As time went on, the initially tiny dot turned into a huge dark patch in the sky. Rumbles of thunder echoed across the sky as lightning flashed in a continuous and intermittent rhythm.
One thing was for sure, a huge black cloud loomed over us…
“No matter how many times I see it, all I can say is that… That’s a huuuge thundercloud!” Tuilë’s already large eyes enlarged, almost popping out of their sockets.
“The bearer of the storm, the messenger of calamity…” Lunaria, who had been silent for a while, said meaningfully with her folded hands on her chest like she was praying.
“You mean a cumulonimbus cloud?” I creased my eyebrows at their ways of responding toward a mere cloud.
“Who’s this Mister Cumulonimbus?” Tuilë tilted her head.
“Er, that’s the name of the cloud you see before your eyes…”
At this point, I was unsure whether to keep going or return back to the way we came from. Although, I had stopped the airship from moving forward but provided it with enough thrust to keep it afloat. In the face of this ginormous, ever-growing cumulonimbus cloud, the airship looked like a speck of dust.
Seemingly aware of my concern, Lunaria advised, “No matter how strong the airship has become, we are unprepared to pass through this storm.”
“Y’know, I’m eager to pass through this barrier that had kept me trapped for years…” There was longing in Tuilë’s eyes as she resumed reluctantly, “But I guess I could only return back seeing that…”
“Seeing what?”
“Seeing that we might not have enough fuel to sustain flight in thirty minutes.”
“Are you crazy, woman?! Why don’t you say so earlier!” I shouted, slightly vexed.
“Sorry, hehe. I’m too eager to give this maiden flight an interesting experience.” She stuck out her tongue at me.
I rolled my eyes and said nothing.
This capricious girl wasn’t reliable sometimes… Anyway, this was not the time to be blaming her. Perhaps she didn’t anticipate the cumulonimbus cloud would pull us in and engulf this airship entirely, either.
Wait, pull us in?
As though realizing that we were about to return back, the storm had expanded on our left and right like the hands of a humongous cloud monster, cutting our escape path. It was as if a terrifying cloud beast was staring at us from within. What an eerie feeling.
“It’s not the time to do nothing! Lunaria, Tuilë, we have to get out of this storm top speed!” I urged my crew members.
““Aye, Captain!”” they replied in unison.
I swerved the steering wheel to the left like a desperate Titanic captain trying to avoid a huge chunk of ice, attempting to turn the airship to the way we came from. As opposed to its predecessor, the current airship handled the extreme maneuver with ease, only tilting the interior slightly; the disturbance was so small that it was barely noticeable.
The airship then cut through the air as I pushed the thruster lever to the maximum. It was only this lever that could cause the pressure inside the airship to increase and press the three of us on our seats slightly.
Right now, we didn’t intend to get out of Aquarine just yet… So many things had to be done before our voyage to the outside world.
Not to mention the supply and weapons that we severely lacked, there was also the fuel problem. And speaking about fuel…
“Say, what’s the main source of fuel that this ship used?” I asked, eyeing both Lunaria and Tuilë.
“This ship mainly relies on the generator that the previous airship used — the one that used source crystals and similar as its main energy source,” Lunaria explained.
Not wanting to get her chance to flaunt the airship and her contributions to go unnoticed, Tuilë followed suit in explaining: “However, since we don’t have any spare source crystals, I have made several smaller ones that use chemical fuel instead, but alas I don’t purchase a lot because of budget concern…”
If my guess was correct, there should be an oil field somewhere in Aquarine because the Aquarine fire that I previously used to exterminate the mutant ant nest contained such a substance.
But still, this scale for a cumulonimbus cloud was not normal. It might only be for a few moments that the airship was cruising against it at maximum speed, reaching the speed of a commercial airplane, but it showed no signs of escaping; there was no clear sky all around us…
This meant that the cloud was expanding at a speed comparable to the ship!
Lunaria informed, “I think it’s not only that we are being pulled in, but the cloud is also moving toward us.”
Suddenly, the airship began shaking. It started small but increased with each passing moment, the storm was trying hard to turn the ship in another direction and swallow us whole. It was also then that the torrential rain poured on the airship hard. The wind howled as it knocked against the glass panels of the airship.
