A flying ship suddenly appeared in the sky above the Inquisition headquarters, throwing the entire city into an uproar.
“T-the ship… it’s flying!?”
“No way… c-could it be the divine ship!?”
“But it should be sealed away in the Grand Temple!”
“And… doesn’t its shape look different?”
“So it’s something else?”
“There’s no such thing as a ship that can fly unless it’s a divine vessel!”
“I–it must be an illusion! We’re all being shown some kind of hallucination, that’s the only explanation!”
To these people who were forbidden even from creating imitations of the divine vessel, this sight surpassed anything they could comprehend. Sensing the disturbance outside, the inquisitors began spilling out of the building one after another.
“Impossible… something like this…”
“A ship identical to the divine vessel… actually exists…?”
“It’s nearly the same size… no—perhaps even larger…?”
Confronted with a reality that shattered the very foundation of their identity as inquisitors, they could do nothing but stare blankly at the sky in stunned disbelief.
Dana—who had escaped from the Inquisition not long ago—was standing nearby, yet none of them even noticed her presence.
“You rode that thing all the way to this island? Then that means you…”
“Yeah. We flew here from the surface. The whole amnesia excuse was a lie, of course.”
Dana’s eyes widened in shock as I spoke the truth.
“From the surface… all the way to this island!?”
Just then, one of the inquisitors finally noticed Dana’s presence.
“Y–You! Why are you outside!?”
“Uh… Oh no..!”
“Oh my, they noticed you. I thought they’d ignore a single escapee with everything else going on.”
Her shout drew the attention of the others, and soon several inquisitors were turning toward us, moving quickly to seize Dana again. Anyone would assume the flying ship was the more urgent matter here, but their rigid sense of duty left them unable to ignore their assigned task. But before they could reach her, Dana’s body suddenly rose up into the air.
“W–what!? My body… it’s lifting on its own—!”
“That’s how you board the ship.”
I explained, floating upward beside her.
“The divine vessel enshrined in the Grand Temple works the same way. It has no visible entrance, right? You always wondered how anyone got in or out.”
“Then… I’m really about to go inside that ship!?”
The airship I created uses an elevator-like system that can raise or lower people and cargo at will. However, there’s no platform or lift—its movement is achieved entirely through flight magic.
“W–wait! Escaping during an inquisition is a serious crime!”
“Come down at once!”
“Do you think you can escape from us!?”
The inquisitors shouted in fury, but Dana was already far beyond their reach. A moment later, an opening appeared on the underside of the Seno Grande Kai and we drifted straight into the ship’s interior.
“Welcome aboard the Seno Grande Kai.”
“T–this is… the inside of a flying ship…”
“Yes. Its internal structure should be very similar to the divine vessel. They’re sibling ships, after all.”
“W–whaat!? This is a sibling to the divine ship…? Then the Three Sages created another ship as well…?”
Dana’s misunderstanding was so large I had no choice but to correct it directly.
“No, that’s not it. Neither this ship nor the divine ship was built by the Three Sages.”
“Eh…?”
“Both were made by the person who taught them—their master.”
“The master of the Three Sages…?”
“That’s right. His name was Aristoteleus—a great sage of ancient times. Even fifteen hundred years after his death, his achievements are still honored throughout the world.”
Incidentally… that great sage was me in my previous life.
『Master, saying that yourself is extremely uncool.』
Lindwurm chided.
Dana’s lips trembled as the reality before her shattered everything she had believed.
“S-Something like that… could it really be true…?”
“There may be nothing like it on this floating island, but down on the surface, there are documents that prove it.”
Well…probably. No, there should be, right?
『Hard to say. The Tower of the Great Sage held no surviving records, and who knows what became of all the scattered documents.』
…Well. We’ll just pretend they exist.
“Haha… if that’s true, then what was the point of calling it blasphemy to create imitations…?”
Dana let out a laugh tinged with self-mockery.
Perhaps the days she’d spent living in fear of the Inquisition now seemed almost absurd to her.
I guided her toward the control room.
“This is the wheelhouse. You can pilot it manually, but it mostly runs on automatic control. As long as you set a destination, it’ll take you there on its own.”
“Automatic control!? H–how could such a thing even be possible…? And more importantly, how does a ship this size stay floating in the sky? I could barely manage something suited for a single rider… no, even that wasn’t truly successful…”
When I went on to explain that the ship could automatically detect approaching monsters and even intercept them, her reaction was immediate.
“The great sage was a genius, wasn’t he!?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that much is undeniable.”
『…Master, I must repeat—praising yourself is extremely uncool.』
This airship was practically a treasury of magical engineering. As a craftswoman of magitech tools, Dana could clearly recognize its value, and her excitement only grew.
“And I’m thoroughly familiar with this ship the great sage created. After all, I even upgraded it—gave it a full refit to improve its performance.”
“You modified this ship!?”
Most of the wheelhouse’s walls were made of glass, giving us a clear view of the city below. Far beneath us, the inquisitors were still running about in disarray, glancing up at the ship as they scrambled in confusion.
“So, what will you do, Dana-oneechan? If you come with us, you might never be able to return to this island—your homeland. Will you leave with us aboard this ship? Or go back down there and submit to the Inquisition?”
I posed the question to her. She answered without a single moment of hesitation.
“Of course I’ll leave the island!”
Then, with fiery determination, she declared:
“And I want to learn everything I can about this ship…! Someday, with my own hands, I’ll build a vessel that can rival it!”
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeineijiworks.wordpress.com.
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