Augeo ;this is intrinsic magic also known as augmentation. To bring about its intended effect, it first has to act upon a mage or an artefact upon the mage’s person before something is realized. There is a blurred line between such magic and skills and this is covered in depth under Introduction to Battle Magic for those undergoing such specializations. All Skills can be considered Augeo but not all Augeo can be Skills. From: Introduction to Arcane Workings, Curricula of Magecraft, Xzerion Institute and Arcanum.

Despite putting his entire oomph to it, smoothing the wood wrung him out. The ironwood was very resilient. Whatever blade the plane had been made of, it was a surprise that it hadn’t gone blunt

‘Another [Eversharp] rune,’ Arthur noted as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Woodwork, at least was straightforward―he didn’t need a tome for that. As for the design, what he was aiming for was a longboard slightly south of 8 feet which would put it at least 2 metres or its equivalent in the dwarven metronic system.

There was no steel tape but notching new measures on a piece of dwarven steel with extraordinarily sharp chisels was a piece of cake. The deviations and errors would not encumber him so.

Arthur then hollowed out the board a quarter ways to the back to make an engine emplacement and drilled a hole for the mast slot. He also made another slightly shorter board with some allowance that he could just rivet to the main body―it was halfway done because chiseling out wood was harder than it was worth.

Would he have shaped a sheet of steel, things would have gone quicker but he cared for aesthetics. He took his liberties with it because, unlike actual wood, there was no danger of the worked pieces splitting along the grain in ways he didn’t want

The engine would be distributed halfway inside the main body and half in the lower then secured with rivets. Heating up the bolts and letting them cool was a great way to get things sealed up snugly.

When done, the board was going to be thicker at the back, bulging underneath but maintaining the overall dynamic shape instead of making the board look like a shoe sole or a ramjet. He’d worked around plane wings way too many times to forget.

The front portion of the board also had to undergo the same treatment so that he could sandwich the aerostat floats in between

‘Joy, more woodwork,’ Arthur mused.

By the time he’d gotten to a level satisfactory to down his tools, it was already evening. The next phase would take closer to a nundine because it was finer work. He’d also have to spend some of that time reading the beginner material on smithing just to start using the arcane forge too.

“ You have been busy,” Aeskyre said as she took in the scene in the workshop. The floor was covered in metallic gray wood chipping and Arthur was just about nursing his wrists as he set down the tool chest. He’d used the rest of his time to organize the tools he’d want in one place by emptying one and making his choice picks from others.

“ That I have,” Arthur replied as he took off his gloves. He dragged a heavy stool and slumped on it before massaging his temples. “ Looks like it will take forever to get things done,” he smiled wryly.

A plethora of tool chests lay scattered around him. Every tool chest he rummaged had the eccentricities of its uses, sigaldry and names that he’d grown to associate with the dwarves. Goldfinger's tools had to have been a jeweler’s while Irontooth had the heavy duty tools that couldn’t have been anything but maintenance tools for the ill-fated ship from which Aeskyre had gotten it.

“ Hmph!, “ Aeskyre snorted . “ I can tell you’re too proud to ask for my assistance.” the woman added. She sauntered between the work tables, right up to the two parts of the board that Arthur was still fabricating and then peered at the blue print alongside seeming to read his notes as if she’d known the language all along.

Before Arthur could respond―

“Allow me,” she said as her eyes glinted. Her aura became palpable, thickening the air with static charge so much that Arthur thought a storm was brewing. Metal flew off the supply crates, toppling some in its flight as it came to levitate above her head. Some of the ingots halted mid-flight. With a twitch of her fingers, Arthur watched the dwarf-steel groan and buckle, contorting into each shape he’d drawn up before flying into an empty crate. He’d have to check those for stress. However, Aeskyre wasn't done—

“ Avert your eyes,” she warned. Arthur had the barest of breaths to slap down the dwarven goggles before the air exploded with eye-searing brightness. More metal flew into the air. The heat was a literal furnace burning in the middle of the workshop. In spite of the goggles' tinting , it took shielding his eyes to chance a squint at what the brazen woman was doing.

Aeskyre was manipulating molten metal like putty, shaping several things at once. Lightning was arcing through them, maintaining its liquefied state as she molded it with telekinesis.

Props large and small formed, accompanied by condenser turbines with their fine toothed tilted blades. Beads of isolated metal coalesced into ball bearings, bolts and the smallest components which would have required precision work and trial and error to make.

Larger specimens turned into shafts condensing chambers, the main thaumic reaction chambers and the nozzles. It was then that he realized she'd made most of the components of the first and the second iteration of his engines.

