November 3, 1614 Central Calendar, 10:12

MOASEC, Aerial System Development Facility

It is another morning for the Ministry of Ancient Sorcerous Empire Countermeasures personnel, the first day after the weekend, where they will go for their job in what can be considered the most elite and influential of all government offices in the Holy Milishial Empire. Naturally, they were all filled with pride, but they did not forget that they carried the expectations of their families and relatives, and thus strive to give their all in their job.

However, due to certain mismanagement by their leader, the Ancient Ministry's employees were now forced to literally give their all, mind, body, and soul, to finish their new project, and they are blaming him for it.

Yes, Director Arsene Lippin will never live it down.

Among them were some personnel for whom the word 'vacation' was no longer exists in their dictionary. One such person, Emilia Giovanna, is a half-elven head of the section in charge of the development of the new Heavenly Vessel's engine within the facility. As a woman in her early 40s, she was still considered a young adult by her race's standards. Her hair was arranged in a bun with slightly curly bangs framing both sides of her face and partially concealing her pointed ears, a mark of her elven heritage. However, there is a strand of fiery red hair on Emilia's left bang that stood out among her lustrous golden locks. Whether it was natural or dyed, no one really knows, but it sure made her look remarkable.

She started her work for the day by going to the office to check her subordinates, and what she found was that they were running frantically like headless chickens. And as she walked through the corridor to go back to her office room to sort her thoughts...

"Ah, there she is! Emmy~!"

A female voice called out from afar. There is only one person who called Emilia by that name, so she chuckled while shaking her head slightly before turning in the direction where the voice came from. And there she is, her colleague Robin, waving at Emilia with a big smile on her face, and behind her, there is a shorter boy with silver hair... carrying something long and cylindrical on his back. Emilia waved at them as they approached her.

"Morning, Emmy," Robin chirped. It seems that she is in a good mood this morning.

Beside her, the silver-haired boy, one of Robin's Apprentice Mages named Meteos Roguerider bowed lightly at her.

"Good morning, Miss Gio—I mean, Miss Emilia."

Emilia was one of Robin's close friends that were introduced to Meteos and Walman on their first days in the MOASEC. Since Robin allowed them to call her by her first name, so did Emilia.

"Good morning to you too, Robin, and Young Meteos. So, what's up? You look happy today."

"Yeah, we have some good news for you," Robin answered before gesturing to Meteos.

"Here is the blueprint for the new engine, please take a look at it."

"What, really? You have finished already?"

When Emilia inquired them in a slightly surprised tone, Meteos nodded and unslung the large plastic tube, handing it to her. As she received the tube and slung it on her right shoulder, the blonde can feel the weight of the tube, which was fully extended to the point it was nearly as tall as Meteos himself.

"Yes. With the help of Miss Robin and the others' experience, it's possible to—"

"Kid took one look at our old engine research documents and instantly understood what to do! It's incredible! We are also lucky that the engines are so similar—although it's still weird for me, but it saves us a lot of time!"

Meteos answered her question with a neutral expression, but Robin suddenly butted in with a bright expression that clearly showed her enthusiasm, ignoring the boy who rolled his eyes before covering his face with his right palm.

"I... I see. That's good. But Robin, you meanie. Why did you let him carry this when all you bring is that backpack?" Emilia chided, pointing to a brown backpack slung on Robin's shoulder.

"Uh... about that... hehe."

"What do you mean, 'hehe'!?" she yelled at Robin's nervous laugh.

"Ahem!"

Suddenly Meteos gave a loud fake cough, turning the two women's attention to him.

"Forgive me, but we are on a tight schedule, aren't we? Please don't joke around and let's get going with our work."

In a polite tone, Meteos reminded them, especially Robin, about the work they have to do right now. He himself didn't mind jokes, but as he said, they were on a tight schedule to finish the project. In fact, calling it that might be an understatement. He felt that it wasn't appropriate to waste precious time by fooling around like this.

Emilia gave her friend a stink eye for a moment before turning to one of the Ancient Ministry's newest and youngest staff members, who had just tried to remind them about their priority as the MOASEC employees.

