“Swallowtail Fairy Wyvern, D. forticatus faietis- The tamest of the wyvern family. It is an omnivorous species that is native to the Great Vale and other areas that are abundant in Aer mana. It comes in a variety of colors but most have a light green hide with some variation of regular patterns on its wings sporting blue, orange or even red circles. Some aelvani arbors keep it as a mount for their rangers. It is however considered very hard to breed and thus does not see much use outside of the areas where it inhabits....”-from Philiarz Warnerskemander’s Bestiary for Adventurers: ‘Exotic Beasties and Where to Find Them.’

Arthur fell into a new routine. Between delving into books and practicing his spells without the World, he’d already become a half-decent mage. Though he had yet to use his spells for any form of combat, his middling arsenal gave him some sort of confidence.

It was an assurance that he was somewhat assimilating into Eryth where magic and arcane beasts prowled. Basics laid down, Arthur started work on enchanting and artificing for the [Enchanter] class.

Inasmuch as Magitech was interesting, it was as equally if not more complicated. A broad discipline, it required arcane knowledge of enchanting and some light smithing. A stubborn Arthur was determined to power through the tomes despite the involuted prose therein, of descriptions, perplexing illustrations and some runecraft that almost drove him bald from head scratching.

Bar none, enchanting was a crafter’s vocation. It leaned into how certain materials behaved and how their intrinsic properties could be exploited to bring about a variety of magical phenomena.

If one wanted to describe magitech, it could have been said to be a branch of magic that married mundane technology and runecraft to create magical items. While magic was pervasive in Eryth, mundane technology seemed almost exotic by comparison, almost fantastic to the people of Eryth.

The underlying basis for meshing the magical and the mundane was to make everyday things a cinch to do and make it efficient while at it. For instance, a steam lift that used magic to generate steam was magitech. It used less mana for, say, conveying loads of goods and people using pure magical levitation or translocation spells.

That said, such things were not widespread because the state of technology propagation being what it was, left much to be desired. Magitech was also the preserve of the insular dwarves who hoarded its knowledge as a source of power and racial pride.

Very few could pay through the nose for whichever magitech the dwarves were willing to part with—for good coin of course. The only thing that could come between a dwarf and their coin too was alcohol and they seemed to never have enough of it. Despite their enterprising ways as crafters, they made for very poor farmers. Ironic that, since they literally lived off the earth.

And therein, trade existed because no one race was ever so self sufficient. With the same magitech, the dwarves found themselves everywhere their services were needed, as builders, crafters, enchanters, smiths…and brewers.

Their voracious appetites for good alcohol and food which could not be sourced within, forced them to look elsewhere and their crafting prowess gave Eryth its aerships. Then they became merchants and sailors too.

Dwarven trading outposts and ports grew to accommodate their need for a stable supply chain which again spurred more development of their magitech. While the Mages Guild held monopoly over communications, the dwarves became a transportation and magitech hegemony.

Somewhat familiar, magitech might have just been something up Arthur’s alley after all. That, even the dragon felt though she did not deign to point it out. As the World was wont, Arthur’s painstaking efforts to understand magitech were with the [Enchanter] class .

And there were two skills to show for it, [Basic Rune Lore] which told him what runes could do, how they were made and how they interacted with mana while [Eidetic Memory] helped him remember them and hasten rune etching without referring to reading material all the time. And that was only focusing on the theoretical part of things!

Although the class was low level then, Arthur knew that it was his ticket to getting the Locus affinity if and when he got around to working on storage items. It might have started as an offhand comment but, Arthur just so happened to be one of those people with an engineer's knack.

He loved deconstructing things, seeing how they worked and then putting them back together otherwise he wouldn't have touched those large titles on the discipline, not even with a pole.

For the time being, Arthur was satisfied with sketching blueprints for conceptual aerships. He envisioned the fantastical shapes, theoretical propulsion systems while trying to find a workaround the bottleneck that was scarce learning resources. He was so close he could taste it.

“Still at it [Lost Worlder], aren’t we?” said Aeskyre as she peered at his scrawlings. After a while she had finally decided if Arthur had his own space to work from, she would no longer suffer him muttering whining while he worked or fell into his flights of fancy. Even a dragon could only take so much before they bit off someone’s head or vaporized them with lightning breath.

“I had an epiphany from my dreams.” Arthur started, furtively eyeballing the dragon to see her reaction. “ I think I have found an idea for my own aership without sacrificing either size or power. That means I should be able to build an aership of the size I want without worrying how large my mana sail has to be,” he said, grinning.

“Truly? You have my attention.”

“I was going through Nys’vera’s Properties and uses of Magicore and Mana Crystals, especially the section about Aer and pyr aspected magicore and mana crystals when an idea came to me. What if I could use the magicore and mana crystals as raw sources of fuel for an aership. Maybe the answer to my quandary was in front of me all along.”

