----Notice----
All Air Vehicle rentals require Class 1 Air Operator Certification.
Air-Boards – 5 Silver an hour
Air-Bikes – 25 Silver an hour
Air-Car – 75 Silver an hour
Damion guessed the Air Operator Certification was akin to a pilot’s license on Earth. Since Damion had no idea how to even get the required certification his hopes for being able to pilot a flying car were temporarily dashed.
“Let’s rent one of the two-person ground cars. They can get us out there quick enough, and we don’t have to worry about a high rental fee,” Ethan said as he pointed to a group of ATV-looking ground cars that had big off-road tires and windscreens, but open sides.
“What can I get you boys for today?” a man in the store said as he came out to greet Ethan and Damion.
“An off-road two-person ground car for a few hours. We’re heading out to the Galen farm,” Ethan told the man. Damion guessed the Galen farm was where the Fire Scorpions were, or close to it.
“Take the blue PTV over there. It has a full magic charge, if you boys recharge it when you get back the rental fee is only 1 Silver for the day.”
Ethan quickly tossed the man a coin and headed to the blue colored personal transport vehicle. Damion followed and the two quickly climbed in. The seats were quite soft and contoured to Damion’s body as he sat down, which surprised him, since any ATV on Earth tended to have hard cheap seats since they were likely to get muddy and wet, so they were built more for durability than comfort.
What really surprised Damion was that there was no steering wheel. His family’s ground car had a steering wheel, though no brake or accelerator pedals as those were pressure buttons on the back of the steering wheel which ensured you couldn’t take your hands off the wheel for long or the vehicle would come to a stop.
The PTV, however, had a joystick in between the two seats. Damion figured it allowed either side to operate the vehicle, but it was still quite odd. Pushing forward on the stick made the vehicle accelerate and bending it left or right made it turn, and Damion guessed pulling back would slow the vehicle down and maybe put it in reverse as well.
“What did he mean by charge it up when we return it?” Damion asked Ethan as they headed out of the city.
“When you hold the stick you can channel your mana into it, just like you do with your sword. Only instead of activating enchantments to make your sword stronger, the PTV’s enchantments pull your mana in and store it to run the vehicle.”
“Does it take a lot of mana?” Damion asked.
“Ground cars like this one don’t,” Ethan said as he pushed the stick further forward to make the PTV accelerate faster. “Air vehicles do, that’s the main reason you have to have an operator’s certificate for them. The government doesn’t let people with low mana fly up high and then not have enough mana to stay airborne and end up crashing into someone’s house.”
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“I thought it was just so you can learn to fly them,” Damion responded.
“Well sure, they put you through a competency test, but a Class 1 is limited to four-person vehicles max, and all those types of air cars are pretty simple. Just look where you are going and don’t fly into a tree. The larger airships require all kinds of special knowhow to keep them up. Usually, several teams of people to operate and another team to keep them powered and in the air.”
“That sounds complicated. How much mana do you need to have to pilot the small aircars?”
“A lot. Even a lot of mages don’t have enough to get their cert. You wouldn’t want one of those anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it, you have to spend your mana to fly it the whole way,” Ethan told Damion.
After a moment Damion understood the problem. “Right, air cars are a constant drain on your mana. So, by the time you get there, you’d be exhausted.”
“Exactly, this is also why we won’t charge up the PTV until we are on our way back. Don’t want to be tired, just in case we run into something more than just Fire Scorpions.”
Damion was not sure what else they might encounter, but since they were heading towards the Benault forest, he supposed they might run into other Ferocious Beasts or perhaps bandits.
“Since your dad is in the shipping business, maybe you know the answer to this,” Damion said to Ethan, remembering his visit to the grocery store yesterday. “Why don’t they use the preservation containers for fruits and vegetables in the grocery store? Wouldn’t that make their limited supplies last longer?"
"Cost, Damion, cost. The preservation spell can be placed on any sealed container making the contents stay fresh for months. But only as long as the spell is unbroken. When the container is opened, it breaks the spell.”
Damion thought on what Ethan was saying and remembered how well sealed the boxes of food in the trucks were. He had thought they just didn’t want to risk a spill. But that was not the entire reason. Mr. Hoyt wanted to make sure the containers did not accidentally get opened since that would then lead to all the goods inside running the risk of spoiling. As long as they were sealed under the enchantment, they would last quite a while before being needed.
“Mages charge to cast the spell, per container. Imagine sealing each piece of fruit in its own container to sell. Sure, the fruit would last a long time, but the enchantment cost is more than the value of the apple.”
“But I bought a sandwich in an enchanted container, and it didn’t cost that much,” Damion said. Fruits and vegetables, Damion now understood, the cost to seal them individually was too high, and if they were all in one sealed bin, each time the bin was opened, the spell would have to be redone.
“A mage probably did a bunch of food packages for a flat rate. Works better on uniform containers or something like that. They can do a whole pallet of boxes at once.
“Wish the mages would develop a better spell then. An apple here is four times as much as in Saung.”
“Very true,” Ethan answered. “But those prices are really making my family rich. Dad has expanded from three trucks to eight. And he says once Bufort is back to producing most of their own, he plans to assign half his trucks to operate out of Bufort as a new distribution point instead of just shipping from Saung.”
Ethan went on for some time about his father’s plans to expand the business. Damion became lost fairly quickly, not really understanding distribution methods or economics beyond the basic supply and demand. The only thing Damion could guess was that Mr. Hoyt was trying to become the sole, or at least the largest, food supply to all the towns and villages around Bufort.
It was not until Ethan began slowing the PTV down that Damion was freed from Ethan’s droning. Looking around, Damion saw a large stone house with a few fields in front surrounded by a low stone wall, not much more than a meter high. As Ethan drove through the gate he saw a sign above the gate that read Galen Farms.