Dimensional Descent

The Starship could be considered to be Cynthia's magnum opus, the greatest blueprint she had ever constructed and the best Craft that she had ever been a part of. Even so, there were many faults with it, most of which surrounded its shrunken size.

A regular Starship was capable of lasting without a replacement of its core for at least a decade without issue, but Cynthia's could only last a single year. This was still not bad as a year was a relatively long time in the scale of a war, at least. However, this 90% drop was something that hurt quite a bit.

The reason for this was that because the core, a fusion core, was an object that simulated the power of a Star. It was extremely powerful. The amount of power within it was obscene, if it wasn't like this, how could it power such a large vessel? But it was also ironic because of this that the fusion core last a shorter time on this modified starship, rather than longer despite its smaller size.

There were a few reasons for this. The first was cooling, the second was capacity, and the final was size, this time referring to the core's size instead of the ship's.

The cooling of the fusion core didn't just happen within the engine room, but rather throughout the entire ship. The main method used was also the easiest and most effective, and that was diffusion. By using special cooling pathways more effective than even copper could hope to be, the heat was evenly distributed throughout the ship.

The problem was that because the size of the Starship was a handful of kilometers, as opposed to the thousands of kilometers of the original Starship, the change in size was far too drastic to accommodate the original fusion core.

The second problem was one of capacity, and that was that the smaller Starship simply didn't have enough mechanisms that could be powered. Fusion cores had a great amount of volatile energy and it could only calmed and parsed to a certain degree. After a certain point, it would refuse to split. As such, a much smaller Starship could be easily overloaded.

In order to deal with these problems, Cynthia had chosen to shrink the size of the fusion core, and the method she used was actually quite ingenious, but it unfortunately only further exacerbated the problem. Now that the fusion core was also smaller, there was less overall energy and ultimately there was the trouble result of a shorter shelf life.

This was the trade off that had come with a smaller core, and this was just one of the major problems the Starship faced.

The second issue was one of defense, and this unfortunately fed into more of the size of the vessel.

The main mode of defense for both Starships were their protective Force Arts. However, for the smaller of the two, this was basically the only mode of protection, and it wasn't as good as the first. It required access to much more energy to complete the same tasks.

Of course, since the Starship was smaller, the area its Force Art took up was much smaller as well, but that also meant that it had much less area to take up. When it took on attacks, there was much less room to disperse said attacks and as a result, it took more energy to deal with the same trouble, once again resulting in a decrease in its shelf life.

The larger a Force Art, controlling for quality, the more powerful it was. This was a simple rule. But even more importantly than that in this case, the more material used as the foundation of a Force Art, the more powerful it was.

But this was unfortunately another problem that the smaller Starship had to suffer in to gain the benefits it had.

The third and the final major issue was speed.

In truth, the smaller Starship was both far more agile, and far faster. Where it suffered was in using space jumps.

Its personal gravitational pull was highly limited due to its much smaller size, and as such its size couldn't be used as a personal shortcut to opening up a spatial tunnel. As a result of this, it took a great deal of time for the smaller of the two Starships to move across large distances, even though in confined spaces, it far outstripped the larger one.

In order to make up for this deficit, the smaller of the two Starships, once again, had to compensate with more energy usage, once again placing it even further behind.

These were the three most major issues, while the rest were more miscellaneous. Leonel planned to not only fix this, but he also planned to improve upon the Starship's strengths as well. In fact, he planned to use the material of this one Starship, to Craft three more. He would also use the much larger of the two Starships to construct an entire fleet, but he wouldn't be able to do that until he finally brought Little Tolly beyond the Fifth Dimension.

However, in order to help Little Tolly evolve, he would have to find a Force Eruption, and there was only one place that he could guarantee would have one... and that was none other than the Morales' territory which was currently undergoing a huge evolution.

For now, he would focus on this matter.

"Let's do it," Leonel said lightly, taking Little Tolly along with him. This would be a large project, even larger than the creation of his Divine Armor, but soon he would be ready.

Right outside of the Segmented Cube, a trio of women sat. The atmosphere was quite somber.

Empress Fawkes gently rubbed her daughter's back, her eyes slightly puffy from crying. She didn't want to see her daughter like this either.

Alienor was always cheery and full of life, but now she could only be said to be the complete opposite.

"He's awake?" Alienor asked.

Aina, the third woman among them, nodded her head slowly.

Slowly, Alienor's gaze went from downcast to sharp, and then from sharp to sharper.

"Let's not bother him. Tell me when he comes out, it's about time I was a real mother to him."