Release that Witch

The students in the Aerial Knight Academy were busy training.

All the trainer aircrafts were spreading out in a line at the end of the runway, and the 30 official trainees were listening to Princess Tilly’s instructions. A little farther on, students who had not passed the exam or those who had recently joined the team were sitting near the runway, waiting to watch the next round of trial flights.

“From today onwards, your training will enter a new phase!” Tilly proclaimed as she paced back and forth in front of the students who were a lot taller than her. “Now, tell me what you’ve learned over the past one month! Start from Patter!”

“Lifting, Your Highness!” the students named Patter replied in excitement.

“Next.”

“Hovering!”

“Magic Movie!”

“What?”

“No…” the student faltered. “I mean balance training, Your Highness!”

“Strange…” Finkin muttered. “Princess Tilly seems to be nicer these days.”

“Really?” Hinds said under his breath. “She won’t exempt you from punishment if you make a mistake. Don’t you remember? We just cleaned the bathroom for a month.”

“I’m not sayiing that,” Finkin mumbled as he looked toward Good. “What do you think?”

Good nodded and said, “I have the same feeling.” He could sense that Princess Tilly had been somehow very anxious for a long time, possibly because of the poor performance of the aerial knight trainees. There were only 30 people out of 200 students who had passed the exam.

Another reason was that there were only six usable planes in the hanger. The rest of them were all crashed during the training. Like the instructor Eagle Face had said, one plane was even more expensive than a ship, which normally cost thousands of gold royals. No wonder Princess Tilly were so sulky and ill-tempered.

Nevertheless, the situation seemed to have changed a bit. Although Princess was still quite strict with them, she was less sullen.

But they still crashed a lot of planes every day.

Finkin, it’s your turn,” someone reminded him.

Finkin erected himself and said, “Discipline, Your Highness, I learned the importance of discipline!”

“And also responsibility!” Hinds shouted.

There was an uproar of laughter.

“I told Princess Tilly a long time ago that we should send these guys to the army and tame them first.”

“Suck it up. They’re all civilians.”

The other students exchanged murmurs. Apparently, the news that Finkin, Hinds and Good had been ordered to clean the bathroom for a month as a punishment had been spread throughout the whole school. However, students who used to be civilians simply made fun of them. Those who despised them most and would like to send them to the North Slope Mine were mostly soldiers from the First Army.

Tilly did not say anything but continued, “Next.”

Good replied solemnly, “Passion.”

Another flurry of whispers swept over the crowd.

“What nonsense he’s talking about?”

“Perhaps he couldn’t think of anything else…”

Good had thought Princess Tilly would not be satisfied with his answer, but she quickly turned away from him to the next student after a short pause.

After everyone supplied an answer, Tilly nodded and said, “You haven’t received much training, but you did learn a lot! Now, what you need to do is to apply what you’ve learned to the subsequent training. You have to be strong and use the flying techniques you’ve learned!”

“Yes, Your Highness!” everyone shouted together.

“Now, I’m going to divide you into two groups of three units to have a mock battle! The rule is very simple. If you could successfully confine the activity of the opponent party to your shooting range for 10 seconds without being shaken off, I take that you hit the target. You only learned firing at a fixed target on the ground before. Now, you’ll learn what an aerial battle looks like in reality!”

Everyone got excited about the news.

“Your, Your Highness!” a student yelled while raising his hand.

“Yes?”

“The gun is… unloaded, isn’t it?”

“What a fool,” Finkin laughed.

“Of course it’s unloaded,” Tilly said while shaking her head. “Actually there’s no gun… The one mounted on the plane is just a model, so you don’t need to worry that you’ll shoot your schoolmates after you pull the trigger.”

All the students guffawed.

“Plus, it’s far more complicated to shoot in the air than on the ground. Taking the aim doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll hit the target. Even with bullets, you’ll most likely miss the target,” Tilly said while shrugging. “Any other questions?”

Good now confirmed that Princess Tilly did have changed. She would not have had such a relaxed look in the past.

“I, I have a question,” Finkin said as he raised his hand and cast a look at the students from the First Army after he got the permission. “Your Highness, how do we know that we win? What if the other party doesn’t yield even if we successfully hold them back?”

The students had never fought a real aerial battle, but they had learned its basic idea in the class. If an aerial knight wanted to defeat his enemy, he should make every effort to take the aim and hold him back. There were machine guns at the rear. Yet due to the limited shooting angles, these machine guns were simply used to help the aerial knight to shake off enemies.

“I’ll make the judgement accordingly,” Tilly said and brought in two women. “They’re my special guests. They’ll watch your every move, so don’t you think you could cheat.”

“… That’s Ms. Sylvie.”

“The other one seems to be the butler of the Sleeping Spell..” Good heard the students from the First Army murmur behind him.

“The trainees over there are not only watching,” Princess Tilly continued. “Do you see the flags they’re waving? We have six planes, each marked with a number. Once you take off, they’ll use the color flags to indicate your status. Green means normal and red being shot down. If you see your number turn red, then you should leave the battlefield and return to the airport. Do you understand?”

“Yes!”

“Very well. Now, I’m going to divide the group.”

Surprisingly, Princess Tilly had already drafted a list beforehand. Good and Finkin were on the same team. Their number was two.

“This is it. I’ll leave you to decide who operates the aircraft and who fires. Team 1, 2 and 3 shall take off in 15 minutes. Don’t hover in the air. Then Team 3, 4 and 5 take off. Once all the teams are in the air, the mock battle officially begins!” Tilly said while clapping her hands. “Show me what you’ve learned!”

Good clenched his fists.

His heart was pounding frantically in his chest.

“Did you notice that?” Finkin said as he drew close.

Good exclaimed. Princess Tilly did not divide the group randomly. The first three teams were all constituted of civilians while the other three were comprised of students from the First Army.

Apparently, Princess Tilly wanted to know who was better!

“That’s perfect,” Finkin said as he rubbed his nose. “I’ve had enough with them. Since we’re aerial knights, let’s fight it out in the air!”

Good did not really care about the outcome of the mock battle. He only hoped that he could fly as much as he could so that he could enjoy the flight a bit longer. Good peered down at his trembling hands. They were resonating with him. He felt a warmth lance through his body as he thought that his hands would sooon reach onto the lever.

“I’ll be the pilot. You do the firing,” Finkin said as he patted Good on the shoulder.

“You know I won’t accept that,” Good returned instantly.

They stared at each other for quite a while before Finkin said resignedly,” Alright. We do the old way.”

There was a very popular method to resolve a conflict. Nobody knew where it came from. Somebody said it was invented by the Witch Union while the other believed it was a creation of His Majesty. Regardless, this method worked pretty well.

“Rock, scissors, paper!”

“I won!” Good said triumphantly as he withdrew his hand.

Finkin looked at his fist in disbelief and finally conceded gruffly, “I’ll let you fly this time. We’ll have a lot of opportunities in the training.”

The two men thus walked up to the biplane and boarded to the corresponding plane.

“You can do it!” Hinds said as he eyed them in a pretty ostensible manner on the runway. He was not listed, so naturally he wished them good luck.

“You’ll soon see that we didn’t train for nothing,” Finkin said as he pulled on the goggles and gave him a thumbs-up.

The stairwell were soon removed, and the propeller was set in motion as the handle started to spin rapidly

When the piston started to move and was connected to the gas, Good felt that the whole aircraft was injected into life.

“All clear. OK to take off!” the ground staff saluted.

Good raised his arm and returned a perfect salute. “Aircraft No. 2, go!”

The biplane slid onto the runway, accelerated, and soared into the sky against the sea breezes.