In Avalon after Jin and the others had departed.
"That last lecture was really educational, wasn't it...?"
Najas Kahn, a medical student from the Kingdom of Franz, was studying in her room.
"They say Deus Ex Machina-san and Jin-san upgraded the Safi units by endowing them with medical knowledge, but I wonder when they'll start teaching classes."
Thanks to recommendations from Jin and Elsa, she had enrolled mid-term, and her grades were already in the upper-middle tier.
When she first arrived, she could barely keep up with the lectures, but with the talent Elsa had recognized in her and her own natural diligence, she had rapidly improved.
"Naja, want to go grab something to eat?"
"Ah, Polly, is it that time already?"
Her dormitory roommate, Pollyanna Pendleton, called out to her.
Hailing from the Kingdom of Egerea, Pollyanna was a gentle woman with medium-length brown hair and brown eyes. She called Najas "Naja," and Najas called her "Polly" in return.
"You're always so dedicated to your studies, Naja."
"Look who's talking, Polly. You're just as obsessed with books."
Najas knew Pollyanna had been lying on her bed reading a story just moments before.
"Well, to each their own, right?"
With a light chuckle, Pollyanna hurried off toward the cafeteria.
"Ah, it's packed."
The student cafeteria affiliated with the Academy was bustling, right in the thick of the lunch rush.
"Oh, but the line seems to be moving fast."
"You're right."
The cafeteria was staffed by Safi units, and thanks to Deus Ex Machina overhauling every single one of them, their operational efficiency had increased by twenty percent.
Members of the Go-lab and the Aviation Research Lab were also queued up in the crowd.
"Speaking of labs... Have you thought about which one you want to join, Naja?"
"Not yet. We still have nearly a year left, so I plan to take my time and think it through."
Najas and Pollyanna chatted as they waited in line.
The two were currently enrolled in the Basic Course, studying a broad curriculum.
Next spring, they would be assigned to a specific laboratory to begin the Specialized Course.
"They say that if you drop by your preferred lab early and make an impression, you're more likely to get accepted."
"Really?"
"Especially for the popular ones."
Students were not guaranteed a spot in their first-choice laboratory.
Each lab had a strict quota, and if applications exceeded capacity, candidates were selected through lotteries or interviews.
While a lottery was pure luck, having an endorsement from an existing lab member was rumored to significantly boost one's chances during an interview.
"I see... Then maybe I should make up my mind by summer."
"That sounds like a good timeline."
Before long, their turn arrived. Picking up trays loaded with their set meals, the two headed off to find an empty table.
"Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"Word is, they're building a facility called a 'wind tunnel' soon."
The members of the Aviation Research Lab were talking of little else.
"It uses wind-attribute magic to generate airflow, right?"
"Which means we'll finally be able to test things like air resistance and stability in strong currents."
"I heard that depending on the scale, we might even test full-sized machines in there, not just models."
"Now that's incredible."
Wherever their source of information lay, their ears were certainly sharp.
"I also heard it'll be used for training during severe winds."
"That would be for the World Security Guard, right?"
"Exactly."
"Supposedly, Deus Ex Machina-san proposed the idea during that recent visit."
"No, no. It was the Magi Craft Meister."
"Was it?"
At lunchtime, the cafeteria was a hub of idle chatter, with countless rumors and topics flying back and forth.
"What's that, Eira?"
"A backpack that lets golems fly through the sky."
Since that day, the Go-lab had built three quarter-scale small golems with slight structural variations to run performance trials.
The team comprising Eira, Groma, and Kachea had built one of their own, and Eira was currently mounting a backpack equipped with circular wings onto it.
It featured a satchel-like unit with arms extending diagonally upward to the left and right, each tipped with a circular wing. In essence, it was like strapping a miniature Blow Floater onto its back.
The arms could adjust their angles dynamically so the circular wings always remained level.
"All right, Novum 1, give it a shot."
"YES, EIRA-SAMA."
As a side note, "Novum" did not refer to the earth spirit "gnome," but was derived from an Ancient Magi Language—the Origin Language—meaning "new."
Kachea had found the term in a book at the Library.
Novum 1 was the lightest of the three prototypes developed by the Go-lab.
To achieve this, they had used foamed magi-resin in sections where structural strength was not strictly required.
Miniaturizing a golem naturally increased its strength-to-weight ratio. Jin had previously advised that they could balance its movements simply by tweaking the parameters in the control core.
However, unlike before when they had been pressed for time, this was an internal laboratory project, giving them plenty of leeway. Eira and the others had chosen to structurally decrease the output of the parts acting as musculature.
Foaming the material lowered its strength output, but because it also drastically cut down the weight, finding the right balance took considerable effort; in the end, they still had to fine-tune the parameters in the control core as well.
Even so, they had managed to reduce its weight to less than half that of the small golem delivered to the Aviation Research Lab.
"We didn't use an internal skeleton or core framing, after all."
Thanks to the foamed material, the construct was remarkably light yet sturdy.
"With this foamed magi-resin, we could probably push miniaturization down to one-tenth scale, don't you think?"
Looking ahead to future compact designs, the Go-lab concluded they could likely achieve a one-tenth scale golem on their own.
Novum 1 activated the Blow Floater on its back.
"All right, nice and slow!"
And then...
"Whoa! It's floating! It's actually floating!"
Novum 1's feet slowly lifted off the ground.
"We did it, we did it!"
Eira beamed with excitement.
Novum 1 hovered steadily about fifty centimeters off the floor.
"All right, try moving forward slowly."
"YES, EIRA-SAMA."
Maintaining its fifty-centimeter altitude, Novum 1 drifted forward at an easy pace.
However, because its body remained completely upright, it looked rather like it was treading water in midair.
"Hmm... It's a success, sure, but not quite what I had in mind."
It seemed it would still be some time before a truly graceful flying golem took to the skies.