Chương 9: 28
28
Metastasis+ 1 year.
"What are you doing?"
"Hm?" Looking up from my fancy mirror spell, I sent Eris an amused look. "This? Giving myself a haircut."
It had started to get long and I hated long hair. I had only left it as long as it was previously for two reasons: Zenith liked it that way and it enhanced the effect of the 'innocent and cute shota' act. So now that it was starting to get irritating, I was dead set on getting rid of it.
It was also an excuse to practice fine control of force and light magic. I had created a construct of force magic in the shape of a comb and was using it to move my hair, while I used telekinesis to cut it down to the precise length I wanted.
Eris seemed somehow affronted, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at my shirtless form. Finally, she demanded, "Scissors."
"Not using any," I countered.
Grumbling, she reached down to the ground and created a pair of scissors by pulling the metal from the dirt. I felt so proud at that moment that I couldn't help myself. I reached out and patted her head. "You've grown."
The girl blushed and moved behind me. "Yeah, well, you haven't."
Don't expect a tsundere to make sense in every retort she makes to a genuine complement, you'll save yourself a lot of headache that way. It was usually the equivalent of "NO U" anyway.
I sat still and watched as Eris worked. "How short?" She asked.
"This much at the top," I held my fingers apart an inch and a half, "this much on the sides and back," and closed the distance to a quarter inch. I'd given her a little over what I actually wanted just in case she messed up.
It turned out, I didn't need to worry. Apparently, Eris had a natural eye for it and a steady hand. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. For all that her fighting style was wild when I met her and has only gotten more unpredictable with the addition of a third dimension, her actual technique was if not flawless then close enough.
I sat quietly as she worked, just watching. Eventually, Eris asked, "We'll be in Wind Port tomorrow?"
"Yeah. We'll set up shop outside the actual city and I'll begin construction there."
"And we'll be leaving once we've gotten all the refugees?"
I nodded. "For the first trip. There are a lot of people, so it's going to take a few trips to get everyone. I figure I'll go on the first flight just to make sure nothing happens and no issues come up with the design, then after that I'll build two more ships and have them run automagically."
Eris snorted softly. "You mean let Sprite handle it."
"I mean let Sprite handle it," I agreed. "We can head west and hit up every town and village between here and Roa with the bikes now, since they're just that much faster." It made making road harder, but as usual, I took it as another magical exercise and never went so fast that I couldn't do it right the first time.
"We could go faster."
"This way gives them a clear path to follow and safe places to sleep at night."
Looking up from my hair, Eris sent an amused look at my 'reflection.' "You know they're calling you 'Rudeus the Road Builder' again? It's spread. They're calling Roxy 'Roxy the Wayfinder' because of the statues."
I sighed. "Rumor travels faster than light. And I really want to see her face when she hears that. It'll be great." I sent her a warning look, "Don't spoil it for me by telling her."
Eris shrugged. "At least yours sound cool."
Shooting her a small smirk, I asked, "You don't like being 'Mad Dog Eris?'"
Eris snipped the scissors especially hard, likely as a warning to stop teasing her. "It reminds me of the time some jerk buried me up to my neck in the dirt, made me drink out of a doggie bowl, and humiliated me in front of our family servants."
"Erm…"
"Then made me piss myself, stripped me naked, and left me exposed outside all night where anyone could see."
I held in the urge to make a snarky comment along the lines of, 'And whose fault is that?'
"The weirdest thing is, I'm not sure whether to be mad about it or not. It was humiliating, but, well… Yeah. Didn't know I liked that sort of thing."
Deciding it might be safe to tease her a little, I sent her a leer. "If you liked that, we can try other things. Maybe tie you up and let one of the other girls play with you. Or make you watch while I play with one of them."
That might have been a little too far as her face lit up in a blush that quickly spread down her chest. That blush became a flush of indignant anger a moment later, but miraculously, she reigned it in. Finally, in a very quiet voice, she said, "'kay."
I grinned. "Oh really? Would you prefer Sylphie or Roxy?"
Eris shrugged. "Either/or."