“Are you certain? I hope you recall that such attempts to use them directly have not been successful. Unless you have come up with some sort of magitech mechanism that is nothing short of radical in its workings. That must be it, is it not?”

“Correct,” Arthur gesticulated excitedly, “that dream I had was the brainchild. It was a memory about a flying machine from my world and I think I can design an engine that uses Aer aspected magicore or Aertherite crystals.”

“Let’s see, the problems you are going to tackle here are…” Aeskyre said as she scooted over to look at his blueprints “One; slowing down the decomposition of stored magicore—

“Magicore is deemed an unstable state of mana that has to be confined within a suitable vessel to slow down or eliminate the process of decomposition using null-steel? I see…She tapped her lip with her well manicured claws; Beautiful and deadly.

“That is ingenious.” She added, “ There is no need for enchantments to perform similar functions when you can have a mundane metal with the lowest magical conductivity do it. Compared to enchantments that do the same task, it costs less mana that way—you won’t need to replace degrading runes.

“Exactly,” added Arthur. “I think the use of runes is just a business model by dwarven artificers to have return customers. Though the storage containers they use have traces of null-steel to slow down degradation of stabilizing enchantments. It is still inefficient. I wonder why nobody has tried that before.”

“Like you, I have no inkling. However… this is a momentous discovery,” Aeskyre smiled toothily.

“The second issue is that magitech can make motive propulsion via raw magicore possible. “ She read on. “ Possible concepts include a type of rotary thaumic combustion engine that uses an Aer and Pyr mixture to provide thrust…” At this, Aeskyre could only crease her eyebrows in consternation.

“I never took you for a pyromaniac Arthur Tyrell. A mixture of Pyr and Aer is unstable,“ she scrunched her eyebrows in perplexity. “ Is it even viable for what you’re trying to do?”

“I think you should read the rest of the notes before you make a conclusion. Let’s see—here are my inferences .” Arthur said as he pointed to a highlighted section

“The workaround for the explosive nature of the Aer and Pyr mixture lies in the ratio of their interaction. I suggest that a one-time infusion of the Pyr magicore into the decomposing Aer magicore should be enough to provide a self-sustaining thaumic reaction. The ratio of the Pyr to the Aer magicore should be one part for every eight.”

“What do you think of that?”

“How did you come to infer this? ”

“Mathematics,” Arthur said with a smirk as he rubbed off the ink smudges from his knuckles.

‘When you mentioned spell matrices, I knew there was a catch somewhere.’ he said internally. ‘ I thought I might not understand all that dwarven gibberish about surface area to mana conversion of a mana sail, Aer output and concentration for Aer ballast tanks but what words failed to describe, numbers triumphed.

“I never thought to quantify the reactions of magical phenomena through numbers. Though that is thanks to my [Eidetic memory] I could work out some of the numbers in my head, the calculations should be somewhere around the study but meh, I can’t bring myself to organize them.”

“I can see you already have a proof of concept,” Aeskyre said as she held the blueprint against the light of the sconces.

The drawing showed an oblong board that was one and a half times as tall as Arthur was tall by the notations. The craft featured a singular sail that was mounted slightly centre right of the board. Unlike the mana sails on conventional aerships, this sail was shaped like a bisected leaf.

The mana conduits branched out from the mast towards the edges as the veins on a real leaf would. There was a boom that not only held the shape of the sail taut but also provided somewhere its user could secure themselves and steer at the same time. Towards the back of the board was the contraption that should make the craft’s propulsion possible—Eryth’s first mana internal reaction engine designed for flight.

“Does this invention of yours have a name?”

“Hmm? I am still working on it. I’ll just go with ‘Mark One’ until I have the real thing working.”

“How soon can you get it made?”

“In a few days I guess,” Arthur said with a raised eyebrow. ‘ I thought you were rather aloof about this. What’s changed?’

“ I have to put together some specialized equipment like a Pyr welding torch, a drill that can punch through ironwood, rivets and safety goggles. Safety goggles are going to be hard to find. Want to help?”

“Of course, why’d you think I asked?” she huffed. “ We elder races rarely have much in the way of pastime. I’ll get you the ironwood tomorrow and your confounded pair of safety goggles if you can tell me how to make them.

“A drill bit made from mithril should serve you well,” she added, giving her two cents. “As for the gliding spider silk for the mana sail and red mithril for the mana collecting conduits, my hoard does not lack for such things. What else do you need?”

“Mithril should be strong enough, yes. Besides the ironwood, I think I’ll need some stainless steel for the engine casing; I think you call it dwarfsteel here. As for the rivets and the inside components, null steel should suffice.”

“Why red mithril ? I would think that pure mithril collects and conducts mana better. Besides, other aerships do use an alloy of mithril and silver woven into their mana sails.”

“Blue mithril is well and good for large sails. But red mithril has the mana conductivity of mithril and the tensile and torsional strength of copper, that’s what I am aiming for. I want to prove that my engine uses the mana it collects more efficiently by using red mithril. It is a proof of concept and a control project in one, like hitting two birds with one stone.”

