The Road to Carriage*1
“Okay, let’s get this straight. In this world, there exist tools that hold mana—‘magic tools,’ right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Those swords that contain mana are usually called magic swords, and everything else is generally called ‘magic tools’... Potions fall into that category too?”
“Yeah. Especially the potions from Panis Village—they’re famous for being packed with mana and working really well.”
… Listening to Lisas-san, I began to revise my understanding of this world.
Apparently, this world was way more fantasy than I had assumed.
According to him, while items imbued with mana weren’t exactly rare, putting that mana to proper use was a whole other story.
For example—take medicinal herbs. Herbs can have all sorts of effects like restoring stamina or speeding up recovery, but, well, it’s not like those effects activate just because you’re holding the herb in your hand.
People make them into potions and drink them because, it seems, that’s the most efficient way for the mana to work.
And in this world, the whole “how exactly is the mana inside an item used, and how does that produce an effect” thing isn’t really well understood. In other words, people are still relying on combinations of materials and usage methods that their predecessors figured out through trial and error.
Lisas-san also said, “Besides potions… remember the armor the Holy Knights were wearing? That had protective magic imbued in it too.”
Makes sense, I suppose. That armor was made of “magic silver,” meaning it must’ve contained some kind of “increased durability” magic.
… Unfortunately, that so-called defensive magic didn’t do them much good. I mean, armor toughness doesn’t help you much when you’re suffocating, right…?
Anyway.
The reason I hadn’t really thought about this whole magic-tool business until now… was actually pretty simple.
“So, they’re expensive and not really in circulation?”
“That’s right. So, here in the village, the only thing you’ll usually see is a potion.”
Exactly! Basically, every “properly functional magic tool” people have discovered so far involves rare, high-end materials—which means, of course, Panis Village doesn’t have any!
Yup. That’s why there are no references or examples around here. Figures.
“Sometimes nobles come through the village riding carriages made with wyvern materials…”
“I didn’t notice that…”
Yeah, I can’t tell just by looking whether something’s packed with mana or not. When I saw a “carriage with a leather canopy,” I never thought about whether that leather came from a wyvern or a cow.
Well, no use whining about what we don’t have. For now, the plan’s to wait until some noble rolls up in a luxury carriage again, and then I’ll do a split-second disassemble–absorb–reconstruct to collect the data.
That said, even if I figure out how it works, reproducing it is another matter entirely.
“So I guess, if we want to mass-produce high-quality carriages in this world, suspension is still the way to go, huh…?”
Since the stuff we’re missing doesn’t exist in the village—because it all requires fancy materials—it’s obviously hard to mass-produce. Too hard.
We’ll need a ton of carriages if we want to boost trade and transport. And horses, too. Honestly, if we could just make self-driving vehicles, that’d be great… but for now, at least the designs need to be mass-producible.
And ideally, they should still be workable even after I’m gone. Which means—yeah, we’ve gotta find solutions that work with this world’s existing technology. Suspension it is.
No use just thinking about it, so I started reconstructing model suspensions to test out different shapes.
A leaf spring over the axle, then the carriage body on top—that seemed simple enough. But wait… in these fantasy-powered carriages, maybe the axle frame and the body aren’t even connected—maybe they float.
In that case… it’s kinda like a maglev train, right? You know, the ones that use electromagnets to hover?
Though in this case, instead of moving along a track, the thing’s floating while being pulled. So the mechanism’s probably different. Still, I think I get the general idea now.
… When you think of floating vehicles, you imagine helicopters or VTOLs… or in fantasy, witches’ brooms maybe?
But, well, brooms aren’t great for carrying cargo. So, carriages it is.
Magic carpets? No thanks. I don’t trust those things. They look way too flimsy—like they’d flip over midair and dump all your stuff.
So yeah, the most efficient fantasy vehicle is probably something like “a slightly floating box you can pull.”
If it takes that much mana to make something float, then yeah, wyvern or dragon wings might have the kind of magic you’d need.
“… Yeah, I really wanna see one of those wyvern wings for myself.”
That was the conclusion I reached.
I knew mass-producing something with wyvern wings was impossible, but I wanted to analyze whatever kind of fantasy power those wings had.
Maybe I could reconstruct that magic on its own.
