Chapter 2: The Kingdom’s Secret Weapon (5)

But this was a world of sword and sorcery, so if ours could bring just one

specialized weapon with them, they could still put up a good fight. For Hal, if he had

just one spear, he'd probably single-handedly cause utter chaos in the enemy camp.

From that perspective, they were a good match for this world.

Castor looked at me quizzically. "They're dratroopers, even though they're

jumping of wyverns?"

"H-Hey, where's the problem? Besides, dratrooper sounds cooler than

wyvetrooper anyway."

"...I guess it does."

Yeah, coolness was important. They didn't necessarily have to jump off dragons.

"That aside... I had another objective in organizing a unit of dratroopers," I added.

"Hm? There's still something more?"

"Watch and you'll see. Okay, Kaede, do it."

"Yes, sir."

When I gave the signal, Kaede raised her right hand. Then, "Now... Fire! You

know."

When Kaede brought down her hand, the anti-air repeating bolt thrower in the

center of the double circle fired all its bolts at once. The bolts with their range and

accuracy enhanced by magic hurtled towards Hal and the others. For the record, the

bolts tips were made with materials that wouldn't injure them even if they did hit,

but when they were flying that fast, they were going to hurt pretty bad.

"Screw youuuuu!"

Hal let out an almost incomprehensible war cry as he knocked down the

incoming arrows with the spear he was holding. The others cut them down with

swords, blocked them with over-sized shields, deflected them with bucklers, or

found other ways to defend themselves from the hail of projectiles.

Eventually, as he got close to the ground, Hal wreathed his spear in fire... or not.

He just threw it straight at the anti-air repeating bolt thrower.

Thunk!

The spear stabbed through the anti-air repeating bolt thrower. If Hal had

wreathed his spear in flames, it would have pierced through the anti-air repeating

bolt thrower and set it ablaze, silencing it entirely. In other words... the drop was a

success.

"Cease fire! You know."

On Kaede's signal, the anti-air repeating bolt thrower stopped. Hal and his fellow

dratroopers landed in the double circle one after another.

While watching them out of the corner of my eye, I explained for Castor, "This is

the other use for them. They're anti-air repeating bolt thrower killers."

The anti-air repeating bolt thrower had been developed to counteract the

considerable air power provided by wyvern cavalry, griffon squadrons, and dragon

knights. The repeating bolt thrower had its range and tracing ability greatly raised

by magic, making it the natural enemy of flying units like wyvern knights. Because of

those, attackers couldn't use their air power to suddenly bombard a city. If they

wanted to bombard the city with their air power, they first needed to destroy these

anti-air repeating bolt throwers which would be on the castle walls.

Thanks to that, they'd have to launch a siege using a land-based force like the

Army. Only once the Army took the walls or destroyed the anti-air repeating bolt

throwers on them by using siege weaponry, their forces in the air could carry out

bombing operations on the city.

That said, if the city was being bombarded, the defenders had already lost. It was

apparently common sense for them to surrender the moment aerial bombardment

became possible. That was why, in siege battles, the Air Force's job was really just to

take down the other side's Air Force so that they couldn't attack the Army.

That had gotten me thinking. If there were a simpler way of attacking the anti-air

repeating bolt throwers, the Air Force could be deployed sooner, and that might

allow for the speedy resolution of the battle.

"So, what I formulated as my response to that was the dratroopers," I explained.

"Because, as you saw watching Hal, the elites can apparently cut down the arrows

that come flying at them. The dratroopers are a special unit that cut their way

through a storm of arrows to land where the anti-air repeating bolt throwers are

and neutralize them."

"Hahh... Hahh... Y-You make it sound so easy..." Hal came over and joined us,

panting and looking exhausted.

It must have been a hard training session. Even though it was still only the

second month of the year, he was drenched with sweat. He cut off his parachute, and

maybe he felt hot, because he stripped down to nothing but a tank top on his top

half.

Hal took a canteen of water from Kaede as he complained. "Honestly, you drop

me from the sky again, and again, and again."

"I'll just remind you, there are safety precautions in place," I said. "If you go into

the danger zone without your parachute opening, the wyvern knights are supposed

to retrieve you."

"That's not the problem," Hal said. "It's damn scary being thrown out into the sky.

The wind roars as it races past your ears. I don't know how many times I've thought

I was going to die."

"Ohh. Yeah... I don't ever want to do it myself."

"I'm not doing it because I want to, either!" he shouted.

While I was bantering with Hal, Castor raised a question he'd had.

"In order to drop dratroopers, don't you need to break the enemy's air power

first? If the wyvern cavalry are carrying dratroopers, they can't fight that well, can

they?"

Hmm... That was the former General of the Air Force for you. He'd caught on to a

good point.

"That's why we've strengthened the wyverns' abilities with the Little Susumu

Mark V Light," I said. "This is an innovation that affects both the dratroopers, who

belong to the Army, and the wyvern cavalry, who belong to the Air Force, at the

same time. We don't have a system for mass production in place yet, so we have to

prioritize where they'll be deployed."

