Mad scientists in a magic world. Chapter 3: So..... magic is real?

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Saint Mons monastery, Holy Captiol of Reguola.

The day of the summoning.

Curie Stonemen.

This is.... so much worst then I thought.

I starred at the alien sky above me. Their were A total of 10 rings each with their own color and appearance with the inner and outer most rings being exceptionally large and bright. Assuming this planet has the same gravity as Earth, hence the same Roche radius and thus the same minimum distance for ring formation by tidal forces. The rings distance from the planets surface should be 13,450km.

That is assuming that the rings have formed natural, which seems very unlikely given their color and spacing and what I knew about the formation of planetary rings. If it was formed naturally it would have probably killed everything on this planet through the sheer volume of falling debris.

which means.... they are artificial.

An artificial mega structure encircling an entire planet....

"Hehehehe...."

I started to giggled nervously at the sheer absurdity of it all. Their is no need for me to crack a bad joke, reality itself seems to be laughing at me.

I shifted my attention to my surroundings. The monastery was a large complex of medieval style buildings with a large stone fence, 3 meters tall surrounding it. The shape and proximity of the clouds, the large mountains visible in the horizon and the difference in air pressure all indicate that we were in fact on a mountain. Their was also a bunch of large buildings carved in to the stones of one mountain peaks with platforms around them.

The place looked less like a monastery and more like a hidden military base in a remote location, yet their was very little in terms of security. In fact, there doesn't seem to be anyone aside from us around here. If I was this important then why have I been brought to the middle of nowhere instead of say, in front of their commander and chief?

Their were no modern equipment in sight. Nothing that couldn't have been constructed with medieval tech.

Except the ring system.

It also makes any attempt of escape on my end nigh impossible. Oh well, that ain't gonna stop me from scanning the area for potential escape routes. I rearranged my robe so it wasn't touching the ground, in case I needed to run.

I turned towards the boy Situlo and the nun Faidea. for a brief moment Situlo had the look of someone biting on a sour lemon. His ears twitched a little and he was looking at me with narrowed eyes as if he was starring at a bright light. His expression suddenly turn to a very convincing poker face when I looked at him and he stood deathly still.

I realized why live action anime adaptations usually sucked. His face alone looked cute and he would have definitely looked adorable as a manga or anime drawing. But dog ears, tail, patched skin and canines on a living human just made him look like a mad scientist best attempt at reaching the bottom of the uncanny valley. I seriously doubt even the most devoted weebs I knew would want to head pat this one.

Faidea on the other hand was far more composed and had what looked like a genuine smile on her face. The two guards were now flanking them with hoods covering there head. There was an unnatural darkness covering there faces. Unless my brain was playing tricks on me, there eyes had a faint red color to them.

I felt my stomach drop as I prepared to ask the question that might break what is left of my sanity.

"Is magic a real thing in this world? if so, can you demonstrate?"

Faidea's smile widened and with practiced easy she pulled a small, gem studded wand from her sleeve. With a few gestures summoned a perfectly spaced ring of six tiny fireballs followed by electric discharges from the wands tip that struck and dispelled all of them Finally a she summoned a gale that lifted a bunch of leaves into the air and spun them in a circle.

"Are you satisfied?" the nun asked, still smiling.

"No" I answered truthfully, causing her smile to vanish and the leaves to fall. She tried to reply but I interrupted her.

"None what what showed me was beyond the capabilities of a sufficiently motivated team of Engineers. The only tricky part is making it look like you are doing it by shear force of will."

Faidea's arched her eyebrows and Situlo tilted his head, neither said anything in reply. I needed to conduct a test to distinguish physics defying magic form 'sufficiently advance technology' magic.

"Can you do something along the lines of summoning matter out of nowhere or cooling an object without making it emit heat in the process?"

It was Situlo who stepped forwards this time. He pulled out something that looked halfway between a wand and a swords hilt. He made a hand gesture and spoke an incantation. His eyes switched from an unremarkable brown to a bright blue. His out stretched hand dipped slightly as a floating ball of what seem to be water suddenly popped into existence over it.

A ball that was too large and appeared to quickly to be formed out of moisture in the air.

A ball was floating as if it was in zero g.

My brain short circuited, the last time something like this happened to me was when father showed me a plasma orb for the first time. The shock lasted less then 2 seconds before my mental discipline kicked in once more, demanding that I check for tricks and illusions.

"I want to touch it" I said.

He floated the ball towards me and I touched it with my finger, it felt a bit colder then the ambient temperature and wet just like water should. Though for whatever reason it refused to cling to my skin. I also felt my hand being gently tugged into the sphere even before I touched it.

