary-it was one of their "responsibilities" she said. As always, Damian modified the spell, removing its limiter and making it mana-dependent. With the abundant mana provided by the mana liquid, he was confident he could grow a tree at the center of the craft and seamlessly integrate it into the structure by shaping it. This would allow the gravity-reversal spell to anchor the entire hovercraft.

A small-scale test had already proven successful.

The plan was to build the carrier from wood of the tree and then reinforce it with metal. Gravity reversal was just one method. Damian wanted at least two backup systems in case it failed.

The first alternative was to create massive mechanical rotor blades powered by wind and attraction-repulsion spells. These could generate lift or aid in descent if needed. The rotor blades would need to be enormous, with a carefully calculated ratio to the craft's size. It was one of the easy parts though, just simple metal work.

The second involved using Vidalia's flying spell, etched into the craft's wide steel sides, to provide additional stability and balance. The spell alone could be used to fly but the mana required would be astronomical and his mana core wouldn't be able to support that.

To power everything, Damian planned to dedicate a section to the mana core generator system, along with a crude operating system like something capable of controlling the numerous runes while optimizing mana usage. Centralized activation of all runic components from a single location was critical.

He envisioned using mana nodes connected to a control hub, allowing seamless activation of runic parts. Additionally, he needed a system to efficiently transfer mana where it was required. Mana-guiding enchantments were a significant help, but he also needed to implement gear-controlled locking mechanisms within the enchanted pipes. These mechanisms would allow for precise mana flow regulation with simple actions.

Here, he had ample space to design an efficient and reliable mana-generating mechanism. Creating a compact version was far more challenging than building a larger one, so this shouldn't pose any significant issues.

Although components like the pieces of rotor blades and hull were already fabricated and only needed assembly, there were still countless details to finalize before the project could be completed.