Uranium Phoenix's Projects
patreon
Chapter 261 - A Road Not Taken
🕑 Added 2025-11-02 18:22:26 +0000 UTCMirian began the arduous work of re-scribing the glyphs in her spellbook. She took the time to import specialized materials using Nurea’s connections with the Syndicate and used Torrian Tower’s specialized precision-scribing equipment. Along the way, she found ways to improve the efficiency of the glyphs she reconstructed. The runes took more time given that she needed specific high-energy souls. She started by hunting in the surrounding forest and using Syndicate-smuggled myrvites, then began gating down to the Jiandzhi to get the larger souls she needed. With how many times she’d revised the context in her soulbound book, Mirian had become highly adept at all the steps in the process, though she hadn’t needed to rebuild so much of it at once.
Then, near the end of Solem, she received a message from Jherica:
Mirian,
Liuan’s new plan failed catastrophically. She’s dead. Akana is on a warpath, and the airship are NOT sabotaged. Tried, but now I’m in hiding. Making my way to our mutual friend with the big tree (hopefully vague enough, I expect most of these to be intercepted).
-Sio Jherica
Copy 7 of 14
That was going to be a problem.
With Liuan’s hand pushing on the Akanan army, she could get Marshal Cearsia convinced that the ‘weapon’ the RID was propagandizing about wasn’t actually in Torrviol. Without any strategic objective there, the delayed Akanan invasion avoided anything north of Cairnmouth. Without her, though…
“Fuck,” Mirian said as soon as she was done reading the letter. The Akanan invasion would be in a few days and she hadn’t prepared the militia. “Get me Professor Cassius and Captain Moliner. Well, she’s not a captain of the militia yet, but she will be.”
“Who?” asked Song Jei, who happened to be in the room with her.
Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “Cassius will know her. If he’s not in his office, he’s at the practice range or with his eximontar.” Then she began muttering to herself. “Then we’ll need to accelerate the training, build the barricades, collapse the north tunnel network, set foss charges to detonate west of the dorms… should have gotten my… ugh. And where’s Luspire? I need him to hold the front lines while I take down the airships, again. Actually…”
She blinked out the window and headed north to begin walling off the underground passages.
***
Mirian landed on the deck of the Might of Liberty and calmly walked towards the bridge. As she walked, dozens of bullets and spells sank into her black shield. She used the absorbed energy to blast weapons and wands out of the hands of her attackers. The airships and army were still several hours out of Torrviol, and Mirian had come up with a plan that she hoped would save her a lot of time.
“Marshal Emera Cearsia, I wish to negotiate Torrviol’s safety,” she announced as she burst down the door. Cearsia, of course, opened up her spellbook, but Mirian tore it from her hands, stripped the officers of weapons, then blew up the communications console. “My understanding is that the Prophet Liuan Var failed to stop the war this cycle. I am the Prophet Mirian.”
Cearsia was staring at her open-mouthed before she realized she’d lost her composure. “I don’t negotiate with traitors, and I certainly don’t negotiate with mass-murderers who slaughter civilians. Your government—”
“Yes, yes, I know what you believe. You were told Baracuel has developed a secret weapon that is blowing up your cities and then they assassinated your head of state. You were lied to and manipulated because there’s a bunch of powerful people in Akana Praediar who want to turn Baracuel into a subservient country. The magical eruptions, however, are caused by spell engine overuse. All that waste mana is overloading the leylines. What your spies have told you is the ‘Divine Monument’ is actually a Gate created by the Elder Gods. If you blow it up, the apocalypse is in a few days. If you leave it intact, the apocalypse is in a few months, and I have more time to work on preventing it. You’re in a time loop, but only the Prophets can remember previous cycles.”
“You’re a… you expect me to believe that sort of nonsense? Liuan was executed—”
“I’m sure she was, and I promise it won’t stick. She’ll learn from whatever mistakes she made, and you never will. Do you have an explanation for how a sixth-year academy student casually levitated up to your airship and disarmed both you and the majority of the crew? Look, I can show you the Torrviol Gate. It’s currently linked to Mahatan. We can go through it and you can see the city, then I’ll take you back and you can call off your army. Then you can go south and so whatever you want to Cairnmouth or Palendurio—you do like vengefully slaughtering civilians who had nothing to do with even your stated grievances—or head back across the Rift Sea. I don’t care, as long as you don’t attack Torrviol and don’t blow up the Gate.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I blow up your airships and slaughter enough of the army to get it to rout. And if it comes back, I do it again. I’ll tell you, it’s annoying, time-consuming, and doesn’t help anyone. It’s inefficient and a waste of my time.” Then, Mirian used aura projection to deliver her words into the minds of the officers. I’VE DONE IT BEFORE, and showed them images of the airships burning and falling out of the sky.