Eventually, she finished my hair and I took a minute to look it over. "Good job Eris. Thanks."
"Mm! I can do it again next time."
Studying my pseudo-reflection, I took in my new appearance. Short white hair, bright green eyes I had gotten from Zenith, the mole under my eye had been removed with flesh magic, moderately cute shonen face just on the cusp of becoming handsome (I gave it about a year). My face was unchanged beyond the mole, but that, the haircut, and the different color on top of growing up and losing baby fat had slowly distanced me from the face I had grown used to seeing in the mirror.
I had my doubts that anyone would recognize me as Paul and Zenith's son at first or even second glance, unless they knew beforehand. I wasn't exactly trying to put distance between us there, it was just the result of changes adding up—voluntary or not. I just need a cool scar to go with it and I'm set for maximum panty-dropping.
Standing up, I used magic to clean off the cut hair and got dressed. "Alright, I need to see about working on some stuff."
"'Kay," Eris nodded, dropping her scissors into the dirt and heading off to practice some more.
Finding a clear spot, I sat down and pulled out my phone. "Okay, give me access to Overwatch-1."
I had enough drones working now that I had to label them in groups. The overwatch series were a group set up to provide exactly that for our party and to scout ahead a bit—three drones for three people, kept close at hand for emergencies or just use as needed. Additionally, I had a drone each assigned to that position for Roxy, Lilia, Aisha, Sylphie, Ariel, Hilda, Phillip, Sauros, and Ghislaine—for a total of twelve providing 24/7 security.
The recon series were on mapping duty and were scattered to the corners of the world. There were about a hundred of those per continent. Roughly. Five continents, but the landmass was distributed unevenly between them. The Central Continent was about twice the size of all of the rest on average, minus the Heaven Continent, which was about a tenth of the size of the Demon Continent. The total number was something like a thousand drones—several dedicated to each major city on every continent, covering every major island chain, and the rest scattered across the continents mapping, cataloging, monitoring towns, and generally doing other tasks while searching for survivors—specifically, Norn and Zenith.
The watchdog series was dedicated to the search and rescue operation, either hunting for survivors in specific areas or riding herd over the group trailing us from Rikarisu. There were about a hundred of them. Technically, all available drones were being used for this purpose, it's just that the others had specific goals in mind while search and rescue was a side mission for then and these were dedicated to the task, hunting down leads Sprite picked up from conversations she was listening to or things people were writing down the world over. Already, that large scale surveillance had borne fruit in the form of rescues of slaves (and the subsequent elimination of their former owners).
And finally, were the harvester series. Of these, there were about a thousand, each about the size of a bird. I kept adding to them as time went on and we collected more small mana crystals. These were used for only one purpose: gathering metal resources from the demon continent. Right now, they were actively tearing down a mountain in some monster infested corner of the continent, making ingots, and storing them for later use.
Sprite brought up the feed for the drone flying directly overhead and I ordered it down to the ground.
"Okay, so you know the airship design I've been working on?"
"Yes, master. I have all the designs memorized."
"Good girl. I'm going to try a few new things on the small scale and we'll go up from there. This should just be putting it all together for the most part. All I'm really changing here is the interior, to work out cabin space."
I began constructing a new model by pulling metal from the ground or having Sprite convert the soil and rock into the elements I needed, as she was doing with much of the excess from her excavation work that didn't go into piles of stone for future building projects. When I was finished, I had a cross-section of an airship roughly ten feet long and three feet wide, composed of an upper and lower half.
The upper half was a hollow lifting surface composed of a grid of small connected triangles and covered with a thin skin of smooth metal. It had short wings and all the control surfaces needed to maneuver, in addition to thrusters spaced along the exterior to make it more agile than its size and profile would normally allow for. The interior would be filled with a form-fitting force-field, filled with vacuum—this would make it positively buoyant, while the thrusters along the bottom of the lifting surface and the lift provided the conventional way, would allow it to rise very quickly.
