Chapter 73

"Before you go," Rachel said, while everyone else rushed around, packing their shit. "I wanted to do this with a big ceremony, but... I guess I might as well do it in close quarters like every other conversation we've had. You never struck me as the pomp and circumstance kind of girl, anyhow."

"I'm not, no," I said, shaking my head. I was a bit preoccupied with the crafting project that Lucy and Lisa were collaborating on- Lucy felt that, if we were expected to cross the ocean at nautical speeds, then we should convert an existing motor vehicle, such as a light truck (which might, but also might not, fit the legal requirements of Japan's kei class of motor vehicle, the smallest that anyone made in Japan and sometimes described as 'a motorcycle engine on four wheels and an enclosed cab.'), into an amphibious vehicle capable of trucking along the ground just fine, but also of going straight into the water and continuing along at a speedy clip.

I wasn't directly involved in it, because Lisa and Lucy had it covered, but... god damn did I wish I was directly involved with it, it looked like so much fun.

"In light of that, and also in light of everything you've done for the wood elves," Rachel said, reminding me we were having a conversation. "I hereby grant you, Roxanne Updyke, the title of Red Prince." From her inventory, she drew a simple crown of rose-gold, much like the royal crown of the Red King with motifs of twisting vines and spiked leaves, but... somewhat more subdued, without as many tall, proud branches upward that signaled Rachel's unmatched regal authority.

She then reached up and placed the crown atop my head, smiling warmly.

"You are second to no person in this forest but me, and I am the only person who may gainsay your orders in this realm," Rachel said. "Go forth and conquer, my Prince."

"...I will, my liege and darling," I said, nodding.

"And come back as soon as you can, will you?" Rachel asked. "I'm going to miss you."

"I will," I confirmed, nodding.

"Boat's ready," Lisa said, stepping back to admire her work.

One of the biggest changes she'd made to the light truck was extending the roof of the cab to cover the bed of the truck, to convert it into a light van- kei-class vans absolutely existed in Japan, so this one didn't really look that strange to me- but the other biggest change was installing a watertight shell of closed-cell foam and fiberglass on the underside of the van.

As a truck, it had had- er, it had possessed a minimum ground clearance of about a foot- where the centers of the wheels mounted to axles and linkages for power and steering, but I'd designed those to tilt up and get out of the way in short order, which did mean there were a lot more mechanical linkages in the drivetrain that could potentially break or get jammed up, but in exchange for needing a bit more maintenance that could mostly be handled by magic, there was a three-foot-wide stripe down the middle of the truck that had a maximum ground clearance of a little over two feet, which was, I thought, a good minimum for a working truck in the countryside that wasn't meant for pavement princesses.

Alas, sacrifices had to be made in the process of converting a truck into a speedboat with wheels, and ground clearance was one of those. It did still have a respectable-enough ground clearance of about a foot across the board, but it was no longer the sort of vehicle I would comfortably take off-roading, what with it now being a speedboat.

As far as nautical propulsion went, I've yet to actually see that, but I'd been informed that, while the hull would have to stay there full-time, the aquatic propulsion mechanism would fold away when out of the water, in order to keep it from banging against rocks on the ground.

"Alright, everyone in," I called out. "Whatever you haven't packed yet, just leave it here. This is our house now, and it'll still be our house when we get back; nobody's going to take your stuff while we're gone, and we can replace it in Dorn."

It still took a good five minutes for everyone to finish packing and then jam themselves into the boat-van; despite the streamlined hull seeming like it'd get in the way, the cab doors opened up just fine, and when shut, the masterfully close tolerances (and soft rubber sealant) of the doors would create a smooth, watertight seal that was perfectly tolerable in a boat's hull.

"Good luck out there," Rachel said, waving at me as I climbed into the driver's seat. "Sorry about the lack of roads."

"Roads?" I asked. "Where we're going, we don't need roads."

And with that, I rolled up the window and gunned the engine, lifting my flying boat-car into the air.

See, when I was reinventing airplanes, I wasn't doing it because it was the only way to fly. Telekinesis and levitation charms have been making flying things for a very, very long time, without the need for any wings, and the only downside they had was that they guzzled magicka like crazy. Airplanes, while still something that I powered with magicka, used far smaller amounts of it, thanks to the system-based efficiency gains of enchantments to make things spin instead of levitate, as well as the inherent efficiency gains of using magic to exert far less force and let physics do the rest of the work.

