After that little incident at the adventures' guild, I received my money and headed out to do my request.
The money I had received was quite impressive. Most of it was in gold coins in leather sacks of a hundred each. I had received four of those bags along with another smaller one. Apparently just one of the divine gold coins was worth one of these sacks.
The amount felt overly convenient, but then again, it was weird that the normal coins rounded off in value compared to each other so cleanly as well, as money made of precious metals would have their value based on the value of the metals themselves, adjusted accordingly to market pressures.
If I remembered right, a silver coin from two different countries would have a slightly different value even if they were the same size and purity due to the economic and political strength of each country. But due to the constraint of of being made from a precious metal, the value couldn't deviate too much from the value of the metal itself?
There was the fact that both opium wars happened because the British Empire faced rapid inflation despite being an economic powerhouse due to silver growing scarce at an extreme rate from using it to buy tea. There seemed to even be accounts of some families using gold to pay for common goods like groceries because they ran out of silver or something.
(Starting a war for the sake of importing more tea sounds like such a stereotypical British thing, if it didn't show up in so many historical texts, I'd have thought it was just some extremely popular urban myth.)
I pulled out a gold divine coin and held it up to the sky to examine.
It was certainly bigger than the normal gold coins I had. The reflective sheen of its surface was incomparably nicer, and I could see my face in the flat parts. Both the shape and the imprints on the face were extremely precise and detailed.
While difficult to tell, the gold divine coin felt a bit heavier than the normal ones as well. At the very least, I suspected the purity to be much higher.
But aside from how nice it was and its size, I couldn't see any reason why it was worth so much. The only idea I could get was that it was considered a collector's item, and thus derived its value from that rather than for normal economic reasons.
There did seem to be a faint mana reaction coming from it, but it was really weak, hardly any better than that which I saw from the magical lamps. It couldn't even compare to the amount my bag had.
While I didn't have the ability to actually check, my guess was that the enchantment on the coin was to preserve and protect its shape and lustre.
"Who knows. It seems like these coins are really old, or at least the original country that made them was from some pretty ancient times. Do you know anything Claret?"
"I'm sorry. You used them a bit in the past to get your hands on the common coins, but that was it. Once you used a bunch to buy things, but that was for the town, not for yourself."
(The town? Is that where my predecessor set as her home?)
"Well, it's probably the face of some old king or something. Not like it really matters once nobody even knows his name."
Historians might argue that point, but for me it didn't really mean anything. It held as much importance to me as some face coincidentally showing up on a piece of burnt toast.
"Ah, it's finally getting dark now."
The sky had been slowly darkening as I walked through the road towards Firestone Mountain. Rather than waiting for the next morning like a normal person, I headed out to the surprise to the gate guards. They still let me go, as I they didn't have the authority to stop me with the only reason being that it was going to be dark soon.
So we headed out on foot and killed time until it grew dark. While the mountain wasn't too far, walking all the way was simply a waste of time, but doing much more would've attracted attention, and that wasn't sounding good with the threat of an assassin coming for me at any time.
Finally, the sun had dipped below the horizon and now I wasn't afraid to expose my skin directly to the air.
That said, I had long gotten used to wearing my hood, and felt a bit insecure lowering it. It wasn't the reason why I had been waiting for night in the first place.
After making a quick spin on the spot to confirm that there wasn't anyone within sight, I readied my next move.
"Are you on securely Claret?"
"I am, Master!"
Just in case, I put a had on her arms that she had wrapped around my neck as she hung off of my back like usual.
With the dark spirit secure on my back, I bent my knees then kicked off the ground while activating [Spirit Form]. We zoomed through the air so fast the wind buffeted against us. Or rather, it was the ambient mana that surrounded us at all times similarly to the air, as we simply passed through the physical air in our in corporeal forms.
As gravity slowed our ascent I activated [Alter Silhouette] and grew wings from my back. The new appendages stretched through the the openings in my robes and formed into a pair of bat wings. With a quick flap, we continued to rise up and accelerate away towards the mountain in the distance.
We continued our ascent until the few trees below shrunk to little dots before I levelled off and cut my rapid flapping to soar over the relatively flat lands.
As before when I first met Claret, and when I took flight for the first time, I pulled back ever so slightly on one wing, then entered a rolling dive. Spinning on my primary axis as I lost altitude, accelerating towards the ground in a corkscrew. The tall grass rushed towards me while spinning.
"Hahaaaa~!"
Alicia's telepathic scream was filled with surprise and nervousness, while Claret's had nothing but excitement while she clung tightly on my back.
Moments before colliding with the ground, a single hard flap of my wings redirected our trajectory and killed our spin as we ascended back up into the sky.
Alicia's scream transitioned into pure joy as the initial surprise of the manoeuvre faded.