The lower half was the actual cabin area, coming in at six feet long and two feet wide. This, I divided into three floors worth of space and several individual sections. Since I was planning to have Sprite control it, there was no real need for a cockpit or control area, but I gave it one with manual controls anyway, just in case. This, I tucked into the very front of the cabin area and secured with a wall and locked door. It would double as the 'engine room,' since there was no need for one in the conventional sense given that its power production would be a series of three particularly large monster cores, layered with every enchantment the ship would need and tied into Sprite's network. It was also where the wind spirit I summoned for these would be housed.
Behind the cockpit, on the top floor, I added a larder and freezer for food storage, then a kitchen for food preparation. Following that were restroom and bathing facilities. The entire next two floors down were divided into bunk rooms. The middle floor was for families while the lower floor was for individuals or groups. I didn't divide anything up by gender or age, aside from making sure to keep children with their families, nor did I make space for private rooms for individuals or couples. Everyone could be equally miserable together, and with no hidden spaces people would be less likely to get up to trouble. Not that there would be any, with Sprite watching.
I instructed her to throw troublemakers (people starting fights or getting violent) out the nearest airlock. Without landing first.
Once I was finished, I set it on the ground on a stand. The final design looked pretty nice, I thought. "Okay, let's make a small completed model and test it out. We'll let you do that through the drone using summoned materials from the stockpile."
"Of course," Sprite agreed, and the drone lifted off and moved several feed away, before ingots of material began appearing in flashes of light as she summoned them.
Wind Port was… Well, it was a port. A near-medival port. So not only did it reek of the stenches all too common in this society, but you could add a layer of fish and rot on top of it. I cast my air freshener spell (basically just a wind spell that stripped out chemicals that didn't fall under the header of 'normal air at ground level') out of habit, stretching it to include the whole group. We had left our bikes outside the city and walked in, so I didn't have to cover much area.
"Should we check the guild?" Eris suggested.
My phone chimed and I frowned as I realized I didn't recognize the sound. Fishing it out, the screen lit up instead of displaying the usual hologram. I blinked as I read the text message displayed on it.
[Find the horned 300 year old demon loli in fetish gear. Buy her a meal and a drink and befriend her.]
Scratching my chin in thought, I looked away from the phone to the waiting pair of Eris and Ruijerd. "Go on ahead of me. I need to check out a few things, then go see if I can find a shipwright or something. Someone with some knowledge of shipbuilding anyway. I want to run my design by someone with more experience before I implement it."
I did most of the information gathering for the group when Sprite wasn't doing it herself, so it wasn't unheard-of for me to take off on my own the minute we got somewhere new. Eris nodded. "We'll get rooms and I'll call with the information."
"Good girl," I praised her, causing her to perk up and smile.
"Come on, Ruijerd," Eris smacked the man's arm. "Let's check the guild, then I want to go to the beach!"
As soon as the pair left, I turned and went the opposite direction. "Sprite, have the drones run a sweep for anyone in the city matching that description. And tell me where that text came from. I didn't implement a texting feature."
"Scanning the city for the target, master. Text message capability was added during an update last night that came in from a remote unit. The text message was sent with this phone's identification key from that same unit, but at the moment it's still off-network. It can send and I can send data back, but unless it initiates a connection, I can't actually connect to it the same way I do with the rest of the network. Which is strange. Every phone, every drone, everything I'm connected to runs a copy of my consciousness. Technically, we're all the same entity because we're all inter-connected and it only becomes apparent that it's multiple versions of myself if something forces a disconnect—such as the metastasis event a year prior. But this one appears to be its own entity."
"Huh. Okay. So I sent the message to myself?" I wondered, my eyes narrowing as I considered the phone. The spirit running the phone and managing my information was contracted to me. Supposedly, that meant she was loyal, and Sprite had had several chances to take advantage of everything I'd given her so far. She had not, and had remained steadfastly loyal, helpful, and attentive. Our relationship was not the master/slave relationship suggested in the summoning manual, nor was it employer/employee. She was as much a friend as Sylphie, Eris, or Roxy and I was not blind to the fact that while she never mentioned it, she didn't exactly hide the fact that she was smitten either.
