Chapter 1666 - 232 - Preparation Done (3)

I left the heroes to themselves for the moment and continued toward the next thing I had specifically asked Agneis to prepare.

We eventually arrived at what looked like a military hangar, a large facility filled with equipment and workers who were moving around while checking various machines and components. The moment I entered, however, my attention immediately went toward the enormous aircraft sitting in the middle of the hangar.

What Agneis had shown me was an extremely high-tech aircraft that looked almost exactly like a fighter jet from my old world, although there were obviously some differences because this thing had been created using the technology and materials available in this world.

"I didn't expect this to be made so quickly," I said while staring at the aircraft with some genuine surprise.

"Well, it was something that needed to be made immediately, wasn't it?" Agneis replied as though the answer should have been obvious. "This is a war we're preparing for, so naturally, we're going to need quite a lot of these."

She said it so casually that it almost sounded like we were discussing the production of ordinary carriages rather than fighter jets capable of carrying enough explosives to turn someone's day into a very short one.

The fighter jet had clearly been designed with speed as one of its primary priorities, while also possessing a powerful propulsion system and enough firepower to carry a considerable amount of high-explosive weaponry. From what I could tell, a properly equipped aircraft could potentially launch an attack powerful enough to reduce an entire city to rubble if it was used correctly.

That was both impressive and slightly terrifying.

"Although, since it hasn't actually been used yet, we don't know whether it will work properly," Agneis admitted while looking toward the aircraft. "That's exactly why I want to test it before we start producing too many of them."

Thinking about it, testing the aircraft was probably a good idea.

If this thing actually worked as intended, it could potentially shift the balance of the coming war in our favor. Having something capable of moving quickly through the sky while carrying enough firepower to destroy enemy positions would obviously give us a significant advantage.

Still, I couldn't help thinking that there were quite a few things that needed to be checked before we started throwing something this dangerous into an actual battlefield.

A prototype was still a prototype, after all.

Putting one into combat without knowing whether it could even stay in the air seemed like a remarkably efficient way to turn an expensive machine into a very expensive crater.

"For the moment, nobody seems capable of flying this thing," Agneis explained. "Although I designed it using a similar concept to what that enemy country has done with their aircraft, I still have absolutely no idea whether the design will function properly, or whether it will even manage to fly in the first place."

Well, that was only natural.

Agneis herself had never flown a jet before, so expecting her to understand everything about operating one simply because she had designed it would have been ridiculous.

Knowing how something worked on paper and actually knowing how to operate it were two completely different things.

I wasn't exactly any better myself.

I had never even set foot inside a flying vehicle before coming to this world, so I certainly couldn't pretend that I knew how to operate a fighter jet. I knew what one was supposed to do, and I had a general understanding of how they worked from my previous life, but that didn't mean I could suddenly sit inside the cockpit and fly one without turning the entire thing into a glorified falling object.

"Is that... a fucking fighter jet?!" I heard a surprisingly excited voice coming from somewhere behind us.

I turned around and saw Morofuji staring at the aircraft with wide eyes, looking like someone who had just discovered an incredibly rare treasure that she had only ever seen in books.

"Morofuji, do you know how these things operate?" I asked her while looking at her reaction.

"Hell yeah!" she answered enthusiastically before suddenly hesitating and looking somewhat embarrassed. "W-Well, not really, no. I mean, I've studied them. My father is a pilot, so..."

That was a little bit of a news drop that I hadn't expected to hear from her.

I stared at her for a moment because I certainly hadn't known that her father was a pilot, and somehow, she had casually thrown that information into the conversation like it wasn't particularly important.

"B-But I know the basics of how they work, I suppose," she added quickly, apparently realizing that her previous answer had made her sound far more knowledgeable than she actually was.

"Do you think you can actually fly one?" I asked her, mostly because I wanted to see how confident she really was.

"Huh?" She looked at me for a moment before immediately shaking her head several times. "N-No, no, no. There's absolutely no way I can do that! I have absolutely no idea how to operate one."

"But you just said 'Hell yeah' with an extremely enthusiastic voice," I pointed out while raising an eyebrow at her.

"That's because I was excited to actually see one of these things in person! And in this world, no less!" she replied defensively. "I wasn't saying that I could actually fly the damn thing."

I see.

That explanation made considerably more sense.

She was basically a fan who had suddenly stumbled across the real thing.

"So, do you want to look inside it?" I asked her while gesturing toward the cockpit.

"C-Can I?" she asked, sounding slightly apprehensive despite the excitement that she was clearly struggling to hide.

"Sure, just don't break anything," I told her. "This is still a prototype, and we're going to use this as a model for producing more of them later."

"I see...!" she exclaimed, her expression immediately brightening.

She clasped her hands together before practically rushing toward the aircraft and climbing inside.

She really was enthusiastic about this.

The other heroes watched her as she climbed onto the fighter jet, and they seemed just as curious about what she was going to discover inside the cockpit.

Morofuji carefully looked around the interior before placing her hands on the controls, examining the instruments one by one with an expression that gradually became more serious.

Her excitement was still obvious, but now she looked like she was actually trying to understand what she was seeing instead of simply admiring the machine.

"If... I could study this properly, then I might be able to get it working," she said while examining the controls.