Mage? Magic Engineer!

Chapter 400: Chapter 397: Distributed Mage Tower

"What pre-employment training? This is your grandmaster!"

Caroline and Andre’s faces twitched in unison. "What do you mean, ’grandmaster ancestor’?"

After Rorschach explained, Andre scratched his head. "My apologies, Master Caroline. You’re so young, I thought you were here for an internship at the factory."

Caroline was quite pleased with the straightforward apology. While Rorschach was still struggling with how to elegantly translate "teacher’s teacher" into the common tongue, Caroline had already begun insisting on being called Rorschach’s senior apprentice-sister—they were both students of Master Kano, so it made perfect sense.

Andre took over as the guide. After he briefly introduced the situation at the Steel Factory, Caroline once again asked about Rorschach’s Mage Tower: "So, is this steel tower in the middle your Mage Tower?" She thought the design had quite a bit of character.

Andre shook his head. "This building serves the factory. The bottom floor of the tower has Transmuting Dust collectors, the middle is the central control area, and the upper floors are for offices. But there are other office areas closer to the residential quarters and the cafeteria."

"So..." Caroline combined this with Rorschach’s evasive behavior and came to a shocking conclusion. "Rorschach, you haven’t built your own Mage Tower yet?"

Rorschach’s mind spun, and he redefined the term Mage Tower. "I am a Mage, and as you can see, I led the construction of all these towers. So aren’t they ’Mage, Towers’?"

Caroline went straight for a chokehold on her former student. Rorschach’s head fell into her embrace, and then his neck was clamped tight as he listened to the furious lady’s tirade while she pinched his cheeks.

"A Mage Tower! Does it have a complete defensive system? Does it have a workshop for researching dangerous Magic? What about an Arcane Garden for growing special plants? An Alchemy Room and a studio? A Library for storing ancient texts? And a Stargazing Observatory?"

"And most importantly, do you have the qualifications to run a school, to recruit Apprentices or attract collaborators for Magic research?"

’Are there really that many requirements?’ Rorschach gasped as he struggled free from the chokehold, retorting, "Who even has a proper Mage Tower these days? Look at the Town Mage Towers all over the Empire. Aren’t they just a combination of a Mage and a tower? Just tell me if you’re staying or not!" He and Bart even had a Tower Spirit; they were already way ahead of the game.

Caroline was still angry. She realized her student had tricked her into coming here. She had originally thought she could become a research collaborator in a proper Mage Tower, but it turned out this was just an unlicensed, back-alley operation with no qualified facilities.

However, Caroline had nowhere else to go right now. She gritted her teeth. "I’m staying. And I’m going to build a Mage Tower with my own hands!"

She wasn’t planning to strike out on her own; she wanted Rorschach to have a Mage Tower worthy of the name.

And after her tour, Caroline had a nascent but feasible idea. "You have offices in two locations and three factories now, right? Don’t you find traveling back and forth to be a hassle?"

"I do."

Caroline began listing the places she had seen. "First, the workshop. You should move the valuable Tower Spirit somewhere else, then just expand your workbench and set up more Alchemy Platforms and storage racks. Second, you need a Sealing Room to block Prophetic Spells and a training room to provide a sturdy and durable space for your Apprentices and yourself."

Rorschach chimed in, "In that case, we can build it to the standard of an explosion-proof workshop. A main structure of cement and steel plates, reinforced with a permanent barrier spell."

"Inside the Central Tower, I currently have a lab for cultivating microorganisms. With some expansion and the addition of a greenhouse, it could be converted into an ’Arcane Garden’."

Caroline approved of Rorschach’s ideas and continued to add her own. "Your biggest advantages are the Tower Spirit and an ample supply of Magic Power, but your defenses are too weak and need to be upgraded. Also, the Observatory can be set up on the mountaintop and combined with the Divination Room. I know you’re not good at either of those things anyway, Rorschach."

Andre pointed out the blind spot. "But none of these facilities are in the same place."

"My idea is to link all the rooms and facilities with permanent Teleportation Gates to form a fully functional Mage Tower. Even though they aren’t physically in the same location in the real world, as long as their internal spaces are connected and accessible, they will be a single, unified whole for the Users inside."

Caroline began to seriously analyze the feasibility. "Even if the distance isn’t great, permanent Teleportation Arrays between the two cities would still consume a lot of Magic Power. Fortunately, the Extractors can meet that demand."

"But they would lack a systematic defense, unless you applied the same standard of defensive measures to every single facility. However, you could stop intruders by deactivating the Teleportation Gates, and if a part of the structure is damaged, you could quickly find a new space to replace it."

Furthermore, the location of a Mage Tower also affects the Casting within it. For example, the Tower of Storms was built on a Sea Cliff, buffeted by the fierce winds and crashing waves of the sea—a place where Air and Water Elements violently converge. Casting Shaping Power and Transformation System Magic related to ’Water,’ ’Air,’ and ’Electricity’ is more effective there, but it has a detrimental effect on Magic related to ’Fire’ and ’Earth’."

Fortunately, both factories have Extractors and numerous Alchemy Devices. All the facilities are close to Magic Nodes and immersed in an environment rich with Ether, which provides a boost to almost all forms of Magic.

In short, this "distributed" Mage Tower had its pros and cons. Rorschach, for one, was satisfied with the concept.

"Teacher Caroline is an expert in the Space System of Magic and one of Master Kano’s top students. If you design and build the Teleportation System, this plan is sure to succeed." Flattery costs nothing, so Rorschach laid it on thick.

But Caroline reminded him, "Permanent Teleportation Gates are very expensive!"

"It’s fine. I own the fish... I mean, all these factories. I’m not short on money."

...

"Hiss... Why so much refined gold?" A precious metal even more absurdly expensive than Mithril had appeared. In Rorschach’s mind, this stuff was comparable to the rare earth metals of his previous life. But according to the cost estimate Lady Caroline provided, building a single Teleportation Gate would require over a thousand kilograms of it.

In other words, not including labor costs, the raw materials for a single gate could buy ten detached villas in Lansite, where housing prices were skyrocketing, or two manors in the suburbs of the capital.

And now, Lady Caroline was estimating they would need to build at least thirteen of them.

In the blueprints she provided, every room would connect to a central hall. Beneath this hall, a dedicated Transmuting Dust converter would need to be installed to provide a continuous power supply for the Teleportation System.

The body of the gate and its frame would form the teleportation mechanism. When the gate was closed, the circuit would be open. Turning the handle would activate the Magic Array within the gate, and pushing it open would complete the construction of the teleportation pathway. This design would minimize Magic Power consumption and also reduce the load during frequent use.

’I might have to hang up a sign in the future: "Conserve energy. Please close the gate behind you!"’

The power for the entire gate would be supplied through the hinge pin on its side—made from a high-hardness, high-magic-flux Secret Silver Alloy. Magic Power would be channeled up from below.

If the project was completed, the three factories would be successfully linked, and at the very least, Rorschach and Andre could travel quickly between the two locations.

When Caroline found something that interested her, she would pour all her energy into it. The Teleportation Gate design was a perfect example, leveraging her understanding of Space Spells and the bulk of her knowledge in Alchemy...

Now there was one more crucial question to ask Rorschach. "We still need a place to house the Tower Spirit’s core. Where do you plan to locate it? In Lansite again?"

Rorschach shook his head. "Not in this world."