"My bad. You're right, Young Meteos. Now, let's head to my office," Emilia said as she patted the Meteos' soft silver hair and began walking down the corridor, ushering them to follow her.

"M'kay."

"Hm."

After they arrived at Emilia's office, Emilia unraveled a huge roll of paper she retrieved from the tube and attached it to the wall of her office. As she looked into the large drawing and compared it with the detailed drawings of each part in the stack of papers that Robin pulled out from her bag, Emilia's feeling of astonishment grew, but she also felt relieved with the completion of the blueprint.

Her thoughts wandered back to the unrealistic two-year deadline that their own boss, Arsene Lippin, had imposed upon the Ancient Ministry. Saying directly to His Majesty the Emperor that a new Heavenly Vessel could be completed in two years, coinciding with the next Eleven Countries Leadership Conference, what he did was the utter recklessness of the highest order. The analysis and development teams were suddenly faced with tremendous stress as they are expected to finish what normally would take years into less than half of Alpha-1's development time. This means that they will be forced to work day and night without rest or even eating in order to try to finish it.

However, it was not all bad news since through Emperor Milishial VIII's generosity, the Ancient Ministry had received a large sum of money to support the development of the new Heavenly Vessel. The Ancient Ministry, which had allotted 120.000 zollarks (roughly $3.469.308 in 2022's US dollars) for the development, suddenly received a four-time increase in budget to 480.000 zollarks (around $13.877.232) as a donation taken directly from the Emperor's treasury.

After that, Lippin convened a meeting with the Ancient Ministry's executives and after taking the brunt of the blame for his blunder from his subordinates, which is something he did deserve, they proceeded to plan measures to reduce the development time as much as possible. One of them was to revisit the research notes of a duplicate Ravernal magic jet engine that was abandoned some time ago.

They also increased the number of personnel by drawing them from other facilities and partnering organizations using the Ancient Ministry's authority. Emilia's engine development section, for example, three days after the meeting on October 20, was swarmed by engineers from various locations in the Empire. But the majority of them came from the Runepolis Magic Academy, the place where the magic turbojet engine was first built. They wasted little time in making plans using their combined expertise. With the ranks of personnel at the MOASEC headquarters swelled thanks to the increase in budget, a sense of normalcy was somewhat restored to the participants of the project as more personnel means fewer working hours for individual staff members.

On a less important note, they also decided on the name for the development project: Alpha Edge.

Without a completed engine, the heart of a Heavenly Vessel, the section in charge of the airframe cannot start their progress. Therefore, the pressure on the engine development section is high, and it came as a shock to the engineers outside the MOASEC who were dreaming of prestige by taking part in the biggest project of the year, conducted by the most influential ministry in the Holy Milishial Empire.

But it did not stop there.

The time limit of two years means that they only have enough time to build exactly one engine, and it must succeed. This is why despite they being pressed to develop an engine in as short a time as possible, the work is also being done with extreme prudence. At the earliest, the blueprint is expected to be completed within one month. The situation still wasn't looking good for the engine development section at all.

But lo and behold, only two weeks after the work has begun, Emilia was already staring at the completed blueprint of a magic turbojet engine. The designing team, of which Meteos and Walman were among them, have done a stellar job, every single detail was drawn with meticulous care, and in such a short period of time. With the plan in full display, Emilia marveled at the drawing, but one part caught her attention.

"This is... impressive, but why is this part is like this?" Emilia murmured, gesturing at the part where the engine's combustion chamber was located as she continued to examine the hanging blueprint.

"About that, we have decided that this arrangement will be the most efficient for the engine's operation," Robin answered her question.

"Huh!? Why? If five rings of enchanter still can't produce stable thrust for the magic engine, what makes you think only two will, let alone be efficient?" Emilia turned to Robin with an expression that clearly showed her displeasure at her colleague's answer.

