Chapter 734
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 .
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