"I see... It's an upgrade you can carry out precisely because you unified everyone

under the National Defense Force," Castor said with a groan of admiration. He

looked up into the sky where the wyvern cavalry were flying in formation, and

muttered sadly, "Wyverns that fly faster than griffons and farther than dragons, huh.

I wish I could ride on one. I've never felt more frustrated about being transferred to

the Navy than I do right now..."

"...Castor?" I asked.

"Ha ha... It's just the howling of a beaten dog. Pay me no mind."

"...Is it?" I asked.

A beaten dog... huh?

True, I had won and Castor had lost. Now we were standing next to each other

staring up into the sky. It was a strange feeling.

Excel watched our exchange with a wry smile.

"Now, let's check out down below next," I said.

After parting with Hal and Kaede, we had returned to the open plain we had

walked across earlier. I was pointing towards a small, rocky mountain that was large

enough to be seen from where we were.

"That rocky mountain over there is probably closest. Let's go there."

I lead the way. When we reached the foot of that rocky mountain, the wyvern

knights were landing, having just finished their training. In the foothills of that rocky

mountain, there was the opening to a cave large enough that a rhinoceros could

easily pass through. The wyverns were going inside.

Seeing that, Castor asked me, "Is that where the wyvern stables are?"

"Oh, hey. You figured it out."

"Normally, wyverns build their nests in rocky caves like that one," he explained.

"We built similar facilities in Red Dragon City. Compared to ordinary stables, the

wyverns can relax more easily in a place like this."

Ah, that made sense. He would be an expert on the topic.

"That's right," I said. "That cave is connected to the level beneath this one. Down

on that level there are about one hundred or so small rooms that branch off to the

side of the main cave. We have the wyverns living in them. There are twenty or so of

them here at the moment, though."

"One hundred?!" he yelped. "That's one-tenth of all the wyverns we had at our

command when I was commander! Do you need that many deployed here on this

island?! Is this a front line base or something?!"

"Well, there's a lot that goes into my reasoning for it," I said.

While I was reassuring Castor, we entered the cave. It stank like a farm inside.

(Or maybe a zoo.) We were doing our best to ventilate the place, but there was no

helping this.

"So... the place down below that you wanted to show me, is it the wyvern's

roosts?" Castor asked, frowning. Maybe all the secrecy was starting to irritate him.

"No, it's even further down," I told him. "Come on, through here."

In front of us there was a man-made door that was clearly out of place in the

cave. There were cranks on either side of it, and there was a guard standing at

attention next to each crank. Beyond the door there was a small, square room.

"Um, sire... It looks like an awfully small room?" Juna commented, a question

mark floating over her head.

Oh, right. This was a first for Juna, too, huh. It was going to be fun seeing her

reaction.

"Okay, people," I said. "All aboard."

"Aboard? Is this some sort of vehicle?"

"Don't worry about it." I turned to the soldiers on each side. "Okay, to the lower

level, please."

They saluted. ""Yes, sir! As you command!""

When everyone was inside the little room, the soldiers spoke into a

communication tube. "Traveling from middle level to lower level." Then, after the

responses of "Upper level, roger," and "Lower level, roger," came, they began

spinning the cranks beside the door. When they did, the little room began to slowly

descend.

"Eek!" Juna shrieked.

The drop was slight, but it came suddenly, and Juna lost her balance, leaning

against my chest for support. When I caught her, I felt the closeness of her soft body,

and the scent of her hair tickled my nose. It was kind of nice for me.

"I-I'm sorry, sire," Juna said, blushing.

"Hey, I'm not complaining," I said. "You okay?"

"Y-Yes. ...Is this little room going down below?"

"Yeah," I said. "You saw the cranks by the door, right? By turning them, they're

able to raise or lower this room."

That's right. This box-like room was an extremely simple manual elevator. The

designer was Genia Maxwell.

I (not being so good at the sciences) didn't understand the system that well

myself, but there was a pulley with a counterweight on the opposite side of the

elevator, and that somehow let them raise and lower the elevator with no more

power than it took to pedal a bike.

The truth was, it had originally been designed to be installed in Genia's dungeon

laboratory. When she'd thought about it, though, even if the hassle of going up and

down the stairs was removed, Genia wasn't going to want to go outside any more

often, so the plan had been scrapped.

The team I'd sent to organize Genia's blueprints (they'd been stored so

haphazardly, I'd dispatched a cleaning team—led by Ludwin, of course) had found

the plans, so we'd tried setting one up here as a test. It was manually operated, not

that fast, and required a lift attendant to be on hand at all times, but if they worked

in one-hour shifts, it wasn't that tiring for them.

There were currently only three stops, "Cave Entrance," "Lowest Level," and "Top

Level," so the one elevator only took six soldiers to operate.

Honestly, it only needed one person to operate it (two, if they were working in

shifts), but the soldiers had said that, when there were requests from multiple levels,

it caused confusion, so we had ended up with a six-person system in which the

soldiers announced what they were doing before turning the cranks.