Chapter 608

Debut Party (17)
After deciding to discuss future matters another day, I said goodbye to Ula and the others.
Now then, where should I go to greet people next?

“Oh? Lady Lily, have you already finished greeting the nobles?”

“Ah, Chairman! Yes, I’ve already greeted the main guests.”

“I see. Then, allow me to formally congratulate you once again on your promotion to Platinum Merchant.”

This man was the chairman of Lumite Company.
After I’d brought various technologies to them, we’d become acquainted.
Though he held the title of chairman, he had left day-to-day management to his son, the company president, while focusing on maintaining connections and networking—attending events like this one was part of his work.

“Thanks to you, Lady Lily, our Lumite Company has seen a sharp increase in sales. That suspension technology in particular was a game-changer—people are raving about how much smoother our magic cars ride now.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Lumite Company pays me quite a bit every year for those patents, after all.”

“And we make dozens of times that in profit, I assure you. Even the noble families who were hesitant to purchase magic cars are now scrambling to get one.”

Apparently so.
From what Marquis Vardmoi told me long ago, nobles still mostly live in a horse-drawn carriage society.
The Marquis’s household owns magic cars and even uses them for travel, but they’re still quite the rarity.
The higher the rank of the noble, the stronger their dislike for magic cars—it seems they’d been reluctant to buy them at all.
As for the lower nobles, poor road conditions had kept them from purchasing one in the first place.

That’s when I stepped in and introduced several technologies I found in the Goddess’s book.

The first, of course, was suspension.
Not just the usual leaf-spring types used for wagons and cheap magic cars, but also coil-spring and air suspension systems.
These designs came from my own ideas, while Lumite handled the manufacturing.
Thanks to that, the comfort of all sorts of vehicles improved dramatically, giving Lumite the push it needed to rise to prominence.
I’ve released the basic leaf-spring design to other magic car and carriage makers as well, so that type has become fairly common nowadays.

The second was power steering.
Different from how it worked in my previous world, this version used a small magic device to assist in steering control.
I’ve heard that it made fine maneuvering much easier.

And finally, there was the collision prevention system.

That one was a byproduct of my attempt to create a drive recorder.
It uses vision from all directions to detect incoming objects and automatically perform evasive maneuvers.
Combined with some safeguards, it can’t be activated inside cities—since dodging inside crowded streets might cause an even bigger accident—but outside the city, if a monster suddenly charges at you, it can help avoid a collision to some extent.

Even if the collision prevention system was more of a bonus, the combination of suspension and power steering propelled Lumite Company far ahead of its competitors, turning it into a major corporation.

The first vehicle I ever bought was Lumite’s monster truck model, but back then, the company mainly produced bulky, eccentric designs.
They’ve really come a long way since those days.

What do you think about this chapter?