Chương 33: Comfort Magic

The night passed without any issue at all. And the next morning, Mirbek put Ivan, Rys, and Ren inside the second carriage. Supposedly, they would be the only ones in this carriage. Which was quite the luxury for hired arms. Ivan stepped through the door expecting cramped benches and the smell of too many people traveling beside tired, unwashed horses. What he found instead was padded seats that ran along both walls, with a small table bolted between them.

A round lamp hung from the ceiling, although it was not lit yet. The air inside stayed warm despite the cold morning outside, and it smelled faintly of cedar. Rys climbed in behind him and looked around.

"Well. I can see why they could give out such handsome pay," she said, making Ivan remember the heavy pouch of gold coins he put in his Inventory last night. Ren followed, then pressed both hands against the nearest seat.

"I-it's soft..."

"It's a chair," Rys said.

"It's a chair that moves!" That was a decent argument, in Ivan's opinion. Mirbek stood outside the open door with one hand on the frame.

"The rear bench is yours. Keep the shutters closed after dark, and please do not touch the wall panels." Ivan looked at the panels immediately. Thin lines ran through the wood beside the windows. Ivan Marcellion had worked with arrays and such for a decade. He'd seen enough to recognize an array even without [Architecture of Mana]; even so, this one had been worked into the carriage so cleanly that most people would assume it was decoration.

"I wonder what happens if we touch them," he muttered.

"Please don't." That sounded like a warning and a plea at the same time. Mirbek shut the door, and the caravan started moving. Ivan waited for the familiar jolt of a wagon wheel hitting an uneven road. It never came. The carriage indeed swayed when the horses pulled forward, but the motion stayed soft. The wheels struck bumps, and the force vanished somewhere under the floor. The frame did not rattle. Even the noise from the horses reached them as a dull rhythm. He activated [Architecture of Mana].

The carriage lit up like a lightshow. The suspension glyphs sat beneath the floor in a linked row. They took the force from the wheels and spread it through the lower frame. The design itself was not complicated. Ivan could probably copy the basic idea after studying it for a few hours. The work was just extremely good. Every line had enough space. Mana passed through the circuit without slowing at the joints, and there were no extra loops added by someone scared of getting the first design wrong.

He found the silence runes too. They sat around the wheel wells and along the doorframe, taking the sharp sounds and dulling them before they reached the carriage interior. The climate lattice ran through the walls, drawing warmth from a small mana crystal fixed beneath the front seat.

"Damn… this is the Rolls Royce of carriages." He wasn't exaggerating. Humanity was a species obsessed with fast-moving vehicles. So ever since cars became useless, people have found countless alternatives. Be it through mounts, movement skills, carriages, or even inserting spirits inside old cars to run them again. Ivan had seen expensive carriages before, but he didn't have [Architecture of Mana] back then to appreciate the work. Which only made him more curious about the reinforced, secretive carriage he'd seen.

What could be inside that? This carriage, discarded and given to Ivan's group, was already such a piece of work. Ten years of copying scrolls had made him familiar with luxury of all kinds. Rich adventurers ordered things normal people would raise an eyebrow at. This carriage rode smoother than the old car he had owned before the Integration. That was ridiculous. He had driven over potholes, bad highways, and one road near his old apartment that had looked like someone tested artillery on it.

This thing had wooden wheels and horses, but the enchantments made it feel better than a car. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Rys watched him stare at the wall.

"Most men look good when they zone out. You really are special."

"Can you let me appreciate artistic work peacefully?" Ren had already taken out his bow oil and started cleaning the wood near the grip. The carriage moved so little that he could work without bracing his elbows against his knees. Ivan kept watching the mana flow. The horses out front had their own small enchantments. Their mana signatures stayed steady, drawing from charms worked into the harnesses. The effect supported their muscles and eased fatigue, but it did not make them run any faster.

I think I can copy this and make it even better, Ivan suddenly had a stupid idea. Haha… should I start a car business in the apocalypse? He decided to entertain that idea later, after reaching Asterion safely. He leaned toward the front window.

"Hey, Mirbek," he called. The caravan master rode beside the carriage on a brown horse. She turned in her saddle.

"What?"

"If the carriages can do all this, why are we still traveling at horse speed?" Mirbek looked at him for a second.

"Because fast is expensive. Burns mana crystals."

"That can't be the whole reason."

