As soon as we enter, the clockwork machine holding the control stick turns its head 180 degrees to look at us.
Then it detaches from the control stick and rushes to attack immediately.
Hmm. It's dumber than I thought.
The best method here is to violently twist the control stick to immediately make it lose balance, then charge. Attacking me is the worst of the worst moves.
Crack!
Because it's rushing to a good position for Polaris behind me to hit. Seeing the tin crumple each time Polaris rushes in and punches its body and head once each, I think it's no problem and go to where the corpse is.
I pretend to examine the pilot's corpse while stealing its warmth.
Ah, it's cooled down a lot.
I should have come here first.
While I'm searching through the pilot's memories, Polaris completely dismantles the machine. Not Polaris, but Polarbear.
Hmm. How to control it.
It's a bit vague because the memory has evaporated a lot, but I learned how to control it. Looking at various memories, it can't fall vertically like an airplane.
I guess it's because it doesn't gain lift by moving forward. Because flying in the sky is easy, things like aerodynamics haven't developed, so it's also slow.
So, how did they land?
"Do you know how to control it?"
"I only know in theory. I'll try."
Since Polaris is the only living person on board now, she should do it.
Me?
I should be excluded because I'm not human.
"What... is that. Don't tell me that's Bern City?"
A city with black smoke rising thickly. If you have good eyes, you'll see it's a mess to the extent that no intact buildings can be seen.
"What on earth happened?"
Polaris asks in a trembling voice. I know everything but didn't answer. Polaris also doesn't seem to expect an answer from me as she blankly looks outside.
Here, I answer as if I just realized:
"There was a reason why the letter sent to Victoria's parents was returned."
And what's happening with the clockwork machines now is different from the accident that occurred in Bern City before.
At that time, the clockwork machines lost control and broke down, simultaneously catching fire from overheating or exploding. But now they moved to kill people.
In other words, it means there's intent.
But is there a technology called cracking here too?
If there's something equivalent to a wireless network, it's not impossible. Or such a program was built in from the start.
"It's been some time since it was destroyed. What on earth happened? No, why isn't this on the news when such a thing happened?"
Polaris mutters while looking at Bern City, stuck to the window.
Grabbing the control stick and turning it left and right, raising or lowering it up. The speed is pedal-type like a car. When you take your foot off the pedal, it slowly stops. No brakes.
The user interface is intuitive. However, in principle, it's closer to an airship that floats in the air using buoyancy by filling it with gas lighter than air, rather than an airplane that generates lift with engine thrust to fly.
However, while in the world of faded man's memories, the volume compared to weight increased enormously, here it floats in the air because the same effect can be achieved with solids instead of gas.
There's no risk of fuel explosion even if attacked, but if the device connecting the floating material and the hull is damaged, the floating material goes up and the hull falls to the ground.
In short, the part where weight is applied becomes a weakness. It seems there's also a plan to make a fighter jet that reduces this weakness by liquefying the solid and circulating it inside the hull, but this is unnecessary information, so ignore it.
"Where should we move this?"
"Ah, umm."
Polaris, who was stuck to the window, turns her head quickly to look at me. Then she turns her head again and directs her gaze outside the window.
However, unlike before, she looks at the whole while moving little by little along the semicircular front.
"Bern City is not an option. Before that, as a premise, you. Can you move this ship?"
"Yes."
Even if the memory is broken, if there are memories of moving this ship several times, I can figure out the method by overlapping them. It's a bit troublesome to cut memories and look at them in parallel, but it's not impossible.
"Vehicle? No, it's a special vehicle designed to break through rough terrain. I know it's difficult for ordinary people to operate that, no, more than that, what's that above? A strange sphere?"
Then suddenly Polaris ran to me.
"Belle. Go down immediately! Anti-aircraft guns are aiming at us. Probably, they're coming to destroy evidence!"
Destroy evidence?
Ah, I see. It means there are people who think it's dangerous if it's discovered that clockwork machines were used to kill people.
I lowered the airship's altitude following the memory.
"At this rate, it's dangerous... What... What should we do?"
Polaris looks around with a pale expression. The place where Polaris manifested something. I also look around that area and see something smaller than a bean coming this way.
Polaris must have good eyes. I can tell something is coming, but I can't see it well enough to identify it.
"Ugh. Ah! Do you see that mountain ahead? When the ship goes down below the mountain peak, turn it sideways and descend in a spiral."
"Won't the side get hit then?"
"Turn as much as possible, hide behind the mountain and retreat as much as possible with our backs to it. No, no. They're assuming the clockwork machines killed everyone on board. Since it wasn't charged, if we escape, they might use other methods."
