Meanwhile, in a narrowly averted timeline…
Kazuma's turn
I was studying Crimson Demon culture one day, by which I mean drinking and playing cards with two of the village NEETs one day after my Rain's class.
"Who's turn is it with the telescope tomorrow?" asked the dealer, who for some reason was never me after the first few games. At the time it was Bukkorori, the local and only grocer.
"Mine," said Huehue, the tall, slender girl across from me. "It's Fruitday."
"Trade?" he asked hopefully.
"No chance, you'd just point it at the Princess' bedroom window again. I know her schedule as well as you do."
"Not for all the time," he defended himself, though I made a note to ask for more details on that. For intelligence gathering purposes.
"First I've heard of a telescope," I broke in, not having known the kingdom even had them. "How far does it see anyway? The demon's castle is at least a day's ride isn't it?"
"It's up on Mount Doom, there's a trail you might've seen," Bukkorori said as he shuffled the cards. "You can see about 30 km in places, but the mountains and folds block a lot in certain directions of course."
"Shame you weren't able to put it on a balloon or something," I mused. "Get a better angle to see over the terrain." Far be it from me to turn down more warning of an attack on the village I was living in.
"A balloon?" he asked, pausing his shuffling to look quizzically at me.
"A sport my people had. You took a big cloth or paper bag, heated up the air inside or filled it with a gas lighter than air, and it would fly. Never tried it myself, but you could get several people in one. How big is the telescope?" Pretty big, I imagined, if they had to keep it on the ground.
He made some gestures, indicating something about the diameter of a kitchen trash can and about a meter and a half long.
"How would it even stay up? You'd need a huge fire to have enough updraft to keep something that big airborne!" Huehue scoffed.
"Not really, they float in the air like a boat in water. Just a small fire on the balloon will work."
She gave me a deeply skeptical look, and laughed. "Floats in the air you say," she chuckled, clearly certain I was bullshitting her and not having any of it. "Prove it, Outsider. I'll believe it when I see it."
—-
Now, I don't consider myself a prideful man. But that was not a challenge I could walk away from.
The next day, I went by Luhan the smith to have an open topped sheet metal box made, light as he could manage.
Then I put my Crafting skill to work. It didn't let me duplicate a real smith, or a carpenter, or some other special trade. Those were expensive skills for a reason. But it did let me do what a good general handyman DIYer could manage.
The paper skin was the hardest part to get, since the cloth here tended to be pretty heavy. It wasn't exactly cheap either, not the kind I was looking for anyway, and I finally had to ask Rain about it. Which meant I had to explain why I even wanted paper you couldn't even write on.
So a week or so later, I had an audience for my test flight including of some of the most powerful people in the kingdom. No pressure.
The fruit of my genius sat on a light wooden stand in the middle of the village square. A meter wide sphere of light wood framing covered with the closest I could get to tissue paper, with a metal box dangling right beneath on strings. Inside the box was a dish of lamp oil, which I touched a lit candle to since I didn't trust my aim with Kindle enough for this.
The oil caught, and nothing else did, so I backed up hastily to wait. For the first minute or so, nothing much happened and there was a steady buzz of conversations, along with a few jibes from the audience. Then, the balloon started to bounce on its frame, as the air inside got hot enough for some lift, and the watchers went quiet.
After another minute, without any warning, it lifted gently off, trailing the string I'd tied to the frame behind it in a fit of what I thought at the time was misplaced optimism.
Now suddenly glad I bothered, I turned and shouted at Huehue and her fellow skeptics. "Pay up!"
Naturally, at that moment a gust of wind jerked the balloon against its tether and sloshed out some of the burning oil. Which immediately lit one of the strings holding up the firebox, flames raced up it and across the highly flammable paper skin, and in moments the whole thing plummeted right back down in a fireball.
But it was the principle of the thing that mattered.
After that, I was too busy with mandatory learning after Iris put her foot down to pay much attention, besides seeing quite a few balloons of different sizes getting built and an awful lot of different objects getting lofted into the air on them.
I moved to the capital not long afterwards, and between the attacks by Wolbach and Hans, and then my engagement, I forgot all about it.
Iris' turn
It was some months after our engagement when I came to visit Kazuma's working chamber, bearing a bound sheaf of papers in one hand and a conflicted expression. I didn't make a habit of visiting him during working hours, only partly because of both our full schedules. Though if my suspicions about my inability to keep more than tea and toast down since yesterday were true, the times we had gotten 'distracted' might have finally paid off.
"I just received these from Yunyun, I believe you should see them posthaste," I said as I walked around his desk to stand beside him, laying out several magic photos.
The first was a close up, ground level shot of what I could only call a giant flying cigar, though it was decorated like the very concept of camouflage had been dragged into the street and shot. The grinning jagged teeth and blazing red eyes painted on the prow were the least of it.
The next was taken from further back, and showed the airship taking off, several Crimson Demons crewing the long basket fastened underneath, with one shooting fire into the gas bag while another seemed to be directing wind to push it along. A cheering crowd on the ground saw them off.
The next seemed to have been taken aboard the airship, showing the crew hurling magical destruction of several kinds at something far below, too blanketed by clouds of dust, debris, and smoke to see much detail, thankfully.
At Kazuma's shocked look, I added. "The cover letter said that that was one of the Demon King's border forts. The next raid is going to be a run towards the coast, since the harpies that tried to stop them didn't do well against Advanced Magic from the crew."
"Good thing they're on our side," he responded, slightly horrified. "Reminds me of one of my old…" He paused, and then in growing worry asked "Has anyone seen Megumin today?"
Megumin's turn
The bold hero rode upon the creaking deck of the crew basket, her hearty crew eagerly awaiting her next command! On the horizon was a smudge of woodsmoke from cooking fires, boiling tar vats, and all the industry that supported a large port.
Adjusting my new eyepatch, I took my hand off of my gloriously plumed new hat, emblazoned with the badge of 'Chief Explosioneer', once I was sure the drawstring would keep it in place and gestured grandly ahead. My preparations complete, I shouted over the wail of the wind through the rigging holding our compartment to the gas bag.
"TODAY! Today we strike a mighty blow against a place not seen by Belzerg eyes in living memory! The city of New Atsugi, largest port of the Demon Kingdom! Home base for his flotillas! A center for the trade that keeps his armies at our doorsteps! Today, it falls to the glory of Explosion!"
