With Solicrave but a small, silhouetted outline in the far-off distance, doomed to miss out on being the spectator for the tumultuous event of what's to occur, this time around. Bounding up, over, and beyond the windy, hillside trails, a pickup truck that's prominence long existed in the distant past carried all twelve of the Star Course students with unburdened ease. Sure, the overall aesthetic could fit in just fine with any other vehicle found in the United Federation of Aethonien. NO, the most outlandish part pertaining to the pickup truck was not its unorthodox choice in parts, but the single, overwhelmingly, inexorable fact that the contraption was entirely built by the hands of Inkaro. Those were G.Galore's words, since anything she'd helped with, she'd class as mild assistance at the most.

  [Multi-Enviromental-Response Automobile lnterlocking Circuit Operative(Mal-Co) Type-6][Type: Transport Vehicle][Rank: SS]

  -A sleek, magisteel(steel but with a faint rainbow-coloured sheen effect) pickup truck. Its enclosed cabin has four doors, with two seats in the front section and a super fluffy blue pillow in the back section. The back of the cabin has a reinforced glass-like window on the back, and that same material is used for the door windows and the windshield. Mal-Co has an extended cargo bed that has four wheels under it instead of the usual two. Additionally, it features thick/padded inuluni (a faintly bioluminescent, cyan stone that compresses slightly like a sponge), tyre pieces shaped like crescent moons. These tyre pieces then hook onto the tyre rim, causing it to resemble a peeled orange.

  The wind surged overhead, separated from the occupants located in Mal-Co's cargo bed by a thin veil of transparent mana. But, its roars and thrashing held no impact on Anazenpha and the rest, who lost out on the chance to experience fast winds in the face while being stationary. However, the lack of turbulence or wind hitting her face didn't ease a certain noble girl's thumping heart. Yuuvia was wide-eyed, looking like the headlights of Mal-Co were aimed right at her. Prior to leaving, the noble girl, along with Ana and Enetha, was given the option to join Lizu in the bed section of the cabin. But Yuuvia'd be dammed if she were that close in proximity to Lizu for any stretch of time; so instead of degrading herself, she decided desperately clinging to the walls currently behind her for dear life was the better option.

  On a totally unrelated note, Anazenpha also chose to sit in the cargo bed, totally independently of any external factors.

  While the noble girl needlessly continued her mental anguish of fearing she'd go flying at the smallest bump, Anazenpha happily clapped her hands at getting to sit next to Yuuvia in the back of a pickup truck, made by Inkaro, heading to a haunted house for the first time.

  Sat with his knees to his chest and arms wrapped around those stalky legs of his, Lyunoto sat on top of Anazenpha's head; also, the mushroom guy was now the size of a lay figure. He watched the surrounding trees pass by with keen interest, taking in the rare chance to do so, thanks to the mana inside Mal-Co's veil making the mushroom guy's efforts to slow down his mana frequency and shrink himself mildly easier.

  "Soo... do you think those two are dating?" Nova murmured aloud, whilst she had her head intentionally positioned past Mal-Co's mana veil so her hair could billow against the passing wind.

  "Noooooo, what makes you believe that?" Yuuvia asked with enough grandiloquent flair and snark that it made her true message hard to miss, while still clutching and pressing her body against the cabin-side corner of the cargo bed. Nova almost wanted to laugh that Yuuvia of all people was the first to say anything, given the content of the princess's question.

  "Oh~ Are you-"

  Raising his hand to drift Nova's attention away from speaking something she'd regret, in the sense of starting a fight with someone who's blessed with 'dumb luck', Myhail deeply sighed before stating, "Based on her reaction, I believe Yuuvia is trying to say that it goes beyond those two merely dating one another."

  "They're married?!" Nova blurted out calmly, as one shouting could, causing Anazenpha to giddily repeat that second word, purely out of habit from her cousin constantly going on about wanting to get married.

  "Ok, maybe too far," Myhail mumbled as he clapped his hands together, like in prayer.

  "Ah, engaged... but wouldn't a member of the current highest-ranked noble family in your kingdom have way more fanfare?" Saruno asked snarkily, as he led on a napping Noaskou's head and wiggled his fingers in the royal duo's direction. Myhail nodded his head, having thought the same thing for the longest time.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "If I had to hazard a guess, it probably happened before the ranking shift, so her father didn't feel pressured to announce an engagement, if it's true. Although I wouldn't put it past Lizu that she pleaded for him not to announce it until some arbitrary time." Myhail's deduction and reasoning seemed sound, enough so that the desire to figure out the reason why had been dampened to a mild ember.

