Claudius weighed the options for how to deal with the biplane situation, and all the other chaos that Wistover had been creating recently.
It was no secret to anyone that the whole region was full of powerful magic users, so every nation had at least one person in their Royal Advisory board dedicated to collecting news that was coming out of the region.
Claudius knew that the King of Axbridge had enough spies in the city that he likely knew the planes were coming before they even crossed the border.
But the more that he watched the skies outside, the more he began to realize it was impossible to tell where they were going, even with the radio on the desk quietly reporting the air traffic.
There were constant flights, which wasn’t really surprising to Claudius, as he was used to the radio traffic of the ships around the Capital, which was close to a million people, as well as being a deepwater ocean port.
But seeing that these were all biplanes, with only a few airships in the area, and no sign of caravans that he could hear, was strange.
How much free ti did these Barons have that they were flying around all day?
However, as he listened, he realized that there were actually two groups of traffic. One was Barons on patrol, keeping the area safe. The other was Barons flying lower to check for issues with crops and irrigation canals at a much higher speed than would normally be possible.
With the Barons patrolling, any sort of crop issue, lost livestock, or monster threat, was quickly being recognized and targeted.
They had even called out Trolls to help with a field that looked like it was over saturated and suffering from root rot. It was an incredibly effective thod of ensuring productive crops, but the Crown Prince didn’t see the value in spending so much Noble manpower just to make sure that one field was tended to on ti.
There was a farr living there who had every reason to do the sa thing.
The Nobles of Wistover just took life a bit less seriously than most other people did.
As if sensing that the argunt should be over by now, Alexis ca into the room with Princess Katerina in her arms.
The tiny Princess burbled happily, waved her arms at the Prince, giggled, then burped a ball of fire.
"That’s uhmm... not what I expected."
Alexis smiled. "She hasn’t done that all week. It only happens when she gets really excited about sothing, and she hates it because she keeps burning her tongue. I think that she likes you."
The Crown Prince ca closer, and Katerina’s eyes locked in on the chain that was holding his cloak in place. It was just a simple golden clasp with a few links of chain on each side, but her eyes were locked firmly on it, ignoring all the other gold on his person.
"What is it about that clasp that has you so intrigued?
Did you want to play with it?"
Katerina burbled and waved her hand. But the mont that the Crown Prince unclasped the chain, she imdiately grabbed his cloak, nearly pulling herself out of Alexis’ arms.
"Ah, so it’s not the clasp, it’s the cloak it’s attached to."
Claudius held up the fur trimd robe for the baby to play with, and Katerina promptly stuck a bit of it in her mouth. Then grabbed the clasp and waved it over her head.
A mont of pure victory.
Claudius couldn’t help but laugh at the baby’s joy.
"Alright, I will admit, the little one is adorable. I know that everyone thinks that their own children are the cutest thing in the world, but this ti it might actually be justified.
Make sure that those apology letters are written, and I will communicate with the King of Axbridge about a partnership on the biplanes.
Just ask your people to make so without the explosive machine guns."
Dominic laughed. "They don’t have explosive guns. They’re just plain old mana rifles. The pilots were using their own magical powers to imbue a spell on top of it. There are sockets in the cockpit for that purpose.
They’re intended mostly to be used by those with lower magical power to keep the plane running. If you don’t have good magic, flying at full speed or more than a few minutes at a ti becos taxing.
The n of the Natural Sons are all accomplished, so they don’t have a problem flying for an hour or more without using stored mana, but that’s an exception."
Claudius frowned as he watched Katerina try to stuff more of his cloak into her mouth.
"It makes sense when you put it that way. Is there any way to lock the sockets so that they only work with specific orbs? Perhaps only with mana storage orbs?"
Dominic shook his head. "In theory, yes. In practice, no. The alterations we would make to only have them accept specific orbs could be undone by any competent techno wizard in about an hour."
"Dammit. Alright, we will agree to sell them to Axbridge as they are. But whatever hidden weapon you’ve got for the Royal Army had better be worth it."
Alexis patted her brother on the shoulder. "Fear not, eldest brother. The other ones that they have designed make this one look like a toy, and that’s why they’ve been treating the biplanes like one.
Actually, the Royal Guards have mastered a new thod for ergency ejection when there is an issue with them as well.
You see, we’ve taught them all the [Wings of Light] spell, so they simply put the plane into a storage item while it’s still in motion, and then activate the spell and fly back to the ground under their own power."
Claudius sighed and shook his head. "That sounds like a plan that you ca up with. For so reason, I have a feeling that Dominic’s plan was to just use a barrier spell to cushion the impact with the ground."
Dominic shrugged. That was precisely his plan. The plane’s minimum flight speed was under fifty kilotres an hour, so as long as nothing too drastic happened, you usually wouldn’t hit the ground too hard.
At least, in a noncombat situation.
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