Continuing with her breakfast, the woman seemed rather unperturbed by Severin’s claim.

“Show it to me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said show me. Show me how you move this rock around. How you make it fly.” She looked up from her plate and, with an intense look, looked directly at him.

“Uhm,” that wasn’t exactly going as planned. But then again. From the outside, his claim had to sound rather absurd. Perhaps he should’ve even been grateful she didn’t immediately start laughing at him and asked for evidence instead.

Still, even if he couldn’t quite refuse her, the request was still rather inconvenient.

‘To have the maiden flight under these circumstances…’ he thought, and instead said,

“…right. Give me just a moment.”

Uncomfortable because of the stares and unwilling to give away more than he had to, he willed open the bluish System screen and took great care not to accidentally slip up and, by force of habit, use his hands to navigate the menu.

It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling summoning and using said menu in front of people he knew couldn’t see it. Moreso, when knowing that his eyes were focusing on something that, from their perspective, simply wasn’t there.

“Well then. Here we go. I guess.” After quickly plotting a rough course westward, he willed a virtual slider to its first notch.

And the result…well, whatever he had expected, that wasn’t it.

In fact, there didn’t seem to be any tangible reaction at all. No sudden jerk or jump or change of scenery; not above this sea of clouds and with no other point of reference.

Maybe there was a slight breeze, but that might just as well have been his imagination; if it wasn’t for the indicator on the floating screen to say otherwise, he would have doubted his actions had changed anything.

It was underwhelming, to say the least.

And potentially even dangerous if Jasmin felt she was being made a fool of.

When all of a sudden the eyes of one of the princess guards- a robust middle-aged woman with sharp facial features- narrowed as she seemed to spot something in the distance; maybe the swirling of some clouds?

The woman bent down and forward and whispered something intelligible in the [Princess’] left ear.

Only then did the expression of the latter visibly ease, her face now much less like the stiff mask that it had been before.

Appearing slightly more approachable than before, she considered Severin for a moment.

“So it is indeed like this. Sooner than expected. Better executed as well.”

“Excuse me?” Severin repeated his earlier question, thinking-hoping?- he misheard.

“We didn’t think you would be quite this fast.”

Severin was momentarily at a loss for words. And then burst out,

“You expected this!?”

“Well. We certainly expected you to try. What else would you need all those [Aero Crystals] for? But admittedly, we didn’t expect it quite so soon.”

“Wha- I see.” So, his aspirations hadn’t gone unnoticed after all. Had he been a fool to believe otherwise? That he could just sneak some clause into his contract with the monarch of a prosperous’ nation? Not just unnoticed by the [King] himself, but all his advisors as well? Without figuring out his intentions? It almost seemed that way.

But more importantly…ignoring his self-doubt and confusion, he carefully considered how to phrase his next question. And then simply went for, “that means you, your father… is not going to take this badly?”

“Well. He certainly will not be particularly pleased. But it was only a question of time. And besides.

From the get-go, it was very clear that we couldn’t keep you- your products- for ourselves. After all, from what I understand, it was part of your sales pitch that your plan was to establish many more portals. I think the word trading hub had been mentioned?

Either way. If one can visit you from wherever, what does it actually matter where exactly you are floating around?

So, no. Father does not harbor any petty thoughts of retaliation, if that’s what you were worried about.”

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“Of course not!” Severin quickly, and unconvincingly denied- a reaction which was met with an amused raise of an eyebrow.

“An attitude that may, however, change if he should think your future…adventures, will put us, meaning me, into undue danger.

That is to say, you are, of course, free to navigate these new waters, so to speak, however you see fit and without our intervention. You have proven to be competent enough.

But this also means it will be up to you to negotiate passage. If other nations are unhappy with our presence here on your mountain… we certainly won’t be going anywhere.”

“Of course not”, Severin repeated himself, this time feeling even worse than before. This was going exactly as Bandur had pointed out. Nothing of this had ever been part of his considerations. At all.

“If there is anything else? If not, might I trouble you and order another one of your exquisite breakfast plates?”

“Eh? Sure. I mean, of course. Please excuse me.”

Severin felt a strange sensation. Was it disappointment? He couldn’t quite put his finger on the feeling. Distracted by this, he even lacked the presence of mind to feel insulted by the way of his dismissal.

He stood up, forwarded the order, and while still collecting his thoughts, headed straight over to the other woman deserving of his attention.

Standing in front of the double door, he paused for a moment and looked into the distance.

A few moments later, he shook himself awake and headed inside.

…

“What do you mean?! You can’t be serious?! That’s unheard of!”

‘Ha, that’s more like it,’ Severin thought and admitted to himself that this kind of reaction was more to his liking. More appropriate.

Though pleased with himself, in the absence of Magda’s smile, he tried hard to suppress his own, forcing a more rigid expression onto his face.

One that soon froze in place.

“This will inevitably lead to several infringements of jurisdiction!”

“Huh?”, he let slip. And was ignored.

“Have you any idea what you’re saying there? What you are doing to me? No. No, of course you don’t!“, came instead the unexpected, almost hostile, accusation. “How could you? All the paperwork I’ll have to file! Just thinking about it... argh.

“What is it with you?! With things like this continuing to happen, sooner or later, I’ll have an investigation from HQ on my ass. What then? Will you take responsibility?”

…

With a blank look on his face, Severin left the still cursing woman’s office. Was it his imagination or was she even more agitated than previously with the issue of the advancement tests?

“What is it with these people?” was all he could ask himself as he headed to work.

Soon, the news broke, and it wasn’t the Society’s agent’s shouts, nor any gossip which spread the news.

Over the course of the day, the movements of such an enormous piece of rock, no matter how slow, could remain a secret.

From time to time, the cover of clouds would break and the passing peaks of other, smaller, floating mountains did the rest.

Soon it was the topic of conversation and Severin, as miffed as he was by their reactions, was glad that he had taken the initiative to inform the two women beforehand so that they didn’t have to learn the news this way.

But while he could make up some generic excuses for most other people, there were two who he didn’t want to put off and lie to. Though telling them the whole story wasn’t exactly an option.

Severin debated with himself and finally decided to explain the sudden changes and additions had all been realized with the help of his, admittedly unique, class.

This was far more than he had ever disclosed to anyone else, aside from his official [Employees] who were naturally in the know. At the same time, this much simply had to be obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes and half a brain. And so, after working hours, when he was just about to head to the last, and arguably most important and definitely secret, meeting of the day, Sabina wasn’t quite willing to let him go and be satisfied with the non-answers he had provided so far.

“But that doesn’t explain…” she started to argue, when an older man, gently put his hand on her shoulder and, raising his eyebrows, gave her a poignant look which seemed to say ‘Not asking any more questions than necessary is also part of our job and reason for the exceptional wages’.

“Fiiiine.” Reluctantly, the woman dropped the matter and allowed Severin to go confer with his trusted, overtired aides regarding the choice of a new subclass.