Chapter 863: On the Road Ahead

The Fire Moon rose, a blazing sun hanging high in the sky.

Even in this northern land of the continent, some regions were beginning to feel the oppressive heat of midsummer.

Gawain flipped to the last page of the dossier before him. The charts and data slowly settled in his mind. After a few seconds of contemplation, he looked up at Rebecca and Maggie sitting across the table.

“So, all the recent attempts to break through the ‘missile speed limit’ have failed?” he asked.

“…Yes, all of them,” Rebecca replied, head bowed, clearly frustrated. “No matter if we increased the thrust of the drive arrays or altered the layout of the wind-element force fields, nothing worked. I’ve compiled detailed records of every failed test—you saw those just now.”

“Hm…” Gawain frowned, scanning the stack of documents he’d placed on the table. A long-forgotten sense of uncertainty and contradiction seeped through the lines of data, stirring his rapidly turning thoughts. “And all the tests ran into similar problems during the final acceleration phase… The magical field sustaining the thrust suddenly became severely disrupted, output plummeted, and the craft decelerated…”

“It felt like crashing headlong into a chaotic, disordered, yet incredibly powerful ‘magical quagmire,’” Maggie, who had personally piloted most of the test flights, immediately reported her experience. “No matter how much output we maintained before, it would be quickly dissolved by that quagmire. The speed just wouldn’t go up.”

Gawain fell silent for a moment, pondering deeply.

The missile speed limit—the velocity ceiling faced by all physical flying objects. As they approach this limit, they become trapped by an invisible but potent “quagmire.” For magically powered flying devices, this manifests as the collapse of the magical thrust field; for natural flyers like birds and beasts, though the cause remains unclear, none have ever broken through this “barrier.”

It was a familiar phenomenon—so familiar that Gawain couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the challenges Earth’s high-speed aircraft once faced: the sound barrier. But…

He sighed softly and looked up, almost speaking to himself. “The known atmospheric speed of sound is…”

“According to measurements taken years ago by scholars in the Northern Territories, near sea level and around freezing temperatures, the speed of sound in the atmosphere is 322 meters per second,” Rebecca answered promptly.

The Northern Territories had once been Ansu’s magical heartland. Thanks to the influence of the Wilde family, many talented mages and scholars gathered in that cold region. To unravel the mysteries of various magical phenomena, even the old-era mages conducted extensive natural studies. Concepts like atmospheric speed of sound, air pressure, and melting and boiling points of substances were well understood among the intellectual elite, with surprisingly precise data.

At this moment, one particular precise figure nagged at Gawain’s nerves like an annoying little demon.

In this world, the speed of sound at standard atmospheric pressure and freezing temperature is 322 meters per second—exactly two-thirds of the missile speed limit.

The speed barrier Rebecca’s craft encountered was not the sound barrier, but something entirely unknown.

In fact, the “sound barrier” that once troubled Earth’s scientists was hardly a problem here. It had long since been quietly overcome—though current “Dragon Rider” aircraft still couldn’t break the sound barrier, some acceleration devices Rebecca developed in the lab had already succeeded in surpassing it multiple times.

Laboratory data showed that wind-element force field spells derived from elves could almost perfectly solve the problems caused by atmospheric drag. Although the “Dragon Riders” and other flying machines seemed to lack any concept of aerodynamics, the visible parts of these crafts were not their true aerodynamic shells. Instead, a surrounding force field interacted with the atmosphere, possessing perfect aerodynamic properties. It could even dissipate shockwaves encountered during supersonic flight. Coupled with the powerful thrust arrays driven by dragon magic, breaking the sound barrier here was far easier than Gawain had ever imagined.

Of course, this didn’t mean the technology itself was simple—the elves’ wind-element force field magic had thousands of years of history and a long, arduous development process. It just happened to fulfill an unexpected role within the magical technology system. This technology wasn’t something that fell from the sky.

Regardless, the sound barrier was not the true challenge facing Cecil’s flying technology. The real hurdle lay beyond supersonic speeds: the mysterious missile speed limit, or as the elves called it, the “physical flight speed barrier.”

And Gawain knew nothing about it.

He could only rely on intuition and existing experimental phenomena to judge that this speed barrier was very likely unrelated to air resistance or shockwaves. It might involve some unique properties of the world’s magical environment, or even more fundamental issues.

“Our tests in the Origin Laboratory have already diverged significantly from real-world experimental results,” Rebecca said boldly after watching Gawain remain silent for a long time. “In short, the missile speed limit in the real world exceeds what the Origin Lab can ‘understand.’ So I plan to focus the next round of high-speed flight experiments in the real world.”

“Good call,” Gawain nodded gently. “Do you have any ideas for the next step?”

Rebecca glanced at Maggie beside her, then cautiously looked at Gawain. After a clear hesitation, she took a bold step forward. “I want to try testing the speed limit with a projectile…”

Gawain raised an eyebrow. “A projectile?”

