Chapter 734: Journey

Two weeks had now passed since the secret alliance in the shadows. Many things happened, many things changed, and many things remained the same.

Within three days of allying with us, not only did the Holy Church not send any new troops to San Antonio, they were already beginning to pull back some knight squadrons that had suffered too many losses from San Antonio.

It seemed like the Holy Church had also reached some sort of secret agreement with Duke Barrot. The Holy Church’s forces were able to retreat really successfully. The enemy Duke Barrot faction completely ignored these retreating forces.

This was only the beginning. All of the Holy Church forces began to retreat from San Antonio. The angel squadrons, which were the most elite, left the quickest.

As this went on, soon, there really would only be citizens of San Antonio left in San Antonio to fight their own civil war.

Was the Holy Church abandoning Prince Winston? Was the Holy Church abandoning San Antonio?

Many rumors and much information spread everywhere. Pope Caloma made an announcement, saying things like “The Holy Church will forever take care of San Antonio”, “The God of Holy Light is watching over all lands of Holy Light”, and other such useless platitudes in order to console people.

Of course, the official announcements always sounded so warm and reassuring. At the very least, Pope Caloma still had plenty of authority as the representative of the God of Holy Light in the mortal plane. Devout believers still really trusted him.

As for what would happen afterwards… By the time that San Antonio’s civil war was in its bloodiest stages, the survivors wouldn’t care about what Caloma had previously said.

All of this would have nothing to do with me, anyways.

The spread of magical engineering technology helped to greatly reduce the time it took to travel between countries. Although airship tickets for transporting people or cargo were still very expensive, and limited to only travel between major cities, my departure city and destination city were both capital cities of powerful countries, so it was quite a good deal for me to take a comfortable and safe flying airship.

But as war went on, these new aerial flight paths would also meet with new threats.

Along the way, our airship met with more than 10 waves of flying magical beasts, one green dragon passing by, and more than 10 aerial knights.

The green dragon and flying magical beasts had been searching for food. The aerial knights were various countries’ aerial border guards. The current world wasn’t peaceful at all, so they would watch every single aerial target that passed by.

But in the end, the flying magical beasts were all defeated by the airship’s magic cannons, while the green dragon and aerial knights simply followed the airship for a while before turning around and leaving.

One reason that they left was because this large transportation airship was equipped with almost 100 medium-sized magic cannons. The more important reason was because of the flags on this airship.

Bardi’s flag, a dragon’s head. The Mist Alliance’s flag, a castle in a blizzard. Auland’s flag, a crowned king. The fairies’ flag, their emblem of the Listener. The four flags on this airship represented that this airship had the protection of four major factions.

The reason for this was simple. Currently, only the Mist Alliance and Auland had the technology to create large transportation airships capable of moving cargo and people between countries. Neither faction would ever miss such a wonderful business opportunity. Rather than vicious competition, we instead cooperated to monopolize the entire airship transportation market. We also had Bardi join us for extra protection, as well as for other reasons. We had also invited the fairies to join us as a shareholder in our business because their information network and organization was far too useful for the aerial transportation industry.

Since the fairies were famously neutral, they were able to advertise airship transportation to merchant guilds around the land. The fairies’ participation would also help other countries to feel more assured about participating in aerial transportation flight paths. They would trust the fairies more than gigantic powerhouses like Bardi or the Mist Alliance.

In this world, there was no such thing as laws regarding airships. The idea of flight paths was also something quite new. The airship operators and captains had all been selected from experienced ship crew members. Even the tools to measure direction and coordinates were made to copy the tools that would be used on the ocean. The airship crew would still try and operate the airship as if they were operating a ship in the sea. It was quite common for the airship to thus accidentally deviate from the flight path.

When on the ocean, deviating from the planned path wouldn’t matter too much. You could simply fix this by turning around a little. However, when flying over land instead, it could be considered as entering another country’s borders without permission, which would be major trouble. Plus, since the airship was highly armed, it was possible that even a battle might start because of it.

That was why we often saw aerial knights following the airship all along the way. Still, maybe it was because the Mist Alliance’s, Bardi’s, and Auland’s flags were enough to protect the airship, or maybe it was because the countries along the flight path had gotten used to it, so in most cases, the aerial knight would simply follow us until they saw us exiting their country’s border, and would then leave us alone.

As for the remaining cases? Sometimes, the aerial knight would even come board the airship. Although this would indeed be to monitor us, I could also often hear the aerial knight chatting about their own country’s stories and customs. An aerial knight who was the friendly type would even put on a performance for the guests from faraway countries. There was a dark-skinned female manticore knight who was also an excellent dancer. Her desert style twisting dance left me with a really deep impression.

Such situations happened several times along the journey. Local song and dance were a way of expressing friendliness all over the world. Not only did this help to ease the airship guests’ tension, it also made them look forward to upcoming journey.

Of course, judging from how the aerial knights who were also performers headed straight for the airship crew to receive red packets of money, perhaps there was even agreement between them already. It was even possible that the aerial knights had been intentionally invited over to help the airship guests relax.