What Emilia was referring to is the enchanter, the component of a magic engine that ignited the fuel inside the combustion chamber. It is a ring-shaped array of magic circuits installed with the spell for explosive magic that will activate when the purified liquid magic stone containing mana necessary to activate the spell comes into contact with the enchanter, heating the incoming air that is mixed with the magic fuel, producing controlled explosions that will burn the mix and then directed it to the engine's exhaust nozzle to generate thrust. This is the principle of a Chant Powered Light Magic-Compressed Air Discharge Engine.

After the reverse engineering of the Ancient Sorcerous Empire's magic turbofan failed because the only good engine they had excavated exploded during testing, the MOASEC researchers attempted to copy the design of the enchanter and put it into the Chant Powered Light Magic-Compressed Air Discharge Engine. They correctly deduced that this component uses magic to generate thrust by automatically chanting the spell utilizing mana contained by the magic fuel, hence the name "enchanter".

However, they cannot determine what exactly the magic spell was used by the Ancient Sorcerous Empire. They only knew that it has a short but powerful spell and could not be used by any race that makes up Milishial's demographics. And when the researchers had no choice but to use their much weaker magic spell, the result was very disappointing: the explosive magic spell installed into the enchanter's magic circuits wasn't complete as it was too long and couldn't fit into the limited space of the enchanter. And thus, when they forced it to activate, it only resulted in a very short and uneven burst of magic fuel combustion, and as a result, generated a very weak thrust.

As a measure to compensate for this, the researchers resorted to using a magic fuel with a much lower level of purification, derived from liquified red magic gems which contain fire element attributes used to 'complete' the spell casting by using its elemental attribute as a substitute for the missing part of the spell. Since a lower level of purification means fewer mana can be infused into one liter of magic fuel, it resulted in a magic engine with very low fuel efficiency. This is where they found out that using one enchanter made the engine extremely wasteful.

In the end, to increase the fuel efficiency, the researchers attached five enchanters to the engine and increased the purification level from 10% to 35%. It was still much less efficient than the Ancient Sorcerous Empire's engine, but not too wasteful either. And thus, the 35% purity liquid red magic stone became known as the 'magic jet fuel' used by the Holy Milishial Empire. The combustion of magic fuel, which happened in short bursts, produced the signature buzzing sound of the Chant Powered Light Magic-Compressed Air Engine. Five is the limit of how much they can attach without making the engine too heavy.

Seeing Emilia's upset face, Robin decided to explain her case.

"Okay, okay, hear me out first," she said, walking closer to the blueprint and tapping on the turbine part with her finger. "The problem with the unstable thrust of a Magic Light Engine is that the flow of mana moved in a straight line from the fuel injector to the nozzle through the combustion chamber. It does not activate the entire magic circuit in the enchanter, hence requiring five of them so that the mana that doesn't activate one enchanter will be caught by the next and so on. But it still sucked. Right?"

Emilia nodded slowly.

"We once attempted to make the mana flow in a circle but cannot figure out how. Well, this is where the turbine part of this engine comes in. When the engine is operating, the rotation of the turbine which is connected to the enchanter will cause it to spin at high speed, making the contact with the flow of mana spread evenly and producing a stable thrust and thus, increased engine output," the bespectacled brunette explained.

"Ah, I see! Instead of making the mana move in circles, you make the enchanter spin instead to produce the effect as you say," Emilia said with a realization after hearing Robin's words. "So is that really the reason why the ancient engine's enchanter seemed to be connected to the rotating part? And is that really the reason why the ancient engine is built that way?"

"Yup. The movement of the turbine also drives the compressor here that will squeeze the incoming air and increase its pressure..."

"...Thus, eliminating the need to use a Tears of the Wind God-based magic circuit to add pressure to the incoming air with the existence of the compressor."

"Exactly."

Both Emilia and Robin were part of the team that once analyzed the destroyed Ravernal turbofan, which research data was instrumental in helping the development of the new engine. As one of the measures taken to fulfill the two-year deadline, Lippin had ordered the Ancient Ministry to declassify its research and now ordinary engineers other than the Ancient Arms Analysis Tactical Operations Department can talk about it freely, including in front of a new recruit like Meteos. This is a policy that was never done before in the Ancient Ministry's history.

Emilia's eyes widened as more realizations came to her mind.