By the time his skin had gotten uncomfortably dry and the air harder to breathe, the light died out and Aeskyre's aura retracted. Arthur blinked the spots from his eyes, peering towards the storm of metal floating around the draconic woman. He recognized the metal that had been used; most had a copper tinge—red mithril, a few had blue accents for blue mithril the rest had a sterile sheen of an unknown metal—

' Is that aluminium?!' Arthur gasped as he removed his goggles. “Never would I have guessed—I couldn't find its name or likeness anywhere!” He exclaimed as the fabricated material floated down, wrapped in a telekinetic field to ensure it held its shape while cooling.

“Ah, yes yes…the elusive faesteel. Strong and light yet not as inexpensive, but no less cheap than svartanite steel.”

Arthur paused at svartanite steel before he realized his thoughts were a tangle of knots—

“But why do this?” Arthur asked. He'd thought the dragon would just leave him to his own devices after showing him to the workshop and be done with it.

”Watching you bumbling about is like looking at grass grow—after seeing these blueprints you speak off and the smell of smoke and fire, I thought you already an accomplished craftsman,” Aeskyre sniffed. “Imagine the disappointment—”

'Ouch,' Arthur felt the jab at his pride. He wanted to blurt out the first thing that came to his mind, perhaps explaining that Earth had different standards of professions and people were specialists rather than generalists. And had no cheats like the World Skills—

“Ah, I see why that might be the case. I was just an avionics tech—not much of an engineer. I am what a [Rune Scribe] is to a [Rune Smith],” Arthur said, smiling deprecatingly.

“Hmm, is that so? And the smell of smoke and fire is not from a forge?”

”Ah, combustion I guess? I didn't know it was that bad.” Arthur shrugged noncommittally. “In my world, we substitute what you have as magic with combustion to drive vehicles, on the roads, seas and in the air and factories.

”Intriguing—” Aeskyre hummed. “ It is no surprise of mine that you are so taken with aerships then,”

“Ah, thanks I guess,” Arthur replied. He cast about to see how much work had been brought forward and revised his plans. From there, the only thing standing between him and his first engine was assembly. He shelved that for the following day—he was too wrung out to carry on despite the excitement.

“Seeing as the day is at end…shall we have an eve repast? Come—while we eat ,you shall regale me with tales of Earth [Lost-Worlder]...” she said in a tone that brook no refusal.

“Eh, even with a little amnesia there's a lot to go over…where shall I begin?”

“Hmm, perhaps how it came to be that the amount of work done by a horse came to be a measure of power.”

Arthur could only shake his head in amusement.

The rune scriber was like an antique tattoo machine, meant to scribe the runes under the skin—or in this case, the leather. For metal, the etching was carried out differently, only the binder was used or not at all because the runes would readily stick wherever it was etched.

For metals, the rune scriber was a gem tipped stylus been cut to a point like a pen's nub. Another gem at the top of the stylus glowed like an indicator whenever the scriber was in use. It could also be used as a tester of sorts to see if the runecraft worked.

Etching runes while visualizing their matrices was akin to drawing with one's eyes closed. He had to visualize the matrix and hold it in his consciousness while also imbuing mana through the rune scriber in his fingers. And that was done while simultaneously fighting against the metal’s resistance to set the rune. It was more mana intensive than casting spells. He could only afford to write a dozen before he had to rest. If Aeskyre said it was normal for beginners—then the experts were monsters!

Translating every wiggle, curve, edge or point from his mind to the actual surface of whichever material he was working with was like coding. He'd done coding with electronics, done troubleshooting for systems that had gremlins and done cyclic redundancy checks until his patience ran thin. But this? This was another level of torture.

Collapsed runes also meant that he had not only lost mana but also time. Each rune etched made moments seem like a thousand breaths had passed. Which made needing to assess the depth of his mana well all the more inescapable if he wanted to economize his time. Feeling full or half full was not telling him much.

It was as he was perusing his notes while testing how much work it took to etch runes on different metals that he realised it. Magic users had to train to their utmost limits and then add experience to tell how far their spells flew, or fast their mana recharged and perhaps how much damage they meted out.

For non-metals he knew that one had to use crystal pine resin as binder and metallic powder as a conduit. Copper, Silver, Fae-steel, Argerum, Gold, Magillium and Mithril could be used in order of availability or cost.

Iron was a bad magical conductor as was its resultant alloys like Dwarf-Steel. He didn't delve too much into the intricacies or metallurgy. As an Avionics technicians, he knew enough about the quirks of metals to infer that there was empirical justification which he could always study it later.

“Sample number 3 done. Blue mithril takes considerably more mana to enchant than Red mithril…that is the difference between Copper and Silver I guess?” Arthur murmured to himself. Despite the echoes of sleep in his mind, he felt himself ready to start working. The night before, he'd narrated stories and the history of his world to the dragon and gone to sleep at midnight as a result.

Explaining why horse power was used as a measure of work done had him explain the calculations and derivations. Never would he have thought to teach a dragon Earth mathematics and physics. Truth be told that was nothing compared to reconciling Eryth and Earth systems of units.

