Did I Fight Kal'tsit? Seriously?

"Later on, it was optimized into two forms."

This Banshee was clearly different from her more mature kin. She spoke in very plain terms. "Since you are a friend of the Banshees, River Valley naturally welcomes you to settle here. But under normal circumstances, once a Banshee chooses a partner and intends to remain with them, she leaves the group to give birth to the child. She only returns to the tribe with the child after the other party dies of old age."

"Ah, of course, there are also those who can't find a partner." Her tone shifted again. "Then there's no helping it. They can only find someone stronger, persuade or kill them, then use Incantation to extract the parts needed for Procreation from their body."

"That's why the old ladies were worried." The lively Banshee sighed. "The Banshee Queen's Incantation is among the strongest. Lamaline obviously used the Incantation in the Courtyard to ambush you, then took advantage of the time you were knocked unconscious to sleep—"

Creak.

Thorns's voice came from high above. After catching the unconscious lead Banshee, he casually hoisted the Banshee who had been endlessly explaining into the air as well.

Meeting Gerald's gaze head-on, Lamaline gave a light cough and explained, "This... was only because I combined the Incantation of Procreation with Thorns's Incantation. You experienced it yourself, after all. Otherwise, your stamina could not have recovered so quickly."

"Besides, you do not need to worry about children. This was only practice."

She spoke quickly and urgently, with none of her usual elegance or composure.

Gerald nodded silently.

Hard to say.

River Valley was as peaceful and tranquil as ever that day.

Even though the Courtyard had caused a bit of a farce, the older Banshees retained the final say in explaining matters. Thus, for most young Banshees, life had not changed much.

Except Nastya.

After personally seeing that Pegasus descend from the Courtyard dressed in clothes belonging to River Valley, she knew she had to find an opportunity to ask him about Originium Arts and levitation.

That morning, she secretly slipped around her usual friends, set off from the forest, avoided the Incantations she would encounter along the way, and began following his trail.

Naturally, she knew such behavior would immediately draw the attention of both him and the Banshee Queen. But this was the only way she could access the knowledge she wanted—she still needed time to practice before she could leave the tribe and live on her own.

At noon, her stalking bore fruit. After finishing breakfast, the Banshee Queen brought the Pegasus to the clinic by the River Valley waterfall.

Though she did not know why the Pegasus occasionally stuck out his tongue as though he had eaten something terrible, fortunately, the Banshee Queen seemed to have other matters to attend to and left first.

What delighted her was that he had not deliberately driven her away, nor had the Banshee Queen punished her.

That meant she had earned his approval.

So she quickened her pace and hurried toward the small house.

The Pegasus stood there, quietly watching leaves drift downstream in the distance. Then, upon hearing footsteps, he turned around.

Gerald looked at the young Banshee who had left a deep impression on him and greeted her with a smile. "Hey, what's your name?"

"Nastya Runorui." Nastya, who had run over as fast as she could in case he changed his mind, immediately blurted out, "May I ask you some questions?"

"About fighting? The lands beyond Kazdel? Or knowledge?"

Gerald asked eagerly. Behind his ear, an Incantation meant for listening was concealed.

"Yes, knowledge." Nastya nodded firmly. "And if this request is not too presumptuous."

"Could you let me experience what it feels like to float in the air?"

This Really Happened All Because of Kal'tsit

It really was an unexpected request.

"Have you eaten?" the Pegasus suddenly asked. He glanced at the sky overhead. The wind had not brought him the scent of Incantation for the time being. "I saw you following us all morning. You have not had time to eat anything, have you?"

"I have."

Though Nastya did not understand his question, she answered truthfully. "The Banshee Queen specifically requires everyone to eat breakfast after singing every day. If we miss even one of three meals, Incantation seals our mouths, and we cannot speak for an entire day. Considering that studying sometimes requires uninterrupted thought, I think this practice is highly inefficient."

Gerald instinctively looked to his side, then turned his gaze back. "You do not sound very satisfied with that rule... though I would think the same way."

He had just eaten a spicy muffin. He should have known better than to eat in a dream.

As for the little Banshee before him, she did not look like the obedient sort.

Even while knowing the rules, she still did this. Perhaps, compared to a Banshee, she was more like a Lich.

