The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 766: More Flying Things

It only took them a few hours to construct the shell of a building to start their work in. The important part was what happened inside, the building itself was just a shell.

This one also didn’t need the roof to open like the others, though it was designed to look the same, with the domed roof and the large bay door at one end.

The rest of the original team came over after they finished the building.

There was no need to call them, they had enough curiosity about where the boss went without warning to come looking for him. And sure enough, they found him with Dominic at a workbench, sketching out wing plans for the new interceptor.

The new arrivals immediately looked at the design, with two propellers mounted mid-wing, central guns in the nose, and immediately began to shake their heads.

“No, that’s no good at all. I mean, it’s a great cargo plane, if you drive the engines directly. But as far as a fighter? Too much drag. It won’t be more than twice the speed of an airship.

If you’re making it to take out our own airships, it needs to be so much faster than that.

A single central propeller, with the guns mounted on the smaller bottom wing, will give you a lot more speed. However, if we’re going for speed, why not do away with the top wing entirely, and just use brute force and magic to keep it airborne?”

Everyone began making different plans so that they could come up with something that would suit every purchaser. Or every possible scenario that they found themselves using these things in.

By midnight, they had three designs that were deemed worthy of trying.

One was a purely magical monstrosity of a machine. It had a self-contained turbine, with an adjustable pitch five bladed propeller, and what the Dwarves had deemed a “Gull Wing” design. One lower wing, that angled down, then back up for stability. There were six self-loading twenty millimetre cannons mounted in the wings, and a small compartment that would hold a hundred mortars for air bombardment.

The wheels could retract up into the fuselage, reducing drag, and according to their rough numbers, a level ten mage should be able to push it somewhere near six hundred kilometres an hour.

They knew what the turbine would do at that level, the question was just how much the body of the airplane would slow it down.

The second design was a biplane, with a much smaller lower wing that was primarily just there to hold guns and ammunition, but with a decent mana storage capacity, and a steam chamber, so that the whole thing could be run by a pilot who could only barely operate magitech devices.

As long as he knew how to fly the thing.

That one had a wingspan that was barely five metres, and the design numbers said that it would be absolutely insane on the manoeuvring numbers. Far more than the pilot was likely to be able to handle.

The logic was that most interceptions would be near cities, and at that point, maximum speed mattered less, and the ability to actually intercept targets was more important.

It would absolutely devastate an airship fleet that got near the city or base that it was stationed at. Ten of them would be able to effectively defend even a capital city against any existing airship design.

The third had gone completely off the rails when the Dwarves had a brainwave.

If a hundred mortars were enough to keep a pirate fleet on their toes, what if you had a thousand? Or ten thousand?

So, they had made a large wingspan airplane, technically a biplane, but with the upper wing extended to hold two more turbines and much more cargo weight. The whole thing was thirty metres wide, nearly as long, and in theory could carry a two-pilot team, a top turret and rear turret gunner, plus five thousand mortars.

“That’s definitely going to get called a war crime.” Gully noted.

Dominic shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time. But you’re right. There is no way that even our allies are going to approve of us making something that can fly twice as fast as an airship and carry that much weaponry.

They’re already panicking about the military use of our cargo airships.

They might haul plenty of potatoes, but they also carry countless explosives if you’re so inclined. It’s best that we shelve that one, and focus on the other two.”

“The little biplane is sexy. It’s so small that you can stuff it in a horse barn, and nobody will ever know. Even the barn at the Manor has a door more than five metres wide and three metres tall.

If we’re going to station them to intercept incoming airships or attackers, the biplane would be the choice to deploy with the Barons,” Gully noted.

“I think that you’re on to something. They’re not the most capable, or the fastest. But they’re small enough to store in and fly from a Barony Manor. If we could modify them with enough mana storage that we didn’t need a mage in the Pilot’s seat, they could be a huge hit.”

“I think that they might be a hit here in Stansia Province anyhow. There is not a single one of the Natural Sons that won’t jump at the chance to have a flying machine gun,” Gully reminded him.

“When you put it that way… Yeah, the little biplane is one that we should likely make anyhow, even if it’s not the winning design.”

“Didn’t you just get a spell to give the Elite troops wings for that sort of assault?” One of the other workers asked.

“Yes, but that is a whole other tactic. They’re still essentially infantry. This is high-flying, fast moving, better against airships, not as good against infantry because it has to keep moving forward.”

“Got it. More flying things.”