Chapter 54 - Chapter 47: Sky Leviathan

🚢Chapter 47: Sky Leviathan

🌍 April 20th, 94 BCE — Late Spring 🌿

Leviathan Illustration: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17-gXRYwC1D7bCaqTCYDa01WarlluC9tv/view?usp=drive_link

Too bad Webnovel doesn't let me embed pictures in here like other sites do. 😉 

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The eastern cavern shipyard had gone quiet weeks ago, yet every day wagons creaked past the gates beneath heavy tarps—alloy ribs shaped like timber, cable drums, crates of gears, and sailcloth—before the great timber doors shut and guards waved no one through. Those not on the "inside crew" could only guess at the work within; some swore they heard the echo of grinders or the deep heartbeat of water-wheels driving hidden machinery, while children dared each other to count the wagons and whispered that they'd glimpsed masts lying on their sides like felled trees.

Inside, the truth unfolded piece by patient piece as blacksmiths and millwrights machined beams on the great lathes while carpenters fitted patterned alloy planks whose wood-grain disguise fooled even a craftsman's eye, and teams rolled out sailcloth from the textile shed—memory-fiber composites that looked like coarse canvas until tension sensors woke and tightened the weave. The blast furnace roared day and night to feed the foundry, while the Fabricator waited in its alcove, quietly polishing any part that fell short of Junjie's exact tolerances, and what had begun years ago as "god-work" was now the labor of hundreds of mortal hands guided by the patient rhythm of belts and gears.

⛵ Birth of a Leviathan

At the heart of the cavern a hull took shape—three-masted and sweeping like an ocean galleon, yet forged entirely of nano-alloy—as every rib was cast by village crews, ground true on their own machines, then slid through the Fabricator for a final micron-perfect shave, while deck planks carried the warmth and grain of seasoned oak but rang with the strength of tempered steel, and the telescoping masts rose from reinforced sockets where hidden motors could furl or extend the alloy spars in utter silence; the villagers who worked the night shifts called the project Sky Leviathan, half in jest and half in awe.

Keel length: 35 m

Overall length: 50 m

Beam (width): 14 m

Draft (depth): 12–20 m

Tonnage: 1,000 tons

Crew: 100 (minimal for flight; most were marines or gun crews)

Passenger Capacity: 400

The figures astonished even the builders. By the final week, the great ship filled the entire cavern, its black hull glowing in the lamplight like a mountain of night.

⚡ Hidden Power

Beneath the elegant façade lay the technology of a new age:

Nano-Fuel Reactor: a barrel-sized core capable of months of continuous output, fed by waste or slag.

Anti-Gravity Plates: embedded through the keel and hull, tuned to bleed away nearly the full weight of the vessel.

Torque-Fan Array: twin stern fans for thrust, four vectoring fans for drift and braking, plus vertical jets for altitude control.

Gyroscopic Stabilizers & Atmospherics: feed real-time corrections to the flight controls.

Ghost Mind: a hardened aero-core that manages navigation, balance, and integrated fire-control, automatically targeting and coordinating the Leviathan's artillery and machine-gun batteries while maintaining stable flight. With Ghost Mind at the helm, the ship can fly and fight with only minimal human oversight.

The villagers helped machine housings for every system, even if only Junjie and a handful of senior engineers understood the inner workings. When a gear or plate proved beyond their skill, the Fabricator consumed it and returned a flawless part by morning—never magic now, merely the valley's final polish.

💣 Armament and Deception

Though it appeared to be a merchant galleon, the Sky Leviathan was a fortress:

120 mm artillery pieces concealed behind retractable shutters, ten per broadside, plus fore and aft batteries.

Rapid-fire belt-fed machine guns mounted on hidden swivel turrets.

Numerous fake gun ports added to the intimidation factor.

Winch-controlled belly hatches allowed for cargo drops or stealth insertions. Cranes and deck hatches maintained the illusion of a conventional ship.

Ghost Mode: an optical illusion system that could weather the hull, shred the sails, and project a phantom image of a derelict "Flying Dutchman" when stealth demanded.

Even the great sails remained functional, able to catch real wind when the reactor idled, preserving the fiction of a mere ocean ship.

🌅 The Unveiling

Before dawn, the inner crews sealed the cavern doors and powered the great anti-gravity plates, and a deep vibration rolled through the valley as the water-mills synchronized with the start-up sequence—a heartbeat more felt than heard. Guards moved quietly from house to house, rousing families to gather in the outer fields. In the gray half-light, the entire village pressed against the fence line, breath fogging in the chill, children craning for a glimpse of whatever secret had stolen so many workers through the winter nights.

Across the ridges and hidden gullies, Nano's sensor pillars whispered their constant watch, confirming only the routine sweep of low-grade sampling drones and no sign of the higher survey craft. With the skies clear, the Leviathan was free to rise.

A sudden hiss of pressure cut the silence. The massive doors groaned outward, and mist poured from the cliff mouth like smoke from a sleeping dragon. For a heartbeat, nothing followed, then the Sky Leviathan slid forward—black-hulled and sail-rigged, a mountain of night that seemed to glide on its own shadow. Anti-gravity plates bore the bulk with uncanny ease, but as the vector fans tilted for the first lift, the air churned in a widening circle, whipping coats and banners flat against startled bodies and driving dry soil into swirling ghost-rings. Children squealed and clutched their parents as a warm downdraft tousled their hair and sent hats skittering across the grass. Chickens burst from coops in a flurry of wings; dogs barked and backed away from the shimmering wall of displaced air.

The ship rose with impossible grace, clearing the treetops in a slow, silent glide once the fans leveled. Farmers dropped their hoes, their mouths round with disbelief. Elders clasped their hands and whispered old mountain prayers. Apprentices who had spent nights machining hidden parts shouted over the rush of air—"That's our spar under the mainmast!" one blacksmith cried, pounding a friend's shoulder. "I ground that joint myself!" Another grinned through tears: "No gods—we built that." Even those who had labored inside the cavern gasped to see the pieces joined into a single living whole, a legend stitched from their own calloused hands.

High above, Junjie stood at the alloy helm, Nano's telemetry streaming across his mind as the Ghost Mind balanced thrust and lift, the great vessel circling the valley in a majestic arc. The fans softened to a steady whisper as altitude eased the ground-wash, leaving only the slow flap of composite sails that caught the dawn like black wings. The crowd fell into awed silence, a thousand faces tilted skyward as the leviathan traced a slow ring over their fields, casting a shadow wider than the river itself.

After one perfect circuit, Junjie guided the ship back toward the cavern mouth, the fans lowering her with a soft exhale of displaced air until the black hull slid once more into the mist. No speech followed. The villagers simply stood, hair and hearts still lifted by the echo of its passing, and understood without words that the valley had built a wonder with its own hands and that the skies—once the realm of myths—now belonged to them.