Knight’s & Magic: Volume 6, page 3
And that was how the genius from a different world, Ernesti, led the rampage of the Order of the Silver Phoenix.
Fremmevilla had just started to adopt the new levitating ships. Would this bring even more strength to the kingdom, or plunge it into chaos? It would be a little longer before Leotamus would find out.
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Luckily, no new order came down to the Order of the Silver Phoenix.
It seemed the king knew how to handle them. Either that, or he was focusing on the national lab, who he could trust to move as he wished. Either way, during this time, Ernie’s order could run as rampant as they pleased.
“First, let’s start by confirming the basics,” said Ernie.
“You got it. Ignoring the basics really wouldn’t be a good thing. But still...really? This thing?” the boss asked.
They were in the midst of working on the plans for the flying silhouette knight. That being said, it wasn’t as if they would be able to draw up a blueprint all of a sudden. Flight is too irregular an objective to be able to reach just by expanding a silhouette knight’s abilities, like they had been doing up until now. In order to bring the dream to fruition, they would need to integrate an Etheric Levitator into a silhouette knight.
So it wasn’t hard to imagine that they would be forced to make major changes to the silhouette knight’s form. Thus, the first thing they needed to do was figure out the function and shape of the final product.
At the moment, Ernie and the boss were looking up to the sky with unreadable expressions. Specifically, they were looking at a large humanoid statue—a silhouette knight, though it seemed devoid of strength, as its limbs hung limply and it was completely still. A device had been attached to its back.
Actually, the device was too big for the word “attached” to truly apply. After all, it was as big as the silhouette knight itself. Thanks to that, it was hard to tell whether it was carrying the device, or the device was carrying it.
They’d started out by trying the most simple and direct methods. In short, they’d stuck a levitating ship’s Etheric Levitator to a silhouette knight before suspending it in the air.
“Well, we did manage to make it fly,” the boss muttered. “Or float, rather. But this won’t be of any use.” It was his honest impression.
The machine was definitely floating, but that was all. It couldn’t move a damn since it was in the air; in fact, it looked like it was being punished for something. The boss’s exasperation was totally understandable.
“This would certainly do the job if all you wanted to do was go up,” said Ernie. “I knew this already, but in the end the Etheric Levitator only makes things float by creating a Levitating Field. It doesn’t provide any propulsion in any direction for movement, so we’ll need to provide that separately.”
“If you knew, then why even try this?” the boss asked.
Ernie laughed. “Because this confirms that we’ll need to miniaturize the Etheric Levitator too!”
“Oh, come on. That should’ve been obvious...”
While the boss was busy being exasperated, Ernie happily started jotting down notes. Regardless of whether this was really necessary, the boss wasn’t able to stop Ernie, even if he’d tried to say no.
He’d expected to be picking a fight with common sense using ridiculous ideas as weapons, but instead they’d started by confirming things that should’ve easily been surmisable. Ernie’s pace was inscrutable, to say the least. Still, that was what had gotten him this far.
Leaving that aside for the moment, the boss launched into an attempt to flush out all the problems with the thing hanging in the air in front of them. “It’s not like you can walk in midair. Are you planning on sticking some Magius Jet Thrusters on it?”
Currently, there were two effective ways to propel oneself through the skies: the Magius Jet Thruster and the Blow Engine. The Blow Engine was just a silhouette arms that caused wind to blow, and it required sails to be worth anything. While that might have worked for ships, the mobility demanded by a combat-ready machine was too much for it.
So, naturally, that only left the Magius Jet Thruster.
“Hm, that would be the choice—barring any new flashes of inspiration.”
At any rate, the seemingly useless experiment at least let them gather their thoughts, one might say. With that, the general concept started to take shape.
The boss summed things up. “In short, we need to make the Etheric Levitator small enough to fit in a silhouette knight, pack in some Magius Jet Thrusters, and supply it with enough mana to fight. I see now... You idiot! Stop asking for the impossible!”
The boss wanted to throw his hammer across the room.
It was impossible to even dream of having a normal silhouette knight fight in the sky. Almost all the equipment necessary to make that happen would have to be newly created. It would be terribly difficult to compress all that within a silhouette knight’s humanoid frame.
“Just so you know, I’ve thought of two ways to solve this,” Ernie said after some thought.
“Wow, you’re well prepared. Go ahead, shoot.”
Ernie counted down on his fingers as he explained. “The first is to equip a model identical to Ikaruga with an Etheric Levitator. That would only require us to miniaturize the Etheric Levitator.”
“Hah! Rejected. You idiot, making another Ikaruga would actually be harder!”
Ikaruga’s ability to freely control Magius Jet Thrusters was entirely thanks to the Behemoth’s Heart and the Queen’s Coronet, two supremely powerful ether reactors. In theory, it was possible to produce another, but unfortunately the machine existed far outside the concept of mass production. There was no way they could apply this idea to mass-producing flight-capable silhouette knights.
“Thought not. Which leaves the other method: to copy off of a success story.”
“Success story? There’s already a flying silhouette knight?”
“No. What I’m talking about is a bit different... I mean Vouivre.”
