“Oh, now that you mention it… That’s right.” Juna’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.
Her mind must have been preoccupied with staying on guard against Excel. When she was embarrassed, she actually acted her age. It was really cute. I wished I could just watch her forever, but I had king things that needed to actually get done.
“Now then, first order of business…” I turned to Castor, who looked like he had no clue what was going on. “For now, let’s put a blindfold on Castor.”
With Castor blindfolded, we got onto a wyvern’s gondola, then traveled an hour or so, including the time transferring over to a ship midway.
When we finally reached our destination, I said to Castor, “Okay, you may now take off the blindfold.”
“…Why do you sound so high-handed?” Castor grumbled.
Even as he grumbled about it, Castor took off his blindfold. When he did, he found himself in the middle of the woods.
The only ones there were Juna, Castor, Excel and me, and the only thing in sight was a bunch of trees.
“What are we doing in a place like this?” Castor seemed dubious, but then he suddenly seemed to realize something and furrowed his brow. He asked me, “Is this… an island or something?”
“Oh…? Why would you think that?”
“I can smell salt water in all directions. We’re near the sea, right? We did get on a boat in the middle of the trip, after all.”
“…Perceptive,” I said.
Even though he had been blindfolded the whole time, he had managed to immediately figure out that we were surrounded by the sea. That was impressive. I could see Excel had trained him well.
That’s when I noticed that Juna was dumbfounded by what she was seeing.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oh, no… It’s just, on the way here, I’ve seen a lot of incredible things…” Juna said a little embarrassedly, realizing I’d caught her with her guard down.
Ohh… Come to think of it, I never had told Juna about this place, did I? I had been leaving it totally in Excel’s hands, after all.
Seeing Juna like that, Castor looked even more suspicious. “Just what is this place supposed to be?”
“Hm? Well, to put it in the simplest terms I can… It’s our secret weapon, and a testing ground for a type of troops, maybe?”
“Secret weapon?” Castor repeated.
“It’s faster to just show you. Come this way.” I started walking and led the way for everyone.
When we had walked a little ways, we came to a clearing. It was a meadow covered in short grass.
There was nothing high up, so the blue sky spread out over our heads. When I looked up to the sky, there were wyvern knights flying in formation.
I pointed up to those wyvern knights. “Castor, what do you think when you see that?”
“They’re very… fast, huh…” Castor said, narrowing his eyes as if it were bright. “Too fast, if anything. That’s not a speed wyverns can fly at. Are they using magic or something?”
“Well, when it comes to magic… you could say they’re using it, in a way, yes. But, if they used magic to create a tailwind, do you think they could still fly in formation like that?”
“…No, not possible. If they were accelerating themselves with magic, they’d be less synchronized.”
Like Castor was saying, people had varying skill levels when it came to magic. Even if they used magic of the same type, the power, range, and cost depended on the person. That was why, even if we gathered a bunch of people with the same ability to manipulate wind, they probably wouldn’t be able to fly in neat formations like that while accelerating with magic. So that speed didn’t come from magic, it came from technology.
“I want you to look at the back of their saddles,” I said.
“They’ve got something attached there,” Castor noted, looking where I’d told him. “Is it those rings?”
If you looked closely, yes, on the back of the wyvern knights’ saddles there were two rings; one on the left, and one on the right.
I answered him while still looking up at the sky, “What you see there on the back of their saddles is a miniaturized, light-weight version of the Little Susumu Mark V.” (The Maxwellian Propulsion Device.) “When equipped with those, wyverns can fly faster and with a greater cruising range than ever before.”
It had happened on the day when Ludwin took me to see Genia’s dungeon laboratory.
They’d shown me Genia’s inventions like the Little Susumu Mark V and Mechadra, and while I’d still had some concerns (especially about what I was going to do with Mechadra) on my way home, I had been confident that I’d found the key to bringing a revolution to this country. That was when a certain idea had occurred to me.
“…Hey, Genia. Can this Little Susumu Mark V be mass-produced? Also, could you make it smaller and lighter?”
“Hm…” Genia answered after thinking for a little while. “It’s really an issue of whether I can secure a source for a certain special metal, but if that can be taken care of, mass production is possible. Now, as for miniaturization and making it lighter, you do realize the output will scale down with that, right?”
Metal, huh? This had been before we’d absorbed Amidonia, so getting that metal would have been difficult in light of the poverty of mineral resources in the kingdom…
Genia tilted her head to the side quizzically and asked, “What were you going to use them for?”
“Well, they suck in air and blow it back out, right? In that case, I was thinking we could fix them to the wyverns’ bellies, or maybe the back of their saddles.”
“Oh?! I see! I hadn’t thought of using it like that!”
There were three types of creature used in a manner similar to airplanes in this world: wyverns, which were in wide usage; griffons, which only the Empire had succeeded in breeding; and the dragons of the Star Dragon Mountain Range. If I were to assign them a grade of S, A, B, or C to their flight speed, turning, and cruising range, it would look like this:
[Wyvern] Flight Speed: B, Turning Ability: C, Cruising Range: A
[Griffon] Flight Speed: A, Turning Ability: S, Cruising Range: C
[Dragon] Flight Speed: S, Turning Ability: A, Cruising Range: S
…Well, more or less.
If you look at these stats, you can see that wyverns are like bombers, able to fly long distance but not strong in a fight; and griffons are like fighters, not able to fly long distances, but strong in a fight. The dragons were strong in all categories, but they were far less numerous than the other two, and they were sentient, so they couldn’t really be controlled. There was apparently a country up north that had a contract with the dragons, but they were an exception among exceptions.
In other words, though I wanted to avoid this at all costs, if we went to war with the Empire, our wyvern cavalry would be no match for the Empire’s griffon cavalry.
However, if we could make a miniaturized, light-weight version of Genia’s propulsion device and attach it to them, what then? Wouldn’t it raise everything except for their turning ability? If we could make it:
[Wyvern (With Propeller)] Flight Speed: B (S), Turning Ability: C (C-), Cruising Range: A (S+)
Then, even if they couldn’t fight griffon cavalry in close combat, they might be able to compete using a hit-and-run style of fighting. That was what I was thinking.
That said, I hadn’t been able to secure a source of that special metal, so the idea had had to go on hold for a time. However, with Roroa foisting Amidonia on me later, things had changed.