“Oh, no! The current around our ship has become chaotic… Isn’t this the sign of a tornado?”
As far as I knew, cumulonimbus clouds could contain tornados inside them. My only hope was that this was just a coincidence, but unfortunately, the worst still happened.
There were soon several humongous tornados blocking our path. Similar in appearance to the one that engulfed the airship the first time Lunaria and I crash-landed on Aquarine; they blocked our only route of escape.
It was as though nature was playing with us…
“We are against the current! Lunaria, you are the best navigator we got! Can you navigate our escape path even without the drone Luna-1?”
While Tuilë was a veteran adventurer, Lunaria’s top observation and analytical skills were incomparable to anything and were the most needed in situations like this.
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“My, well, of course. After all, I can still access the database inside the airship. All we have to do to escape is to see the updraft to make a path through the wind.” She pointed her forefinger to the ceiling.
Did that mean that all we had to do to escape this storm was to go higher than this cumulonimbus cloud?
It was a daring but logical way to escape. But to do that, we had to traverse the stormy cloud right through its center, and it would require no ordinary ship to achieve such a feat.
Luckily, the airship had gotten an upgrade on almost every aspect, giving a strong armor that coated its hull as well as an improved air shield that acted in minimizing the disturbance from outside — as the previous shaking had gone.
Seeing that the airship was in danger, either Lunaria or Tuilë must have activated it… Just that it would consume the ship’s energy even faster.
Whatever the case, I felt that this cumulonimbus cloud was extremely abnormal and massive. On a scale incomparable to the one I had seen in my previous life!
It truly might take our full power to get out.
“Look, I see the updraft,” I said, steering the airship with full concentration.
Through our combined efforts, we were at last able to see a clear path to the outside. I ramped the airship to exert a last push on getting out, blasting its way up and higher than this enormous cloud demon.
We cheered as the ship made its way out. Regardless, we didn’t let our guard down as the cumulonimbus cloud was practically chasing after us.
A minute later, as the cumulonimbus finally gave up on its chase, we were able to heave a sigh of relief. I went as far as to slump on my chair like a melting ice cube.
“Hah… Huff… No more.”
Left hand raised, I reflected on the incident we just had. If I was given another chance, I wouldn’t want to traverse that cumulonimbus cloud ever again.
“Unless we have a definite way out of the thundercloud, we better not have another thought of trying to cross it.” Even Lunaria shook her head and sighed.
Tuilë stood by the pane of glass, her right hand touching the window as she leaned out with yearning eyes dan tail slumping down.
“That’s true. But I wonder just how much longer we have to wait for such a day to appear.”
She must be missing her family… Being away for years, it wouldn’t be strange if her family considered her dead and vice versa. Her experience wasn’t much different compared to this body’s original owner — Raymond — so it wasn’t difficult for me to sympathize.
“Hmph!” With arms folded, Lunaria declared, “Don’t underestimate me. I won’t even need a week to find a safe passage out of that measly storm.”
Calling it measly was a bit too much there, Lunaria. I inwardly chuckled. However, it was pretty rare to see her so expressive and being so supportive of someone other than me, especially. Perhaps no longer embodying an immobile and expressionless drone, she had become a “real” person.
“Talk about a 180…” I murmured to myself.
“Really?”
“Leave everything to me.” Lunaria puffed out her chest which was neither large nor small.
“Thank you, Lunaria!!” Tuilë beamed brightly and pounced on Lunaria, nuzzling her until she was choking. The sad expression was gone like it had never happened.
“Agh! Don’t hug too hard. How dare you do this to me. Get off me!” was what Lunaria yelled, but most of the words were pretty expressionless, which gave me a feeling that she didn’t mean what she said. Right, she must be inwardly happy.
Either way, there must be something Lunaria was so confident about this. Maybe it had something to do with the newly upgraded airship, so I went ahead and used [Identification] on it, as I hadn’t done so.
Lunaria (airship)
A wondrous magical airship created from a fusion of magic and technology. Only through the genius mind of a mechanic, the wisdom of a digitized mind, and the contribution of a chap could this airship come into existence.