Vouivre floated with an ether reactor and used Magius Jet Thrusters to move. The magic requirements for this were made up for by having a multitude of ether reactors and a much larger body. I see, the boss thought, so they only added as much as they needed.
The only problem was that Vouivre was essentially an extension of a levitating ship. The starting point was too far removed to be applied to silhouette knights.
“Every once in a while, I really want to give you a good slap in the face,” the boss said after a moment.
“Please don’t. I’ll burst like a ripe fruit. Anyway, we can’t use either of those off the shelf, so we’ll need some sort of change in perspective.”
Ernie was very energetic for some reason, while the boss’s exhaustion was already showing on his face.
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Gentle morning light shone down upon Laihiala Academy City.
It was a little later than early morning. Students in various parts of the city were greeting each other as they headed to school. Adeltrude “Addy” Alter was doing the same, strolling happily through the hubbub.
She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she could hear snippets of other students’ conversation, and they were talking about levitating ships. But this wasn’t just limited to the academy city; the entire kingdom was alight with rumors of the shocking new vehicle. The students, in particular, were most concerned about whether a new levitating ship department would be established at Laihiala. Addy, who had intimate knowledge of the subject of these rumors (as well as experience shooting them down), couldn’t help but be giddy, her footsteps becoming lighter and more energetic. She continued walking down the street, and before long she reached her destination.
“Good morning. Let’s go to the fort, Erniiieee!”
Familiar with the Echevalier house, she barged right in and greeted Tina before shouting for someone farther inside. Before long, Ernie appeared, dragging along his favorite trunk that was stuffed full of documents.
“Well then, we’ll be off.”
While waving goodbye to Tina, who saw them off, the pair left in good spirits. Fort Orvesius, the Order of the Silver Phoenix’s base, was close to Laihiala Academy City. Since they both lived in Laihiala, they would commute to the fort when necessary using Addy’s Tzenndrimble.
They were headed for the parking area located in the outskirts of the city when the sound of a strong gust of wind came from overhead. Gasping, they looked up along with the students around them.
A ship was plowing through the clear blue sky, its sails on either side swelling with wind. It was the practical cargo ship that had just been developed and constructed by the National Silhouette Knight Laboratory.
It hadn’t been long since the ship had come out of development, so there weren’t enough of them to go around. Thus far they were only being used to ferry goods around the eastern border of the kingdom. Still, everyone had high hopes for the levitating ship—that it would eventually be able to ferry people too. Its value would be particularly immeasurable here in Fremmevilla, given that travel was greatly limited by the monster population. A flying ship was truly the kingdom’s newest dream given shape.
“Heh heh, we can’t afford to be left behind. Let’s head for the fort, Addy.”
“Okaaay.”
Two months had passed since the end of the war for Kuscheperka and the Order of the Silver Phoenix’s return. In that time, dizzying changes had occurred within the Kingdom of Fremmevilla.
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As for what the Order of the Silver Phoenix had been doing during that time...
They’d been researching the fundamental technologies they’d need before even beginning to design a flight-capable silhouette knight. The functions that one would need to fly in the sky were all the product of advanced science.
“We managed to miniaturize the Etheric Levitator surprisingly easily. Now we can install one into a silhouette knight,” said Ernie.
“There was no way we could make such a huge thing float, after all,” the boss noted.
The original Etheric Levitators were the size of silhouette knights themselves. The new version was much smaller. What made this possible was how simple the device’s inner workings were.
The Etheric Levitator, roughly speaking, created a Levitating Field as long as a certain amount of high-purity ether was inside it. A levitating ship’s Etheric Levitator was large in order to support the ship’s size. But since it was being adapted for a mere silhouette knight, it needed much less ether, and naturally the machine itself could be made smaller as well.
“Next, I tried further developing Ikaruga’s Magius Jet Thrusters. It should reduce the weight if we put this together piece by piece,” Ernie said, moving on.
“Whoa, I can’t even tell what kind of script this is anymore. It sure is packed in...”
Ernie was talking about a combined Magius Jet Thruster made of the same capacity frame that was on it, only with a dense Emblem Graph carved into it. He’d gone back over the script and optimized it, along with the structure and arrangement of certain pieces, while cutting out some parts to make it smaller in exchange for a loss of some thrust. Though it had less output, its mana-to-thrust efficiency had actually improved, so it was now more suited to air maneuvers. He’d taken out as much as he could—they needed as many of these pieces as possible to make a silhouette knight fly.
“All that’s left is the mana supply...and that’s going to be a tough one,” said Ernie. “It needs thrust to move through the air, and it needs to be able to fight while doing so. According to my calculations, the only way to compensate for this is to use multiple reactors. I’m thinking of taking Ikaruga’s layout as an example and plan to mount two.”
“Hrm, I guess there’s no other choice. It’s impossible to make more Ikarugas, but I guess referencing its structure is a good thing,” the boss agreed.
With that, Ernie and the boss had gathered together the ether reactor required to float in the air, the Magius Jet Thrusters required to move, and the ether reactors required to supply all that with mana.
“I tried drawing up a blueprint combining all of this,” Ernie said.
