The Engineer Walker and his students raised an uproar as they scrambled towards the toppled marionette in a frenzy. As the marionette was the brainchild of their collective ingenuity, an integration of Earth’s technology into Isythre’s, and the representation of a certain video game they were currently transfixed at, it was understandable that the Engineer Walker and his students panicked at the sudden turn of events.
“I need an explanation! How in the world did something that walks on four damn legs even fall over?!” The furious Engineer Walker, who was running the fastest, yelled.
“Huff… Huff… Well, seriously, if… it’s certainly not because you fumbled around with its control…” A panting student offered as he struggled to catch up with the professor. “Maybe something happened to its vertical stabilizer or the hydraulic drive system.”
“Aren’t those the two places I’d* specifically* asked be triple-checked before testing?” The Engineer Walker asked, looking a little annoyed.
“Hey, we did, okay? We checked them as many times as we could afford under this tight schedule! But then again… Well, you know the materials we had to make do with,” The student from earlier answered in a softer voice.
“Chin up, guys. It might be nothing serious. Our babe here is just a ‘cloudcuckoolander’ channeling its clumsy-cute charm!” cried one of the students, who had begun to gather, and everyone burst into laughter.
“Well, I told you all not to use a white paint coating, didn’t I? But, oh no! ‘Four lean, long legs must only be paired with white silk socks,’ said a certain someone. We all know that wearing long, white socks is one of the hallmarks of a clumsy-cute ‘cloudcuckoolander’. It’s only natural that the marionette would fall over at some point!” Someone else chimed in.
“While we’re talking about design fails, let’s not forget about another glaring oversight: the* size*. We should have made it smaller; that would have improved its mobility! Seriously, whose idea was it to make it this big?”
“You’re close to exposing our dear Principal there, mate. Better not let him hear you—”
“Too late, brats!* I heard everything!” The Engineer Walker bellowed. “If you have issues with the Phoenix’s enormous size, then come at me! Didn’t I make it very clear that real* men find beauty in very large mechas?”
Baiyi quietly watched a decrepit suit of armor that was the Engineer Walker banter with his students, who laughed as they raced towards the large spider-like machine. As they ran, they veered towards more “gentlemanly” topics of discussion. One would find it hard to believe that this rogue group was responsible for the invention of such impressive technology.
This thought moved Baiyi a little. Unlike other faculties, the Engineering Faculty was not big on respect to seniors, and its professors and students saw each other as equals — members of a focused research team. Because of this, they shared a close relationship with each other, and they were more relaxed when they were together. Baiyi noticed this ages ago, and he was not surprised by it.
The Engineer Walker was a friendly guy, who was down-to-earth and cared little for decorum. He also enjoyed passionate discussions with his students on the sidewalk, about which female student had the leanest legs, the most curvaceous waist, or a face most deserving of a good, slow lick. The male students also considered him a patron, as he helped them distract the Jawflower while they snuck into the female dormitory to sing love songs to their crushes. There was a time Baiyi found out that a few students were working on a device to spy on girls, and at the time, the Engineer Walker helped them escape Baiyi’s wrath.
Setting aside his depravity, the Engineer Walker was, generally, a calm professor that mingled incredibly well with his students. Although the Engineer Walker’s students did not revere him as much as they did Grand Principal Hope, they were closer to him than the students of other faculty were to their principals.
Baiyi did not know if interacting with students this way was good or bad, but he did not put a stop to it. [1]. From an educator’s standpoint, the Engineer Walker was a good teacher, whose students possessed impressive skills and a professional mindset.
However, the Engineer Walker had also inadvertently introduced his students to corrupt hobbies and interests. Baiyi felt that the students of the Engineering faculty had begun to descend down a dark path, which led to unbridled “gentlemenhood”.
As Baiyi wondered how best to bring Isythre’s next generation of genius engineers back on the path of righteousness, he heard the Engineer Walker call out to him from afar. “Yo, Boss, can you come over here and help us out a little?”
‘Why do I feel like this is the real reason he invited me here? He just needed me as his insurance, right?’ Baiyi thought as he flew to the Engineer Walker. In moments, he landed beside the spider marionette.
“So, did you find the source of the problem?” He asked.
“Solaire of Astora’s sun has set. It is dark,” replied the spider marionette.
“I wasn’t asking you!” Baiyi leered at the robot and turned to the Engineer Walker.
“This is why we need you. Please, help us flip the Phoenix so that we could inspect its internals.”
“Oh…” Baiyi’s mana surged and covered the marionette, attempting to flip it over.
