“That’s why we’ve strengthened the wyverns’ abilities with the Little Susumu Mark V Light,” I said. “This is an innovation that affects both the dratroopers, who belong to the Army, and the wyvern cavalry, who belong to the Air Force, at the same time. We don’t have a system for mass production in place yet, so we have to prioritize where they’ll be deployed.”
“I see… It’s an upgrade you can carry out precisely because you unified everyone under the National Defense Force,” Castor said with a groan of admiration. He looked up into the sky where the wyvern cavalry were flying in formation, and muttered sadly, “Wyverns that fly faster than griffons and farther than dragons, huh. I wish I could ride on one. I’ve never felt more frustrated about being transferred to the Navy than I do right now…”
“…Castor?” I asked.
“Ha ha… It’s just the howling of a beaten dog. Pay me no mind.”
“…Is it?” I asked.
A beaten dog… huh?
True, I had won and Castor had lost. Now we were standing next to each other staring up into the sky. It was a strange feeling.
Excel watched our exchange with a wry smile.
“Now, let’s check out down below next,” I said.
After parting with Hal and Kaede, we had returned to the open plain we had walked across earlier. I was pointing towards a small, rocky mountain that was large enough to be seen from where we were.
“That rocky mountain over there is probably closest. Let’s go there.”
I lead the way. When we reached the foot of that rocky mountain, the wyvern knights were landing, having just finished their training. In the foothills of that rocky mountain, there was the opening to a cave large enough that a rhinoceros could easily pass through. The wyverns were going inside.
Seeing that, Castor asked me, “Is that where the wyvern stables are?”
“Oh, hey. You figured it out.”
“Normally, wyverns build their nests in rocky caves like that one,” he explained. “We built similar facilities in Red Dragon City. Compared to ordinary stables, the wyverns can relax more easily in a place like this.”
Ah, that made sense. He would be an expert on the topic.
“That’s right,” I said. “That cave is connected to the level beneath this one. Down on that level there are about one hundred or so small rooms that branch off to the side of the main cave. We have the wyverns living in them. There are twenty or so of them here at the moment, though.”
“One hundred?!” he yelped. “That’s one-tenth of all the wyverns we had at our command when I was commander! Do you need that many deployed here on this island?! Is this a front line base or something?!”
“Well, there’s a lot that goes into my reasoning for it,” I said.
While I was reassuring Castor, we entered the cave. It stank like a farm inside. (Or maybe a zoo.) We were doing our best to ventilate the place, but there was no helping this.
“So… the place down below that you wanted to show me, is it the wyvern’s roosts?” Castor asked, frowning. Maybe all the secrecy was starting to irritate him.
“No, it’s even further down,” I told him. “Come on, through here.”
In front of us there was a man-made door that was clearly out of place in the cave. There were cranks on either side of it, and there was a guard standing at attention next to each crank. Beyond the door there was a small, square room.
“Um, sire… It looks like an awfully small room?” Juna commented, a question mark floating over her head.
Oh, right. This was a first for Juna, too, huh. It was going to be fun seeing her reaction.
“Okay, people,” I said. “All aboard.”
“Aboard? Is this some sort of vehicle?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I turned to the soldiers on each side. “Okay, to the lower level, please.”
They saluted. ““Yes, sir! As you command!””
When everyone was inside the little room, the soldiers spoke into a communication tube. “Traveling from middle level to lower level.” Then, after the responses of “Upper level, roger,” and “Lower level, roger,” came, they began spinning the cranks beside the door. When they did, the little room began to slowly descend.
“Eek!” Juna shrieked.
The drop was slight, but it came suddenly, and Juna lost her balance, leaning against my chest for support. When I caught her, I felt the closeness of her soft body, and the scent of her hair tickled my nose. It was kind of nice for me.
“I–I’m sorry, sire,” Juna said, blushing.
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” I said. “You okay?”
“Y-Yes…Is this little room going down below?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You saw the cranks by the door, right? By turning them, they’re able to raise or lower this room.”
That’s right. This box-like room was an extremely simple manual elevator. The designer was Genia Maxwell.
I (not being so good at the sciences) didn’t understand the system that well myself, but there was a pulley with a counterweight on the opposite side of the elevator, and that somehow let them raise and lower the elevator with no more power than it took to pedal a bike.
The truth was, it had originally been designed to be installed in Genia’s dungeon laboratory. When she’d thought about it, though, even if the hassle of going up and down the stairs was removed, Genia wasn’t going to want to go outside any more often, so the plan had been scrapped.
The team I’d sent to organize Genia’s blueprints (they’d been stored so haphazardly, I’d dispatched a cleaning team — led by Ludwin, of course) had found the plans, so we’d tried setting one up here as a test. It was manually operated, not that fast, and required a lift attendant to be on hand at all times, but if they worked in one-hour shifts, it wasn’t that tiring for them.
There were currently only three stops, “Cave Entrance,” “Lowest Level,” and “Top Level,” so the one elevator only took six soldiers to operate.
Honestly, it only needed one person to operate it (two, if they were working in shifts), but the soldiers had said that, when there were requests from multiple levels, it caused confusion, so we had ended up with a six-person system in which the soldiers announced what they were doing before turning the cranks.
There were a number of elevators installed here. (Though this one here in the cave was the only one with three levels.) I intended to have them installed at the castle, too, sometime in the near future. The palace was a big place, and it was a lot of work going up and down the stars all the time, after all…
When I gave her that explanation, Juna let out a sexy sigh for some reason. “I feel like I can understand why the princess has an exhausted look on her face sometimes.”
“Why are you bringing up Liscia now?” I queried.
“I understand this is a wonderful machine, but when you pop things that are beyond my understanding on me one after another, it’s hard to keep up.”
“Do you really need to think about it so deeply?” I asked. “I’m sure the guys here only think, ‘Hey, what a convenient new thing to have.’”
“That won’t do.” Juna was still leaning against my chest, and she gave me a soft smile. “Even if it’s exhausting… we want to understand you.”
“…That’s kind of embarrassing,” I admitted.
While we were talking, we arrived at the lowest level. The elevator doors opened into a wide, open space with a high ceiling.
There were a large number of machines, bizarre pieces of experimental apparatus, and “something” that appeared to be currently under construction. It was like the scene I had witnessed before in Genia’s dungeon laboratory.
If there was one difference, it was in the number of people. Here and there, there were people wearing the white lab coats that made them look like researchers, as well as construction workers traveling to and fro.