  Whilst those lot continued mingling among themselves, but on topics other than Lizu and Inkaro's relationship, Lizu was sprawled out avidly over every inch and corner of the backseat-replacing bed; well, it was mainly her tail doing most of the space seizing. Had it not been for a lack of space for herself to actually be in contact with the fluffy bed, Enetha might've been inclined to enjoy the rare chance to ride in a vehicle that wasn't royally approved. Instead of the softness of the bed's mattress, the little princess had to endure having her head sandwiched between Lizu's bosom. Again. Not that she was consciously annoyed by her predicament, with how she was out cold. She'd been put deep in a slumber from around ten minutes into the drive, from the influence of those very things cushioning her head. "How's that thing you were working on coming along, Inkaro?"

  As the driver, Inkaro was obviously in the driver's seat. Nothing was really out of the ordinary there, other than him having Morilore sitting, unrecommendedly, in his lap. To his left, equipped in a booster seat for an extra measure of safety, a dozing Paruneha, barely keeping themselves from fully falling asleep.

  "It would still be classed as a bummer, or however Nuenala says it, that I can not get it to connect to anyone, let alone myself," Inkaro retorted. His eyes never left the road, even as he removed a hand from the steering wheel to summon the Clamity Fractal of Connection into his raised palm.

  While caressing the top of Enetha's hair with one hand and using the other to gently pull at the side of the other girl's mouth, Lizu lazily rolled her head to the side with a hearty yawn: "Well, it's nice to have a few roadbumps, every now and then, no? Also, I'm too tired to see whatever you're trying to show me."

  Inkaro involuntarily scoffed, sounding somewhat bemused, before unsummoning his latest magic creation."Try telling me such comforting words when you can take them to heart yourself."

  Lizu met Inkaro's counterattack of words with an airy huff, followed by a short silence.

  Knowing Lizu's tendency to put small pauses inbetween her comments as she thought, Inkaro braced himself for Lizu's impending verbal follow-up. However, that comeback never transpired. It left Inkaro momentarily on the metaphorical edge of his seat before he arrived at the realisation that Lizu had most likely fallen asleep, which swiftly turned into all but confirmed the moment Inkaro heard her softly snoring behind him.

  "That bike Xythio had was rather impressive under the surface," Inkaro murmured to himself as he resumed his full concentration on driving, while recalling Xythio and Myendi going on a different route, at Myendi's relentless insistence. The repeated type of pleading Myendi chose this time around must've been too much for Xythio this time, or so Inkaro surmised, before the guy lifted the girl by the collar.

  Naturally, she smirked with unadulterated smugness before being tossed off the cargo bed like an unwanted passenger. But it didn't take Myendi to catch back up to Mal-Co by riding on top of a non-elemental type Minagary of Broken Reflection, after being super-sized to around the size of a door.

  [Non-Elemental Type] Hand-sized, fifteen centimetre tall, six centimetre wide, and one centimetre thick, almost fully opaque, bronze reinforced glass. Its borders are covered by a sleek, muted band of plated, very dark bronze metal case.

  Inkaro wasn't entirely sure what Myendi had said to get on Xythio's nerves this time, especially enough for him to conjure shadow mana with mass and then to shape it into a motorbike just to race after Myendi when she flew off ahead of the group. Inkaro briefly considered picking up the pace to keep up with the reincarnators, but leaned toward not pushing Mal-Co on its first road test and opted to maintain Mal-Co's current speed, so as not to upset Morilore by decreasing travel time.

  "For...bidden... to forget... visitor...." That was the last string of coherent words from Paruneha before they fully succumbed to exhaustion and joined their fellow passengers in the act of slumber. Still looking forward, Inkaro allowed Paruneha's message to simmer in his mind, with it only taking him all but a second to figure out what the stigmai was mumbling about.

  "Hmm, I think Lizu mentioned something about him visiting, didn't she? That guy should really learn how to use a phone."

  Meanwhile, back at Inkaro and Lizu's home, Vergilou, adorned in cardinal additions to his priest robes, stood at the front door. The seven-year turning cardinal peered around at his surroundings, looking like a lost pool noodle in the middle of the ocean with how out of place he looked.

  "Seems nobody is home. I knew my instincts were right, even before I received that request," Vergilou murmured while rubbing his chin and deeply sighing, "What are they up to this time? Either looking for them or coming back another time to pass on that gu- Pope's message: neither choice is appealing."

  Vergilou slumped his shoulders, emotionally resigning himself to having to ask Zaluto for assistance, whether that came in the form of locating magic or showing him how his phone worked.