I then tried to scoop some of it in my hand. It was harder then expected as the water tried to return to the sphere but was still doable.

I tried to taste it, it tasted flat but otherwise normal.

This should have been enough but I wanted to know more, I just can't miss the opportunity to see real physics defying magic.

"Can you cool it down?" I said. I contemplated sticking one of my fingers inside to see if I can sense the change in temperature but had the sense not to. There is a reason I still had a full set of digits and it isn't because my parents were overprotective. Instead I settled for hovering my palm in front of the sphere to sense any change in the temperature.

He nodded and performed another chant and gesture with the wand while holding the ball above his free hand. He touched the sphere with the tip of the wand and the sphere began freezing from the point of contact, without expelling any perceptible amount of heat. His eyes slowly shifted from blue to cyan and stayed there as the ball floated. I touched the ball and it felt just like ordinary ice.

As if violating conservation of energy wasn't bad enough now they are violating thermodynamics. What is next? time travel? FTL travel? teleportation?

With just entropy out of the way damn near anything is possible now. Perpetual motion machines, free energy, machines that require no maintenance and computers that run at arbitrary speeds with zero cooling.

Or maybe I am getting ahead of myself and this is just a creative application of some 'sufficiently advanced technology' that I just don't understand yet.

Or I could be inside a simulation. with what I have seen so far my hypothesis space is free game for any and all crackpot theories.

"Are you alright? you have been starring at the sky and giggling for a while now." Faidea asked while smiling back, pulling me out of my dreams of reality breaking experiments.

"Alright alright, I am going to assume magic is real for now" I said to her. She looked both relief and irritated but she didn't press any further.

I rubbed my left cheek were I was kick by that man. My involuntary smile disappearing when I remembered how Faidea put a hand on my head, causing the pain to go away. I looked at the nun, trying my best to hide my fear and anger before I spoke.

"Did you use magic on me back then?" I asked.

She nodded before quickly adding.

"It is a basic healing spell, it is quite safe and effective. You seemed to be in great pain so I took the liberty to...."

"Do NOt, do that again." I cut her off, anger turning my voice to gruel. I saw Situlo flinch but the nun did seem bothered in the slightest.

"From now on NO ONE is allowed to cast any magic on me without my consent, unless I was in mortal danger. understood?"

The Situlo and Faidea nodded. Only time would tell if these people would respect my boundaries, if they don't then I would know not to trust them. I pointed at the ice sphere and spoke.

"Are you expecting me to do magic or what? Because I am pretty sure I can't do that."

Faidea was the one to speak.

"We are well aware that you don't have affinity for our particular magical tradition, but your worlds has wonders of it's own and we asked the Ferryman to bring us someone well versed in you worlds own brand of magic."

"In other words, you think Science and Engineering are some kind of magic and you want me to teach that to you." I replied. Faidea looked like she wanted to say something but then closed her mouth and just nodded instead.

"Well I am going to have to check first if this world runs on the same natural laws as mine. While we are at it, I am going to ask you a few questions along the way."

Given my prior knowledge of Earth physics and the fact that my body feels basically the same, the odds that this worlds physics is any different is basically zero. For physics to be different here it has to only be unnoticeably different or else I wouldn't have survived getting isekai'ed, not without having my body altered or even reconstructed from scratch.

However, running a few quick and simple stress test should at the very least confirm or rule out the class of hypothesis that involve me being inside a sloppy computer simulation, since simulating physics down to the boring detail is not necessary to trick the average human.

"Give me the ice ball please." I asked Situlo while unrolling my sleeves so I can use them as makeshift gloves. He handed it over without compliant, his arm relaxing and his eyes turning back to brown the moment I took it from him.

The ice ball was perfectly clear with no air bobbles or obvious crystal defects, indicating that the water that formed it was devoid of dissolved gases. It wasn't perfectly spherical, there was a small ripple centered around the point of the wands contact but it was good enough for my purposes. The sphere was about 12cm in diameter so about 900g in mass. The fact that the sphere had any effect over Situlos hand despite his apparent telekinetic powers is a sign that the sphere was exerting weight force on his hand.

"Tell me how many branches does snowflakes have. What large salt crystals look like and what does fool's gold look like" I asked while preparing to test if light behaved the way it did on Earth.

The sphere should be able to act as a prism and split sunlight into its components and sure enough it created the familiar band of rainbow light on the dirt ground. I tried to work out the behavior of light through the sphere to see if what I am seeing matches what I would expect from a transparent sphere of this size and refractive index.

