199. Airship Voyage
199. Airship Voyage
The daily life in the newly built mansion was no different from the dormitory days.
Wake up before sunrise, prepare for the day, and get ready for my usual morning exercise routine.
As I finished getting ready for exercise and stepped out into the hallway, a drowsy voice reached me.
"Good morning, old man..."
Eyes barely open, a yawning Casey in her disheveled pajamas emerged with a blank expression and bumped into me in the hallway.
Seemed like she just woke up.
That girl had a habit of being completely limp and groggy like that until she washed her face, after which she would snap right back to normal.
If you ask how she, who used the female dormitory, ended up in this mansion...
'I'm gonna live here from now on.'
'Do whatever.'
Shortly after the mansion was built, Casey dropped by casually and commandeered an empty room.
It didn't matter since there were still plenty of empty rooms.
We had shared a room back in our knight order days, so there was nothing awkward about it.
After Casey finished washing up, I picked up a comb, sat down, and began brushing her long hair.
It had been a while, so Casey seemed flustered at first, but she soon settled down quietly.
As I drifted into old memories and nostalgia, a thought abruptly came to mind.
"Casey, what are you going to do over break?"
"...Dunno. I was planning on staying at the academy."
"You got close with Dorothy's crowd. Nothing going on with them?"
"They're all going home too."
She was always blunt, but now she seemed a bit sulky somehow.
"If you've got nothing going on, come along with me."
"So you can ditch me halfway again?"
"I'm heading to the Blade Mountains. It'll be more fun than staying at the academy. Catching demons along the way, cleaning out bandits, you know."
The moment her hair was fully tied up, Casey sprang to her feet.
"...Fine."
Still a child who was clumsy at expressing emotions.
I was just getting used to the daily routine at the new mansion, so the thought of having to leave it empty for a while was disappointing.
After this week ended, the freshmen's first semester would be over.
Break was about to begin.
.
.
.
.
The morning exercises grew more intense with each passing day.
After the basic routine was finished, Liber, Lucia, and even Emy would all spar together at once.
Since I no longer had to hide my strength like at the very beginning, I could handle all three of them jumping me simultaneously with ease.
Sometimes Casey would come and help out too.
Casey, who possessed top-tier Expert-level skill, also toyed lightly with the three who were on the threshold of the Upper Rank.
After morning exercise, there were no lectures, but I headed to the academy building anyway.
Some of the professors had already left the academy, so everyone was just hanging out and relaxing.
With break starting the day after tomorrow, someone came to find me out of the blue.
"Atlas~ It's been a while~!"
The half-elf Nina waved her arms around and greeted me.
She was in a different class and took different lectures, but whenever we ran into each other in the hallway, she always greeted me brightly — a good kid.
She sometimes came just to ask me to hang out, so I went out without much thought, but another person was waiting too.
"Hey~"
"I can't say the same to you."
Nivas Perda, who had been hiding behind the wall, slipped out and flashed a sly grin.
Seemed like he used Nina as bait, figuring I wouldn't come if he just called me himself.
"Where are you going once break starts?"
"Why do you ask?"
Perda asked me with a smirk.
What did he want to know about my break schedule for?
"Was thinking I might give you a ride."
"Give me a ride?"
"A few of us are going together by airship, you see."
"Nivas's airship is amazing! It's got everything you could think of inside!"
An airship.
Literally a ship that flies in the sky.
Unlike the airships that only existed in movies in my first life, they really did take the shape of a ship, and surprisingly, the principle was similar.
The airships from the movies used streamlined balloons that displaced air, carrying gases lighter than air to generate buoyancy and float in the sky.
The airships here, though lacking a balloon, used a special synthetic mineral called Icarotite, which gained its own buoyancy when infused with mana, allowing the ship to rise into the air.
The buoyant airship then gained propulsion from an Orion Engine, letting it sail the sky as if it were water — but of course,
the aforementioned mineral Icarotite wasn't something that occurred naturally; it had to be synthesized, and so it was insanely expensive.
In other words, it was an elegant hobby for the wealthy.
'The elves used them pretty often.'