Aeskyre hummed, “You come up with excellent ideas human. Do not disappoint me.”

“I don't rememb—” Arthur pointed out. Aeskyre’s eyes glinted dangerously. Arthur backpedaled. “ Ah, now I remember, where was I…yes, the effects of mithril alloy purity on mana conversion—”

The following day was the beginning of the three day Erythean weekend. However, compared to weekdays, Arthur and Aeskyre were even busier. On se’taday, sixth day of the nundine, Arthur was finalizing the creation of artificing tools that would help make his designs a reality.

Once again, Aeskyre’s lair happened to have an old, abandoned forge as part of the ancient structure. Whatever the complex was, it contained more rooms than Aeskyre knew what to do with.

The mithril drill bit was the tricky part even with Aeskey’s draconic strength. It was one of the most resilient metals on Eryth alongside a host of other magical metals. A small ingot, barely the size of Aeskyre’s simulcran palms, took concentrated bursts of lightning from her dragon breath to mold into shape.

The ironwood board also required a bit of exertion but not so much that even Arthur could assist using a plane and a saw. Though his strength was nowhere near Aeskyre’s, he still pulled his weight.

The most delicate part of all was assembling the engine. Arthur had to mold the engine casing and assemble it as well. Etching the mana conduits that conveyed magicore had to be done with dexterous hands as was the placement of the Aertherite crystal that gave the board its lift.

The Aertherite crystal was a turquoise gem resembling emerald beryl. It was the stable crystallized form of the Aer mana that would be used as a mana catalyst of sorts, transforming collected mana from the sail into the magical phenomenon responsible for lighter than air levitation. That was the crux of how an unwieldy dwarven aership achieved flight worthiness.

The principle operating in aership was such that, mana sails collected pure mana and Aer mana from the atmosphere. The mana was channeled to an Aertherite crystal suspended inside the Aer ballast tanks strategically placed within the aerships hull. As mana was channeled into the crystal,the confined Aer mana within the ship’s ballast tanks made the ship lighter than air.

It worked as any lighter than air gas from Arthur’s world would, excepting that the efficiency of lift per volume occupied was way higher. That meant that with a reduction of the cargo hold, the aerships could still retain their shapes, and have a sail without resorting to dirigible design. As for the craft he was making, since it barely weighed more than he did; it had no need for an Aer ballast tank

Nonetheless, with natural laws still well and true, the rotary joints had to be oiled with a heat resistant lubricant obtained from some sort of wurm creature. Where Aeskeyre found it, she didn’t say.

While Arthur had no blacksmithing skill, it could not be said that he would lose his way around a forge. Besides, Aeskyre’s draconic magic made short work of melting down the metal he wanted to use.

Putting the sail and the mast together took some trial and error but eventually he did it. Etching the mana conveyance system from red mithril the mast into the engine where the Aertherite crystal sat was also a rather time intensive process.

For this engine, there was no need for Pyr mana crystals because the volume was rather small and the propulsion provided would exceed the engine’s tolerances. Septday and Octi’sday passed the same way.

Towards the end of Octi’sday Arthur secured the engine to the board of ironwood with rivets. He even added the straps which provided a bracing for the rider’s feet. There were controls in the middle of these straps which contained runes to regulate the amount of mana fed to the engine via a pedal shift.

Arthur did level again afterwards getting the [Advanced Crafting] and [Artificing] skills as part of an [Enchanter]’s skillset. He’d grown into a level 10 [Enchanter] and His leveling speed was meteoric, even by Eryth’s standards.

On Oon’sday, the first day of the working week for any respectable adult on Eryth, the craft was done. Arthur named it the Azure Surfer; and that had nothing to do with its color but rather, what it was intended for.

Despite the rigors of working over the weekend, both human and dragon woman were chipper and couldn’t wait for testing. After checking with [Detect Flaw] to ensure everything was in order, Arthur slotted in the mast holding the mana sail. Meant to be detachable, it made it easier to store and fit through small spaces.

As soon as the mast was slotted in, the mana sail lit up with a turquoise glow that showed mana was being collected. The mana was fed into the mast through the conduits then into the board with barely any lag like a closed circuit.

Bits of dust and detritus underneath the ironwood board were displaced as the Mark One hummed, churned out gusts of air. Slowly, the board lifted off the ground, courtesy of the passive enchantments channeling the threshold of mana required to hold it aloft.

Loud silence pervaded the workshop as if the World itself had stopped to witness the occasion—Arthur and Aeskyre regarded one another. The human was smiling, while the dragon showed the barest hints of one as the side her lips twitched. From the way his eyes lit up, Arthur was trying so hard to rein in his emotions. That night, in his sleep,

[Inventor Cl…]

“Not a chance. ” he mumbled, drifting back a restful slumber.

[New Class Acquisition Declined!]