“…That’s why it’s a failure, huh.”
“That’s right.”
Still, even if there had been almost nothing gained from the attempt, it wasn’t a complete wash. We had put a slight dent in that enchanted armor. That suit of armor that was covered in fragments of curse ore had lost its enchantment. If it were hit with a bullet, or something else that had a high level of penetrating force even without magic, it would be possible to penetrate that armor.
Yes, when developing the anti-magic arrow, I had been thinking about introducing the gun, which hadn’t been developed in this world because it didn’t provide much of an advantage.
When I’d learned of the existence of curse ore, I’d thought it might be possible to shoot through the Magic Armor Corps. However, the result had been as I’d shown.
An ordinary bullet would be deflected by the enchantment. If we tried to use curse ore in the bullet, it would become too brittle to be usable. Besides, though it was common to strike curse ore in the kingdom, it had many uses, like the Little Susumu, so we didn’t have such a surplus that we could afford to waste it.
Furthermore, when used in a bullet, the curse ore could cause problems later. If land became littered with bullets that had missed their mark, it would make it impossible to use magic there for a while. In this world where magic was a part of people’s daily lives, that would make the land unlivable.
While it wasn’t as lethal, in terms of remaining after the war and negatively impacting the lives of civilians, curse ore was as bad as cluster bombs or depleted uranium bullets. That was why it was necessary to be cautious in how we used it, and to continue with the research.
“…So, like that, they spend their days here with repeated successes and failures,” I concluded. “And even though it’s with only one step at a time, they’re marching us towards a new era.”
“…You’re covering a pretty broad range of things here, huh,” Castor remarked, looking half-impressed and half-exasperated.
“Well, though some of our research will be fruitless, I have to take every measure I can as king,” I said.
“As king… That’s right. You’ve really become a king now…” Castor murmured.
“Well, yeah. Now then, shall we go up now?”
“There’s still more?”
Having seen so much, Castor was looking a little fed up with it all, so I told him, “The next one is the main event for today.”
“Up, you said? What, are we climbing the mountain now?”
I tut-tutted and waggled a finger at Castor. (Was that too old-fashioned?) “Even further ‘up’ than that.”
Returning to the surface, we got aboard a wyvern gondola.
The gondola rose, leaving the surface further and further behind.
Not being blindfolded this time, Castor gave me a suspicious look, as if to say, “What are you showing me now?” But once we rose in altitude and he was able to see what was below us, he cried out in shock.
“Wha?! What is this?!”
Beneath us was a single, massive ship floating in the middle of the open sea. The surface of the ship had soil packed on it, and there was a rocky mountain, forest, grassy plain, red clay field, and more. From above, it looked like nothing other than a lone islet in the distant seas. But beneath the ground, it was a hunk of metal. Looking closely, the rocky mountain was where the ship’s bridge would be.
That’s right. Up until now, we hadn’t been on an “island” at all. We had been on that ship.
“Wyverns fear the sea,” I told Castor, who seemed at a loss for words at the incredible sight. “That’s because wyverns, lacking the flight range of dragons, can’t cross the sea, right? To be more precise, wyverns hate being so far out to sea that they can’t see land. That’s why it’s been common sense that you can’t employ wyverns in naval battles, right?”
“R-Right…” Castor nodded.
Because dragons could fly continuously across incredible distances, they could cross the sea in a single flight, and that meant they had no reason to be afraid of it. However, wyverns, with their lesser flight range, would run out of strength halfway if they tried to cross the sea. Because of that, they feared going out far enough to lose sight of land. This held true for the Empire’s griffon squadrons, too, which had an even shorter flight range than the wyverns did. (In fact, they were even afraid of rivers if they couldn’t see the other side, so they had it worse.)
“Huh?!” Castor cried. “Now that you mention it, the wyverns were flying in formation earlier, weren’t they?! No, even the wyvern carrying this gondola seems perfectly fine out here in the middle of the sea!”
Finally, Castor was beginning to grasp the situation. However, the more he figured it out, the wider his eyes opened in surprise. His lips were trembling.
“You… What the hell have you created here…?”
“A vessel which carries air power across the sea, and also acts as a base for it,” I said. “In my world, a ship like this was called an aircraft carrier, or just a carrier.”
That’s right. That island-shaped ship was analogous to a carrier, with wyvern knights as an analogue to fighter planes. When I’d seen this world had wyverns and steel ships, I had wondered if maybe I could combine the two to create a carrier. When I’d first started planning it out, the first issue that had been pointed out to me was the wyverns’ fear of the sea.
“So that was when I had an idea,” I explained, “to try and trick the wyverns out of being afraid of the sea.”
I’d gotten the hint I needed from the first of the Thirty-Six Stratagems from my world: “Deceive the emperor to cross the ocean.” It’s about making your strategy look like nothing out of the ordinary, then acting while your enemy’s guard is down. The stratagem had been based on an event when, in order to get the Emperor of Tang, who feared the sea, aboard a boat, his retainers had piled dirt on top of it to make it look like the land. I’d thought that maybe I could use the same trick on wyverns.
First, I’d created a giant ship, then packed soil on top of it. Though a portion was left as dirt, most was covered with grass or trees to create plains and forests. The bridge had been covered in Roman concrete and painted to disguise it as a rocky mountain. Then, in order to lower the wyverns’ stress levels, their stables and everything below deck had been made to look like the inside of a cave.
Basically, I was trying to make the wyverns recognize this carrier as an “island.”
The issue had been how I was going to find the propulsion to move my island-type carrier, but that had been solved thanks to Genia’s Little Susumu Mark V. They weren’t visible from the air, but there were four Little Susumu Mark Vs attached to the sides of this island-type carrier below the waterline. The reason the distribution of the Light model wasn’t further along was because I had prioritized the production of these larger ones.
Now, as for this island-type carrier that we had built, it was still incomplete. It had taken a long time to get the wyverns used to the carrier. Our first priorities had been to give it the bare minimum features required of a ship, make the outside look island-y, and focus on making it seaworthy. In terms of propulsion, the plan was actually to have double the number of Little Susumu Mark Vs (with the current number, it could only go at a crawl), and the area currently being used as a military research and development lab was eventually going to be used for equipment storage and the crew’s quarters. (They were currently camping out in tents on the deck.)
Castor, who had been staring at the half-finished cruiser in a daze, turned to me, his eyes filled with disbelief. “But this thing is massive… Just how long have you been building it for?”