The officers had all turned white. Cearsia had stumbled back, but recovered. She was shaken. “Akana Praediar does not negotiate—”
Mirian summoned Eclipse, blinked forward, and cut off her head. She used an improvised force spell to prevent the blood from ruining her clothes. “Typical Emera. Would anyone else like to negotiate? I know we have a gaggle of captains and two commodores. Same offer.”
Behind her, she felt movement. One of the officers was pulling a gun. He didn’t know her aura was right on top of his. She levitated Eclipse backward, driving the sword into his brain up to the guard.
“I—I move to… h-halt the army and d-discuss…” one of the officers stammered out.
“Great! Go ahead and give the orders. Now. Oh, and show of hands, who’d like to visit Mahatan? It’s quite beautiful this time of year.”
***
In the end, the invasion was delayed for several days. Fort Aegrimere’s division began taking up positions in the town, but it seemed the Akanan attackers might withdraw without battle.
Then there was a mutiny in the middle of the officer corps, so even though Mirian had adequately demonstrated why the Akanan army shouldn’t attack for the officers on the bridge, the whole thing was veering into something Zhuan would write about, which annoyed her. As soon as the first artillery shell landed, Mirian went on the offensive. She sliced open the repulsor engines and dropped the two airships on the army, then used Gaius’s trick of exploding the auramancers to quickly and efficiently inflict maximum casualties. She covered up the evidence with fireballs since signs of obvious necromancy would be a problem for the professors she was relying on for research.
When she returned, it was to a throughly shaken Archmage Luspire who had watched her from Torrian Tower.
“They’re routing now, but they often make another pass at the town,” she told him. “Keep lookouts posted to assist with General Hanaran’s patrols. Remember, if the Akanans get in, they slaughter everyone.” And waste my time, she mentally added.
Then she got back to work on her artifice. She’d directed as many people in the town who weren’t involved in its defense to production. If she was going to study antimagic, she already had preliminary notes, and she already had a place where she could directly study an active field:
The Labyrinth.
***
Mirian stood before the entropic antimagic field of the Frostland’s Gate Labyrinth. She’d looked for closer ones, but the one she’d found in the Torrviol Labyrinth was too deep to be used. She couldn’t be watching her back from enervators or causters while also conducting experiments, and she certainly couldn’t bring a crew. With her variations on supreme levitation, she could cut her travel time to Frostland’s Gate down to a few hours, and with a glider, the trip back using the high altitude winds was even faster.
Beatrice and the others stood behind her looking nervous. That was the usual reaction to her presence, and Mirian had long since grown tired of assuaging people, so she just let them be nervous.
Mirian had spent weeks testing the effectiveness of different enchantment schemes at resisting antimagic. The most effective thing she’d found was the soul-imbued metals. Ironically, the very thing she was trying to retrieve in quantity from Divir. After her extensive testing, she’d forged an orichalcum gauntlet, then reinforced it with every enchantment that seemed useful.
Cediri held a timepiece, while Beatrice, Grimald, and the Ennecus group stood as lookouts.
“Start.” She plunged her hand into the entropic field.
She felt the pain immediately as it started ripping at the outer layers of her aura. She steadied herself, clenching her teeth. She was doing this without the Lone Pine stance since she wanted the feedback pain provided, wanted to know what she could do to hold her aura together.
The enchantments were scoured into dust within seconds. The orichalcum began to spall and heat up, and as it did, she felt the razor edge of the entropic field on her aura intensify. She focused, trying to hold her aura together through force of will, trying to restructure the flows so they weren’t sliced apart. She shifted through the different dervish stances, but if there was any difference in their ability to repel the entropic field, she couldn’t tell. The pain faded when she finally swapped to Lone Pine, but the damage to her aura didn’t.
She pulled her aura back away from the hand, and then the pain became too much to bear as the antimagic field began to dig into her soul.
Mirian let out a hiss of breath and withdrew her hand.
“Three minutes, forty-five seconds,” Cediri announced.
Mirian frowned. “Would anyone like to be a comparison?” She glanced over at two more gauntlets she’d made.
Grimald said, “I’ll do it.”
Mirian used shape metal to resize the gauntlet, then handed it to him. The tall fighter adjusted the straps on the gauntlet while Mirian used a trick of necromancy to direct Grimald’s soul into contact with the orichalcum so it would align to his soul.
“Ready, Cediri?”
“Ready.”
Grimald plunged his hand into the field. He held it there, eyes watering with pain. Then he screamed and fell back, clutching his hand.
