Chapter 33: To Lamacus (Part-1)

“This feels weird…” I mutter, looking outside the carriage through the glass window.

Unlike what I hoped for, the streets are now packed with numerous people, going to their work. Unfortunately, it took a lot more time to load our stuff into the carriage than I expected, and because of that, we got late to leave the house.

Man, this is exactly what I feared…

There are not many carriages out at this time of the day, to begin with. And even among the ones that are on the street right now— our carriage is standing out way too much. No one owns such a luxurious-looking carriage in the whole town— or anywhere else, as a matter of fact.

People are stopping to look at our carriage in awe and wonder— some of them amazed by the beautiful carvings on its surface, others are shocked by the huge lustrous horses. A few curious ones are even trying to peek through the front window to see who’s inside this driver-less carriage— but thankfully, it’s too high for them to see anything.

Well, it’s not like a lot of them know who I am, so it’s fine even if they see me.

No, my problem is different. Due to being standing out like this, the crowd is getting denser around us, and thus, the carriage cannot move any faster (or we might accidentally run over somebody).

That’s really troublesome as the more time we spend among this crowd (especially men), the worse mother’s curse will get. With the exception of Lucy, my sisters are currently setting up mother’s room and restraining her to the bed.

On the other hand, Lucy is not sitting idly as well. She’s giving this carriage a thorough search, looking for the weapons Hephaestus promised to deliver (we couldn’t find them earlier). And as for me, I took the responsibility to look over things in the isolated driver’s cabin as I couldn’t get too close to mother’s room at the moment.

Damn, if we continue like this, things are bound to get out of control in mother’s room. Even now, I don’t even know what’s going on in there. I have to do something to get out of the town as quickly as possible.

“Let’s see what more do I have here…” I mutter, looking down again.

At the bottom of the metallic table in front of me, far away from the five buttons, there is a small screen showing the most amazing map I’ve ever seen in my life.

When the cool voice from the carriage asked me to name the place where I want to go (City of Lamacus), this strangely accurate map popped up as well, showing the shortest route from our house to our destination. There is also a small green dot at the center of the map, showing the current position of our carriage.

It’s so amazing that even I became speechless when I understood what it does.

But well, it’s no use to me now. Let’s go above…

I look at the five buttons again, wondering which one could help me in this situation. Of course, as I couldn’t find any guidebook, the best option here is to try all the buttons and see all the functions of the carriage myself— but this is not the time or the place to do that.

Well, clearly, Attack and Defence won’t be of any use. As for Driving, it doesn’t have any options other than manual and automatic, so that’s out as well. My only choices are Visibility or Miscellaneous.

Hmm… Obviously, Miscellaneous will have a bunch of other options, so let’s try going with Visibility first.

I press the button.

“The carriage is now invisible.”

Instantly, the cool voice speaks out again.

What? Invisible?

But I don’t see any changes— no, wait.

To my surprise, almost everyone in the crowd outside looks flabbergasted. They are staring really hard in the direction of the carriage as if trying to see something that isn’t there.

“Holy shit! Is the carriage really invisible!?”

I get the answer to my question almost immediately. As the carriage moves ahead, no one turns around to gawk at it or follow it anymore.

“This is amazing…” I say, laughing excitedly.

Even though I basically blackmailed Hephaestus to make this carriage, he did an excellent job. Though well, I know that this isn’t because he’s nice God or anything— he just loves his machines way too much to even try to make them shitty.

Well, nevertheless, my opinion of his has risen slightly…

We make it to the main gate of Asione without attracting any further attention. Thankfully, as people don’t usually walk at the center of the street unless they are crossing to the other side, no accidents occur on the way as well.

As we pass through the guards sitting at the entrance gate, one of them suddenly jerks up his head, looking at the direction of our carriage. For a scary second, I thought that the invisibility is gone, but the guard just looks around in confusion before leaning back on his chair again.

We must have bumped up on a rock or something. Well, it’s lucky that we don’t have to stop for the guards. They would have surely investigated the carriage— and nothing good would’ve come from that.

“Woah!”

The moments we get outside the town, the horses start gaining speed automatically, running faster and faster.

“Damn, it’s already faster than a racing chariot!” I say, astounded yet again.

Once we are at a considerable distance from Asione, I finally decide to check out all the buttons on the table in front of me. As there is no one on the road except us, it’s safe to do so now.

“Well, let’s start with the miscellaneous button this time—”

“Brother!”

Suddenly, a voice interrupts me from behind. I turn around to look— only to find Arya standing at the doorway, looking utterly exhausted. She’s literally drenched in sweat (?), her face is red, and she’s breathing heavily.

“What happened to you?” I ask with a frown.

“Mother— her condition got way worse than we anticipated. We need you!”