Oh oh? What's this?"
"Hmm?"
A familiar voice rang from above.
"Oooh, Scarlet! What'cha got there?"
"Orphne?"
From overhead, the fairy that served under me came fluttering down. She was originally a part of the elite fairy guard, but after she was fired from her position, I ended up becoming her new employer. Though it wasn't like I actually paid her a regular wage. At least not in coin. For some reason, this little being was fine with receiving sweets in the place of pay. Though she did eat a lot, far more than what you'd conceivably consider to be able to fit into her little body.
Even now, there was some sort of white bun in her hands that smelled sweet. Though it was half eaten already.
"Hey! This looks interesting!"
"Orphne, what happened to your work?"
The little fairy was supposed to be off doing a delivery to trade dungeon materials and goods produced here to the small village just outside the forest our nation was build inside of. In exchange for the paper they made, we provided everything from food to equipment.
"I finished it already~!"
"Already? You only left four days ago."
Usually it took her seven days to do the job. Three to get to the village, one spent wasting time over there, and three more to get back. Despite the fact that fairies took absolutely no effort to fly, they were comparatively slow at it. It was probably more accurate to say that they floated rather than flew. Despite having those wings sprouted out of their backs, they didn't really flap nearly fast enough to keep them afloat.
"That's cuz I got this made! Yea!"
Orphne pulled out something from her bag. A cylinder as big as she was with four little wings sticking out near the base. Looking a bit closer, there was a turbine fan inside of it along with some fairy sized grips and foot pedals. There was a simple enchantment to rotate the fan along with another to control the device clearly written on the outer body.
"Is that a turbofan?"
A while back, I experimented in trying to build an airplane. Since the two settlements of our Hourai Commonwealth was separated by quite a distance, I had thought that maybe we could build airplanes to allow people to move from one side to the other rather than only having the dungeon be the way people and goods moved back and forth. Congestion at the entrance got pretty bad on occasion, and the entrance was only wide enough for a small wagon. Moving large goods between the two cities was virtually impossible without a magic bag, so a secondary way to move between the two locations felt like a good idea.
Except it didn't work. While we were able to get most of the parts designed and built, in the end, regardless of how we redesigned the wings, the frame, and switching between propellers, duct fans, and even turbines incorporating compression and expansion chambers, the efficiency never got high enough. The energy requirements to get a plane airborne and fly all the way to the other side proved too high to actually allow any decent capacity unless if it was being powered by a particularly strong mage rather than mana crystals. But if that was going to be done, then the project wouldn't be economically viable, so the whole thing was scrapped.
There was the alternative to have it powered by someone with high enough stats to be the power source, but they would have to be paid enough for the economic viability to quickly be drowned this way as well.
I never knew that someone had miniaturized the turbine though.
"Yup! Look at this!"
Orphne straddled over it, and by passing mana in through the handles, the turbine whirled to life with a high pitched whine and the little fairy sped off. Her flight was quite shaky as it didn't look like there was much stability in the design, and the torque made her constantly have to adjust or else she'd keep rolling to one side. But on a very basic level, she was able to fly much faster like this than normal. And at this scale, the energy requirements was low enough that it might not take a high level fairy to supply the required mana, not just Orphne who was originally an elite guard.
The little fairy zoomed around showing her new toy off. The sight reminded me of one of those RC airplanes, except there really was an actual pilot riding the thing.
"Haha! How was it?"
"Oooh, pretty neat."
I gave Orphne some light claps as I praised her.
This wasn't something which I had considered with the original design. In fact, we were instead moving towards moving the technology into making trucks and buses, or even a train, and just building a road or tracks between the settlements instead. It would be a lot of work building and maintaining the road. Or rather, not just the maintenance, but the risk of monster attacks was quite the problem if we wanted it to be a regular service.
But while those ideas had stalled due to the difficulties in implementing them, Orphne here had already gleefully shown me an alternative. At least for solving half of the problem.
That said...
"So...where did you get the money to buy that toy of yours, huh?"
"Erk!"
I narrowed my eyes as I looked at the little fairy still straddled across the magical turbine engine.
"I hadn't even heard of this fairy sized turbine, so it must be very new. In fact, looking at how rough the design is, this must still be part of the first generation or even one of the prototypes. Such a thing can't be cheap to buy, and the wage I pay you in is in treats, not coin. All of which you eat up as soon as you get it to the point that you come begging for more before your next pay half the time."
"Erk!!"
"While I do pay you money for any additional tasks, I know that you usually spend it almost immediately on even more treats. And any amount you've managed to save couldn't have gone to pay for something as expensive as that toy, am I right?"
"Erk!!!"
"So as to how you got your hands on that turbine...my guess is that you 'borrowed' it? Maybe without asking?"
"Gaaaah!!!"