In the dense forests where the elves lived, thick tree roots made it hard to build straight roads, so airships capable of using sky routes had developed considerably.
It was the exact opposite approach from the dwarves, who developed minecart railways.
Anyway, an airship... Listening to Nina, it sounded like it wasn't just any airship, but a super-luxury one.
Since Perda's territory was far from the academy, it surely had fine cabins and all sorts of auxiliary facilities inside.
"I don't need it."
It wasn't that the airship was slow, but the distance from the academy to the Blade Mountains was considerable.
I had a lot of things to handle during the break, and I didn't want to waste time needlessly.
If I moved personally, I could arrive in a single step — did I really need to ride an airship?
And my counterpart was that Perda.
I didn't think he'd give this kind of favor out for free.
He definitely had some ulterior motive, and the moment I boarded the airship, I felt like I'd get tangled up in trouble.
I already had a mountain of things to resolve; I didn't want to get caught up in that too.
Just then, a regretful-sounding voice came from behind.
"You're... not taking the airship?"
"Wow... the Five Pillars even own an airship."
"???"
I looked to the side and saw that Liber and Emy had been eavesdropping on the conversation and were listening in on the airship talk.
Judging by their expressions, they seemed curious.
What's the big deal about an airship anyway? All you do is go out on the deck, admire the open sky and tiny-looking landscapes, then come back inside for a fancy meal and relaxing....
Damn it, that actually does sound fun.
Seeing Emy grin awkwardly pricked at my conscience.
"Fine, I'll ride it. How far are we going?"
"Oh, you're riding too, Atlas?"
"Final destination is my territory, naturally, but we'll make one stop at the capital along the way. That's fine, right? You can also get off separately in the middle of the route."
"My party members will be riding along too — you don't mind?"
"That's more than possible."
With my back to the two of them, who were inwardly delighted, I stepped closer to Perda.
"So... what's your real game? Giving us a ride on a luxury airship like that is suspicious."
"No hidden motives. I just want to get closer to you, that's all~ Right, Nina?"
"Yeah, because Atlas is fun!"
Fun... What does he take people for?
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As soon as break started, the prospect of riding Perda's airship made Emy's heart pound with anticipation.
She had seen one from a distance before, but this was her first time actually riding in one.
"An airship... it'll be fun."
-Do not let your guard down.
The Companion had also grown rather lax.
It no longer pressured or hounded her like before.
In the old days, it used to show up at all hours, issuing random orders to go somewhere without even knowing why.
The places she went at the Companion's direction either held clues for obtaining useful artifacts or were spots where the Demon Church had been operating.
Now, thanks to Atlas working so diligently, she could directly feel that the Demon Church's power had been greatly reduced, and the work of confronting them had lessened a lot too.
Last time, she'd even heard that he had gone to a meeting among Masters and proposed directly attacking the Demon Church's main bases in each country.
For him, who loathed demons, the list of things to worry about had shrunk considerably.
Even so, many threats still existed in the world, and there was absolutely no reason to let her guard down.
No matter how hard Atlas worked, he was ultimately human, and the place called Hell was too vast for a human to fend off alone.
'It'll be fine to stick with Atlas during the break, right?'
-The one currently holding the 'Flow' is Atlas. You'd best stick close to him.
Emy felt as if a few weights had been lifted off her shoulders.
Before coming to the academy, before she met Atlas, Emy had lived beneath a suffocating pressure.
She soothed herself saying everything was fine, and she laughed, but she constantly suffered under the weight, feeling like she was the only one in the world who knew about the demonic threat that everyone else ignored.
-But an airship... and Perda's airship at that... It's bound to be luxurious.
'Is there some kind of problem?'
The Companion, which had been speaking positively about the airship, suddenly fell into thought.
-Maybe I'm worrying too much, but... there exists in this world, you see, a creature that flies around the sky and fanatically loves sparkling things.
'This creature... it exists?'
-Yes. But they aren't creatures you see often. It's not like this is that airship's first voyage — it surely arrived at the academy once before without incident, so the odds are slim.
'... It'll be fine, right?'
She never got to hear just what kind of creature it was, but she could only hope nothing would happen.