"All right, anyway." Gerald temporarily set aside his first impression of her and raised one finger. "Since you have eaten breakfast, it is best not to do anything too excessive. Remember, do not do somersaults or turn your head upside down toward the ground. Though a morning is enough time for you to digest, I do not want to see you vomiting everywhere. Understand?"

Nastya nodded.

Then, in the very next second, her body was swept into the sky along with the wind.

Although the wind was not fast, more like an embrace that lifted her into the air, the experience still completely startled her—Banshees found it difficult to learn how to turn an abstract concept like wind into a real Incantation even after reaching adulthood. Even the Banshee Queen was no exception.

The first thing she felt was weightlessness.

Many young Banshees would choose to leap with all their might from River Valley's waterfall, allowing their bodies to plummet heavily under gravity. Fortunately, the riverbed was not shallow, enough to support such fearlessly reckless play.

But the old ladies soon caught them at it. Everyone was hit with several Incantations and slept from Monday straight through Sunday.

Nastya had tried it several times, so her punishment had been the harshest.

But what she felt now was entirely different.

The textbooks available in Kazdel were far too rudimentary, while the books preserved by the Banshee tribe were far too ancient. Neither could explain her present situation.

Because this was not a natural phenomenon. This was genuine weather manipulation.

Once she regained control of her body in midair and even cautiously took a step, feeling something clearly supporting her feet while seeing no solid object at all, an eye-catching brilliance finally burst forth in Nastya's eyes.

It was a fervor interwoven with astonishment and excitement.

"Not bad, right?" Gerald walked through the air one step at a time as if ascending stairs, coming to stand beside Nastya, who seemed to be balancing on a beam. "You should know that if it is just flight, plenty of people can do it. You only need to borrow a reactive force... Do you know physics?"

"I have actually studied it." Nastya was still breathing hard, carefully maintaining her balance until both feet stood steadily in the air. "Her Highness seized quite a few books for us. One of them was handwritten, called Fluid Mechanics... It was difficult, and it definitely needed other books to help with reading it. I searched for a long time but could not find any. Still, I have no problem interpreting the isolated parts of it."

All right, this was already beyond his reach.

Gerald silently chose to shut his mouth. Had something been wrong lately? He was supposed to be someone who had studied before, so why did he keep running into geniuses?

"I believe Originium Arts itself is actually a system."

Nastya wildly gestured through the air as she explained her thoughts. She had completely forgotten to maintain proper respect, though Gerald had never cared about such things. "There is input, output, the need to maintain its own dynamic balance, and several different modules. The result achieved by Originium Arts is the output, but the problem is how we observe this system."

"Just like how I cannot understand at all how you manipulate wind to create this dynamic balance around me. To us, that process is a fog."

"But you can do it. You proved that."

She gritted her teeth and jumped upward, only to land uneasily back in her original spot—the wind, or rather Gerald controlling the wind, easily caught her and kept her from falling.

"Did you see it? The ability to maintain this dynamic balance." She lightly caught her breath, the fervor in her eyes growing stronger. "The other parts of the system are not difficult at all. This includes monitoring an object's balance in real time and providing subsequent feedback. It can all be achieved with a machine made through Incantation. I tried making one several times. Though I did not succeed, and it is not reproducible, I know that this is something we can absolutely accomplish with our own power!"

"Can you understand? You are the most crucial part of it!"

"As long as we can summarize and derive the calculation formulas for this fluid, then account for turbulence control and vortex ring stability, we can continuously maintain an object—"

The little Banshee's words were drifting farther and farther away from him.

Sorry, I can't understand any of this.

Gerald could vaguely sense what concept she was talking about, but he truly could not understand it.

This should have been around the 900s of the Terra Calendar, right? Why would anyone carry books containing knowledge of this level onto a battlefield?

When he memorized history, he only recalled that the first Originium internal combustion engines had been created around the 800s of the Terra Calendar. But could things really iterate so quickly into Fluid Mechanics and systems? What had those people done to this little Banshee?

As Gerald was thinking this.

Somewhere infinitely far from River Valley, a lynx wrapped only in rags had just found a ruined house to rest in.

She sneezed involuntarily, startling the monster behind her, whose body had shrunk somewhat.

The perspective returned to Gerald.

"If I am not mistaken—" The Pegasus shook his slightly distracted head, trying to sort out his thoughts. "You want people to move freely through the air. But what is your purpose in doing that?"

"A city."

There was not a trace of hesitation in Nastya's voice as she directly answered Gerald's question.