I didn't know the refractive index of ice but I knew it was less dense then water, so I just used a slightly smaller value at 1.3. After a brief mental calculation to figure out the focal length of the sphere I used my hand to both find the focal point and see if sunlight still burns. The result of this experiment was nominal with the focal point being somewhere between 12 and 13 centimeters from the center. The focal point itself felt hotter then normal, just like on Earth.

"Snow flakes have six branches" Faidea answered "Large salt crystals usually looked like a transparent cube with a white center. Never seen fool's gold though."

"It looks like golden crystals or cubes fused together in it's purist form. Otherwise it just looks like a shiny yellow-brown mineral." Situlo chimed in, his tail wagging slightly. A sight that sent shivers down my spine.

"What is the name of your nation, What species or race do you belong to and how old are you?" I asked Situlo while handing the ice sphere back to him. The nun seems to be the leader and was doing most of the talking so I am guessing he is the least capable liar of the two.

While he was answering I pulled the back of the over sized robe over my head so I can rub it over my head to see if static electricity was still a thing. The crackling of static and a flinch from the dog eared boy was answer enough. This is great news as a sloppy computer simulation Is very likely to skip this feature, it was hard to simulate and it's absence won't be noticed by most people.

"We are in the holy capitol of Regoula, the entire nation goes by the same name. I am from the Wabuti tribe of the central desert. I am not sure how old I am but I believe I am half way through my 13th year."

That is about as old as I thought, great to know that these people don't seem to age any differently then humans. it was also strange that he didn't know his precise age. The tribes name didn't ring any bells but the mention of central deserts would be worth checking in the future.

Wait, backtrack. I am running on the assumption that this planet has the same year length as Earth and that they are using the same time keeping system as us. Got to check if that is true.

"Does either of you have a time keeping device on hand?"

They both shock their head. So I took off my robes belt and gave it to Situlo.

"I want you to connect an ice ball that same size as the last one to the end of the rope. While you are at it tell me how many days are in a year and how do you divide the time in each day."

Situlo did as I asked. Melting the the ice sphere and attaching it to the end of the belt. he was working quietly which the nun took as an excuse to speak on his behalf.

"Our year has 365 and a quarter days and our days are split into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds."

I turned to Situlo who just finished making the pendulum and asked him the same question. He gave me the same answer. I then took the pendulum from him and carefully measured out 0.25 meters using my arm as a reference. I then let it swing and asked the two if the pendulum seems to be swinging at the rate of one full swing per second. They both nodded.

It was only then did the implications of this really hit me. assuming the boy ages at the same rate as a normal human, not only did this world have an identical orbit to Earth but it seems to have an identical day night cycle and an I identical time keeping system. Big evidence in favor of this whole world being a simulation and otherwise being some alternate reality Earth.

Actually, let's just ask.

"Undo the ice and tell me, does your species age at the same rate as humans?" I asked Situlo. while handing him the pendulum. He nodded and melted the ice away with magic before handing me back the belt.

"Alright then. Any idea why your world has the same year length, the same day length and the same time keeping system as mine?" I said while putting on the shockingly dry belt.

The two's eyebrows shot up as they realized what just happened. I couldn't fault them for not noticing that we had words for minutes and hours that, most people would not think twice about such a mundane detail. This time it was Faidea who spoke up.

"Maybe the Ferrymen were the ones to import it from your world? They have been in contact with your world for quite a bit of time. But I don't see why our realms year length should be any different."

"I don't see reason for you to think that our year lengths should be identical either." I replied, causing the nun to just shrug.

"Do you not know that a planet is?" I asked, I got I purple flash for the word so they do have that In their lexicon. The boy was the one to answer this time.

"They are the star like objects in the sky that don't quite look like stars. Their are many theories on what they are but non are definitive yet."

Oh boy, where do I even start. You know what? lets just drop the truth on them with zero context.

If I was actually trying to inform them then this is absolutely not the proper way to do this, but their reaction would give me a pretty good idea on where the gaps in their knowledge are. And I see no reason for that particular piece of knowledge to cause any trouble if I gave it up for free.

"In my world, planets are their own 'realms' so to speak. And they all orbit their nearest star, the sun in our case. They have different year length based on how far they are from their star. If your planet was a randomly chosen planet from a randomly chosen star then it's odds of having the the same orbital period as Earth is almost zero."

Faidea looked at me like I grew a second head while Situlo was starring off to space, almost drooling in the process. Eventually the questions came.

"The planets are realms? Like ours?" Faidea asked. Looking like she just had a religious experience.

"The stars are suns? With their own planets!" Situlo added. His tail wagging so fast it looked like a blur.

"....So your world goes around your star, and not the other way around." Faidea added again.

