Chapter 67: Oops

My blood runs cold. Feeling my heartbeat steadily rise in panic, I freeze for a moment in confusion. I hesitantly ask, “Excuse me?” Resisting the urge to remove the damned helmet; realizing too late the clerk doesn’t know my face. “My damned obsession with keeping my appearance on the low down is biting me in the ass,” I murmur, mentally berating myself.

Nervously I gaze around, seeing a panic-stricken clerk. I stutter out “Do… don’t worry about it.” Before immediately walking to the mayor's office. Halfway along the hallway, I break into a sprint. I blasted into the room unannounced. I mentally apologize, but my gut is screaming something bad is going on.

The mayor turns to me, a moment of confusion before pure panic crosses his face. He quickly and seamlessly schools it into a neutral expression, lightly tilting his head.

I swiftly remove my helmet, “What is going on?” I watch as his face cracks into a bewildered expression. He stands up and quickly replies.

“Aeternum? What are you wearing? That’s the royal armor; you can't wear that! Where did you even get it? Wait don’t answer that, you're going to bring hell to this town.” A bead of sweat slicks down his face.

I hastily remove the armor before equipping my usual armor. There’s no need for modesty when both parties are panicked.

He crumples into his chair. From his short few words, I realized I fucked up something serious; I can gather why, too. Let's hypothetically say that this armor is used by the royal family, or worse; the king! I can easily imagine it's rather exclusive. I do wonder what the royal family would think finding the royal armor in a random town worn by a random dude? Especially if all the royal family were accounted for, I could see that being problematic.

After a moment of deep consideration, he speaks. “I don’t know nor care how you got that armor. But if the family hears of this, we are both screwed. I just thoroughly hope you didn’t get spotted by any nobles. I will speak with the clerk, come back tomorrow. And leave without anyone noticing.”

Choosing not to poke the bear, I just seamlessly disappear. Finding it very humours how a single item can allow such excellent exits, this necklace is great; really adds to my dramatic flare. Spending a short moment enjoying my cool exit, I distracted myself from the potentially rather serious situation. I have already played with fire without knowing it by using exclusive equipment openly.

Well, I suppose I should find some other activities to occupy my time while I wait for the fire to cool.

Heading upstairs from my basement, I head to my library. I have a few general knowledge books I have neglected to read. Information on any family, clan, or coven is normally scarce and covered in rumors. So, I often ignore them.

Flipping through the notably high-quality book, I find a scant few pages detailing the royal family. I identified some general knowledge hosted within the book, mostly the family tree and other smaller known things about each royal member. A few high-quality drawings are placed within the book; it’s not uncommon in higher quality books. One is a family portrait of the current queen, king, and their 3 children.

A second is a war drawing of the king on a horse. A helmet is shown in his arms with a very familiar appearance. A rather rough and scarred wyvern helmet. How old does the wyvern helmet have to be to get that damaged? But with its defense… a long time. So, don’t wear this armor in public – noted.

Leaning back in my comfortable chair, “Well this is annoying. This may cause some issues.”

Stepping into my castle, I begin my first idea for helping the local civilians. Archimedes ships; mar a dragon attack is a rather safe form of travel. Now, without the army of bugs the original mod hosted.

Collecting a large amount of oak and spruce wood, I begin crafting a trial ship for future mass production. I made it look like a sea ship in the hopes of a potential crash landing in the sea resulting in more favorable results. I add iron plates to the front of the ship and along the support beams.

I made it rather large; hosting a large hollow inner body to work with. First I take the curved bottom and use the balloons allowing for flight to create a flat plane to work from. I create a captain's room at the front. This will host the helm to control the ship. Installing a large window and an inverted sky block directly above the helm.

I create a small bed and storage area within, along with a desk, lamp, and fridge. Under the captain's room, I prepared a single thermoelectric generator to power any appliances within the vessel. I plan to make the door a secure, security door with ID needed for access. Any free space around the edge of the room is filled in with balloons. It’s a theme I intend to continue to allow for efficient space use.

Next, I line the walls of the vessel with small 3x6 rooms. Each hosts a bed, chest, chair, desk, and a window at the far end of the room. They are very simple rooms for efficiency. Closer to the captain's quarters I made 2 larger rooms that host more extravagant expenditures.

Behind the passenger rooms, I prepared another 2 larger rooms for crew quarters. Bunk beds line the walls. Each holds a large table, a fridge, and a small oven.

In the final room, remaining back of the ship, I install a kitchen, a larger fridge area, a few bathrooms, and a small mess hall. Excluding spaces for windows, I fill in all empty cavities with the balloons. Which, I hazard a guess, are all I need for the vessel to fly. Although, I will still add more above ship for redundancy.

