It took Carpenter several minutes to work out what Russell meant, and then she felt even more keenly just how muddled Gilbert's thoughts must have been.
Their teacher had always been meticulous. He rarely did anything like changing the aircraft's settings without leaving instructions.
"Why?" she couldn't help muttering. "Going to Sia Tower..."
"We're Hainalsons, Carpenter," Russell suddenly said in a subdued voice as he crouched on the floor. "We never experienced how tragic the past truly was, but... the Hainalsons of old were Nicholson of the Defense Tower.
"We're certainly powerless before someone strong enough to kill us all with a casual backhand, but at least we don't need to go out of our way to show off our strengths.
"Heh... especially anything related to art.
"Carpenter, those nobles you saw in Black Mystery Town, the ones with absolutely no eye for art... who only wanted unusual colors and materials without considering coordination or differences in shade, weren't isolated cases produced by the Black Enigma Tower's decadence.
"In this world, most nobles and Mages abandoned their pursuit of beauty over the long years. They even lost the traditions passed down to them.
"Our Hainalson Family is the exception because, during those bleak years, the Defense Tower was the only Mage Tower that kept painting the flowers in its heart.
"They had convictions of their own, so... it was also those convictions that made them choose to face death.
"After that, art vanished even further from people's lives... because of the Defense Tower's choice, most people felt that excessive emotion, especially emotion that overpowered reason, made people impulsive.
"But although our Hainalson Family has always tried to steer the family toward reason... look, they couldn't even give up teaching young children a lesson in art appreciation.
"They would tell us