When Roland finished explaining the principle, he discovered that with the exception of Anna who showed a “so that’s the reason” expression, the other three witches were at a loss, seeing this he couldn’t stop himself from secretly lamenting about the importance of innate talent.
When the balloon was completely inflated, it began to float up and slowly straightened the draglines. Roland took the lead and entered the basket first. Afterward, he helped Anna to climb into it.
“I’m still a bit worried about this,” said Nightingale, “maybe it would be better if you let me try it out first.”
“Trust me, nothing will happen,” Roland smiled soothingly. “And even if we run into something unexpected, there is still Lightning.”
“You can rest assured, I will catch them.” Lightning patted her chest confidently.
“There’s also me,
With a shake, the balloon’s basket took off from the ground, gradually climbing up. Before long, they had crossed the top of the castle, and the whole town started to spread out in front of them.
To Roland, seeing such a scene wasn’t something new, after all, he had looked out of a skyscraper. But in Anna’s view, it was a new experience, it was a perspective that she had never seen before. She leaned over the edge of the gondola and looked out of it, grabbing at Roland’s arm with one of her hands, seeming totally excited while also being nervous at the same time.
This was the first time that Roland had seen her showing such an expression,
Soon, the basket which was tied to a hemp rope had also reached its limit finally stopping its rise. The hemp rope was about 50 meters long, in other words, it was around the height of a fifteen to sixteen-story building. Roland let Anna reduce the fire so that the hot air balloon could begin to hover within the air.
Lightning who had stayed close the basket for the whole time, but now where she saw the balloon was safely flying in the air she felt assured and thus she started a game of catch with Maggie around the hot air balloon.
When looking down from this height they could clearly see the castle roof, the constructions taking place all across town, the Redwater River flowing from west to east and the green farmland on the other side of the river.
“How do you feel?” Roland asked with a smile as Anna retracted her hand.
“Thank you for your gift,” she said excitedly. “It turns out that even I could fly so high.”
“You can even fly higher,” Roland sat down next to the side-wall of the rattan basket. “If the following hemp rope was longer, we could fly even ten times higher, but up there the airflow is much more chaotic, and it would become harder for us to still stay safe. Furthermore, this is only the first aircraft, just wait until I invent a piston machine, then even ordinary people can fly faster and higher than even the birds, and then…” He looked up at the blue sky full of hope in his heart, “humanity will one day fly out of this world and into the boundless space.”
“…” Anna held her breath, her eyes were shining and full of expectation for what was to come.
“I cannot guarantee that we will be able to fly out of the world,” Roland became amused by seeing her appearance, “but creating a piston machine, so that even ordinary people can fly around like the birds, the rest of my life should still be enough time to achieve that.”
“That Border Town was able to achieve its current appearance, this is all because of your contribution, ‘Miss Anna’.”