“Thirty-two seconds,” Cediri said.
Mirian pondered the next steps. “Alright, let’s get that measurement equipment down here next. I have some ideas for testing the field. Then we can start taking chunks out of the wall.”
Beatrice looked concerned. “You know what the Labyrinth does when you start removing pieces of it.”
“I am aware. Let’s move.”
***
Over the next two months, she flew back to Torrviol twice. The first time, she helped push back the reconstituted Akanan army’s siege, then hunted them down for several days to reinforce the message she was trying to send. The second time, it was just to check they were really gone. Each time, she picked up more supplies to move north over the mountains.
The problem with using any form of magic to try to assess an antimagic field was that the arcane force was dissolved on contact. With enough arcane force, the antimagic field could be pushed, but whatever was powering it was far beyond Mirian’s capability to overwhelm. She could use spells that sent unguided electricity, heat, magnetism, or force into the field, but that didn’t help her assess it. As the antimagic field destroyed the different magics she put into it, she could tell from her divination devices that there were subtle differences in how the glyphs were dissolved, but how she could use that to figure out the nature of the entropic field eluded her.
Her work on antimagic suppression fields seemed unrelated to entropic fields. From what she could tell, they operated on a different fundamental force. Suppression fields interfaced with the aura-soul boundary, and auramancers could duplicate the effect easily enough.
The Labyrinth sent waves of horrors at her when she drilled into it, but eventually, she got some chunks of the area around the entropic field. Problematically, the parts she needed most were inside the field. She spent two days plunging her arm in and using a hand-cranked diamond-tipped drill, but the material she got wasn’t revelatory in the slightest. There were no glyphs or runes to study, just the usual strange material of the Labyrinth. After exhausting every divination spell, every alchemical and chemical test she and Professor Seneca could think of, and even trying to use Tlaxhuacan spirit constructs to learn anything, she found her ideas on even how to proceed to study the phenomenon exhausted.
Plan 7 - Build an antimagic resistant skiff
Notes: Plans 3-5 scrapped/erased because an antimagic field interferes with all of them. Plan 6 still not ideal, but may be last resort. Antimagic proving difficult to make progress on. Plan 7 may be untenable because our technology and understanding of the world is simply not developed enough.
Plan 8 - Build a non-magical delivery system
Mirian knew, from her visions from Xylatarvia and study of the Viaterrians, that it was possible to move through the void without magic. She just had a hard time wrapping her head around how. The world ran on magic. Guns used glyphs and fossilized myrvite charges to accelerate projectiles. Trains used spell engines to generate force. Forges used glyphs to regulate heat and air flow. Yes, woodworkers like her adoptive mother might use non-magical tools, but that was for making furniture and artwork, not airships. Plenty of things had physical mechanisms, but for anything complex, everyone used glyph sequences.
She’d seen a column of fire coming from the Viaterrian ships in her vision. That was her clue.
She considered the heater. A modern home used a simple glyph heater, but plenty of homes had wood stoves too. It was easy enough to burn things. But to create the kind of force needed to propel something? And how would one regulate the force? How would one prevent the fuel from burning out of control? Then there was also the problem of containing air. Air was notoriously annoying to control with physical mechanisms because it was a gas. Spells made manipulating it easy. There was a reason fire response teams were made up of sorcerers and docks always had mages on hand to create air bubbles for underwater work.
Steel proved useful for making airtight containers, but it would need an airtight door. Also, adding a huge amount of weight to any airship would be a problem. The Viaterrian ship they’d found had thick, bulky doors, and now she could guess why. She could make an airtight airship. It was feasible. But then how to move something so heavy without force or gravity magic?
That brought her back to Professor Sefora Seneca’s department.
Alchemistry and its less-studied mundane counterpart often dealt with strange substances, many of which were volatile or burned. She and Seneca worked on measuring ways to burn such substances, using divination magic to measure the amount of heat and force such flames those substances could put out.
They started with cooking oil, mostly because it was simply obtained and would act as a proof-of-concept for their testing apparatus. The result was what she expected: a lot of heat, not a lot of force, and then there was the problem that the cooking oil had its own weight, which would only add to the amount of force necessary to move the hypothetical magic-less airship.
Mirian looked at the first divination numbers with disappointment. Using fire to move an object was horrifically inefficient.
They tried a number of different explosive substances, both liquid and powdered, next. Immediately, they ran into a problem of getting anything they were using to burn in a controlled manner. Several times, their testing apparatus blew up. Then, there was the problem that most common explosives needed to react with air, and there wouldn’t be air up there. She would need air for breathing, and even more air for fuel.
