(Barely any mana is necessary,) Ifri answered. (Even a normal spirit that has been raised to the point that they can use ice or gravity can do it.)
(You would need mana to make the carriage move, though,) cautioned Levvy.
Everyone other than the merchants was mostly listening quietly to the discussion without actively participating, but it was still only the first meeting. We’d teach them as we went.
(Not much, though,) said Ifri. (Deir could recover most of the mana required with just her natural recovery rate. She could move it for a whole half a day.)
“But that’s the young miss you’re talking about. What about a regular person?”
Whoa, that was Rex. He speaks!
(It depends on one’s capacity. Alyssa could manage for two hours.)
“That’s quite the difference,” Glen murmured.
“Alyssa is the magician who became chief of the new Bureau of Spirit Affairs, right?” Hugh asked.
Alyssa’s promotion was of great note. She stood at the top of our domain’s mages, who already had a connection to the court mages in the capital. The woman herself had hated the idea so much that she’d looked like she was about to burst into tears at the mere thought, so I’d gone to great lengths to get some of her friends involved and train them until they had their own spirit beasts too.
Now, my brothers and I were free from the work of having to give lectures on raising spirits within Belisario. Hell yeah.
And then we’d been hit with requests from outside of our domain. Hell yeah...
“What’s different about Lady Deirdre’s mana?” A question from Hugh interrupted my thoughts.
“Deir has the blessing of the Spirit King, remember?” Chris reminded him.
“Oh, of course,” said Hugh.
“I understand now...” Glen nodded to himself.
“Well, you know, two hours sounds like plenty if you ask me! Even horses need to take breaks along the way,” I said, trying to salvage the proposal.
“But none of the coachmen are mages,” Glen pointed out. “If you’re a mage, your options are to either become an adventurer or join the military.”
I shook my head. “That’s not quite right. Mages nowadays have no choice other than to serve nobles in order to continue their research, or to train to fight in the army or as an adventurer if they want a job.”
Since the number of people who could use magic had decreased when humans stopped coexisting with spirits in the same way, they’d developed various magic tools instead. That had led to people seeing magic as something mainly used to take down enemies. But there had to be plenty of mages—especially the women—who wanted to use their spirits for something other than fighting. It wasn’t as if spirits were weapons, after all.
“That’s... That’s true,” Glen said. “Do excuse me. It isn’t good for me to get stuck thinking that this is just the way things are.”
Hugh brought a hand to his chin in thought. “Two hours, hmm? In that case, the merchants would need to make multiple transfers as they went from town to town.”
Our domain was the kind of place where the moment you stepped out of a town, you were greeted by sprawling tea plantations and other farmland, and it took multiple hours to reach the next town. Central Azelia wasn’t much different, I believed. Their towns were just a bit closer together. In that respect, I could understand the concerns about the time.
“Adventurer escorts can’t afford to waste their mana, so horses would still be necessary for them. If the carriage had two coachmen, they could alternate,” Alan suddenly jumped in to suggest.
“At the very least, travel within towns doesn’t seem like it would pose any problems,” Hugh mused. “Nobles who like trying the latest thing will probably jump on it.”
“What if we made the carriages smaller?”
Alan was oddly enthusiastic about all this. Was this the kind of thing boys liked talking about? Or was he simply sick and tired of his butt hurting after long carriage rides?
“What if we made it like this, for two people to ride?” I drew a rickshaw on one of the pieces of scrap paper I’d brought, but no one seemed to like it. They said it might work for commoners, but nobles traveled with both a lot of luggage and a lot of people. They simply didn’t like carriages that were too small, apparently—in that sense, it was reminiscent of rich people and their cars back in Japan.
Wait, does that mean they’re not thinking about it from the angle of how viable it is?
“It would be perfect for us to use at the very least, so how about we just make one?” Alan suggested.
“Good idea, Alan,” I said. “We’d need a seat for whomever is directing the spirits, but since we don’t need horses, I’d like to think about air resistance.”
“Air resistance?”
“Let’s make it look cooler.”
“Oh, okay!” He liked the sound of that, it seemed.
“I want somewhere we can put our feet as well. It’ll feel more comfortable if we raise this bit like this.”
“That makes sense. You always put your feet up on the seat.”
“Now, hang on.” Chris interrupted our excitement over the carriage. “Do you intend to use this for your trips to the other domains this winter?”
“Yes. I want to dazzle them with my horseless carriage blazoning the Belisario crest while floating down the road with spirits pulling us along like nyoooom!”
Why was Chris holding his head in his hands?
“Wouldn’t that be practically issuing a challenge to the empress? Are you sure it would be all right?” Hugh asked nervously.
“The imperial family can’t accept the challenge either way,” Glen pointed out. “Not with the fairy princess here.”
“But even presenting one to Her Majesty as a new product would leave a bad taste in their mouths.”
“We also had our own misconceptions about spirits until not long ago, after all. We may be getting along with them now thanks to Lady Deirdre, but I do feel sorry for those in the central region.” Glen gave his spirits a little mana, and they began happily flying around. Everyone watched the display with fond expressions and then gave their own spirits mana.