- 06: Crucible of humans
And in this way, my stage has changed from my homeland to the light capital, Apollon City.
This city where the light church’s main headquarters are in, is a prominent big city even in the standards of this world.
The number of people and buildings, it is on a whole different level from my homeland. It overwhelmed a countryside person like me.
“Ufufu, are you surprised?” (Karen)
Karen-san who is accompanying me, was looking pleasantly at me who had turned into a country bumpkin.
“Is this your first time in Apollon City?” (Karen)
“No, rather than calling it my first experience in a city, it would be more like, this is my first time going out of the village. Everything I see is surprising.” (Haine)
“Is that so? In my case, it was surprising to see a completely different side of Haine-san. Since I met you, I always thought you were a cool person after all.” (Karen)
“Ah, Karen-san, what’s that?” (Haine)
“You are not listening at all…” (Karen)
What caught my interest were the vehicles that were running around the city.
No, vehicles are normally things that are pulled by cows or horses, but these vehicles have nothing pulling them. The vehicle is moving by itself.
Moreover, in this paved road, there’s not only one of those kind of vehicles, there’s several of them, and they were going back and forth.
In other words, that vehicle that moves on its own isn’t something special, but a common thing.
“That’s an ethereal car.” (Karen)
“Ethereal car?” (Haine)
“A vehicle that moves with ethereal.” (Karen)
“Hah?” (Haine)
It seems she is trying to explain it, but it didn’t serve as an explanation.
“Hmph…it is a vehicle that has degraded humans.”
The one who said this in a bad mood was, as expected, captain Vesage who was together with us. The knight corp that he leads as well, and there’s also the other corps that had spread to other locations in order to recruit new members and had reunited as we were getting closer to the light capital. It had become quite the orderly mass.
Within that group, there were a number of people that had accepted the recruitment like me.
And so, the talk of captain Vesage continues.
“Because something like that exists, people have forgotten the grace of the Light Goddess and have become arrogant. Hey, newcomer, I will be telling you this in advance since you are a country bumpkin. The light church completely forbids the use of such machines. Remember that.” (Vesage)
It is true that the knights of the light church, even when there’s this many adults, are all walking on foot or riding a horse.
There’s this many, so it would have been easier to just prepare a big one of those things called ethereal cars and bring them along that way.
“Captain Vesage, please don’t vent it on Haine-san. Seriously, you have been grumpy since the time in the village.” (Karen)
“But Hero-dono, our corp was assigned a quota of 50 people. And yet, we only brought back one. What would the founder-sama and the knight’s commander say?!” (Vesage)