Before I knew it, a full faced grin had erupted on my face. Hearing both of their joyful voices drove me to even more acrobatic manoeuvres.
Turning my body to the right, I slid into a slow lateral spin before adding a gradual axial rotation. I flew as if sliding almost sideways while the world spun around me, tracing an arc as if I was forming a spiral around the outside of a cylinder.
Wanting to go for something a bit more exciting, I pulled into a sharp climb. Rising up, up, closing on the clouds above, but rather than flap my wings or reach out to touch the misty cotton floating in the air, as the mana flow around me slowed, I inverted, half folded my wings, and entered a steep dive. I raced through the air as the light brush of mana against my cheeks grew stronger and stronger until it was like hurricane force winds trying its best to tear my cheeks from my face as the ground raced towards us.
Right before impact, I flared out my wings and gave a powerful flap, redirecting my momentum from downwards to a flat trajectory before entering another climb and back towards the waiting clouds.
After thee of such repetitions, I flared my wings heavily at the top of one arc, killing all my forward momentum by angling my body upright perpendicular to our flight. Just before all of my momentum was lost, I gave my wings a strong flap and went into a shallow dive to gain some speed before levelling off. Next, with a partial downwards flap of my wings and some small adjustments to their tips, I did an extremely tight vertical loop, going end over in only a split second.
With most of my forward momentum lost in the last few manoeuvres., I rolled my body to the left, entering a turn along with a steep dive before reversing my vertical orientation and climbed part of the way back before levelling off facing the opposite direction. Finally, I threw in a single flap to gain some speed then entered a sharp, almost perfectly vertical climb. As gravity's strength took hold of my body and bled me of my speed, I kicked my body sideways and slid to the left. By the time the atmospheric mana had stopped blowing past our bodies, I had already turned my body fully inverted. Gravity asserted its domination and I fell, the ambient mana blowing against my body as they filled my wings. Once I felt I had enough speed, I pulled out of the dive and levelled off.
In only a couple of minutes, we went through a barrel rolls to solo rolling scissors transitioning into a cobra then a modified kulbit, next a low yo-yo and finally a wingover before levelling off again.
I wove from one manoeuvre to the next with barely any breaks in between, quickly disorienting myself. I was only able to reorient myself thanks to the bright stars and the giant landmark of Firestone Mountain jutting out from the mostly flat horizon.
"Wasn't it? Master's flying is so incredible!"
After that little incident at the adventures' guild, I received my money and headed out to do my request.
The money I had received was quite impressive. Most of it was in gold coins in leather sacks of a hundred each. I had received four of those bags along with another smaller one. Apparently just one of the divine gold coins was worth one of these sacks.
The amount felt overly convenient, but then again, it was weird that the normal coins rounded off in value compared to each other so cleanly as well, as money made of precious metals would have their value based on the value of the metals themselves, adjusted accordingly to market pressures.
If I remembered right, a silver coin from two different countries would have a slightly different value even if they were the same size and purity due to the economic and political strength of each country. But due to the constraint of of being made from a precious metal, the value couldn't deviate too much from the value of the metal itself?
There was the fact that both opium wars happened because the British Empire faced rapid inflation despite being an economic powerhouse due to silver growing scarce at an extreme rate from using it to buy tea. There seemed to even be accounts of some families using gold to pay for common goods like groceries because they ran out of silver or something.
(Starting a war for the sake of importing more tea sounds like such a stereotypical British thing, if it didn't show up in so many historical texts, I'd have thought it was just some extremely popular urban myth.)
I pulled out a gold divine coin and held it up to the sky to examine.
It was certainly bigger than the normal gold coins I had. The reflective sheen of its surface was incomparably nicer, and I could see my face in the flat parts. Both the shape and the imprints on the face were extremely precise and detailed.
While difficult to tell, the gold divine coin felt a bit heavier than the normal ones as well. At the very least, I suspected the purity to be much higher.
But aside from how nice it was and its size, I couldn't see any reason why it was worth so much. The only idea I could get was that it was considered a collector's item, and thus derived its value from that rather than for normal economic reasons.
There did seem to be a faint mana reaction coming from it, but it was really weak, hardly any better than that which I saw from the magical lamps. It couldn't even compare to the amount my bag had.
While I didn't have the ability to actually check, my guess was that the enchantment on the coin was to preserve and protect its shape and lustre.
"Who knows. It seems like these coins are really old, or at least the original country that made them was from some pretty ancient times. Do you know anything Claret?"
"I'm sorry. You used them a bit in the past to get your hands on the common coins, but that was it. Once you used a bunch to buy things, but that was for the town, not for yourself."
(The town? Is that where my predecessor set as her home?)
"Well, it's probably the face of some old king or something. Not like it really matters once nobody even knows his name."