A few fuel candidates seemed promising (at least, if they could find a way to solve all the other problems), and then came the next problem: how would they manufacture these substances at scale? Most mundane chemicals useful in alchemistry were made in small amounts by experts using specialized spell engines or specific spells. Torrviol, as a major research center, often got them in enchanted casks. Usually, they were shipped in tiny glass vials. The most useful ones weren’t shipped at all because of the danger, and instead, only small amounts of precursor chemical were moved, again, in tiny packages. Those precursors, in turn, came from rare minerals that weren’t mined at any appreciable scale because the market demand was too low for anyone to bother.
The longer she worked on the project, the more she realized that there were entire fields of study that would need to be invented to make a mundane airship, and the more she looked into what would be needed, the more work she began to realize would need to be done. The leyline detector would be made up of parts and materials that were already manufactured at scale. The magic-less airship would need parts, pieces, fuel, and technology that no one on Enteria made.
Notes:
Our reliance on magic has undermined our ability to solve problems without it. I can’t even begin to estimate how many years or decades it might take to solve the technical issues that I know about, and I find myself having trouble imagining what a magic-less airship would even look like. Presumably, long ago, Viaterrians had solved these problems, but consulting with Zhuan in the dream, whatever records survive do not detail their mundane technology in anything approaching a useful capacity. Our technological development has gone in a completely different direction than theirs must have. Inventions we possess seem obvious in retrospect, but were built on what came before. Trying to break new ground where the fields have not been prepared by others is a different task entirely. I can imagine new arcane devices with ease. My imagination fails me with these mundane projects. I am trying to build Torrian Tower with a foundation of straw.
Plan 8 overly time consuming and unlikely to succeed. Also making me too philosophical. Scrap.
Comments
Evil Legend
Huh, my narrative-oriented brain really underestimated how, when you have access to magic at least part of the time, flying to the moon isn’t actually that technically difficult. I think your idea really makes sense, and now this whole moment with the attempt to physically reach Divir also looks like a kind of plot hole to me. Although I didn’t take the skiff scene as literally as you did. My imagination must’ve been accounting for at least some acceleration when I thought about it, because I interpreted “the skiff began to fall” as what it looked like from Mirian’s perspective. That is, when she started accelerating relative to the skiff, at the beginning they should have had identical speed and acceleration — meaning the skiff was stationary relative to her — and when she lifted off, from her point of view it would look like the skiff was dropping away, even if in reality it might still have been accelerating. Rereading that moment in the chapter, I realized that this wasn’t actually intended. Even with that, though, I don’t think this is a major plot hole — if there’s a plot hole at all. The thing is, at least for the very first flight toward Divir, you can assume the problem was that the skiff’s magic cut out long before it reached the necessary acceleration to arrive there in time. So the overall situation remains unchanged. After that, it was never mentioned that Mirian actually struggled to reach Divir physically, although I did get the impression that the conversations mixed up speed and acceleration — but that doesn’t matter, because even if you remove that contradiction, you still have the soul-destroying entropic antimagic field to deal with. The only real problem — if you can even call it a problem, considering we have no concrete numbers to work with — is the described time it took Mirian to fly toward Divir. Online sources tell me that a human loses consciousness at about 4–6g. For simplicity, let’s assume Mirian is a weakling and it was 4g. The thing is, at that level of constant acceleration, you can reach the Moon in a little over an hour — and we’re told that Divir is significantly closer to the planet. Moreover, we have an explicit fact: on her second attempt she reached within a kilometer of Divir after it had entered the atmosphere. The atmosphere is far closer than the distance to the moon — so close that at 4g you can reach its upper boundary in about 1 minute 11 seconds. Even if we assume she used lower acceleration for comfort and spent part of the time decelerating, you’d barely stretch that to 3 minutes. So the plot hole isn’t so much mixing up speed and acceleration — it’s that the author really overestimated the travel time, and underestimated how drastically constant acceleration compresses distances. Hypothetically, this could still be fixed — either by drastically shortening the mentioned travel time to Divir, or by greatly reducing the acceleration achievable with available magic. But if you weaken the acceleration too much, then that blackout scene from excessive g-forces wouldn’t work anymore.