But, well, I had infinite magicka engines now, and if I wanted to take a flying carpet around the world, I could absolutely do that, and I've put flying carpet charms in otherwise-enchanted vehicles before, too.

"Captain, we are now at two thousand feet," Nel said in the passenger seat. "Recommending we deploy our wings and stealth charms now, and begin our ascent proper."

"Copy that, Lieutenant," I said, flipping a toggle switch, and deploying a pair of inflatable wings from the side of the van. Once upon a time, in my world, inflatable airplanes were a workable-enough idea that they were built and tested, and then scrapped because they had serious safety issues with inflatable members being prone to folding under excessive stress.

Now, they were a workable-enough idea that they'd already been built and tested, and in response to the wing-folding problem, they were given a far, far more resilient outer sheath that could safely contain far greater air pressures, and were also given a telescoping reinforcement spar made of Titan's Steel- an alloy of adamantine and steel that had an absolutely insane strength-to-weight ratio, and which a few Dornish delvers had used to build a few experimental cargo ships.

We were quite confident that we'd do just fine with these new inflatable wings, and after I deployed the air propeller (there was a different switch for a water propeller) and retracted the wheels, I started to climb in a big upward spiral that kept us well within the Red Forest's airspace, and far out of eyeshot of Vega. It wasn't until we were two miles up, and very confidently too small for the naked eye to spot, that I leveled out and began our flight over Vega.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," I said into the intercom. "We have finished our ascent, and are now at cruising altitude; you are now free to move about the cabin. If you need to use the restroom, now is the time to do it, as we have only a thirty minute window before we finish crossing the Azel continent and begin our descent into the water, at which point we will need you to buckle back up again. Safe travels." I cut the mic, and sighed. "Alright, Nel, I need to use the bathroom. You've got the helm?"

"I have the helm," Nel said, putting her hands on her own steering yoke and nodding.

"Good," I said, nodding.

"And if you don't mind," Nel continued, "I'd like to keep flying for the rest of the trip."

"I mean, we're going to be making a water landing in a half hour, but..."

"Well- yeah, poor choice of words," Nel said, shaking her head. "I like driving vehicles, and I'd like to keep driving for the rest of the trip, aside from when I inevitably have to take a bathroom break."

"Fair enough," I said, nodding. "Have fun."

Thanks to everyone on board being preternaturally durable (Lucy and Ariel were only Level 1 in Swordsage and Oracle, the Demon and Angel special classes, but they were also outfitted with some very heavily enchanted safety gear), we were able to descend at a pretty steep angle, and for sixty seconds, the interior of the plane was effectively under zero gravity. From my position in the cockpit, this wasn't something I could really appreciate all that much, as Nel and I were both strapped down into our seats pretty tightly. However, once we'd pulled back and made our gentle water landing (I assure you, we were not so stupid as to plow straight into the water at a forty five degree angle) and it stopped being necessary to have two pilots in the cockpit at all times, I made my way back to the cabin to check on everyone else.

Naturally, the first thing Lisa showed me was a recording of Akane giving Nicky a zero-g blowjob, with Nicky's tits floating around in microgravity, which ended with Nicky's zero-g cum floating up and into the middle of the cabin... before gravity reasserted itself and the cumstream splattered back down to the floor, where Lisa recorded it for a good few seconds before someone finally cast a spell to clean it up.

"I still don't get why we didn't fly the plane a lot closer to Dorn before we landed," Akane was saying. "Dorn isn't that much better at detecting fliers than Vega is, after all."

"The answer is that, as a boat, we're still gonna be goddamn fast," Lucy explained. "The biggest impediment to speed in a boat is drag from the water, and for that reason, I've installed a little something called a hydrofoil."

"Oh?" Nicky asked, as she finally managed to wrestle her tits back into her shirt. "Is that like an airfoil? And... also, how is that meant to help?"

"It's simple, really," Ariel said, taking over the explanation. "By putting, basically, a small airplane on the end of a spar projecting down below the hull, the propeller will shove us forward fast enough to create lift over the wings, and those wings will lift us up and out of the water, which vastly reduces the amount of water-based drag we experience, letting us go a lot faster with the same amount of engine power."

"Meaning that, if we keep going as fast as I saw us going back when I was still in the cockpit, we'll be back in Dorn before lunchtime tomorrow," I said. "So... we're making just fine progress, I'd say."

Still, all things considered... The sun was setting on my time in the Red Forest, and already, I longed to go back. Alas... we were homeward bound.