"My goodness! Young Meteos, it's really the same principle as your magic turbojet engine!"

"...Yes. I hope it helps with the research," the boy answered with a slight nod.

"Why, of course! We have a functioning engine to base our research on and now we just need to make a full-sized version of it! But one more thing... Yes, it can solve the thrust stability issue, but that still doesn't explain why you are reducing the enchanters into two. Won't that make the engine inefficient instead? Why are you doing that?"

"It's all thanks to the new magic circuits."

Meteos rummaged through his jacket's pocket and revealed a small device pinched between his index and middle fingers, then he showed it to Emilia for her to see.

"This little thing can contain much more spell components than the standard ones used in the current magic engine's enchanter. Thanks to this, we can reduce the number of enchanters used and combined with the turbine, we can finally make a good engine—no offense, Miss Emilia."

Emilia did not expect the kid to bring an empty magic circuit around, so when Meteos offered it to her, she received it with an awkward laugh. She held the magic circuit in her palm, a flat and rectangular device 10 millimeters in length and 5 millimeters in width, and on the surface, the words "AIKON" was engraved on it, signifying the manufacturer of this device.

"Haha, none taken. But wow... I never realized just how advanced this thing is until now, the Aikon Corporation has outdone themselves this time," the half-elf pondered.

"Well, they originally manufactured magic circuits for their grimoire, right? If using this can turn a manacom the size of a typewriter into something so slim like a grimoire, then the same thing can be done to an engine enchanter," Robin chirped.

"Hmm, you have a point."

The Holy Milishial Empire, as the world's strongest magical civilization, stands above other magical civilizations in the known world by mastering the usage of the magic circuit, a method of shortening the long spellcasting process by engraving the components of a spell into it and let machines fast-forwarding it for them. Through the advancement of computing technology, the spellcasting process can be reduced to the point that it only took several seconds to chant a lengthy spell. Even more so after the introduction of the newest computers and manadrivers.

However, the problem that remained is how many spell components can be contained within a single magic circuit. The Aikon Corporation, who took an interest in Robin's grimoire project approached them and managed to produce a much more advanced magic circuit, allowing the grimoire as everyone knows it to be born.

However, one might have wondered, why would they use a magic circuit used in what is basically a cell phone as a component of a jet engine?

This is possible because of the nature of the magic circuit itself: being merely the container of spells. The only thing that distinguishes magic circuits used in magical communication devices, magic lighting, magic engines, and so on, is the spell contained within the circuits. If the shape and size are correct, these magic circuits in different applications can technically be interchangeable with each other as long as the material used can withstand the effect produced by the spell. That's how versatile magic circuit technology is. It is aptly called a centerpiece of Milishial's technological might, a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural once its full potential was unleashed.

While Emilia continued to scrutinize the magic circuit, Meteos explained, "When we built the miniature turbojet engine, I designed it with only one enchanter to see how far the new magic circuit can raise the engine's fuel efficiency and as a result, we discovered that the engine is capable of achieving the desired performance when burning 25% purity magic fuel. The details are in the reports."

"Hmm... then, with the larger dimension of a full-scale engine, more magic circuits can be mounted on a single enchanter..." Emilia trailed off.

"Yes, it is possible to maintain the 35% purity magic fuel usage with two enchanters and maybe we can even raise it slightly."

"Which means more mana per liter and more fuel efficiency!" Robin finished in a cheerful mood.

"......That's good news!"

"I know, right? They were not joking when they said that mastery of magic circuits is the key to bringing mankind closer to the Ancient Sorcerous Empire's level."

"Do you really think so, Robin?"

"Well, we won't know unless we try. Though it would be better if the engine can use 50% purification level magic fuel."

"Hah... that's optimistic, but oh well. It's time to move to the next phase! We'll bring this to the others and we can start building!"

Emilia clapped her hands loudly, satisfied with the current situation. The other two visitors inside her office nodded broadly and were about to follow Emilia when Robin suddenly spoke up.

"Wait a minute!"

"Hm?" Emilia raised an eyebrow.

"It's already twelve o'clock. Meteos, it's the end of your shift for the day. You can go home now."

