The [Sleipnir].
This massive airship was a "war hero" that had existed for a thousand years.
In the war against the tide of Monsters, it had crashed and been destroyed several times. Each time, the craftsmen took the steel that formed its core and fused it into a new hull, letting it be reborn and surpass what it once was.
Now, compared to the wartime needs of the past, the Sleipnir served more as a kind of "miracle" the Magic Kingdom used to show off its own Strength.
According to an elderly Elf.
Its size, compared to the previous generation — back when it had truly served in war as the core of the airship fleet — had grown many times larger, which made it feel somewhat showy without substance.
The last mission it had truly carried out was joining every airship of the Magic Kingdom to intercept the wounded [Black Dragon] that had fled from the Great Pit.
It was said that the airship fleet had pursued the Black Dragon all the way north, to where the [Dragon Valley] lay.
Together with the armies and Heroes gathered from across the continent at that time, they finally forced the Black Dragon down in that far northern land, buying the Great Spirit Aria the time she needed to complete her seal.
In the end, the seal was completed, of course — but the entire airship fleet was wiped out.
According to the accounts of the survivors from that time, when the Black Dragon finally hit the ground, its last roar drew every dragon-type Monster from across the world.
It caught everyone there completely off guard.
What followed was a bloody, chaotic battle lasting several days. Countless dragon-type Monsters swarmed in, trying to save their "king," while the armies of every nation and the Heroes present fought to the death to hold them back. At last, the Great Spirit's sealing magic was completed, and the [Black Dragon], along with every dragon-type Monster present, was sealed away within Dragon Valley.
Isagi and Ryuu looked down at the little pamphlet in their hands.
They walked along the black steel plating of the bridges — impossibly thick, nothing but solid iron — that connected airship to airship.
The boy and the girl were now heading toward the one positioned at the very front of all the airships, the [Sleipnir], which at a glance was already several times larger than any of the others.
Its prow was strange indeed.
Cast in steel was the form of an enormous eight-legged horse.
From the ground it hadn't seemed like much, but now that they were close, it gave off the impression of some colossal "Monster."
"This place has the finest inn in the whole Magic Kingdom.
Want to try staying a night?"
They'd been wandering since morning, and it was already afternoon now, the summer sun beating down with a faint warmth that made a person drowsy. Isagi was starting to feel like taking a nap.
Along the way.
They'd actually gathered quite a bit of information.
Isagi and Ryuu had run into no shortage of locals from the Magic Kingdom, including one old noble gentleman who'd talked at them, on and on, for what felt like ages.
From interesting new technologies that had recently emerged, to the nation's cooperation with the Empire, to his opinions on the adventurers over in Orario —
It had actually been fairly interesting.
Unlike places where one still had to head into the Dungeon and fight Monsters.
These days, the Monsters across the continent had degenerated a great deal. Traveling merchant caravans might still need adventurers or mercenaries as escorts, and remote villages and towns might still suffer Monster attacks.
But for a nation like the Magic Kingdom, granting Falna to turn more people into adventurers was, if anything, a secondary concern.
What they cared about far more were their "craftsmen."
Or as the outside world often called them, "magic-artisans" and "witches."
"You know how it is — most nations are ruled by gods, and not just one, but many. Beneath the great god Odin, there are countless other gods and their Familias as well."
"But in our country, when it comes to selecting talent, we don't prioritize combat strength — we prioritize technical ability."
"Much like the smiths of Orario — here, our smiths are craftsmen too."
As it turned out.
It was only through talking with the locals that Isagi and Ryuu learned the truth.
In the Magic Kingdom, most mages were also technical specialists, trained across a wide range of knowledge and disciplines. Most of them graduated from the relevant schools first, and only afterward joined a Familia to see whether they had any matching aptitude.
The efficiency of this system was remarkably high.
Because a god's Falna, at its core, was meant to draw out potential — a person's experiences, their past, everything they'd thought and felt, all of it would show up on their status.
So someone who'd studied architecture since childhood would, upon receiving Falna, very likely gain skills or even magic suited to that field, and go on to become a fine architect.