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Looking at how things currently were, transporting people long-distance between countries was immensely profitable. I did some calculations. This airship would take one flight approximately once every three days. The number of passengers would be around 300-400 people. There were several different levels of airship tickets, just like how airplane tickets in my original world were separated into economy, business, first-class, and so on. Even the cheapest airship ticket would cost more than 2,000 gold coins. The first-class tickets would cost 10,000 gold coins for a single ticket, which was more than enough to buy a respectable manor in a country. Only a major merchant or major noble would be able to afford a first-class airship ticket.

With just one airship flight, plus maybe some extra cargo transportation or smuggling, if nothing unexpected happened, the flight would likely bring in revenue of over several million gold coins. This was far more profitable than robbing any bank.

Still, there would also be significant expenses in running the airship flights. Not only would there be upkeep costs for the airship, the magic cannons’ ammunition and the guards protecting the airship would also be quite expensive.

Over the days, I idly walked around the whole airship and saw two Legend ranks as well as a Saint rank “youngster” who were wearing uniforms indicating that they were airship security. Basically, they were probably the airship’s guards.

Still, when considering the current chaotic situation in the world, perhaps this was already a great deal. The tariffs and checkpoints that various countries would impose for entering their borders were extremely annoying to deal with. Some countries were also current battlefields, and passing through those places would be the equivalent of suicide.

Although there were also problems in the air, the problems were far fewer than on land. Flying magical beasts were far rarer than land-based magical beasts, and deserter soldiers and bandits were even more dangerous than magical beasts on the ground.

So far, as far as I could tell, due to the flags of the major factions, these transportation airships were still running at a safety rate of 100%. The guests really trusted the airship crew to keep them safe.

Although this trust was greatly tested when the green dragon arrived, the trust was restored to a peak when the green dragon chose to leave rather than attack.

“As expected of the Mist Alliance. Even dragons don’t dare to touch their airship.”

“Don’t you mean the Bardi Empire? My country’s dragon knights are famed all over the world. That dragon is definitely afraid of my country’s powerful dragon knights hunting it down.”

Although the Bardi citizen’s claim made all other Bardi citizens on board really proud of their own country, I almost laughed out loud as I was the only one here who could understand the dragon language. I had heard what the green dragon really said.

“…Wow, a flying iron can! I heard that meeting one will bring me great luck! Flying iron can, please bless me so that Natasha can accept my love, please bless me that I’ll have lots of treasure, please bless me…”

The green dragon’s roars had really frightened all of the guests, but he was actually someone who believed in the newest rumor going around the dragons—that anyone who met a “flying iron can” would be blessed with great luck. So, all he was doing was praying for what he wanted, and when he left, it wasn’t because he had judged that it wasn’t worth it to attack the airship, but rather because he was leaving quite happily after he finished praying for everything that he wanted.

Still, the guests were right about some things.

Due to Bardi’s special relationship with the dragons, any dragons who were related to Dragon City wouldn’t attack any airship with Bardi’s flag.

In fact, the rumor about “flying iron cans” bringing great luck had intentionally been spread by Bardi’s Dragon City and Little Red’s Dragon City. The rumor even had an additional part that any dragon who attacked an airship would suffer misfortune.

Still, this was technically true as Dragon City was also taking a cut of the airship transportation profits. Attacking the airships would be the equivalent of attacking the dragon leaders’ profits. Any wild dragon would of course suffer misfortune if they dared to do so. This was another reason why Bardi had been invited to join in the airship transportation business.

Of course, there was no such thing as absolute safety in this world. As the Holy War progressed, an accident would happen to an airship sooner or later. Not all enemies could be communicated with. For instance, maybe an airship would meet with a large horde of flying demons or something of the sort.

But as the Holy War progressed, traveling on land would only become more difficult and more dangerous, so airship transportation had immense development potential.

Another benefit of the secret alliance with the Holy Church was that this airship transportation business could be expanded to the Holy Church’s areas of influence. This would greatly expand our profits.

All these profits would represent even more military investment and food. It would mean that the Mist Alliance’s national strength was constantly rising. Perhaps we were the ones who were most accustomed to this time of Holy War…

“There’s a group of flying demons in front! There’s succubi and four-winged Berserker Demons!”

A warning alarm started ringing as the airship crew hurriedly urged all passengers on the airship’s deck to take cover in their rooms. Meanwhile, Harloys glanced at me in dissatisfaction.

“Is this my fault for jinxing things? Isn’t this quite normal? The demon wave is over, and the Chaos Abyss is active. There’s probably countless portals from the Chaos Abyss right now. Meeting a demon army or a Demon Lord is just so common…”

“You two over there, old man and little girl! Please hurry and get to safety! Grandmaster Raikage, please prepare for battle! The radar reaction shows that a Demon Lord has appeared!” An airship crew member urged myself (disguised as an old man) and Harloys to get to safety.

Alright, it seemed that I should shut up and stop jinxing things.