At least he’d calculated the theoretical engine output for a theoretical magier engine; an engine powerful enough to churn out 1150 horsepower to push a twenty tonne, 42 metres long yacht or its equivalent metronic values, 17.25 metres a second, assuming the aerostat floats had a buoyancy factor that negated the unladen weight by a factor of 500 percent.

And such values were based on the output from pure, unaspected mana. If he started factoring the conversion constant of actual aer and pyr fusion, he could expect that value to reach 72 metres a second under the assumption that it put out 4.98 times more power due to the nature of its thaumic reactions.

That was the top speed of a posh, equine badged turbo engine churning 761 horsepower. However, even if he had all the components at hand he was leery of using actual pyr in his tests until he took some safety precautions .

Only after putting his fantasies of owning the fastest inanimate flier in the skies, did Arthur start his crafting. One [Aggregation] rune at a time, he started with the interior of the mana condenser chamber using red mithril. He’d fashioned the thing after one of those sports car catalytic converters, split in half lengthwise so he could work on the inside before securing the two pieces together―it took him all morning to do one side.

And how time flew. Arthur lost count of the days, noting their passing by his host’s insistence that he go to sleep . He was oftentimes, dead on his feet that he was shepherded along like a child caught staying up late watching the telly. His single minded focus had a tendency to give him tunnel vision when all he cared about was what was right in front of him.

The days leading up to its completion offered an almost cathartic euphoria as he oiled joints and double-checked the mana conduits for breaks. The welding seams of the engine nacelle were passable, he just had to chip off some slag. Fortunately, dwarf steel was easy to do that way.

For lubrication, he went the old fashioned way; rotary joints were oiled with heat resistant lubricant obtained from a sort of creature called a lava wurm. It was common enough for him to find it in some of the greasy tool chests which left him wondering what kind of mechanic class the owner had possessed.

As for the sail, he appropriated a dwarven ship’s stabilizer wing-sail. He had to reinforce the frame and refit a sturdy mast but he did it. Then it had been a matter of reworking the mana conveyance system from the mast to the conduit’s receptacle, a socket with spring release that he could detach as easily as he would release an umbrella.

The moment of truth was the slotting in the aertherite crystal. Arthur found the smallest canister he could from the sundries he’d taken upon to organize into crates. They had been organized into spent crystals, half spent and almost fully charged crystals by testing them with a rune scriber. The brighter they lit up the better.

The canister was reminiscent of the vacuum tube, bottle shaped with leads at the top and bottom. At the very least it might have weighed as much as a 1 litre bottle or 1 aum of weight. Much of it a result of the sturdy casing with a glass aperture that let him see the crystal within.

Aertherite was turquoise and bore an uncanny resemblance to emeralds and beryl crystals. Even past its containment, Arthur swore he could feel the static charge of its power; he wondered if it could readily be converted to electric power.

The canister was soon secured to the engine which was subsequently fastened to the board of ironwood with rivets. Straps for the rider’s feet were added, in the middle, a simple pedal switch to shunt mana to or away from the engine as he saw fit

It was Octis’day when he leveled again. About a nundine and a half had passed. Arthur leveled afterwards, getting the [Adroit Handicraft] skill as part of his [Enchanter]’s skillset.

By Eryth’s standards, his rise to a level 10 [Enchanter] was meteoric; Aeskyre supposed that he had some hidden skills under his [Lost Worlder] class that were helping him play catch up. Like a temporary boon type of skill that would go away after certain conditions had been met. Another theory was that his Earth knowledge and way of doing things had also contributed towards it―

Though the craft was done, it was not until Oon’sday that it was named. On said day, the first magier engine, the Mark I became the powerhouse for the Azure Surfer. Rigors of work forgotten, both human and dragon were excited. It was somewhat novel for Aeskyre to be witness to something new.

Checking with [Detect Flaw] to ensure everything was in order, Arthur slotted in the mana sail. As soon as the receptacle’s quick release mechanism clicked, the mana sail lit up with a turquoise glow. Mana thrummed as it was funneled into the sail, running from the mast to the conduits.

Not a breath too soon, Arthur stepped back as dust and detritus were displaced when form the Mark One’s fan blades as the small engine churned out gusts of air. A few kardions hence, mana levels reached the lowest point of saturation as passive enchantments funneled it to the aerostat floats wafered in the ironwood. Slowly, the board lifted off the ground.

The silence that pervaded the workshop was loud as though the World had stopped to witness the occasion. Arthur and Aeskyre regarded one another with various expressions on their faces. The human was smiling, while the dragon suppressed the barest hints of one as the side of her lips twitched. From the way her draconic eyes lit up, Aeskyre was trying so hard to rein in her emotions. On the same night when a familiar monotone voice deigned to reward him for it,

[Conditions Met-New Class Acquired!]

[New Class - Inven—]

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

[New Class Acquisition Declined!]