Historians might argue that point, but for me it didn't really mean anything. It held as much importance to me as some face coincidentally showing up on a piece of burnt toast.
"Ah, it's finally getting dark now."
The sky had been slowly darkening as I walked through the road towards Firestone Mountain. Rather than waiting for the next morning like a normal person, I headed out to the surprise to the gate guards. They still let me go, as I they didn't have the authority to stop me with the only reason being that it was going to be dark soon.
So we headed out on foot and killed time until it grew dark. While the mountain wasn't too far, walking all the way was simply a waste of time, but doing much more would've attracted attention, and that wasn't sounding good with the threat of an assassin coming for me at any time.
Finally, the sun had dipped below the horizon and now I wasn't afraid to expose my skin directly to the air.
That said, I had long gotten used to wearing my hood, and felt a bit insecure lowering it. It wasn't the reason why I had been waiting for night in the first place.
After making a quick spin on the spot to confirm that there wasn't anyone within sight, I readied my next move.
"Are you on securely Claret?"
"I am, Master!"
Just in case, I put a had on her arms that she had wrapped around my neck as she hung off of my back like usual.
With the dark spirit secure on my back, I bent my knees then kicked off the ground while activating [Spirit Form]. We zoomed through the air so fast the wind buffeted against us. Or rather, it was the ambient mana that surrounded us at all times similarly to the air, as we simply passed through the physical air in our in corporeal forms.
As gravity slowed our ascent I activated [Alter Silhouette] and grew wings from my back. The new appendages stretched through the the openings in my robes and formed into a pair of bat wings. With a quick flap, we continued to rise up and accelerate away towards the mountain in the distance.
We continued our ascent until the few trees below shrunk to little dots before I levelled off and cut my rapid flapping to soar over the relatively flat lands.
As before when I first met Claret, and when I took flight for the first time, I pulled back ever so slightly on one wing, then entered a rolling dive. Spinning on my primary axis as I lost altitude, accelerating towards the ground in a corkscrew. The tall grass rushed towards me while spinning.
"Hahaaaa~!"
Alicia's telepathic scream was filled with surprise and nervousness, while Claret's had nothing but excitement while she clung tightly on my back.
Moments before colliding with the ground, a single hard flap of my wings redirected our trajectory and killed our spin as we ascended back up into the sky.
Alicia's scream transitioned into pure joy as the initial surprise of the manoeuvre faded.
Before I knew it, a full faced grin had erupted on my face. Hearing both of their joyful voices drove me to even more acrobatic manoeuvres.
Turning my body to the right, I slid into a slow lateral spin before adding a gradual axial rotation. I flew as if sliding almost sideways while the world spun around me, tracing an arc as if I was forming a spiral around the outside of a cylinder.
Wanting to go for something a bit more exciting, I pulled into a sharp climb. Rising up, up, closing on the clouds above, but rather than flap my wings or reach out to touch the misty cotton floating in the air, as the mana flow around me slowed, I inverted, half folded my wings, and entered a steep dive. I raced through the air as the light brush of mana against my cheeks grew stronger and stronger until it was like hurricane force winds trying its best to tear my cheeks from my face as the ground raced towards us.
Right before impact, I flared out my wings and gave a powerful flap, redirecting my momentum from downwards to a flat trajectory before entering another climb and back towards the waiting clouds.
After thee of such repetitions, I flared my wings heavily at the top of one arc, killing all my forward momentum by angling my body upright perpendicular to our flight. Just before all of my momentum was lost, I gave my wings a strong flap and went into a shallow dive to gain some speed before levelling off. Next, with a partial downwards flap of my wings and some small adjustments to their tips, I did an extremely tight vertical loop, going end over in only a split second.
With most of my forward momentum lost in the last few manoeuvres., I rolled my body to the left, entering a turn along with a steep dive before reversing my vertical orientation and climbed part of the way back before levelling off facing the opposite direction. Finally, I threw in a single flap to gain some speed then entered a sharp, almost perfectly vertical climb. As gravity's strength took hold of my body and bled me of my speed, I kicked my body sideways and slid to the left. By the time the atmospheric mana had stopped blowing past our bodies, I had already turned my body fully inverted. Gravity asserted its domination and I fell, the ambient mana blowing against my body as they filled my wings. Once I felt I had enough speed, I pulled out of the dive and levelled off.
In only a couple of minutes, we went through a barrel rolls to solo rolling scissors transitioning into a cobra then a modified kulbit, next a low yo-yo and finally a wingover before levelling off again.
I wove from one manoeuvre to the next with barely any breaks in between, quickly disorienting myself. I was only able to reorient myself thanks to the bright stars and the giant landmark of Firestone Mountain jutting out from the mostly flat horizon.
"Wasn't it? Master's flying is so incredible!"