Robin pointed to her wristwatch as she turned to Meteos.

"Huh...? Oh well, I guess that's it for today. Maybe Walman is already on his way here at the moment. Alright, see you later, Miss Robin, Miss Emilia."

With a loud sigh as he checked his own wristwatch, Meteos bowed to his teacher and her friend in farewell before getting out of the office, intending to head back to his apartment. Just before he fully closed the office door, Emilia called out to him.

"Thank you for your hard work! Tell Young Walman to go straight here!"

"Of course."

After the door was fully closed with a soft thud, Robin and Emilia gave a brief glance at the place where Meteos had just been with soft smiles before they began to arrange the documents stacked on the latter's desk, waiting for Walman's arrival before leaving. Amidst the soft rustling of papers, Emilia broke the silence between the two.

"I can see in his eyes, that he wants to stay."

"Hmph, that might be true, but as part of the terms of Meteos and Walman's employment in the Ancient Ministry, I have convinced Director Lippin to put an emphasis on strict adherence to the work schedule for those two. Which means, no overtime bullshit," Robin snorted at Meteos' stubbornness. "They are still kids, for gods' sake."

"Language, Robin," Emilia chided, but her smile faltered a bit after hearing Robin's last remarks. "By the way, Meteos and Walman are still fourteen years old, right?"

"Yes."

"That's... younger than when you first come here, Robin," the blonde half-elf murmured with a concerned look.

She knows that the Ancient Ministry has a history of scouting individuals with bright minds and offering them recruitment regardless of their age. Youths aged 12 to 14 are offered to receive education in the Ancient Ministry for a limited number of hours per week as part of a training program. However, in the hands of unsavory decision-makers, this has the potential to be abused into exploiting them as child labor.

Emilia had never seen any of this happen and she hoped that she will never see it, but since the Ancient Ministry is a place with secrets buried under secrets, it filled her with uneasiness knowing such a thing can and very nearly happened before her eyes.

"Hm?"

"Nothing... it's just one more thing that Arsene had done right," Emilia finished by casually mentioning the Director's first name, but Robin had long used to that and did not question it.

Robin hummed and after remembering something, she asked Emilia, "Anyway, back to the work, when will the shipment of materials arrive? The sooner we can start building the engine, the better."

"If I recall, the first shipment will be coming in the next week..."

"Sheesh, that won't do, Emmy."

"I know, but do you have any solution for that?"

Robin put a hand on her chin and pondered for a moment before answering, "I know some research organizations and steel companies in Runepolis that stores NMC-22 ores, we can request them to hand over whatever amount the ores in their possession to the Ancient Ministry."

"Noted. I'll tell Arsene about this," Emilia sighed.

At that moment, they heard a series of light knocking on the door, and when it opened, it revealed Robin's other apprentice who had taken his shift for the day.

"Excuse me..."

"Ah, Walman, just in time," Robin nodded.

"Um, I was told by Meteos to come here?"

"Yes, we will now go to the planning room," Emilia said as she picked up the drawing tube with the blueprint that she had rolled back into the container and several documents, preparing to head out of the office. "So, Young Walman. How good are you in mathematics?"

"........."

Walman Falkenhausen stared at his teacher's colleague with a grim smile.

Currently Publicly Available Information

CHANT POWERED LIGHT MAGIC-COMPRESSED AIR ENGINE

A magic-based propulsion developed by the Holy Milishial Empire for Heavenly Vessel, based on reverse-engineering the magic engines of the Ancient Sorcerous Empire. It uses the principle of sucking in air mixed with purified liquid red magic stone fuel, igniting it with the chanting of explosion spell fueled by the mana contained by the fuel, and discharging it to the rear to generate propulsion.

During takeoff process, the Tears of the Wind God magic circuit will engage, actively drawing in air to assist with the engine's operation. Several minutes after the Heavenly Vessel is in flight, the limited power of the circuit will eventually deplete, leaving the engine to passively suck in air for the rest of the flight.

In order to ignite the magic fuel, a component called enchanter is used. In the case of this magic engine, the enchanter is filled with explosion magic spell components.