Leaving a few trap doors with crawl spaces to access deeper parts of the ship in case of fire and such. After spending a while touching up the rooms and head above deck. I add railings to the edge along with a small extension on either side for disembarkment. A few ladders are attached to the sides of the ship just in case.

I created a raised wooden structure with stairs in the back and added a door to the new room. Inside I create a small vessel with easy escape through the back, enough for 2 or 3 people and a bit of storage. Above, I create a viewing area for good sightseeing.

I add a large poll in the middle and build a crow's nest. I create a few sails out of the balloons for the redundancy. Honestly, it really looks like a ship now. I add a few further touches to make it even more ship appearing. The mermaid on the front really tied it together. I call it the ‘white pearl.’

It's rather bare-bones but it’s a proof of concept. I can allow the mayor to explore it to have a look. I have the intention for the recipes for the balloons and helm to be spread through the civilian community. With the dissemination of knowledge, a whole wave of transport companies should spring up, all bringing a competing market and a healthy traveling economy.

Each will battle with each other for cheap prices and will stop a single company from ruling the market. I won't allow greed to ruin a potentially really good thing. I won't bother with a security door. I neither have plans to make money from this business nor protect its secrets. I will just release the recipes and allow the town I live in to open the first traveling company for air travel.

Although admittedly, a shield generator within would really make me happy. But I don’t think the world is ready for that… yet.

I at least have something to show now. Maybe it will cheer the mayor up? Nah, but who cares. Anyway, let's go grab some food. I think I have some meringue left. A steak and pavlova later and I find myself sitting on the side of my island, lazily gazing across the infinite seeming ocean. The trees around my island are getting a little out of control, I should prune them soon.

That’s a thought, I haven’t touched tree breeding yet. I should do that; it's fun. Creating a scoop from some fabric and sticks, I set out looking for some hives.

I immediately head to the forest I live next to. It’s the most likely place to host bees. Before I do everything, I sit down and just observe the forest. Looking at the insects and especially flowers, I notice a few bees frequent some of the flowers. I find the one with the most bee traffic, then follow a trail of bees.

The particular bee I was following stopped at over a dozen flowers greatly frustrating me. Eventually, it turned around, weaving through trees like a fighter pilot. I almost lost it, cursing my lack of care. I find a rust-colored nest nestled between some leaves. Having a target in sight, I break it with my scoop, finding a queen and 2 drones in item form.

It's odd how a living entity is so easily turned into an item. I hope that doesn’t negatively affect the hive. Leaving the area, I fly for a while before setting down in a small clearing. I do the same process, wasting a bit of my time following crazy bees. Eventually, I came across another rust-colored hive.

Like an extremely boring loop, I continue; finding a good couple of hives. They net me sufficient bees to start a bee farm. I was never one for bee farming, but I think it’s a good time to start. It’s a time-consuming task and I have a lot of time. And, I always wanted to try bees, modded wise and in real life. I never worked up the nerve sadly.

It's totally not because it has like 5 hidden costs. I don’t actually intend to start the whole mod quite yet. But it was a nice distraction and having them for later will be much appreciated by my future self. Although the thought of finding nether, ender, and all the other variants of hives make me shudder.

I check my mailbox idly, finding 2 letters, 1 from Jengal and 1 from Cassie. I check the latter first and find just a short greeting and invitation for tea tomorrow. The former however is an invitation for more clay soldiers' wars. Jengal for some reason is convinced he can beat me easily with a tactic he has thought up. And he may have found some garmonbozia – excellent. A rare and hard to find material.

I will deal with both tomorrow. For now, let's mess with some magic. I have neglected my wizarding ways recently. I could use some practice. Grasping my wand, a handful of crystals to keep it charged, “I should get Jengal to find a source of these crystals for me,” I say quietly.

First I cast some spells to familiarize myself with the spells I have within my wand. I read my spellbook of the place block spell. I erase it from my wand before attempting to re-encode it for practice. It took me some time, but I eventually got it down. Noting the soft free-flowing mana I can sense within the wand, I have an idea.

I took that mana and manually ran it through the wand. I carefully followed the normal route required to encode the place blocks spell. About halfway through it fizzles out, “damn, this is hard.” I say as sweat drips down my brow.

I eventually make a mistake and the mana just dissipates. I soldier on, as I have inspiration and it looks like it could work. I keep trying, over and over. Making it a little further each time; my headache also gets a little worse each time. As the headache reaches a crescendo and forms into a migraine, I complete a whole path of mana. Suddenly, the spell ejects from the wand. The spell came out terribly formed, yet it was successful nonetheless.

After allowing my head to rest, I attempt it a few more times. I find it’s easier as it's now-familiar rather than new. I managed to complete 1 more free-formed spell. Clearly not that useful given I can just encode spells, but it’s a cool and unique method.

And with that, I head to bed and pass out, my brows creasing as I allow the pain to slowly drift away. It takes some time but eventually the headache completely fades.