However, the marionette did not budge. It was much heavier than Baiyi had expected. It definitely weighed more than a hundred ton, heavier than battle tanks on Earth!
Furthermore, the spider marionette had been enchanted with an absurdly strong anti-magic, and none of the load-lightening spells that Baiyi cast worked.
As both mana and magic spells were ineffective on the gargantuan deadweight, brute force was the only feasible way to lift it. A tremendous amount of brute force.
With this in mind, Baiyi removed his cloak and transformed into his Black Meatball Mode, right in front of the students.
A collective gasp of bewilderment rang out from the crowd of students.
“G-guys? That’s Grand Principal Hope’s Void Form, isn’t it?! Our Principal has mentioned it once or twice before, but I have never thought it would look this awesome!”
“This power… is terrifying! It’s leaps and bounds more than the Principal’s power! No wonder our Principal had no choice but to be his underling!”
“Such boundless energy, harvested from timeless darkness. So, this is the legendary Void Energy, huh? It was rightfully classified as a supermundane power. Its energy pulses suffocate me…”
“Dude, are you seeing what I’m seeing? It’s a sphere! A most perfect, all-around shape! Get it? All-around…?”
“I understand basic shapes; thank you. What I don’t understand is that blue… flowy ribbon thing around the top. What’s that supposed to be? It completely ruined the sphere’s aesthetics!”
Baiyi held back laughter as he listened to the students. Since he fought that huge battle at Mars, Baiyi had not had to use his Black Meatball Mode. Never did he predict that the next time he would use it would be in front of a crowd, for something as trivial as flipping over a marionette.
The spider marionette’s immense weight and anti-magic property made flipping it over difficult, and Baiyi could not direct Void Energy at it lest he reduces it to ashes. Hence, transforming into his Black Meatball Mode was Baiyi’s only choice. Only in this form could he use Void Energy without causing unwanted damage to the spider marionette.
Baiyi realized that the students, who had just seen him transform into his Black Meatball Mode, had reacted differently than the public would have if they saw him. The students were not struck by panic and fear; instead, they were amazed and taken in.
He could tell that the students had accepted the Voidwalkers and Void Energy — the energy that these legends draw strength from — another indicator that the Engineer Walker’s teaching methods had been successful.
Baiyi turned to the curious crowd of students and said, “Listen: if you have any brilliant suggestions regarding the aesthetics of this transformation, you should just take it up with its designer, His Majesty the Principal, okay? Now, please move aside…”
His spherical body grew to twice its previous side, making Baiyi look even more domineering. He stretched his arm, which was made entirely of Void Energy, and grabbed the marionette’s front legs. Then, he flipped it over, causing its soft underbelly to face upward.
The spider marionette was creepier than a hammerhead shark, but they both had similar underbellies!
“That should be all, right?” Baiyi asked.
“Solaire of Astora’s sun has set. It is dark,” replied the marionette replied.
“Again, I wasn’t talking to you! Besides, why is that the only reply you give, anyway?”
“Solare of Astore’s sun has set. It is dark.”
“You!” Baiyi was about to rant when a thought crossed his mind. It was possible that the marionette kept saying the same thing because it was busted.
“Oh, give the babe a break, would ya? Its voice lines were — I’ll admit — last-minute additions, so of course, they are a little sloppy and prone to technical issues,” the Engineer Walker said, trying to save the face of his creation.
He began to issue commands to his students, instructing them to remove the marionette’s outer shells. The Engineer Walker then hopped onto the marionette’s belly and yanked a metallic plate out. He stuck his hand into the marionette’s metallic entrails and pulled out a few eerily familiar-looking trinkets on its circuit board.
Baiyi looked at them and asked, “How did you get your hands on those?”
In the Engineer Walker’s hand were five Void Crystals — the very same tools Tisdale had used to summon Voidwalkers when Duat invaded. The crystals were special containers for Void Energy; hence, the Archmage called them “Summoning Runes” 1.
The Engineer Walker and the Blacksmith Walker had built the metallic body used by the Third Voidwalker, but the Engineer Walker had no part in the invention of the Void Crystals, which were inferior copies of Divine Energy Crystals. The Void Crystals and other items invented to store Void Energy were made by Baiyi and the Alchemist Walker. Hence, it was quite strange to see the Engineer Walker holding Void Crystals — items he should have no business with.
“Hold on… This marionette was powered by Void Crystals?” Baiyi asked in surprise as realization dawned on him. This had to be the reason why the Engineer Walker insisted that he be present for the testing.