Gopard
Ok so I think I found a plothole or rather hole in the arcane physics decribed here specically the way you described the Entropic Anti Magic field. One thing I will add here first is this though; My whole point the entire thousands of words of comment is assuming one thing: That you did not incorporate the Velocity Mirians skiff had build up in its in ascent last chapter when you wrote about it "just dropping down after the engine fails bc of Anti magic". This is my explanation for why what you wrote last chapter doesn't really make sense to me if you did try to accept that she already "had a velocity it was just way to small".: I did see that you write "the Spell engine guttered out and the Skiff slowly begun to fall". Yet this is entirely the problem here^^ You seem to have entirely forgotten the Upwards speed the Skiff HAD at that moment. A Train with engine failure moving at high speeds doesn't just stop, neither does a plane or a Car. Nor A fucking Spacecraft XDDDD As I write again down below in the last segment of this stupidly long verbose complicated comment: Imagine how fucking far up Mirian had to fly BEFORE she got hit with the Anit Magic Impulse? Several Kilometers or something along those lines? Even if she has a shitty Acceleration spell or engine by our modern standards she had to OVERCOME the G force at lauch already. So she needs to have some minimalis "Acceleration per second" for sure (it needs to be enough to overcome G at the ground whatever that is for Enteria) However Mirian was in the air for OVER AN HOUR... OVER 3600 Seconds... so....... Where did all that acceleration go if she is slow enough that the moment her engine dies she drops? You do know that both G force and Air resistence lesson as one goes up yes? And supposedly Mirian had her acceleration speed "rise slowly" since this is the case she would have gotten faster faster and even faster over time... And everything past here is me trying to in some argue that your own System of "Arcane Physics" as explored right here in this very chapter proves that an anti magic pulse should only stop the engine of the Skiff not also strip it from all the velocity it had before. (Unless as I also mention in one line somewhere down there you added to this green Anti Magic pulse also a "delete Momentum spell" too like a security measure lol but I doubt that as it wasn't at all mentioned and I'm sure Mirian would have noticed that XDD Basically I think you mixed up concepts of "Acceleration" and "velocity" you in the last chapter had the Skiff "ACCELERATED BY MAGIC". But the Anti magic pulse did not only "STOP THE ACCELERATION" it "STOPPED THE SKIFF ENTIRELY". This however conflicts with what you show is here in this chapter that "Entropic Anti Magic Fields" only "destroy magic not the mundane effects that come from it (like electricity, magnetism and light, a "FORCE IMPULSE" also known as "velocity of an Object") you basically changed how the entropic field works. To do what it did to the Skiff last chapter it would need to essentially: Stop a mundane rock that was thrown by way of magic into the field. However this doesn't make any sense because: If Electricity createdby Magic is "mundane enough to be ignored" then how can the Velcity of the Stone be "stopped" if it is entirely moving without magic. And THEN we can use this same principle on the Skiff last chapter saying that after all regardless of wether a different effect is still providing acceleration, even if that ACCELERATION effect is enirely Nullified IMMEDIATELY, the Skiff still has a certain high velocity (aka the mundane impulse created by the Magic remains) so why was this Velocity also stopped?? The Skiff should just after the Anti Magic impulse continue with the Exact speed it had at that Moment and then slow down slowly as Enteria's gravity and the last remnants of the thin atmosphere up there slow it down. This is I think the plothole I found XD feel free to correct me though. In case I horrible misunderstood something and tried to falsely use mundane physics on this "arcance physics problem". So below I have rambled a bit how I think (with the Plothole removed) Mirian is already relatively simply able to just reach the moon. The actually thing that SHOULD have stopped her ascent last chapter was at most the "skiff breaking apart entirely because it relied on magic for structural integrity". If we assume mundane Impuls (Skiff Velocity) remains even after the AMI (Anti Magic impulse) we can assume the needed Velocity of the Skiff to just reach the moon after all further acceleration is cut of by the Anti magic isn't very high. because she will already be almost there after all. And if the distance to travel isn't so high anymore, then as long as Mirian surves penetrating the Anti Magic Field she should be fairly easily able to use the Lone Pine stance to hold out the couple of minutes it (SHOULD in my mind now) takes to reach the gate after the impulse hits. There is lots of more complicated explanations down below because I got a little bit too into it I think XD. Okay because I ended up kinda going overboard down there the TL; TR explanation why this isn't so hard to archieve in my opinion is: Entropic anti Magic fields don't actually stop the ship they only stop the Magic that ACCELERATES it not sapping its actual "speed" because said speed is a "mundane result of the accelerating magic spells over time" and since the Divir moon is above the Atmosphere Mirian just needs to magically reach terminal velocity and then once the Anti magic pulse hit wait the couple of