“Okay, then let’s see it.”
Ernie retrieved the blueprint from his trunk and spread it out. The silhouette knight he’d chosen as a base was the Kardetolle, Fremmevilla’s officially adopted, mass-produced unit. It had high base power and simple construction, so it was perfectly suited for cases like this.
“Hey, this thing...” the boss couldn’t help but mutter.
The machine described by the blueprint reused Ikaruga’s structure, placing two reactors in its abdomen and back. The miniature Etheric Levitator was also in the back; no matter how much smaller it had gotten, there already wasn’t enough room left in the silhouette knight, and it was too tough to fully internalize the device. Not to mention, they needed to pack in the etherite needed to supply the thing with ether. Also, because the Etheric Levitator would lose function if the ether inside were to leak out, it needed heavy protection. Thus, all the most important parts were concentrated into one spot as much as possible and surrounded by armor.
In addition, there were Magius Jet Thrusters attached to the armor. They were placed so as to preserve the machine’s ability to fight while also maintaining full mobility in all directions. This was achieved by attaching them to moving appendages, much like sub-arms.
With all this cutting-edge technology concentrated into one machine, the completed blueprint...
“What the heck? It’s so fat.”
“It’s not cute at all...”
The critical parts had been concentrated in the abdomen and back, with plenty of armor surrounding them. With the Magius Jet Thrusters added to that, the new unit’s sheer girth made it practically spherical. In short, it was an inflated ball with limbs sticking out of it—and frankly, ugly.
“Hey, Ernesti? If you actually make this, I’m quitting the order,” the boss said.
“Surely that’s a bit dramatic...” Even Ernie, who’d drawn this blueprint up, had some awareness of how bad it looked. He was acting much less confident than usual as he turned to the boss haltingly, like his joints were rusted over. The boss looked like something was surging up within him, something that wasn’t quite anger or confusion.
“Sure, this has all the necessary features. But there’s no way we can make something so fat and uncool!” the boss shouted, carrying the will of all knightsmiths on his shoulders. They collectively threw up their arms, shouting their agreement from the soul.
David’s sense of aesthetics aside, the problem wasn’t just that it didn’t look good. All those things concentrated in the body made it hard to move, limiting the silhouette knight’s greatest advantage: its mobility. As a result, even if it were to take to the air, it was doubtful whether it would be able to fight.
Ernie had suspected this would happen, but he hadn’t expected so much resistance. He folded his arms together as he pondered. “Hrm, this is a problem. As you say, it may be a little lacking in the looks department.”
“You call this a ‘little’ lacking?”
“But still, there are many more challenges to take on in order to fly through the sky. What can we do, and what can’t we do? What should we change to improve it? We’re still steeped in ignorance,” said Ernie.
The noise faded, like a receding tide. The knightsmiths who’d come together to oppose the design were suddenly unsure of what to do with their raised fists.
“Having ideas requires thought, and actual practice is required to engrave knowledge into the mind. This is just a prototype. There’s a lot we need to confirm by actually making and operating it, including any problems with its shape and other ways to improve it. So why don’t we make one first so we can iron this all out?”
The Order of the Silver Phoenix had been founded to create the most cutting-edge machines along with Ernie. Speaking in extremes, there was no actual need to convince the boss and the other knightsmiths—he could just order them to make the prototype. However, Ernie probably wouldn’t resort to that. These knightsmiths were comrades who’d made robots along with him. They aimed for the same things, built the same things, and enjoyed the process by his side. No matter what anyone else thought, Ernie had always considered that to be the order’s raison d’être. So, he sought their understanding with straightforward speech.
“I mean, gah... Your devilish whispers are always so unfair. There’s no way we could refuse as knightsmiths when you put it like that.” But it seemed he’d tickled their innate curiosity as engineers. The boss threw up his hands—like he was throwing in the towel—and heaved a deep sigh. “I guess there’s still lots we don’t know, even though we managed to fly a levitating ship for a bit. Hmph, you’re right about that. It’s a little ugly—scratch that, extraordinarily ugly—but it’ll still be a challenge.”
“The shape of it aside, I guess it’s still a silhouette knight we’re trying to make fly.”
“It’s time to show our stuff!”
The sentiment spread through the crowd, and the knightsmiths showed a mix of resignation, exasperation, and excitement. But once they decided to do something, they were swift. With that, the Order of the Silver Phoenix came together to work toward their goal of a flying silhouette knight.
“But! Once we test it thoroughly, we’re changing the way the second prototype looks!” The boss had to put the nail in the coffin on that point.
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It took about half a month for a prototype to be completed. Though it was packed with unique functions, its actual structure wasn’t all that special. Thanks to the skills they’d built up and their silhouette gears, building it was much faster than normal.
Though there were a lot of complaints bandied about, the knightsmiths would never cut corners on anything they built; they’d use all their skills to accomplish the best work they could. The completed flying silhouette knight, prototype number one, was dubbed “Sylphianne.”
As in the blueprint, it was round and bloated.
Addy stood dejectedly in front of the Sylphianne, with its torso armor open and exposing the cockpit.
