"An air race, huh...? That sounds like fun!"
Reinhard was clearly eager. He had always been fond of that kind of competition.
"What kind of race are we talking about? Single-seaters? Or remote control?"
"We already did remote control on Onogoro Island, so how about single-seaters piloted by golems or automata?"
At Jin's suggestion, Reinhard's enthusiasm surged even higher.
"That's a great idea! Jin and I, along with whatever volunteers we can gather, can organize the inaugural tournament. From there, it's just a matter of how many spectators we can draw."
If crowds gathered, money would flow, and more participants would surely step forward for the next event.
"I don't mind sponsoring the first one myself."
Jin had a substantial amount of idle funds sitting around, and he was well aware that hoarding it did no favors for the economy.
"True, but if you do that, you'll just end up earning back even more than you invest."
Under normal circumstances, that was only natural. No sponsor willingly sank money into an event destined to operate at a loss.
"I suppose..."
Yet if it turned a deficit, they would never attract future sponsors.
Jin voiced his thoughts, offering what seemed to be the next best option.
"It might be better for the long run if we find a merchant guild willing to sponsor it."
"Yeah, good point."
"Let's set the sponsor talk aside for now, though."
As far as Jin was concerned, hammering out the aircraft specifications suited his temperament much better.
"Right, let's talk about the aircraft."
Reinhard was on the exact same page.
"Having golems pilot them—that's solid."
"Yeah."
"The real question is what to do about the airframes."
"That's the tricky part."
Jin and Reinhard pondered the dilemma. After all, when people in this world thought of aircraft, the options were limited to balloons, airships, and Blow Floaters.
"A Blow Floater wouldn't make for much of a thrilling race, would it?"
Competing for top speeds or engaging in a nail-biting, down-to-the-wire showdown seemed out of the question, Reinhard noted.
"If anything, I get the feeling it would turn into a rather leisurely, gentle cruise."
"True enough."
"Still..." Jin mused. "Depending on the rules and format, don't you think we could make it interesting?"
"Hmm, fair point."
Though from an entirely different genre, Jin recalled reading a manga long ago about a "little big game."
It was a fishing manga.
Generally, anglers pursuing big game savored the entire struggle leading up to the landing, starting right from the initial bite.
Building on that premise, the story had focused on bitterling fishing.
Bitterling were among the smallest fish pursued in angling, but by using ultra-light tackle, one could thoroughly enjoy the delicate challenge of landing them despite their tiny size... That was the gist of the story as Jin remembered it, though the finer details were hazy after so many years.
At any rate, Jin figured that even with Blow Floaters, a thrilling race was entirely possible depending on how they handled it.
(The low-speed flight trial turned out to be pretty exciting, after all.)
As Jin and Reinhard put their heads together to mull over the details, Lishia, Marcia, Goose, and the others, who had quietly listened up to this point, finally chimed in.
"Listening to Jin and Reinhard banter is fun and all, but participating in the discussion is where the real fun begins!"
Goose's remark captured the exact sentiment of everyone in the room.
"Even without high speeds, I think a gripping, neck-and-neck contest is totally doable," Marcia said.
"Exactly! For instance, we could cap the maximum altitude at five meters," Goose suggested.
"Hmm, flying at five meters would certainly keep things tense. But what happens if they crash? Golem or not, the Blow Floater would still be wrecked, wouldn't it?"
"Then we just set up a barrier close to the ground. Touching the barrier results in disqualification, of course."
Saki offered her own idea.
It was the same method they had used on Onogoro Island, though Jin kept quiet about it.
"Since Blow Floaters are vulnerable to the wind, what if we enclosed the whole arena with a wind-blocking barrier?"
"No, having wind whip across the course during the match might actually make things more exciting."
"How are we going to let the spectators watch?"
"That's an easy one—magi-screens, surely."
One opinion followed another in rapid succession.
Everyone seemed to relish this kind of brainstorming.
Then Lishia, who had sparked the topic in the first place, spoke up.
"I don't know much about technical matters, but if we're going to bring tourists to Toka Village, I think we'll need to develop the... infrastructure, was it?"
"Ah, that's true. Even if visitors suddenly showed up, the village wouldn't have the capacity to handle them," Beena agreed, nodding.
"What local specialties did they have again?"
"I was told Pashta has become too widespread to count as a specialty anymore."
Jin recalled the conversation from his previous visit to Toka Village.
"Kemeria oil is supposedly a specialty, at least. Oh, right."
Catching sight of Reinhard's face, Jin remembered another local product.
"Come to think of it, their red wine was delicious."
"Oh?"
Predictably, Reinhard took the bait.
"I believe they mentioned it was aged three years."
"I see. I'd love to try it sometime. If it's a three-year vintage, it has a good chance of being well-received."
It could easily serve as an attraction for tourists, Reinhard noted.
"Aside from that, there's the hot spring, but the water has stopped flowing."
"Could it have dried up...?" Lishia asked, her expression clouded with disappointment, but Jin shook his head.
"I didn't have time back then, so I left it alone, but given the underground water veins, there's no reason it should have run dry."
After all, the hot spring in Kaina Village was still flowing without issue, Jin pointed out.
"It's possible the pipes carrying the spring water got clogged."
Precipitation of hot spring mineral deposits could cause that. That was why systems needed periodic cleaning, but...
"Hmm, I don't think that spring had the kind of water chemistry to cause heavy buildup."
"Mm. It was a simple spring. No smell of sulfur, if I remember right."
Elsa had also been present when Jin originally excavated the hot spring in Toka Village.
"Ah, but I have a feeling the source for that spring was fairly shallow."
"Huh? But I thought you said the water vein you tapped for us, Jin-san, was around 250 meters deep?"
"I did?...I don't recall that."
At that moment, Reiko spoke up from his side to offer clarification.
"Father, that occurred... after you returned to four hundred years ago, so it is only natural that your current self would not remember it."
"Eh? Ah, is that so?"
"Oh, of course! That's right!"
Because Jin had dug the deep well and secured the water source only after the original Jin traveled back four centuries, the Duplicate Jin had no knowledge of it.
Lishia, having undergone homunculus transformation, retained those memories, however.
Setting that aside and returning to the matter at hand...
"So the main water source is deep, but the hot spring was shallow, meaning it could have simply run dry, huh."
In that case, Jin thought to himself, drilling a new one was definitely worth considering.