minutes with her Lone Pine stance holding her breath until she hits the moon. What I'm really wondering about is: Why WOULD we even NEED to "accelarate WITHOUT Magic"??? The divir Moon BEFORE it falls is ABOVE the Atmosphere right? Even if not that much it still is... Thus its NOT a problem to ACCELARATE OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE and then let the Anti magic field "cancel your magically acceleration" because guess what... once you reach terminal velocity after overcoming the atmosphere you will reach the moon either way... In essence the author has SPECIFICALLY shown right here in this Chapter that "MAGICALLY created PHYSICAL FORCES/EFFECTS" are NOT "deleted" just the "magic doesnt work inside the field. Now what does Propelling magic do for a Skiff???? It CREATES AN IMPULSE AND "ACCALERATION". So in the last chapter Why did the Airship fall? (it shouldn't at least not the way it did) The "antimagic pulse" can only do the following it can "cut off any further ACCELLARATION but NOT "delete the existing IMPULSE Speed the Ship/Mirian ALREADY have that will only get slowed by the remaining Atmosphere and gravitational force of enteria. So at best the Skiff should deccellerate either quickly or slowly (depending on its speed before the anti Magic hit) and THEN slowly fall down to Enteria. So this was already falsly (at least in an arcane physics sense falsly) depicted last chapter. No what Mirian really has to worry about is the following: how thick is the Anti Magic barrier, will it kill me if I move through it too slowly? If the Anti Magic Barrier around Divir Moon is "only a relatively think screen" then reaching it is actually fairly simply done: 1) Build a ship out of mundane materials 1 (just steel basically) Important here is just ANYTHING THAT WILL NOT GET BROKEN BY BEING STRIPPED OF MAGIC IS FINE 2) and put a bunch of Runes on it for propelling and Air production. These runes will ONLY work until in range of the Anti Magic pulse but this doesn't matter because Mirian will only need enough Speed from those glyphs to get her "from the moment of AMI (Anti Magic Impulse) hit to last her for hitting the moon. 3) Since this won't be (comparatively much distance at all to the part of the journey where the ship has time to accellerate) much distance, she only needs so much speed... Then she also needs enough Air in said ship that even with it somewhat leaking out after the AMI hits last her the 1-2 minutes she will need from "AMI time" to "landing on the moon and rushing to the Gate Time". The only question really is "how far is the range of Impulse" AKA we define the range of the Impulse as "X" then we define the "Time Mirian after hit by AMI can still survive without access to air bubble spells" as "Y" then we just need to calculate literally X/Y to get "Z" the speed Mirian and her ship need to be at the moment the Anti magic Impulse hits. This isn't at all so complicated... So unless the Author suddenly changes how the Entropic fields work (forgot it themselves) Mirian can calculate the necessary Speead "Z/V" or whater you call it in her sleep and then just needs to find a way to archieve said speed by magical accelaration. I actually think though likely we don't even need Dad for that because the gravitational force of a planet isn't actually that strong that far up... and Magic even by the elder Gods is limitet in range to Kilometers not the tens or hundreds of Kilometers. So Mirian likely only needs to archieve speeds to like "cross a few kilometers in one full minute" (Likely less because Lone Pine form lets her survive much longer without Air) And she has THE ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE TO GATHER ENOUGH SPEED. XD
Gopard
I think the author already accidantilly wrote in a plothole here because in regards to the whole "Anti magic field is making reaching the moon impossible" this wouldn't make sense because: Okay because I ended up kinda going overboard down there the TL; TR explanation why this isn't so hard to archieve in my opinion is: Entropic anti Magic fields don't actually stop the ship they only stop the Magic that ACCELERATES it not sapping its actual "speed" because said speed is a "mundane result of the accelerating magic spells over time" and since the Divir moon is above the Atmosphere Mirian just needs to magically reach terminal velocity and then once the Anti magic pulse hit wait the couple of minutes with her Lone Pine stance holding her breath until she hits the moon. What I'm really wondering about is: Why WOULD we even NEED to "accelarate WITHOUT Magic"??? The divir Moon BEFORE it falls is ABOVE the Atmosphere right? Even if not that much it still is... Thus its NOT a problem to ACCELARATE OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE and then let the Anti magic field "cancel your magically acceleration" because guess what... once you reach terminal velocity after overcoming the atmosphere you will reach the moon either way... In essence the author has SPECIFICALLY shown right here in this Chapter that "MAGICALLY created PHYSICAL FORCES/EFFECTS" are NOT "deleted" just the "magic doesnt work inside the field. Now what does Propelling magic do for a Skiff???? It CREATES AN IMPULSE AND "ACCALERATION". So in the last chapter Why did the Airship fall? (it shouldn't at least not the way it did) The "antimagic pulse" can only do the following it can "cut off any further ACCELLARATION but NOT "delete the existing IMPULSE Speed the Ship/Mirian ALREADY have that will only get slowed by the remaining Atmosphere and gravitational force