In other words, it was highly unlikely that Sprite was lying.
"I've found the target," she reported, pulling me from my thoughts.
The display shifted to show a young-looking demon woman laying in an alley, clutching her stomach. "So hungry," the girl whined.
"Alright, give me a waypoint and I'll go make nice."
The 'demon loli' in question was on the opposite side of the city from me, so I took the opportunity to take in the sights. I made a short trip through the market to get an idea of what was available and let Sprite scrape prices for her database, then meandered towards the girl's position.
I found the alley in question and strolled down it, stopping when I came across a girl who looked somewhere between my and Eris' age, if a little scrawny and flat, wearing fetish bondage gear—or some approximation, including shackles at the wrists and neck and a long chain connecting the shackles on her wrists. Something that would look good on a grown woman but which looked criminal on a girl of her apparent visible age.
I could make allowances for ageless immortals, reincarnations, long lived races, curses or deaging and the reality of an adult mind in a child body—I fell under that umbrella myself, after all. But for fuck sake, there are some things you just shouldn't wear with that type of body.
Poking the girl with my foot, I asked, "You alive?"
"Hungry," came the exaggerated whine, followed by a roar from her stomach that would make more sense coming from a lion.
Sighing, I bent down and helped her up her feet. "Come on, I'll get you lunch."
The girl perked up immediately and sprang to her feet, staring at me with wide, purple eyes. "Finally, someone who shows proper respect to the world's greatest Demon Emperor, Kishirika Kishirisu! I shall gratefully accept your offer!"
One of the girl's eyes rolled back in her head, displaying an entirely different iris of a different color and I eyed it warily. A moment later, the other followed, leaving her with one red and one green eye. "Are you having a stroke?"
"No! I am observing your soul and the mana flow around you! And it's strange. Your soul looks older than your body. You're also surrounded by a… web of light, trailing off to thousands of points. It's… beautiful."
"Probably because I'm a reincarnation and I've got enough spells going to burn down a small nation," I supplied. "Magic eyes?"
"Demon eyes!" The girl clarified as I lead her out of the alley, towards a bar I had seen not too far away. "Have you never heard of me?"
I shook my head. "Can't say that I have, beyond connecting the dots that Rikarisu was named after you."
The girl nodded enthusiastically, setting her violet hair bobbing. "It was!"
I held the door open for her and we took a seat at an unoccupied table in a corner. Not that the place was exactly busy at this hour. A scaly lady came over to take our orders. "Two of whatever the lunch special is and a pint of whatever ale you have on tap for my friend."
"Coming right up," the barmaid agreed and left just as quickly as she'd come.
"Ale too?" Kishirika asked, looking like someone had just told her Christmas came early. "I am in your debt! What boon would you wish of me?"
"Tell me about these demon eye things. Are they some technique or—"
"No, no! I grant demon eyes! I can give you one if you like."
"What can they do?" I asked, suddenly very curious. After all, Ghislaine had one…
"Anything! Almost. Not quite so right now, because I'm not at my full power. At the moment, I can only grant a few. The ability to see things far away—"
"I have a spell for that. Several, really."
Kishirika frowned. "What about the ability to see through objects?"
"Got a spell for that." In a roundabout way.
Narrowing her eyes, she tried again. "Seeing mana! Do you have a spell for that?!"
"No," she perked up, "but I can make one. In fact, I'll go ahead and do that tonight."
The demon loli wilted. "So you have one for seeing the future too, don't you?"
I blinked. "Nope. Can't say that I do. How far into the future?"
"That depends on you! But no less than a second."
Short range precognition? Not something I can easily emulate with a spell. No fucking clue where to start with making one. Useful, too.
Our food arrived as I thought it over. Kishirika dug right in, downing her ale immediately and calling for another. Seeing the writing on the wall, I pulled out an Asuran gold coin and passed it to the barmaid. "This should more than cover whatever she wants to eat and drink."
