Unconscious Movement
The White Horse Legion appeared out of nowhere, and for a moment I actually hoped they might seat the students on the backs of their pegasi and fly us straight to Prache. Sadly, nothing of the sort happened.
"This is a magical implement newly developed by the kingdom—the sky carriage."
They presented the students with a massive carriage drawn by pegasi and ushered the Aegis contingent inside.
A sky carriage.
Anyone who heard "a giant carriage pulled by pegasi" would picture something more or less like that. The convenience of aerial travel by pegasus had already been proven by the Flying Knight Order; if you could hitch a carriage to them as well, the benefits to the kingdom would be enormous.
And so the kingdom had poured years of research into the sky carriage—yet practical success had only come a year ago.
Why did research into something that looked so simple keep failing for so long?
The reason was, in the end, quite simple.
You couldn't keep the carriage balanced, and the pegasi couldn't bear its weight.
An ordinary carriage races over solid ground on wheels, which takes the load off its draft animals and keeps its center of gravity steady. A sky carriage, by contrast, has to race through empty air. The strain on the pegasi is immense.
Using four pegasi would stabilize the carriage and ease the weight—but the cost of deploying four pegasi made the whole enterprise a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.
For a long time, the kingdom's sky carriage had been considered possible only in theory.
Then the Empire successfully commercialized magically engineered railways, and the kingdom, determined not to be left behind, redoubled its research into magical engineering until it finally made the sky carriage practical.
That, at least, was the lore inside the game.
Even so, for all the vigilance that had driven its development, the newly practical sky carriage never delivered the dramatic returns the kingdom had hoped for. Unlike the railway—which could haul vast quantities of cargo and people at once and expand into business—the sky carriage's uses were severely limited.
Even ordinary horses are precious resources. How much more so the winged horses called pegasi? Their numbers were already few, and the budget required to raise a single one was said to defy imagination.
In essence, you were spending a fortune to build a weapon—and you could never put a weapon that expensive to work as a mass transit system the way you could a railway.
If I were to put it in terms of my previous life: it was like using a hover-car that cost well over a billion as a taxi or a delivery van. And the driver would be an elite from a prestigious university who'd landed a job at a major conglomerate.
Inefficiency didn't begin to cover it.
"Blanc… we're really flying through the sky right now, aren't we?"
But what did inefficiency matter?
What my lady liked was what mattered most.
Watching her gaze out the window at the mountains and clouds streaking past, she looked thoroughly delighted. She was doing her best to keep a composed face, but she couldn't quite hide the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"Heh heh…"
Seeing her enjoy herself so much, I found my own mood lifting as well.
"Whoa…"
As the royal capital of Prache came into view, the students could not hold back their awe.
Prache, one of the five great cities of the continent.
The Imperial Capital, also counted among those five, prized urban efficiency over outward beauty—but the royal capital was so beautiful that its epithet, the City of Beauty, felt entirely earned. Canals wound everywhere, and the city had been laid out around distinctive tourist landmarks until it resembled a single work of art.
Lyceum had delighted the eye with the mystery of its countless magical implements and magic circles lining the streets. The royal capital possessed a pure beauty that needed no magical elements at all.
"Welcome to the royal capital of Prache, students of Aegis."
After circling once over the city so the students could take in the view, the sky carriage touched down in a plaza. The moment that mystical experience of soaring through the air came to an end, a wave of regret rippled through the students.
"This is the Plaza of the Sun, built by the Sun King, Lucas von Bourrois."
The Sun King, Lucas von Bourrois.
The greatest king the realm had ever known, and said to have wielded more power than any monarch in continental history. Claiming descent from the Sun God, he had laid the foundations of the present kingdom.
And the place the Sun King had loved most was this very Plaza of the Sun.
Receiving the talents who would bear the continent's future in the place the Sun King had loved most—it sounded impressive enough at first hearing. For the Empire's imperial princess, Lucia, it was not a situation she could accept with ease.
Welcoming the Empire's princess in a space that symbolized the kingdom's greatest king was, in itself, a form of silent pressure.
I never thought the kingdom would come on this hard.
After the civil war the kingdom had been in decline—yet once the Second Prince fully inherited the royal authority, the realm had recovered its former stature.
They're showing me this right now. The kingdom, reborn.
The ploy was so transparent that Lucia almost laughed. To put the kingdom back on track so quickly after such a devastating civil war was genuinely impressive—an achievement worth praising without reservation.
But Lucia also knew full well that the kingdom had yet to heal the scars of that war. It had restored order and even finished the long-stalled development of the sky carriage. The intensified strife among its estates, however, was a fatal weakness the kingdom could neither ignore nor conceal.
And yet, even with a weakness like that on display, they stood before an imperial princess and declared that the kingdom had risen again.
There was only one conclusion to draw from that.
The kingdom was that desperate about the Empire's progress. It had to keep pace with an Empire advancing at breakneck speed. It had to check an Empire that was extending its reach ever closer to Lyceum. The impatience born of those thoughts had driven the kingdom to this aggressive display.
Still, I can't simply dismiss it.
The Empire currently held continental hegemony, but not so overwhelmingly that it could crush every other nation underfoot. The kingdom's urgency was plain and its motives transparent—yet when a warning was delivered this forcefully, the Empire could not afford to ignore it either.
The kingdom knew that, which was precisely why it had chosen this hard line.
I'll have to tell that damned father of mine.
How would that damned father react to the kingdom's warning?
The Plaza of the Sun!
It was even listed among Prache's recommended date spots!
According to legend, if two people clasped hands on a sunny day and tossed a coin into the fountain, they would stay together for life!
"Mmm…"
I stole a glance at Blanc.
Her profile, framed by silver hair so radiant it looked ready to reflect the sunlight itself, was breathtaking. She was more beautiful than the view of Prache, City of Beauty. A bead of sweat sliding down between her rose-colored eyes and the pale nape of her neck was terribly…
"My lady?"
"Huh?! W-what is it, Blanc?!"
Ah—no!
I was looking at Blanc with weird eyes!
The instant I realized I'd been staring at someone as pure as Blanc that way, guilt and self-loathing crashed over me.
I shouldn't be doing this…
I knew I shouldn't. And yet the frequency with which I found myself looking at Blanc like that had been climbing lately. No matter how hard I tried to stop, my gaze would end up fixed on her, and it was driving me out of my mind.
I'm sorry, Blanc…
But wasn't Blanc a little at fault too, for seducing people without the slightest sense of danger?
Blanc always wore a maid uniform with not a scrap of skin on display, and she lengthened her school uniform more than the other girls. What she didn't realize was that that very lack of exposure only drew the eye more sharply to places like her nape and collarbones—to that delicate skin. She had no idea how maddening the fine, lovely flesh glimpsed between her pure white hair and those tightly wrapped clothes could be…
Ugh, what am I thinking again…!
And worse—anyone could see the problem was me, yet here I was shifting the blame onto Blanc!
"My, the wind is rather strong today."
A sudden gust whipped Blanc's pure white hair into a scatter. She brushed the strands stuck to her cheek back behind her ear—and once again put that alluring nape on full display…!
Ah! Honestly!
I give up!
This is just Blanc's fault!
Hmm…
Have I done something wrong?
My lady's gaze has been resting on me more often of late, but today her stare felt especially intense. It was so blatant that I asked if something was the matter—yet my lady only insisted that nothing was wrong at all.