of enteria. So at best the Skiff should deccellerate either quickly or slowly (depending on its speed before the anti Magic hit) and THEN slowly fall down to Enteria. So this was already falsly (at least in an arcane physics sense falsly) depicted last chapter. No what Mirian really has to worry about is the following: how thick is the Anti Magic barrier, will it kill me if I move through it too slowly? If the Anti Magic Barrier around Divir Moon is "only a relatively think screen" then reaching it is actually fairly simply done: 1) Build a ship out of mundane materials 1 (just steel basically) Important here is just ANYTHING THAT WILL NOT GET BROKEN BY BEING STRIPPED OF MAGIC IS FINE 2) and put a bunch of Runes on it for propelling and Air production. These runes will ONLY work until in range of the Anti Magic pulse but this doesn't matter because Mirian will only need enough Speed from those glyphs to get her "from the moment of AMI (Anti Magic Impulse) hit to last her for hitting the moon. 3) Since this won't be (comparatively much distance at all to the part of the journey where the ship has time to accellerate) much distance, she only needs so much speed... Then she also needs enough Air in said ship that even with it somewhat leaking out after the AMI hits last her the 1-2 minutes she will need from "AMI time" to "landing on the moon and rushing to the Gate Time". The only question really is "how far is the range of Impulse" AKA we define the range of the Impulse as "X" then we define the "Time Mirian after hit by AMI can still survive without access to air bubble spells" as "Y" then we just need to calculate literally X/Y to get "Z" the speed Mirian and her ship need to be at the moment the Anti magic Impulse hits. This isn't at all so complicated... So unless the Author suddenly changes how the Entropic fields work (forgot it themselves) Mirian can calculate the necessary Speead "Z/V" or whater you call it in her sleep and then just needs to find a way to archieve said speed by magical accelaration. I actually think though likely we don't even need Dad for that because the gravitational force of a planet isn't actually that strong that far up... and Magic even by the elder Gods is limitet in range to Kilometers not the tens or hundreds of Kilometers. So Mirian likely only needs to archieve speeds to like "cross a few kilometers in one full minute" (Likely less because Lone Pine form lets her survive much longer without Air) And she has THE ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE TO GATHER ENOUGH SPEED. XD
Gopard
He isn't affected at all as far as I know... Which makes sense he is an "ELDER DEVICE" he (AND ALL THE OTHER AUTOMATIONS that are essentially copies of him Mirian has fought in the Vaults so far) are immune to the labyrinth anti magic effects. No what I'm really wondering about is: Why WOULD we even NEED to "accelarate WITHOUT Magic"??? The divir Moon BEFORE it falls is ABOVE the Atmosphere right? Even if not that much it still is... Thus its NOT a problem to ACCELARATE OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE and then let the Anti magic field "cancel your magically acceleration" because guess what... once you reach terminal velocity after overcoming the atmosphere you will reach the moon either way...
J H
It won't necessarily solve the anti-magic field part, but I'm surprised she isn't doing the launch attempts with her dad. The strain of her new levitation spell is a lot, so why not go up in the ship as high as possible, and then have her and her dad switch off on who is holding the air bubble and who is levitating? That would let them take breaks from the strain. If that lets her intercept Divir before it enters the atmosphere, it will be easier to handle getting through the antimagic field and landing without dying. It must be a shell as she said, so depending on how thick it is, she can probably just use her momentum to get through it and then just needs to be able to regain enough use of magic quickly enough to land without dying. Then speed to the Gate to 'unlock' it. Then she can travel to it via Gate in the next loop at her leisure and collect the loot. She's going to need to try to prioritize that so she can bind her new updated armor and book before someone else makes use of the relicarium.
Mai0e
Such a pain to have finally catched up. Thank so much for the work so far, it was an amazing read. Looking forward to the rest of the story.
FuriousDee
If she is just trying to pass though quickly what would the point of trying to drop onto it be. Also given she can’t reach it before it starts to fall she would need to fall faster than the moon.
Amadhe
Didn’t Apophagorga use an Anti-Magic Suppresion Field and not an Entropic one?
Evil Legend
Actually, I’m curious whether the approach would work if she tried to fly over Divir’s anti-magic field and then drop onto it from above. In theory you could still do that while it’s falling — it would just require even more precise timing and planning. She’d also need to enter its field quickly enough to pass through before it fully interacts with her, but at the same time be able to latch onto her own magic to catch herself before she splatters against Divir.
FuriousDee
If Mirian wants to learn about antimagic she should try and see how Apophagorga could use antimagic innately.
FuriousDee
I wonder if people will think Mirian’s armour is the Baracule super weapon that can manipulate the leylines Also Marshal Cesaria’s complaining about slaughter civilians is the height of hypocrisy.
Fomentador
What's that referencing?