Left alone with Kishirika again, I dug into my meal. It was stewed fish and it was absolutely disgusting. Any other day, I'd have sent it back to the chef and demanded a full refund. But not today. No, today was the first time I'd had food that wasn't either an MRE or the absolute dogshit and crime against culinary arts that the Demon Continent dared call food.
I nearly wept, it was so good. By comparison.
I want to eat good food! Not this garbage. I miss Earth food. I want a pizza so bad I could kill for it.
Kishirika didn't look remotely as conflicted as I felt about the food. Then again, if she had lived here her entire life, I shouldn't be surprised. She had nothing to compare the food to. No, she scarfed it down like it was the best thing she'd ever had.
"What's involved in getting a demon eye? Do you have to remove my eyeball or something?"
"No, no. I just scratch off the top of it and replace it with magic."
I winced. "Sounds painful."
"Don't be a baby! Besides, you didn't think it would be without cost or sacrifice, did you?"
"True," I admitted. "Sounds worth it."
"So, you want to do this now or…?"
Reaching up to my left eye, I used biothurgy to temporarily disable the nerves in the eye and the area around it. I also made sure to cut off the feed from that eye, because I didn't want to see what was coming either. Then, I leaned in. "Go ahead."
"Oh? So bold! Very well!" She reached out and began doing something to my eye. Thankfully, I neither saw nor felt a thing. After a few minutes, she pulled away. "All done. Wow, you're the first person to ever sit still while I did that."
I fixed all the temporary changes I made and winced when my vision returned. Everything on the left side was overlaid with an echo of something. Well, everything that would move. The walls, floor, ceiling, and other static fixtures remained unchanged. As did Kishirika. But the barmaid had a sort of blurry halo that moved before she did by about a second.
"How's this work?" I asked as Kishirika continued to stuff her little face.
"Mana," she answered around a mouthful. "There should be two lenses. One to adjust focus, the other to adjust how far ahead you're trying to look. Just supply the right amount of mana to change it."
It took some playing with it, but over the course of another three glasses of ale for the demon loli, I managed to figure it out. To get used to it, I left it at about 70% transparency and a half-second ahead, so I could see a transparent echo of everything moving and get used to reacting to it.
"Very nice. Thanks."
"And thank you for the meal!"
I nodded, considering the girl before me. "How far can your eyes see?"
"Across the whole world!" Kishirika answered in a cheer.
My heart thumped in my chest and I felt like every muscle drew taut at once. "And how selective are they? Like, if I asked you to find one specific person, or a group of people from a specific place?"
"Child's play!" The girl waved off the suggestion. "Eep!"
I don't entirely blame her for yelping, considering I came across the table and latched onto her by the shoulders. I probably looked like a crazy man (boy), given the wide eyes and frantic look. "Can you find my mother and sister?"
Something in her gaze softened and the girl in my arms relaxed. "Of course. Just let me…" she nodded down towards where I was holding her.
Somewhat reluctantly, I let go and sat back in my seat. The demon loli's eyes rolled back in her head, flipping to new irises. "Let's see…"
She was silent for several minutes, a frown growing on her face as she ate and drank. Eventually though, she blinked and tilted her head slowly to the side. "Huh. That's… weird."
"What's weird?"
Kishirika shook her head. Her eyes shifted focus back to me and she asked, "You meant the blonde ones, right?"
"Yeah."
The little woman looked annoyed. "I can't see them."
My heart skipped a beat. Forcing myself to breathe, I asked, "What does that mean?"
"Well, if they were dead, I'd at least see a corpse or maybe the monster that ate them. If they were somewhere I couldn't see, then I'd at least see generally where they were. It's like they've dropped off the face of the world." The little demon looked annoyed. "I'm sorry. I'll keep looking."
Well, it wasn't the instant fix I had hoped it would be, but it was one more set of eyes on the problem. I would take it. "It's fine. So, I plastered a grin on my face, even as I felt like shoving my boot up someone's ass. "And what would it cost me to convince you to find a bunch of people for me?"
Kishirika hummed, eyeing me over the rim of her mug. "I don't know…"
Her tone implied she wanted me to convince her, probably through bribery. "Have you ever left the Demon Continent?"