Orphne grabbed her head in both hands and shook it back and forth wildly.
"Haaa...it figures. You keep doing this sort of stuff. Looks like you need a punishment again. Maybe your treats..."
"Wait! Wait! Anything but my treats!"
That foolish little fairy of mine dropped down and practically started begging at the very mention of her treats. But I wasn't going to make the same mistake as before. I've already learned long ago that banning treats was too much of a punishment for fairies. It was like forcing a cocaine addict to go cold turkey against their will.
It's not like she was unrepentant. At least after I gave her a punishment for messing up, and the threat of taking away her treats was so effective I felt bad using it even on bigger things. But the fact that I needed to teach her, and adult, so many things that she's doing wrong, it felt like I was raising three children not two.
Or rather, how was Orphne being even more selfish than Alicia and Fate, who were only a fraction of her age?
Then again, fairies in general were pretty lax when it came to these sorts of education. They liked to play a lot and forgave easily.
If you were nice, you could call them casual, if not then lax. And as long as you didn't take them too seriously, they were fun to be around. But occasionally they did things that went too far. It was easy to see how they often got in conflict with the elves back in their homeland when they were like this.
I couldn't help but wonder if Orphne did these sorts of things knowing that it was bad to do, or if she was simply oblivious until it was pointed out?
"Anyways, we'll go and apologize together."
"Then, then my treats...?"
"For now I won't do anything."
"Yay!"
"But that depends on how the other party feels, alright?"
"Alright! This 'toobaine' belongs to Elder Aurae, so it'll all be fine!"
"Huh?"
Somehow, I really wondered just how full of cotton candy this fairy's head was.
Leaving Sarah and Magni to their work in the dungeon, our group of four passed through the dungeon over to the eastern settlement.
Over here, the place that was first settled by the great fairy migration over half a decade ago, has changed quite a bit even in the last few years. Just past the dungeon entrance, the trees were filled with little buildings either suspended on, or even hanging off of the enormous trees that inhabited the area around the great Hourai Mountain which our Hourai Commonwealth was created around.
Of course, after so many years and so many more immigrants since I had discovered these migrants suddenly popping up at the front door of my home while I was away travelling the world, the new home of the fairies, along with the myriad of spirits that followed them and blotted out the skies, there were plenty of signs of others who had chosen to share a home with these eccentric creatures.
In the heavy shades of the enormous trees that made up the local forest, for every few fairy sized structure, there was one for those of us with larger statures build on the ground. Whether the owner was a human, beastkin, or one of the dark people, there was a distinct lack of discrimination based on one's race that was apparent with how everything was laid out, without a care of who would be their neighbours.
Being from a world where people often wouldn't even tolerate their own fellow humans due to such minor differences like belief or culture, it was great to see all these people who weren't even of the same species who eschewed their differences and instead embrace their similarities.
From workshops to grocers, and of course many individual homes. Though due to the originally extremely high fairy population, the number of fairy sized buildings built high up completely dwarfed the larger ones on the ground.
But the mix of facilities made to cater to a wide variety of home owners, workers, and consumers as well as how everyone passed through the streets with smiles on their faces was solid proof that things were going well and that our nation was on the right track.
"Vweee!"
Orphne flew around on her little turbine. It was clear just how much she was enjoying it, though the noise of the engine itself almost drowned out her vocalized sound effects.
People all around stared at the strange contraption as the little fairy flew wide circles around us.
"That's pretty amazing but..."
"Mommy's way faster."
(Well, it's true, but kinda cheap to make such a comparison.)
Even still, I couldn't stop myself from gently stroking Alicia and Fate's hair as their heads swivelled while their eyes continued staying on Orphne's flight.
Making sure that Orphne was following me, we made our way to the fairy elders' place.
In the middle of a circular plaza, there was a large crystalline structure that almost resembled some sort of fantasy winter palace. Though it was suspended in the air by a single thick crystalline wire connected to a web of crystal lines that ran between all the giant trees around the plaza to the centre.
While the overall structure was clearly made for fairy proportions, the entryway all the way to the audience chamber were still large enough for a full sized person to enter at least. More than big enough for someone like myself, though a titan would have to squat their way in.
As one of the leaders of this nation, I was easily able to enter the fairy elders' place without question as well as meet up with the fairy elder I was most familiar with.
But when I entered the audience hall, a wide circular room with space enough for all the fairy elders to float side by side while meeting with as many as five normal sized people and still have some room left over, I was met with an unexpected sight.
"Ha! Take this!"
"Oh no!"
"Eeek! You blocked it!"
"Do it now!"
"Take this! [Love love pink hell thrust]!"
"Gah! No, not again!"
What I saw was all the fairy elders already there. Most of them formed a circle and were cheering on as the other two were sitting on player chairs, controlling their celestials.
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