Chapter 266 - New Flight Device
"Magic stones are ready, food is ready. We're all set."
"General, are you sure everything's going to be okay? I don't want you to get lost in the middle of the flight again."
"I'm sure it will be fine, Vargas. Don't worry about it. This is a new type of balloon that I improved based on the previous failure. No, maybe "balloon" isn't quite the right word."
"Really? I don't know if it's a new model or what, but this time the enemy army might come while you disappear."
"It's going to be fine, fine I say. I already had a successful test flight before."
"We're really counting on you. If you are this sure of everything, I suppose stuff will be ok. Have a safe trip, General."
"I will."
The Memento Army was making slow progress.
I decided to go check them out for myself.
The Memento family is currently marching northward with an estimated 40,000 troops.
And their route is through several noble territories.
Normally, the nobles or knights of a territory would not allow the movement of another noble's army within their lands.
After all, there was no telling what the foreign troops may do at any given moment.
Perhaps they might attack some people while crossing through.
Or they might loot villages and towns along their route in the name of securing food.
Clearly, they are too dangerous.
But the Memento Army continued on through others' territories without being stopped.
This is because the Mementos are an exceptional noble family.
If a normal nobles' army were to face them, it could cause great damage.
If that were the case, the timid nobles might decide that it would be better to allow passage, even if it would cause some problems. And that's exactly what they did.
There are other reasons as well.
It had to do with the presence of Fontana and/or Barca.
The Fontana family's territory has been expanding rapidly over the past few years.
The House of Uruk, which ruled a neighboring territory, has been destroyed and its territory split apart.
And the Arbalest family, located on the opposite side of the Uruks, has also suffered a major defeat that has weakened their power to the point where they are unable to use higher-level spells.
The nobles whose territories were located south of Fontana must then have thought, "After destroying the Arbalests, we must be the targets!"
'Fontana's next target must be our territory in the south.'
'If this is the case, then the move by the Memento family is not a bad one.'
Those were most likely some common thoughts in the minds of the nobles.
Although the king's presence was the cause of the current turmoil, it would make sense for the Memento family to defeat Fontana.
After all, the Mementos do not border or are very close to the Fontana Territory.
Even if war were to break out between us, and we were defeated, the territory Memento acquired would become an enclave and would not be so easily managed. Eventually, the other nobles may be able to come to a consensus and take over the land.
Merely just causing Fontana to weaken would be enough, as well. If the enemy isn't strong, then they will be easier to deal with.
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In other words, to them, allowing the Memento Army pass through their territories is profitable in the long term.
That is why the Mementos could take shortcuts.
However, the treatment our side is receiving is the exact opposite.
Fontana's army is not being allowed to easily march south.
Especially after the three new encampments, the southern nobles have tightly closed the borders to their territories.
Information about what our opponents were up to in the south was getting harder and harder to obtain.
That is why I am going there.
I will go using a route where there are no customs to check for where I am from.
There will be no traffic, no crowds, and no barriers.
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"Yo-Soro!"1
"Ars-sama, what were you saying?"
"I don't know how to explain it... It's a signal to start, I guess. So, what do you think, Payne? How is this new ride? Is it good?"
"I think so. As you can imagine, it's the first time for me to fly in the sky, and I'm afraid..... But it's more stable than I thought it would be."
"The wind today hasn't picked up that much yet. It's not shaking too much now, but there is a chance there will be more turbulence. Oh, and before I explain any further, if you're going to throw up, throw up outside.
"Hey, don't say that right after we start flying, Ars-sama!"
I'm moving through the sky to scout out the Memento family along with Payne.
To do this we got into the new balloon and took to the sky.
Or, rather, you might say it was no longer a balloon.
To put it bluntly, it is not a balloon but an airship.
It is, however, a small airship which is not that big.
The inside of the cloth, which is oval shaped like a rugby ball, is heated by a flame from a Flame Ore, rather than being round and inflated like a balloon.
It is larger than the balloon created previously, with the basket being large enough to accommodate more than 10 people.
Why did we make the balloon in the shape of an airship?
There was a reason.
It has to do with the method of flying freely in the sky.
A hot air balloon works by heating up the air inside the fabric to lift off.
But the only way to move around is to drift, following the flow of the air.
The air currents in the atmosphere change in complex ways depending on the conditions at any given time.
The altitude of the balloon had to be adjusted appropriately so that I would be able to read the air currents and ride the flow of air in the direction I wanted to go.
However, such a complicated method could not be learned overnight.
So, I thought, 'how about adding power to the balloon while accurately reading the flow of air in the direction it was going?'
The result was an airship.
This one is a bit different than others, though.
Normally, airships use gas, which is lighter than air, for buoyancy.
But the only gas which was lighter than air I could get my hands on at the moment was hydrogen.
If I electrolyzed water with the Thunder Swords I had obtained from the Arbalest family, I would be able to separate it into oxygen and hydrogen.
There was a plan to collect only hydrogen from the water and use it to power the airship's buoyancy.
But I quickly rejected that idea.
Hydrogen gas is unstable because it reacts with air.
If the airship were to explode in mid-flight and crash, everything would be beyond saving.
For this reason, the use of hydrogen for airships was rejected.
Then, the shape of the airship itself was changed to an ellipsoidal airship.
I remembered that the shape of the vehicle will change the amount of buoyancy it has while moving through the air.
The airship was a small, yet there was a military-grade heat source; the flame ore.
Using it, I could use fire to fit the airship with a power source, like a normal hot air balloon.
In the end, the source of power was not fire-based, but something much more primitive.
Billy had created a new type of flying Familiars.
I connected them to the airship.
The bird-like beasts that used to track people with their scent were now called Tracking Birds.
They were large enough to perch on my shoulder.
However, the newly hatched Familiars were even larger.
They were around 1meter long, with greenish hair.
This would be quite large for a bird.
Yet, as expected, even at that size, they could not fly with a person on their backs.
However, when connected to an airship, it was different.
The airship, heated by the flame ore and buoyant, floated in mid-air.
An object floating against gravity is, in other words, lighter in weight.
In this state, the airship could be pulled along by connecting several of the new Familiars.
Apparently, these new creatures were not as good at recognizing scents as the TrackingBirds, but they had a different characteristic.
They were amazing at reading air currents.
That meant that with a flame ore, these Familiars, and some other craftsmanship, I could create a flying device which could be controlled.
This is only possible because the Familiars can understand and obey me.
For now, let's call them Kazami Birds to distinguish them from the Tracking Birds.
In this way, I succeeded in flying to the place where the Memento family might be located on the new model of the airship.