Much the same way the blacksmith families of Solingen, generation after generation, tended to gain the [Blacksmithing] Development Ability once they became adventurers.
Honestly.
Isagi and Ryuu had never really thought about it before, but now that they considered it carefully, it made sense — what the Magic Kingdom was doing wasn't just specialized, it was remarkably efficient too.
The old noble just kept talking and talking.
He went on describing the technology and achievements his nation had accumulated over the years, and Isagi, naturally, took the opportunity to ask about that "secret weapon."
"Ah — you two are from Orario, aren't you. Yes, word got out after the god Hermes came, representing the Labyrinth City, to pay a visit to the great god Odin.
"That's right. All three phases of testing are said to have succeeded already. It's the crowning achievement of nearly a thousand years of our nation's technology — practically a work of art... no, it's another kind of [God].
"So many lives were given for it, you can't even count them..."
[Sacrifice].
The old noble used that word.
Technology needed to be proven — and sometimes that proof had to be paid for in human lives.
Isagi and Ryuu listened as the old noble in front of them described, vividly, some past critical technological breakthrough. Apparently it involved some device that could give magic a kind of static "acceleration," and the team that had led the research back then had gone from twenty people down to just three survivors.
"Their sacrifice had meaning. In the great god Odin's [Valhalla], their technology will live on forever, carried down through a thousand years."
In that old noble's eyes,
Isagi and Ryuu saw nothing but the most exalted reverence — a look they'd seen before, a thousand years ago, on the faces of the people living in Orario, when they looked at the Heroes and soldiers fighting on the front lines. It was exactly the same.
But there was a difference: the old noble's face was also full of fervor, almost feverish.
Isagi didn't know quite how to judge it, but there was something faintly frightening about the man's near-manic expression.
As if he'd sacrifice anything, everything, for the sake of technology.
Perhaps, a thousand years ago, in the face of the Monster tide, in the fight simply to survive, that kind of mindset had been absolutely necessary.
But now...
Before they knew it, a fair amount of time had slipped by in that "pleasant conversation."
Isagi remembered that after he and Ryuu said their goodbyes to the old noble, they'd wandered around a bit more, and by the time they finally arrived at the very front of the [Sky City] — at the flagship Sleipnir itself — it was already afternoon.
He really did feel drowsy and worn out.
Isagi, leading the Elf girl whose cheeks had gone faintly pink, actually went and booked a room at the inn. After a shower, the two of them simply fell asleep on the big bed in the guest room.
Until...
Drifting somewhere between sleep and waking.
By the time he woke up, it was already evening.
Isagi checked the time — a little past seven, night had just fallen. Beside him, Ryuu was still asleep, though the two of them had ended up in a rather odd position.
For some reason,
he'd ended up leaning crookedly between the Elf girl's slender, soft legs, her smooth skin faintly flushed pink, giving off a warm, soft impression against him.
The girl, meanwhile, had curled up her upper body, sleeping in an equally awkward pose, her breaths coming soft and small.
All around, everything was silent.
Beyond the inn's huge glass window, the deep blue sky looked almost unnaturally beautiful.
Far below, the city's lights had already come on in shades of deep blue, and from a distance of several hundred meters, looking down from above, it felt almost like gazing out over a sea of stars.
Maybe it was because they were up in the air.
Great banks of cloud seemed close enough to touch, lit up fiery red by the slowly sinking sun, forming a strange, beautiful contrast against the blue-gray sky.
The airship wasn't simply hovering in place.
This [Sky City] slowly circled the outskirts of the city below, moving so gradually that most of the time you couldn't even tell it was happening.
It drifted like a cloud, giving off the same lazy, unhurried feeling.
Isagi didn't much feel like getting up.
Not until Ryuu, too, blinked awake from her sleep, rubbing her eyes, and then, feigning annoyance, smacked his head with her small hand, complaining that her thighs had gone numb under the weight of it.
"Come on, get up~"
Right after waking, the girl's voice always came out soft and syrupy.
The two of them spent a few minutes discussing whether to head back now or just stay the night, and settled on the latter.
There shouldn't be anything urgent today anyway.
Everyone had agreed to use their Eye Crystals if something came up, and there'd been no message from Ais or the others.
