Chapter 429 — Cecil's "Warship"
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 3
At that, Byron couldn't help sighing. "Alas, that's just what I mean about our shipbuilding falling behind—traditional river boats, sure, you can hire craftsmen at a high price to build those, but this new type of ship that uses arcane technology—who'd know how to build it!"
"Tch…" Tyr clicked her tongue again, as if about to say more, but in the end held back. After poking the wood a while longer, she waved a hand. "All right, I've seen about enough, and I can't make sense of your arcane technology anyway… I'm going back to sleep. Just call me when it's time to set out."
With that, the siren lady undulated her way out of the hold.
Byron turned to glance at the empty "engine room" and couldn't help muttering, "Why won't she take the bait…"
He had barely finished when footsteps came from near the stairs. He looked up and saw Knight Philip entering the hold.
"Miss Tyr has already left?" The young knight spotted Byron standing alone in the cabin and asked curiously. "She toured our warships?"
Byron nodded. "Took a full tour. She's got some interest in arcane technology, but clearly thinks nothing of our ships."
"Oh, then she…"
"Don't get me started. Every time before I can even open my mouth, she shuts the conversation down—her wariness is terrifying," Byron said, thoroughly deflated. "In that regard she's nothing like you—you're much better at taking the bait."
"Could you stop steering every conversation off course," Philip said with a frown, then continued, "Miss Tyr is a guest of another race. We can't force her to help. The lord only asked that she take an interest in arcane technology—he'll have other arrangements for the rest."
Recalling Gaoyang's hopes for Tyr and his stubborn insistence on "building new-style ships," Byron couldn't help but sigh. "To get someone as lazy as Miss Tyr to help long-term, the lord has really set himself a tremendous goal… Though come to think of it, why is he so set on building new-style ships… Are the ships built by the craftsmen we recruited from the Peibo region really of no use?"
"The lord once said that land is only mankind's cradle, and mankind must eventually leave the cradle," Philip said with a perfectly straight face. "I can't claim to fully understand what he meant by that, but the facts have proven time and again that the lord's judgment is almost never wrong. So if he says these new-model ships are useful, then useful they must be."
"Fine... I trust the lord's judgment too, in any case," Byron said, then lifted his head to look at the metal crossbeam that had been added later across the cabin ceiling—on that beam, forged from a lightweight alloy, hexagonal arrays of magical runes glimmered faintly. This thing, called the "power spine," was the ship's great artery; it linked the mana-net units of the several decks and cabins together so as to supply the immense energy the prismatic ray device required. "Whether or not the new ships are useful, I'm rather looking forward to what these two are about to be put to."