There is a lot of missing context here. At least they don't sound like flat earthers.

"Yes, yes and I am willing to bet that your world also orbits it's star. I am going to need a telescope to prove or disprove that. Assuming your world is in fact a planet in a planetary system, then it must be orbiting it's star."

A lot of green flashes followed my response. Before the discussion could get derailed any further, I switched my attention to Faidea. She looked human but I had to be sure.

"What species are you?"

"I am mostly a human with a bit of elven heritage."

I starred at her for a while, trying to see anything inhuman about her. She didn't have the stereotypical pointy ears of an elf and wasn't exceptionally tall either. They both had a look of surprise on their faces as she uttered the word 'elven'. This time Situlo spoke up.

"Are their elves in your world?"

"No, not as far as I know and I know a lot. To be sure we are on the same page, what are elves exactly? We have stories about elves but no living elves around."

This time Faidea was the one to answer. Giving me a generic standard description that would fit just fine in any fantasy media.

"What about trolls, orcs and goblins? Are they a thing here?"

She proceeded to give me another generic fantasy description of all those race. The kind of description you can find in modern fantasy media. Which nicely leads to the next question.

"How old is you world? and how old are the various races I just asked about?" Again, Faidea was the one to answer.

"Depends on which scholar you ask, most agree it is somewhere between 7000 and 40000 years. As far as I know, all the various races existed in this world from the start."

An awkward moment of silence stretched between us as I contemplated. It was finally broken by a question from her.

"Do those match descriptions match the stories in your world?"

I nodded in affirmation, she continued with an excited tone.

"Are those old stories from your folklore or..."

"Aaaghh. Please don't go there. I have read enough urban fantasy novels and I know where this crappy trope is going. No, we don't have elves and goblins and what not roaming around our world in the past and we definitely don't have them hiding among us now. The probability of such creatures existing in our world in past, being vaguely recorded in our folklore and somehow never leaving any other trace of their existence afterwards is basically zero. More importantly everything you have just described pertains to modern fantasy media that is not even a thousand years old. If the elves you speak of were some long lost sister species of Earth's humans or some such they wouldn't sound like something straight out of a 21th century high fantasy novel."

After I finished my rant the two looked at each other for a brief moment before looking back with Situlo tilting his head in that eerie, dog like manner. The two answered in unison.

"What?"

"Never mind we have more important matters to discuss." I mentally shifted more of my probability mass towards the simulation hypothesis as it was the only thing that matched what I just heard. That is conditioning on them not lying. Their are very few ways in which a planet would end up looking like this that aren't just 'this is all fake and we are messing with you'.

"What about the guards? What are they exactly?"

Faidea was about to speak when she visibly hesitated. I urged her to speak and she relented.

"They are vampires."

"Vampires? Like the bloods sucking, garlic hating ,sun fearing vampires?"

"I wouldn't put it that way but yes, those vampires."

I didn't know all that much about vampires lore but there were a couple of things I wanted to check, just to see how far magic can screw with physics.

"Do they have a reflection in the mirror?"

"Yes."

Well that is a big hit to the simulation hypotheses. Making someone not have a reflection in the mirror is trivially easy to do in a simulation. On the other hand there is basically no simple alteration to baseline Earth physics that would have the same effect. Add that to the fact that this universe has so far been following fantasy trope logic this evidence swings more in favor of this world being some kind of alternate Earth.

"Can they turn into bats?"

"Yes."

"Like, tiny bat with a fraction of the original mass and an entirely different nervous system?"

Faidea looked exacerbated before saying something to one of the vampires. He outstretched one hand with the palm facing up, with a chant and hand sign with the other a smoky fire appeared over it. Once there was enough smoke he formed a wall with it facing the sun and transformed himself, and all his clothes and equipment into an ordinary looking bat.

If this isn't some kind of an illusion or trick then I just witnessed a vampire breaking more physics in 10 seconds then the average anime fight scene does in an episode.

If I haven't just seen a half dog half human boy do something slightly less nonsensical then this I may have just started laughing hysterically. Now all I can mange was a sad, short giggle.

There wasn't a point in following this line of thinking anymore, not until I get my hands on the magical equivalent of a physics text book. Ignoring Situlo's and Faidea's worried looks, I moved on to the next stop, the tiara.

My main hypothesis is that they were some kind of translation aid or transcription device and that the nun and the boy just knew English. There is of course the chance that it actually was some kind of magic translator that lets you speak and understand other languages.

But a magic translation device that can modify your brain into being able to speak and understand a language that you never knew has some very worrying implications. Implications I am trying very carefully to avoid thinking about or now. I began collecting some independent data points, just in case they tried lying about it's function afterwards.