Isagi got up to wash and freshen up, meaning to organize the information they'd gathered today, while Ryuu called for dinner — this being the most expensive inn in the Magic Kingdom, at five hundred thousand Valis a night, naturally including all three meals.
The one who delivered the food was a round little alchemical doll, carrying the meal inside its belly, apparently with some kind of warming function built in.
Isagi retrieved the food from it with practiced ease, feeling like there was something oddly familiar about all this.
After that.
He and Ryuu polished off the meal together.
Dinner wasn't especially good, nor especially bad — about what you'd expect from a big inn. To suit the tastes of travelers from all over the world, everything was made rather middle-of-the-road, except for a large shrimp dish that stood out as the house specialty, and that one was actually excellent.
While Isagi sat there quietly rating the meal in his head and pulling out paper and pen to jot down what they'd learned that day,
Ryuu happily went off to take a bath.
The girl hummed a tune from her homeland, the sound drifting out from behind the near-transparent glass wall, adding an extra touch of beauty to the darkening sky.
Stars and moon were slowly coming out.
The city lights below grew even more brilliant, and then, all at once, the airship shuddered.
"?"
It was clearly no ordinary tremor.
Accompanied by a mechanical roar, Isagi even felt an absurd sense of weightlessness.
Then, through the massive glass window, he could see with his own eyes that the flagship of the [Sky City], the Sleipnir, had begun accelerating.
The Elf girl, who'd still been in the bath, came dashing out, throwing her discarded clothes back on and slipping straight into combat readiness.
She was an adventurer, after all.
Her response to unexpected trouble was quick as ever.
As for Isagi,
he simply stood by the window, watching clearly as the Sleipnir, the ship they were on, pulled away from the other airships — as if the steel bridges that had connected them to each other had suddenly snapped.
The room's soundproofing was excellent, so he couldn't hear a thing happening outside the door.
Ryuu, having just tied up her still-dripping hair and finished dressing, was heading for the door to see what was going on.
Then, another tremendous rumble came up from beneath their feet.
It was the ear-grating shriek of steel twisting under stress — something had just, in that instant, given way.
And it was right at that moment.
The sense of weightlessness beneath their feet grew even stronger. In an instant, the once-level floor tilted at a sharp angle, nearly knocking them off their feet, while the cabinets and bed in the room began sliding, all at once, toward one wall.
The airship was falling.
Falling toward the glittering city below.
What was happening?
Isagi was stunned — his very first visit to the Magic Kingdom's flagship airship, and the thing was about to crash?!
The colossal airship was plunging downward, closing in on the bustling city below at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Meanwhile,
in the Sleipnir's command room.
The elderly commander had just cut off his final call with the great god Odin.
At that moment,
on this enormous airship, tourists and crew together numbered in the tens of thousands, and if it crashed — based on the current trajectory — it would strike at least several districts of the capital, [Altena], affecting more than a hundred thousand residents. As for the disaster that would follow —
beyond counting. But so what?
If Isagi and Ryuu had been there, they would have recognized this elderly commander at once — he was the very same old noble who'd been chatting away with the two of them earlier that afternoon.
At this moment, everyone faced the fact that the airship was about to crash.
There was no panic. No screaming.
Everyone in that control room was among the elite of the Magic Kingdom — and it was precisely because of that, that they'd been able to come aboard this greatest of the nation's "war heroes," to serve it, to work for it.
And now.
The ancient legends of Heroes existed only on paper now.
People treated them as nothing more than stories — even deaths in the thousands, the tens of thousands, reduced to a handful of lines.
That was exactly why a new [Hero] was needed.
"Well then, in that case — let's prove it."
the elderly flagship commander murmured to himself.
If he was a [Hero], then he would save this massive falling airship. He would save the tens of thousands of tourists aboard it, and the hundred thousand citizens in the city below.
If you were a [Hero], you had to accomplish it — could only accomplish it. This was the miracle that belonged to a [Hero] alone.
It was also the best proof that [Heroes] still existed in this world.
This.
This was the trial of the [Hero] that the Magic Kingdom and the Labyrinth City placed their trust in!
____
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