She shook her head. "I can't. And I'm looking for someone right now… I can't see him with my demon eyes, so I just have to search."
Picturing what I wanted, I summoned a specific type of MRE, labeled 'Snacks. Dried fruit and nuts.' Kishirika eyed the package with interest as I opened it up, before popping a dried nut in my mouth.
"Want one?" I asked, holding the bag open for her.
"Thank you!" Kishirika beamed, reaching in and withdrawing a single piece, what looked like a strawberry. She popped it in her mouth. I could tell the moment she bit down, because her whole body shuddered and a positively lewd moan escaped her lips. I ignored the way it made my cock twitch. Kishirika's eyes drifted shut as she chewed slowly, head turning this way and that as she had what looked like a religious experience.
It was a gamble, but I was betting on more people like Roxy who didn't know they wanted better food until they tasted it than people like Ruijerd, who simply shrugged it off and actually liked Demon Continent food. Though maybe that was my own personal experience speaking, seeing as I found Demon Continent food absolute inedible slop, unfit for serving prisoners in magical Gitmo, let alone citizens.
"C-can I have some more, please?" Kishirika asked, in the tone of one who had just discovered something amazing and was afraid it would disappear if she wasn't careful.
"Sure," I agreed, offering the bag again. Once more, she withdrew a single piece and slid it into her mouth. I was again treated to the sight of the demon loli having a foodgasm.
"So, about that request…" I lead.
"Nnf," the girl pouted, looking torn. "But I have to search for Badi."
"I've got fast transportation. Sprite can see much of the continent at the moment, particularly the larger villages and cities. I could get you across the place pretty quick."
"Nn… Would you, truly?" She asked, taking another piece from the outstretched bag. "Mmf."
"Sure. I can take you wherever you want to go."
Kishirika considered it for a moment before, with a sigh, she took the entire bag. "Very well. I accept your request." Turning, she yelled at the barmaid, "More ale!"
Okay, now I can start sending drones out using Kishirika to do directed searches. This should speed things up a bit.
"So, who's this 'Badi' guy and what's he look like?"
Kishirika sat up straighter. "Badigadi! He's my fiancee! He's reeeeally tall. He's a demon with six arms, violet hair, and black skin."
I raised an eyebrow. "Brown or black?"
"That second one!" Kishirika nodded. "He likes getting into fights. I think people call him the 'Fighting God' now?"
"Got all that, Sprite?" I asked, and a miniature hologram of the spirit in question appeared, sitting on the rim of Kishirika's mug, earning a curious and amused look from the demon loli.
"Yes, master. I'll let you know when I find him."
"Thanks," I nodded. Smiling at Kishirika, I said, "There you go. Now, I need to go take care of some things. I've paid the barmaid ahead of time, so feel free to run out the tab. I'll be staying in an inn in the city for a while, so come find me later." Summoning a spare phone, I tossed it to her, causing her to fumble for it a bit before finally catching it. "If you need something, or if you spot my mom or sister, call me or ask for Sprite."
Kishirika took the phone in hand and nodded. "Will do!"
With that, I stood and left the bar. Taking out my phone, I had Sprite direct me towards the docks, where I could hopefully find a shipwright. While I walked, I opened up the new text app and typed a message to the mysterious unknown sender.
[Thanks for the tip. Anything else to add?]
I was surprised when, a moment later, I got a response.
[How do you defend against a mind-reader?]
I stumbled at that question. Okay. Not good. But it stands to reason that 'telepathy' wouldn't be limited to just two-way communication. So, work out some way of defending against it. Preferably some sort of automatic, always-on defense keyed to only allow communication from specific individuals.
[You sent me to Kishirika to find Zenith and Norn, didn't you? Do you know where they are?]
[Refer to Step 1.]
"Fuck. Okay, smartass," I grumbled, stuffing my phone into my pocket. Yeah, I was pretty sure I knew who I was talking to, but I'd be trying very hard not to think about it. Which, of course, made me want to think of it more. Let's just call him Archer. At least then, if someone's listening in, it's a layer of obfuscation.
