Chereads / Awakening of an Engineer / Chapter 101 - Nearing The Great Arrays

Chapter 101 - Nearing The Great Arrays

Over the next few days, I went through the basics of engineering with Laveki, but soon we arrived at the arrays separating Gluaze and Eiovi.

"Alright, here is the plan, the arrays stop all forms of Eneru and somehow drains humans of their vitality, so, the plan is to go over them." I set down a rudimentary map with a red flight path on it. "The pressure mages don't usually do this is that they can't fly long enough to stay above the anti-Eneru array, and it's not worth the risk when there are ways to safely pass via the toll roads."

Bella chimed in "Unfortunately, the Anti-Eneru arrays are so powerful that they pull Eneru far from their borders, this makes the link between golem and master weak enough for the golems to frenzy so we will be training the humans aboard to run the propellers manually. Sorta like using oars instead of sails when the wind is low."

"Speaking of wind, since we can't rely on the humans for every minute of the day, we will be installing some sails. We didn't have the materials before, but thanks to our ground crew, during the raid on Gond we got a bunch of tough sailcloth that was slated for delivery to Belnas. So for the next day and a half, we will land and modify the airship." I pointed at a part of the map. "Right here is a clear spot with some barriers that block vision so we can stay hidden."

"The only reason we haven't been attacked yet is that the kingdom thinks we haven't noticed their scouts." Bella pointed at Laveki. "This is where you come in. You will make the entire ship invisible, we only need 5 minutes and Larry can supply the Eneru required for the spell. For the rest of the ride to the landing spot you must practice until you can do it, but you can't practice on the ship itself because the scouts will notice something is amiss. Ingen will prepare a scale model for you."

'This is the true strength of superior spirit user, just the variety of their abilities can help in strange ways.' I thought

"Well, that's all, I'm off to do my part so I'd better not hear of any slackers."

I walked off to the workshop and quickly assembled the scale model from memory, intuitive manipulation made it simple and I built the ship so I knew it inside and out.

"All yours girlie, I got my own scale model to mess with."

I conjured another one with some wood I had at hand and started to model the sails.

"I need to make sure the sails push the ship in a way that pushes it forward with no up or down influence." I pondered where I thought the center of mass was, resolving to balance the scale model on a fulcrum to test. "It's inconsistent, the center of mass should stay the same at all times."

Then it dawned on me. "Ugh, no wonder I can't, I'm on an airship." I facepalmed and made a near-solid pressure zone and used that as a table since it would stay perfectly level.

"Wow, that's quite low, and since it's more forward we can probably get away with twin, upside down sails that jut out the sides."

I modeled it on the miniature ship and used winds generated by pressure manipulation to figure out how the wind would skew the ship.

After about an hour I got it to a spot I liked.

"Now I just need to rig a bunch of pulleys to retract the sail."

I used my hair for the model since it's conductive. "And if you just pull on this one..."

I tugged on the string and the sail folded on itself until it got to the main body, then the masts holding the sail in place folded in.

"This will protect them in case of an attack." I sighed. "Well, I'm done, but that was far less fun than I thought it'd be."

'How do you plan to steer the ship when only the sails are active?' Spirit's voice filled my consciousness.

Without a word, I started to work on some wings to control pitch and, yaw.

"The yaw stabilizer makes sure I don't turn left and right unless I want to, and the pitch one controls how high or low the front dips," I explained once Laveki got distracted looking at the new model. "Don't worry, once we land you will probably have to practice on this one too so we can take off unnoticed. You can disassemble and reassemble it all you'd like then. For now, focus on the current model."

I set down the model and got back to work on my greater golem, managing to finish the torso and arms' draft musculature. I went to bed and woke up the next day refreshed.

"Up next is the head, this is easy since it has no muscles except for the head and the eyes."

I whipped them up with a flick of my wrist and started work on refining the draft parts of the golem.

"Assess" The golem lit up like a flashbang in my eyes.

I blinked for a second and took off my glasses.

"Agg, that hurts so bad! I need to tone down the light at higher imperfection ratings."

I adjusted the settings on the glasses and got back to work. by the end of the day, I had a grotesque musculature ready for a circulatory system. I had a good night's rest.

'Now, we have some important decisions.' I explained to Spirit.

'The question is whether we should use imbuement, enchantment, or alchemy to conduct the Eneru around the golem. Right?'

'Yep, enchantment means that I have to infuse everything on the golem, alchemy is the cheapest but most vulnerable, and imbuement is the most expensive and needs some Eneru conductive wire, but grants some extra power and even some spells to use.'

"What do you think Laveki?" I said

"Huh? What? Were you talking to me?" She asked.

"Oops, I was talking to Spirit, let me relay," I told her the advantages and disadvantages.

"Oh, well isn't it obvious then? You have four cores total and are making three golems, and since you only need one spirit core to imbue, it would allow you to squeeze the most out of the golem." She said.

"Imbuement it is then." I got to work weaving the wires.