“Not exactly a cannonball, but similar in principle,” Rebecca waved her hand. “So far, all our tests have involved attaching propulsion devices to flying machines, and the results are clear: as speed approaches the missile limit, those propulsion devices nearly fail. So I want to try a different approach—using a fixed propulsion device to launch an unpowered physical object and see what happens.

“This way, the propulsion device itself won’t be affected by the speed limit or the ‘magical quagmire.’ It should keep working until the very end, accelerating the projectile to the maximum the device can handle.

“Of course, many natural creatures without magic also can’t break the missile limit, but I think that’s just because their flesh and blood bodies have limits. If we use a sturdy steel projectile, the situation should be different.”

Gawain’s frown gradually eased as he listened with interest to her idea. “How exactly do you plan to do this?”

“I want to build a larger acceleration track, with more and higher-powered repulsion devices, and stronger overload regulators. If necessary, the track can even be disposable—I want to use it to launch a projectile that carries no magic effects except wind-element runes. I want to see if it can break the missile speed limit.”

Gawain stroked his chin, beginning to help Rebecca refine the idea. “Have you considered that as the projectile nears the missile limit, the wind-element runes on it might also be affected, causing the magical quagmire to trap the projectile?”

“That’s why the acceleration track must be long, and the rune power strong. Even if the runes on the projectile break down, the track should keep pushing it forward,” Rebecca said immediately. “If that doesn’t work, we can build a vacuum tube to house the entire device. Then we can remove the wind runes altogether, simplifying the projectile to a chunk of iron. With a vacuum environment, maybe we can get better acceleration…”

Unsurprisingly, this stubborn girl had proposed a “go big or go home” plan.

But Gawain had to admit, Rebecca’s “go big or go home” idea made a lot of sense. At this stage, it was the best approach. Even with his suggestions and optimizations, they could only patch up the edges of this plan.

After a moment’s thought, he casually added, “There’s just one problem—this won’t be cheap. Have you told Hetty?”

“Not yet,” Rebecca immediately scratched her head, her voice dropping by twenty percent. “Such a large acceleration track, plus the supporting power supply, observation, and safety facilities, and maybe even a vacuum shell… Once the cost is calculated, Aunt Hetty will probably chase me down and beat me up. That’s why I came to you first, hoping…”

Her voice grew quieter and quieter until it was barely a mutter.

Seeing Rebecca’s exposed anxiety, Gawain suddenly laughed. Surprised, she looked up at him. He nodded. “I’ve approved the project. It’s authorized.”

“R-really?” Rebecca stared wide-eyed, hardly believing it. “You just approved it just like that?”

“This project is important, and its results might exceed everyone’s expectations. I think it’s necessary to increase investment,” Gawain smiled. “But I do have some suggestions. We can skip the vacuum shell for now and optimize the projectile’s shape itself, so that…”

A sudden invisible breeze swept into the study. A familiar presence appeared beside the desk. Gawain stopped and looked toward the seemingly empty space.

“What’s the matter? Why are you so flustered coming over here?”

Rebecca and Maggie exchanged glances, already guessing who had arrived. Sure enough, Amber’s figure materialized from thin air. She gave a brief nod to the two women, then leaned close to Gawain’s ear and whispered a few words.

Rebecca noticed her usually stern and reliable ancestor’s expression stiffen noticeably over the next few seconds.

The next moment, Gawain stood abruptly, his face grim and serious.

“Rebecca, the project is approved. You can start preparing your accelerator,” Gawain said quickly, then looked at Maggie. “Maggie, I need your help.”

Maggie immediately lowered her head. “Of course, just say the word.”

“We’re heading straight to the Holy Spirit Plains, Solinfort.”

Rebecca sensed something from Gawain’s tone and immediately asked, “Ancestor, what’s happened?!”

Gawain looked at Rebecca quietly, took a slow breath in, then exhaled.

“Norris is gravely ill,” he said slowly.

“Norris?” Rebecca’s eyes widened. At first, she seemed not to grasp the meaning behind the ancestor’s words. Two seconds later, realization dawned, and she instinctively stepped forward. “I want to—”

Gawain met her gaze, seeing a stubborn resolve suddenly flare in her eyes. This girl had her quirks, but she rarely showed such defiance toward him or Hetty.

He recalled that Norris was from old Cecil, one of the eight hundred villagers Rebecca had risked her life to save.

A farmer by birth, Norris had eventually become the Empire’s Minister of Agriculture, thanks in no small part to Hetty and Rebecca’s recommendations.

After a brief silence, Gawain nodded. “You may.”

Relief washed over Rebecca’s face. She smiled and quickly expressed her gratitude to her ancestor, but the smile soon faded, replaced by sorrow and worry spreading across her features.

Gawain’s brow gradually furrowed as he recalled the recent reports from Stormhold and mulled over the things Beltira had mentioned during their last conversation. Slowly, he drifted into deep thought.

After a moment, he gave Amber a slight nod. “Go to the North Shore…”

They say coming back from the dead is a miracle.

Gawain felt as if he had already lived through one.

So… maybe it was time to create another.

(End of chapter)