Currently, the technology behind Void Crystals was unsatisfyingly immature, which meant that Void Energy leakage or even explosions of the crystals were possible. Thus, Baiyi locked them inside his lab all the time, banning anyone saved Tisdale from gaining access to them; Even then, Tisdale was ordered to always treat them delicately.
What would happen should a single crystal explode? Well, to make an easy comparison, one would just have to recall the power of the Knight’s one strike as well as the Third Walker’s spectacular showboating back during the Duat Invasion. Indeed, those feats were possible only because of the immense energy stored within these Void Crystals.
Thus, using such a spectacularly unstable and risky energy source on an equally unstable prototype created through a slew of unfamiliar tech was akin to courting with death. No wonder the Engineer had brought his creation to the wasteland for testing. If a timebomb like this were to appear within Da Xue, Baiyi would no doubt annihilate every silver of the Engineer Walker’s consciousness!
“Hey, hey, chill! Everything is still under control,” the Engineer Walker said, dismissing Baiyi’s concern with a wave of his hand. “This isn’t even the first-generation generator you used for your contingency plan anymore, man. It’s an improved version — one the Alchemist Walker had created after studying the books on chemistry and material science you’d brought to him. It’s quite stable, and even if something were to happen to it, it would definitely not explode or turn into whatever worst-case scenarios you could think of.”
Then, to prove his faith in the Alchemist Walker’s expertise, the Engineer Walker began to juggle the crystals like a circus clown.
Baiyi began to panic. He would not mind if something bad happened to both of them, because their bodies were not even real, to begin with; But* what about the kids?!*
Baiyi really wondered about how these two clumsy, gentlemanly goofs even gotten their hands on Void Energy itself!
The Engineer Walker tossed one of the crystals to Baiyi, prompting the Fifth Walker to snap out his reverie and catch it. Once Baiyi inspected the crystal with his psychic energy, he relaxed. The Engineer Walker was right.
“See? Far from being a battery of its own, this newly-improved version of Energy Crystal is really just an extension of the actual energy repository, like a wire connected out from a battery. Which is why if anything were to happen to this little thing, you bet those leaked Void Energy would be retracted back into the central energy repository instead,” The Engineer explained.
Baiyi scrutinized the crystal following the Engineer Walker’s words and realized that it was exactly as he had described. In fact, this would have explained why they managed to obtain Void Energy without Baiyi supplying them.
“Hmm, so this is why the Alchemist Walker asked me to lend him that Divine Energy Crystal the other day,” Baiyi murmured. “It’s for this, huh? Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“You bet! I mean, if we can’t make Energy Crystals as stable as the original Divine Energy Crystal, then we should solve our problem from a different angle… Which is to find ways to extend the reach of the original Divine Energy Crystal, right? Besides, you haven’t been using the energy stored in that little thing for years, man. All that power’s going to waste!” The Engineer Walker beamed. “I was inspired by the books you’d brought home, honestly, and when combined with the Alchemist Walker ‘s own breakthrough in his field, we created this improved version together!”
“The two of you are amazingly efficient. Do keep up the good work,” Baiyi nodded, giving them his seal of approval.
“Well, we had been trying to work on a solution for a while; It was just the lack of information and knowledge that held us back. The science you’d brought from Earth, though, had bridged the gaps of ignorance. How else did you think we managed to come up with so many new things within the short amount of time you go out there and threaten everyone with your power like a gangster?” The Engineer said.
“So, what else should I know? Did my teacher help with the application of Void Energy?”
“Yep. Check this out,” the Engineer Walker said and pulled a formation from the marionette’s circuit board. It was an unmistakably Rohlserlian formation with a few spaces among them, where the crystals were to be fitted.
“Only with this transformation formation, combined with the energy-transferring network that I’d designed along with other technical improvements and techniques, had I been able to make this babe move! Oh, but now I don’t understand why it’s suddenly down. This stinks…” The Engineer Walker grumbled.
Then, suddenly, a student who was removing the metallic shell away from one of the spider-marionette’s legs shouted, “Look!”
The crowd did as told. There, under the plate, was a chaotic mess of intertwining pipelines with a cracked propeller shaft buried among them. It was quite obvious that this was where the problem was; an error on the marionette’s leg had caused the entire thing to topple.
“Ah, so it really was a problem on the joint and load-bearing after all, huh? That sucks. I mean, it’s already the best we could come up with using the best current material and craftmanship!” The Engineer wailed loudly. “Ugh, can the Alchemist Walker and the Blacksmith Walker just work faster on their own bloody fields…”
Footnotes:
A reference to the item to summon heroes in Fate Grand Order, because of course, it’s always FGO when the Archmage is involved.