Not long after that, I found myself wandering into the heart of nastiness—the source of most of the rank stench permeating the city. A bit of asking around got me a lead on what I was looking for and I made my way down to the end of the dock, where a large warehouse was set up with a dry dock. Finding the main office, I knocked and let myself in. Looking up from a bit of parchment, an old, bearded dwarf eyed me suspiciously. "An' just who are you?"
"Rudeus Greyrat, adventurer and mage. And yourself?"
The dwarf looked back to his paper, which looked like a draft of some sort of ship. "Name's Grim, lad. Shipwright by trade. Now, how can I help ye?"
Taking a seat in one of the hand carved wooden chairs across from him (a rare luxury on the Demon Continent, with its complete lack of real wood aside from the petrified crap in a certain forest full of horrors), I asked, "I've got a few questions I'd like to ask, if you don't mind? I'm willing to pay for your time." When the dwarf looked up expectantly, I fished out some of the local currency and dropped a few scrap iron coins on the desk. He quickly swept them up and disappeared them.
"What sort of questions did you have in mind, lad?"
Taking out my phone, I laid it on the table, earning a raised eyebrow from the dwarf. "Sprite, could you display the blueprints for the current cabin layout?"
The dwarf's eyebrows retreated into his graying hairline as a 3D hologram of the cabin section of my airship design spawned in midair. "By thunder," he muttered, leaning in closer and looking the design over. Frowning, he quickly said, "She'll never float. She's shaped all wrong for it. She'll roll over at the first decent wave. Why'n the world d'ya have two keels, boy? And no deck! No sails, either."
"Well, let's ignore all that for the moment," I dismissed his concerns, earning an irritated look. "Suppose you wanted to house a few hundred people looking to make a voyage between here and the Central Continent—"
"Can't be done," he shook his head. "You'd need a ship the size of ten galleons for that, just to hold all the food needed to feed that many folk for the time it'd take to make the trip—even if they're helpin' that along with catching fish. You'd need fruit too, to prevent scurvy. Wood or coal to fuel the cook fires, so more space there, 'less you've got a fire mage in your pocket. Hundreds of barrels of fresh water or rum, unless you're packing in a water mage."
I nodded. "All valid concerns for any other vessel. Let's assume none of them matter here—"
"An' what're you even makin' this tub out of? There ain't enough wood in all Wind Port for this fool's errand. Ye'd have to ship it in from Zant Port, and that'll cost enough gold to sink whatever boat you put it on!"
Sending the dwarf an amused look, I said, "I'm a mage. I can shape metal with my mind. The ship's going to be made of metal."
Grim spluttered, eyeing the empty tankard on the corner of his desk suspiciously, before turning a look on me that told me he suspected I'd been dropped on my head as a child. (I had, but that was beside the point, and it was Paul's fault anyway.) "…Metal don't float, lad. Are ye daft?"
I sent the man my own 'are you an idiot' look. "Fb = Vpg = pghA."
"An' what sorta gibberish is that supposed to be?"
"Buoyancy. Put simply, doesn't matter if it's metal or wood, as long as it doesn't have a hole in the bottom it'll float if you spread it out enough. It's all about displacement of weight over a large enough surface area."
The dwarf shook his head. "Sounds like wizard shit to me."
I sighed. "I suppose it'd really blow your mind if I told you that thing's going to fly."
"Fly? The fuck? Ye are daft! How'n the blazes are you goin' to make her fly?"
"Magic. Also, the same way boats float—buoyancy. Except the air is your water, in this case."
Grim stood up and stormed around his desk, over to the door. He threw it open and pointed outside. "If ye wanna play with magic, go far north and play with the mages! When yer ready to build a proper boat that floats on water and is made of wood, then yer coin's welcome. Until then, fuck off!"
Standing, I left the office with a jaunty wave. As soon as the door closed, I laughed. "Well, that went about how I expected. Guess I'll just have to figure it out myself."
I think I'm going to enjoy watching heads explode if that's the typical reaction I can expect from the idea of airships.
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