Airship Specs:
* Fuselage length: 108 m
* Tail height: 33 m
* Wingspan: 47 m
* Max payload: ~200.000 kg
* Max range: ~6.000 km
* Max speed: 900 km/h (normal)
I was a bit surprised to see that [Identification] provided me information regarding the specifications of the airship, but I figured that as a given considering that it was made by me…
Wait, what the heck with “the contribution of a chap”? I creased my eyebrows.
In any case, for one reason or another, the name “Lunaria” wouldn’t fit this ship any longer.
There were many reasons why, such as Lunaria was no longer a digitized mind; the fact that this ship was made by the three of us would negate the sole name of the creator; last but not least, I would be confused when differentiating the name for a pretty, silver-haired teenage girl and the magical airship…
Under those circumstances, I brought this matter to the table.
“The name of the airship?” Tuilë’s eyes brightened; she appeared to already have a name in mind.
“What’s wrong with my name?” Contrary to her, Lunaria was downcast “Is my name not to your liking?”
“Stop teasing me, Lunaria…” No one knew better about Lunaria’s personality than me; subsequently, the fact that she liked to pretend just to tease me couldn’t escape my eyes.
To clear up the misunderstanding, I explained to them the reasons that I’d thought beforehand.
“Then, how about ‘Luna,’” Lunaria proposed.
“Nah, that would be the same as no changing the name at all.” I gave her a dismissal hand.
Tuilë then raised her hand, frantically jumping up and down like a grade schooler trying to get picked on. “Me, me! Let’s name it TLM-01! It stands for Tuilë-Lunaria-Maxim’s first creation together.”
“Duh, are you trying to name a missile or what?” Besides, it was totally cringeworthy, to say the least.
Seeing that none of us could come up with a suitable name, we each thought about it deeply, all the while seeking a suitable patch of land to park the airship. By now, the ship wouldn’t sustain flight for more than ten minutes, so if we didn’t want to crash-land, we better hurry…
***
I was sitting on top of a large hill, bathing in the crimson light of the evening sun. Up above was a vast orange sky with countless clouds as far as I could see, so close I could almost reach out and grasp them. Below was a green plain that spanned wide in every direction, I could imagine myself sleeping soundly on the expansive grassland as the breezy wind sang me a lullaby.
At times, the chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects inundated my ears. So calming yet so breathtaking, that was Aquarine.
The once sunny day had turned into a stunning sunset. Sitting nearby on my left and right were a female human and a female humanoid creature — an achlys. Even now, they were both gazing at the landscape while thinking about something.
Right. We had yet to come up with a name for the airship.
None of the names they picked fit the ship. The airship that we had crafted through shared hardships to reach for the new world.
Hm… through shared hardships, is it? “This” might just be it then.
“All right, I have decided.” I thumped my palm.
“Have you decided on a name?” Lunaria turned her face at me, her flawless features that were bathed under the sunset light struck me speechless.
“Ooh-ooh! You must be thinking of naming the airship with a placeholder or something arbitrary, ain’t I right?”
“Nah, that would be lame.” I made an impish smile. “Let’s name the airship ‘Astra.’ It derives from four Latin words: ‘per aspera ad astra.’ If you’re wondering what it means, it means ‘through hardships to the stars.’ As such, in Fogland, it means ‘stars.’”
I didn’t bother to explain what kind of language Latin was since I thought that it was unneeded.
“I see… Latin should be one of the languages of your world…” said Lunaria in a voice so low that only I could hear it, in the language that I first mastered in this world: the one used in Raymond’s village. “You do utter one unique word there, Maxim.”
“Aw, you beat me to the punch this time. But I can’t say that I’m unsatisfied either. Hahaha!” Tuilë hit my back multiple times while laughing heartily. “Then Astra it shall be.”
With the naming problem concluded, I lay on the ground with my arms wide open. It had been such a long journey so far, and while there were hurdles and challenges along the way, thanks to the help of my comrades, I prevailed.
While wondering if the path ahead would be the same, my gaze fell on both Tuilë and Lunaria, who were both enjoying the sunset.
As my thoughts strayed into the upcoming adventures, I was jolted awake by a new mission—
“JESUS CHRIST!! WHAT IS THIS??!!”
It seemed that the days ahead would not be so quiet.