So, I made a carriage with a leaf-spring suspension for testing while also disassembling and reconstructing every noble carriage that came by to gather data.
And finally, one day, a carriage arrived—not made with wyvern parts, but with a canvas canopy woven from pegasus feather fibers. Jackpot.
“Ahh, I see now. So this is where the ‘levitation’ magic’s packed in.”
Sure enough, when I analyzed it, I found several kinds of magic molecules—and one of them produced a “levitation” effect. Makes sense, right? Pegasi are flying horses, after all. To lift that much weight, they’d need a lot of help from magic. The fabric also contained “reduces air resistance” and “self-healing” types of magic.
After experimenting a bit, I managed to replicate the “levitation” molecule.
Basically, it’s like taking magic apart into elemental components and reassembling them, as long as you know the final structure and composition. The raw materials can come from junk magic.
Thanks to the books we’d been collecting for the library lately, I had plenty of spare mana to work with.
It seems that “information-based” magic sources sometimes produce specific-effect elements and sometimes just generic fragments. Either way, I could use them as building blocks for new magic molecules.
So…
“Alright, so that means if I mix this thing into some fabric, it should work, right?”
I infused some hemp fibers with the recreated “levitation” magic and wove them into canvas.
Pegasus feather fabric worked the same way, so this should float. Should.
“… Yeah.”
I looked at the finished cloth.
“… Yeah.”
It didn’t float.
Yeah… yeah, why not…?
“I don’t get it! I don’t get it! Aaaahhhh! Uoooohhhh—moooochiiiiiiii!”
And so I dove into a giant slime. I was done. Done with this nonsense!
I mean, I don’t even understand the properties of the “elements,” let alone the “molecules” made from them—how am I supposed to figure out why magic doesn’t activate in certain materials!?
“Man… the pioneers who did all that fundamental research were incredible…”
Yeah. The scientists who spent over a thousand years figuring this kind of stuff out were amazing. Trying to replicate that in a few hours was just dumb. No wonder I’m stuck here, lost in “magic” hell.
“Alright… maybe after a nap, I’ll give it another shot…”
If I keep experimenting, maybe I’ll find some combination that works. Then the villagers could mass-produce “levitation” magic on their own someday.
For now, though, I was tired—so I buried myself in the giant slime again and fell asleep.
“Morning.”
When I woke, I thanked my slime bed for holding me up and sat up to think.
Even after sleeping, the cloth still refused to float. My face was about as down as that fabric.
Okay… time to go back to basics.
So I disassembled and reconstructed the noble’s carriage exactly as it had been.
“Yup, this one definitely floats a little…”
This one worked fine. So what was missing!?
I tried mixing in not just the levitation magic but all the other magic molecules too—still didn’t work.
Maybe the pegasus feathers themselves had some property that helped magic activate? I generated horsehair and bird feathers and tried those too. Nope.
Float, damn you! I tried all sorts of stuff—but no dice.
Why!?
I was about ready to give up on fantasy entirely when—
Something gently drifted across my vision.
… Fwooosh. Slowly, lazily gliding through the air like a balloon caught in the wind.
“The slime’s floating…”
It was one of my slimes—sitting right on top of the cloth I made.
Fwoooosh… it bobbed at a low height, wobbling slightly. Ohhh… ohh?
Then it hit me.
“Ah, I see! The magic needs something to act through! Of course!”
And just like that, I finally managed to make a “slightly floating carriage.” Success!
But now came the real challenge—mass production.
See, the reason they use dragon, wyvern, or pegasus wings is probably because no other materials naturally contain “levitation” magic. Those flying fantasy creatures must generate that magic internally.
Right now, the only way to reproduce it is through my reconstruction ability—but long-term, that’s not sustainable.
We need a way for the villagers to do it themselves.
Could we raise a flying creature, maybe? But where would we even find pegasi? If people could breed them, they’d already be common by now. The pioneers of magic in this world have probably already tried all that.
So we need substitutes—and if they don’t work, we find why they don’t. Probably it’s just “not enough levitation magic.” So, maybe we can find some smaller, breedable flying creature…
… Wait.
Come to think of it, I did see a flying creature recently.
That little furball that flies with its ears—the one called a Mewmya. The one that made that ridiculously good milk…
Yeah… that one.
What do you think about this chapter?