"It's most of it. The distance isn't small, you know?" She guided her horse closer to the window.

"Even so, it's cheaper than teleportation gates I guess. The gates between major cities cost money. You pay to use the gate, then you pay the city that owns it, and then you pay whoever controls the one at the other end. Asterion's families own most of the gates near this territory." Ivan glanced at the road ahead.

"Since we're saving money anyway by not teleporting, why not burn some more mana crystals?" he couldn't help but ask. Mirbek tapped the side of the carriage.

"We carry cloth, spices, tools, metal, and everyone else. Reaching Asterion early is a goal, yet, but we have no reason to rush so much as to attract monsters. Some feline-type monsters take it as a challenge if you move too fast. A lot of different-type monsters see a caravan running and think something is fleeing. A slow caravan with visible wards tells them there are armed people here who might hurt them." Rys leaned toward the window.

"She's not lying, Ivan. A fast caravan does look like food trying to escape."

"Yup," the middle-aged woman nodded. Ivan thought about the harpies. Then the wolves who'd apparently attacked these people five days ago. The beast lure changed what the caravan looked like to every monster nearby. It did not matter how careful Mirbek was if someone could keep calling monsters onto the road. I guess to a degree Mirbek was aware of what was going on, and was trying her best not to take risks that'd attract more monsters. He looked through the front window toward the third carriage.

Its black wood moved ahead of them without a sound. The ward around it had stayed active through the night, and nobody had opened the door. Even its driver only spoke to the other workers when Mirbek went over herself. Ivan still did not know who or what was inside. It mattered enough to pay for that kind of protection, but that did not tell him whether they were the target or the reason the whole caravan was being attacked.

"Well, slow and steady wins the race," he told Mirbek. She gave him a tired look.

"For sure. And we can't ask the horses why they can't fly." The carriage moved on. Ren waited until Mirbek had ridden ahead before pulling a small stack of paper from his pack.

"I want to practice," he said. Ivan looked at the paper.

"Practice what?" Ren held up a piece of charcoal.

"You forgot? You were supposed to teach me runes… You said letters are shapes that mean things, right? And runes are shapes too. So like maybe if I get better at letters, maybe my rune lines won't look so bad."

"Oh, yeah right," Ivan cleared his throat. He'd totally forgotten about teaching the boy runes.

"But no, that isn't how it works." Ren's face fell a little. Ivan, feeling guilty, added.

"But you're right, it might help." Ren spread the paper on the table. The carriage stayed smooth enough that it barely shifted beneath his hand. He drew a simple curve, then another line beside it. Ivan watched for a few seconds.

"You're pulling the angle too far left." Ren frowned at the page.

"It looks straight to me. Aunty, can you take a look?" Ivan shook his head.

"It looks straight to you because you're looking at it from above. Turn the paper a little." Rys leaned over from the opposite bench.

"He is right," she said.

"It bends." Ren looked offended by the betrayal. Ivan turned the page slightly.

"See it now?" Ren squinted.

"…A little."

"Try again." Ren drew the shape a second time. It came out cleaner. He looked pleased with himself, then added a pair of small fox ears above the line. Ivan stared at it.

"What is that?"

"A god letter."

"A what letter? And that isn't even a letter."

"It could be," the boy argued.

"You Earth people have that thing, right? In your pyramids, called hairagraph? Hair graph?"

"You mean hieroglyphs…" Ivan helped him out.

"Yes! Hieroglyphs. Symbols can be letters too. It's history, not myth," the boy said, making Ivan honestly feel a little embarrassed. Rys covered her mouth with one hand, although her eyes had already started smiling. Ren looked back down at the paper.

"When I get better, I'll write to Yueko. Maybe she can read ugly human squiggles." Rys' expression fell upon hearing that. Ivan did not know what to say to that. Ren had asked him almost the same thing months ago, while Ivan was carving a rune into his own skin. At the time, he had treated it like a child asking whether clouds could hear him. Now Ren had a bow, a kill notification, and a dead harpy, and a grateful guard who could point to the exact place where Ren's arrow had entered.

Ivan found it incredible how both memories belonged to the same boy.

"... Sorry Ren, I'm not really a master of Hieroglyphs. I can teach you normal letters first," he said.

"Then Yueko will at least know what you're trying to say." Ren stayed quiet for a moment. Then he nodded seriously and started again.