Polaris grabs her head with both hands. Occasionally, murmurs of "think, think" flow out.
"We've gone down below the mountain peak. Shall we turn?"
"Turn!"
I turned sideways along the mountain as Polaris said.
Because it's an airship, the turning radius isn't that large, but still, I turn in a spiral-like manner spreading outwards rather than a clean circular orbit.
Polaris runs back to the window and stares at the group coming this way.
"Turn more sharply!"
More than this?
It's dangerous for balance, but I do as told. As I turn sharply, the floor rises severely to the point where it becomes a side due to centrifugal force.
Rumble!
At that moment, a flash of light narrowly grazed where the ship was.
"Crazy bastards! Did they really attack? This ship has the royal emblem on it, are they thinking of committing treason?"
Meanwhile, the ship completely turned with the mountain behind it.
"Shall we go straight like this?"
Polaris looks straight ahead, then sits down on the floor and draws something with her finger. Nothing is actually drawn.
It seems she's drawing in her head.
"Belle. Reduce speed. And do you know what happens if you take your hands off the control stick?"
I tried letting go of the control stick once. Maybe due to inertia, the control stick slowly turns.
The speed also decreases because I took my foot off the acceleration pedal. Polaris, who was watching this with an anxious expression, brought the remains of a clockwork machine near the entrance with its head replaced by a chair.
Then she tears off the machine's arm with her bare hands.
"Do you see that hill? We're going to jump off there."
She pointed to the mountainside visible outside the window. Then she approaches where I am and fixes the control stick using the machine remains.
Even if it's brass, it shouldn't bend so easily, but she bends it smoothly to fix it.
Then she drags the remaining debris and puts it nearby.
"We have to jump out before crossing that hill. If we cross the hill, it's dangerous because we'll roll down. So we must jump before crossing it. Got it?"
"Yes."
At my answer, Polaris patted my shoulder with an expression of great approval and pointed outside.
"Go prepare now. I'll follow right away."
"You're planning to put this on the pedal, right?"
When I pointed to the clockwork machine missing its head and one arm, Polaris nodded.
"That's right."
I understood what Polaris was thinking. She plans to use this as bait. We'll jump out and escape, and make the people chasing us now chase the ship.
Turning along the mountain wasn't simply to avoid attacks, but to prevent the enemy from seeing us jump off.
She's using her head.
I nodded and immediately went through the cockpit to the passenger cabin. Then I enter the corridor passing through the passenger cabin where several seats are missing and clockwork machines are broken.
I pass through the corridor covered in corpses and blood, and open the door leading outside.
Click.
Whoosh!
The door opens sideways, and the wind escapes.
Below, trees are getting closer and closer. The ship isn't going down, but the terrain is rising.
Going outside and holding the door, I look ahead and see that within 1 minute, the treetops will be at a height where they barely touch the bottom of the hull.
So I looked back at the corridor, stepping backwards. In the distance, Polaris shouts to jump. So hearing that, I immediately jumped.
There's a slight feeling of floating and soon I hit a tree.
Thud!
And I fell to the ground, being poked here and there by tree branches.
I got some scratches, but safely arrived on the ground. Looking up at the sky, Polaris jumped from the gradually accelerating airship.
However, unlike me who bumped here and there, Polaris grabbed a branch at the top of a tree and rotated her body like an acrobat, then looks around from the treetop.
After looking into the distance as if examining the surrounding terrain, she came straight down to the ground along the tree trunk.
By the standards of the world in faded man's memories, it's superhuman physical ability. But it could be possible physical ability in other worlds.
This side also uses magic power, so strictly speaking, it seems to be a different species from the world in faded memories...
Anyway, the pain of the scratches disappeared strangely quickly, so I looked down at the scratched wounds and they're healing.
It's not flesh filling in, but thin threads going back and forth around the wound, attaching. The search result found it in the artificial body function section of Great Kraken's memory. It says it can regenerate limbs as long as there's calorie.
Hmm, that's right. Since this body isn't human, there's no need to press reality to heal wounds.
If I stack up the specs of the body to descend into, I don't need to use power separately.
My wisdom has increased.
"Are you okay? Are you safe?"
Looking at Polaris who immediately approached me, I nodded.
"Yes. Polaris. What are we going to do now?"
"We have to move. Since we don't know when monsters will attack here, we'll go to the beach first. As far as I know, dangerous monsters don't come there."
This is also an area where wilderness remains. Wilderness so harsh that Great Kraken's advance party failed to settle.
I nodded and immediately followed Polaris, who set the direction and started moving.