Fomentador
Mirian used Eclipse dozens of times before during the invasion, and Liuan still doesn't know, apparently. I'm not sure if Scebur would be able to completely assimilate the RID after Liuan's death, nor if he'd be interested in doing it. His focus seem to be on the southern island, and using RID to getting access to it.
miraca
probably angry and annoyed more than anything
orinatic
Kind of unrelated to the chapter, and may have been mentioned before, but I just realized how *helpful* the Invasion was for Mirian's development as a prophet. She started with a extremely difficult but not insurmountable problem. This 'taught' her that problems can be solved. She got quite good at solving things before realizing the sheer magnitude of the actual problem. It seems like many other prophets didn't have that, which is part of the reason why they're less "just directly try to solve the problem" oriented than Mirian is
Matt H
While I understand her decision at the current time, the scientist in me is so sad that she won't be taking advantage of magic to do R&D at a ridiculously accelerated rate. Just having spells to carefully control the composition of an atmosphere (or the lack thereof) as well as regulating temperatures would already be incredible for advancing chemistry and materials science. Gloveboxes, Schlenk lines, cleanrooms, etc. could all be a thing of the past. Just cast a couple spells and suddenly you're ready to create materials and products that otherwise require a high degree of technology and infrastructure.
Atlas Dwarf
Welp if Scebur didn't know that Mirian had the Sword Relic then he 100% does now, and likely assumes she has the Holy Pages as well. I'm not sure if I remember correctly but I do not think we ever learned what that unknown glyph in the Labyrinth environmental chamber that simulated the leyline mana issue. I wonder if that glyph has anything to do with antimagic, which might be another avenue for the whole excessive mana type polluting the leylines.
SlickMongoose
Yeah good ideas
Shaoraka
Why not a cannon that uses magic and a ship that doesn't ? Or that only uses magic to deal with initial issues like inertia and burning, but which then goes dark only to go back online when it's time to land on the moon maybe ?
Michael T
I feel that a flying archmage with a proven ability to destroy airships wouldn't face much difficulty defeating an army that travels on airships, over a large expanse of water.
Gustav
Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Michael Vonica
Does anyone remember what happens to Scrappy, the northern vault guardian, when he enters an antimagic or enthropic field? I don't think there are any enthropic fields in the labyrinth, and he doesn't leave that, but I think I remember reading that he deactivates in antimagic ones? And that he goes back to normal once removed?
Evgenii Grishin
In the middle when started to discuss fuel, i thought that we finally will be back to poor guy who explode himself in the classroom in the start of the loop :)
FuriousDee
She is just scraping the plan to use it to get to the moon she might revisit it for other problems. The issue is that to use any solution based on technology on a large scale problem would require a manufacturing base and logistical network that she not only doesn’t have time to build she doesn’t even have time to teach people what she needs properly. A few months is not sufficient to teach even GCSE level science. With that restriction I am not sure what it could be helpful with in the loop. It does seem like something to look into after the loop ends though, to help replace spell engines and replace magic climate change with regular climate change.
steamrick
>Plan 8 - Build a non-magical delivery system Plan 9 - Get powerful enough to make the journey unaided
Enthernal
it works by coating an object, she makes malls for her items to reduce relicarium usage. It Only works on the object that is submerged though, so if you were to make a bag or box, only that would be soulbound, not it's content.
Alexander Dupree
Just a couple of Navier-Stokes equations and a bit of thermodynamics and she’s on her way to being a rocket surgeon
Pandalf
Mirian won't be playing Factorio 🥲. Also the note about making her too philosophical feels more human than everything else in the chapter.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Noooo! It makes sense, she absolutely won't be able to make an actual rocket, much less in a month, for centuries. However, it seems like a big mistake to not look into it on the side: Even if she can't replicate an actual spaceship, she just realized how massive of an unexplored field it is and it's possibilities. Surely there is a worthwhile possibility of easier and more achievable inventions that could assist her, especially if combined with magic rather than viewed as an entirely separate field. Also, her going "Man, there is this massive space of possibilities that we were too blinded by magic to explore, lemme just ignore it because I have magic" seems contrary to so many of the lessons she learned on her journey, both magical and societal.
cel
When you coat an item in relicarium, do we know if it soaks (only word I could think of) all the way through the item, or does it simply form a coat on the item’s surface? If it’s the latter, would coating a bag in relicarium binding it and placing things inside to transport them back to the past work? I wouldn’t be surprised if this question has been raised in the past and I just didn’t see the comment…
Robert Mullins
Liuan must feel so embarrassed.
F
Good choice! Mirian shouldn't have to invent fluid mechanics. She has enough on her plate
Myr S.
yaY!!!