"I heard that people outside Kazdel have already figured out how to put cities on tracks and use Originium to drive them, making the cities move."

"You came from elsewhere, so you should know about this, right?" The little Banshee lowered her eyes, hesitating slightly as she considered whether she should say these words. "They found a way to escape Catastrophes, to escape things they do not wish to encounter."

"So I think that if they do not welcome the Sarkaz, then we can do the same."

"I hope that one day, it will no longer be outsiders who exile Kazdel, but Kazdel flying through the skies who—"

She looked at the person before her and spoke each word distinctly.

"Exiles those who do not welcome us."

Gerald was somewhat surprised.

This was something he had never considered in his previous life because it went beyond ordinary logic and imagination—well, perhaps he had dreamed similar dreams many times as a child, especially on the day he realized his talent for Originium Arts.

The difference was that Nastya would live a long life, long enough that when he returned to reality, he might still see this young Banshee deeply pursuing some field. Of course, perhaps what awaited him in the end would be her having given up on her dream and returned to River Valley to retire.

But treating this thought as a dream and striving for it was not such a bad thing.

"Lamaline."

"I am here."

The Banshee Queen, dressed in formal attire, appeared beside the Pegasus almost instantly. Even the veil on her face did not flutter, as though she had never left.

Nastya, who had been filled with excitement just moments before, froze as though struck by lightning, the light in her eyes abruptly dimming. Her lips trembled slightly, yet she could not utter a single word. It was as if she had fallen into an invisible abyss.

"Do not worry," Gerald said gently after noticing the hesitation and fear on the little Banshee's face. "I will make sure she absolutely does nothing to you. I guarantee it with my life—"

Before he could finish speaking, however, the Pegasus suddenly furrowed his brow. A sharp pain struck his waist, as if something pointed had viciously pinched him.

Enduring the pain in his waist, he silently turned to look at the Banshee Queen, whose expression had darkened once more, and sighed.

"Anyway, I only called Lamaline over to test whether an idea is feasible."

"Test?"

Two identical questions rang out at once. Both wore expressions of confusion, clearly having no idea what Gerald meant by "test."

Gerald did not answer immediately. He merely calmly looked around at their surroundings.

Thinking about what would happen next, honestly, he was not entirely confident himself.

But if someone did something while knowing they might be able to do it, it would be tremendous encouragement for the person who held that dream.

So why not make this his first lesson in guiding these young Banshees?

There was still plenty of time.

"We need to find somewhere that will not affect River Valley, preferably outside River Valley."

After considering it again and again, Gerald finally made up his mind. "Lamaline, I may need you to conceal what we are doing. There may be a lot of commotion later, and there may be times when I cannot provide enough force. You need to consider the risk of taking the two of us falling from high in the air, but I think it should be fine."

"Wait." Lamaline instantly interrupted Gerald, pulled him directly in front of her, and stared straight into his eyes. "What exactly are you trying to do?"

Then, for the first time, Gerald shifted his gaze away.

"Probably just... a simple test?"

"To see how much force it takes to make a house fly, and how many other problems need to be considered."

Ethereal Above the Clouds

The three entered the clinic.

River Valley's architectural style resembled the medieval style of Gerald's previous life. The clinic's interior walls were mainly constructed from stacked timber, while stone was widely used for beams, window frames, and door panels. Near the waterfall, the roofs were mostly sloped and covered in heavy wooden shingles, with parts of the walls embedded into the rock face. Thorns and vines covered the window lattices, and ravens occasionally perched atop the beams.

Lamaline had personally proposed building this clinic, yet it had seen actual use only rarely.

All injuries in River Valley, large and small, were handled by the Banshee Queen or the older Banshees. As for River Valley now, the young Banshees had not yet grown up, the core members were deeply scarred by the Trauma of war, and the older Banshees were even less likely to leave their kin and go elsewhere.

Moreover, River Valley's environment differed from Kazdel's, possessing a natural barrier against disease that made illness difficult to truly invade this place.

But that did not mean the clinic was useless.

"Pain relief, sleep aid, Incantation backlash." Gerald brushed a hand over the cloth spread across the table. Bottles and jars sat together atop it, each labeled, while Incantations around them regularly cleaned the area and adjusted the environment. "They are kept very well. Whoever is responsible for this place must have put in a great deal of effort."