I asked him questions in the few languages that I knew well enough to ask in. Which weren't many since I wasn't the 'speaks a dozen languages' type of smart, but I had more then one.

The boy replied in a slurred accent that was no better then mine. I was still able to understand his answers though, a very worrying sign.

I was checking if he plucking the language from my head. If his language understanding was no better then mine then this evidence in favor of that, but I needed more data points. I had plenty of foreign words from languages that I don't knew will enough to speak thinks to my hobbies. The problem was that I can't actually ask basic questions in most of them. This however doesn't mean I can't tell when someone is speaking said language.

"Were going to play a little game. I am going to say a word in a language from my world and you are going to tell me what the word means, in detail, in that language. Understood?"

Before Situlo could answer, Faidea interjected.

"I don't see the point of all this, If you need to know something about our equipment then just ask."

"No" I replied. A good rule of thumb for adversarial questioning is to obscure your intent with your questions as to not let your opponent know when or how to lie. A good example of this is a cop wanting to know if a suspect was at a certain location at a certain time. Asking them directly would make it far to easy for the suspect to construct a coherent lie, asking probing questions around the thing you want to know on the other hand would keep your opponent guessing what you know and when and how to lie, it might even make them slip up.

"You want my cooperation or not? If yes then you will tolerate my method."

She looked like she was about to argue for a second but she closed her mouth abruptly as if realizing something then left me to speak to Situlo.

I ran through a bunch of common words from different languages. While I couldn't fully understand the follow up answers, the intonations and grammatical structure seemed right to me. Their were also a few words that I understood clearly. None of that would be the case if he was some how using my own understanding of a language to translate.

For some reason Situlo's pronunciation was kinda off for some languages while being perfectly accurate for others. His Chinese for example was a mess so bad it made him flush as he tried and failed to speak a coherent sentence. His Arabic on the other hand was near flawless, he even got some of the more difficult phonetic elements right. Now that I am hearing more of Situlo's voice, I noticed that his accent sounded a bit like an Arab native speaker trying to speak English.

I had enough data, time to ask him directly.

"Answer as quickly as you can, What does that tiara do?"

"The 'tiara', is a translation circlet we bought from The same Ferryman that brought you here. It Allows the user to speak the most common languages from your world. It flashes both gems upon a successfully switching to a new language then flashes purple when it recognizes and translates a word and flashes green when it fails to translate."

The explanation so far seemed right but there are still details that I need to Iron out before I continue.

"Do you know how the tiara works mechanistically? If not Then just tell me how does it feel to use." I asked him.

"I don't know, off the top of my head how the translation circlet works. It is probably a circlet with some kind of translation rune engraved on it. As for what it feels like.... ah.... It is hard to explain but it is like I suddenly could tell what a word or a sentence sounds like in a new language. If I don't actively resist it then I find my self speaking that new language when ever I try to say something. I also understand what others are saying in that language"

"Can it translate written words?"

He nodded. Further cementing my worries about this device and making me believe that these guys have no idea how the brain worked. If they did they wouldn't have told me that translation magic is a thing. That is like a country declaring their plans to start a space program, and expecting their neighbors to not worry about spy satalites and ICBMs.

If someone handed me the documentation for a piece of technology that can make someone speak and read a new language they never spoke before in real time, then I have no doubt I would be able to reverse engineer it to create a mind reading device. Mind reading someone is a much simpler, component task of making them speak and read an alien tongue. If you have the tech for the later then you must have the tech for the former.

Mind control isn't really all that far behind from that. The translation device they were wearing isn't just a passive scanner, but an active brain interface that hijacks the language centers of the brain. What is stopping someone from reusing that capability for mind control?

But still, everything I have seen so far was evidence against the 'translation circlet' having some kind of long range mind reading capabilities. It was probably limited to reading the mind of the wearer to unable translation. This doesn't completely rule out mind reading nor mind control on it's on, but this fact combined with the fact that they are trying to get me to cooperate instead of just messing with my head is evidence that they can't.

I was keeping a close eye on everyone present while think about this. If my surface thoughts were being read by one of them then their is a good chance they would show some sort of a reaction.

The guards were stone faced, or at least that is what they look like through their dark hoods. Faidea still had the friendly smile on hers. Situlo looked nervous but his expression didn't change much while I was tracing that line of thought.

I relaxed a little after that. I didn't have many options against Mind readers. If they can read my memories then I have already lost. If they can read all of my surface thoughts then I will have to censor them 24/7 like I was living in a dystopian dictatorship. if they were only reading my inner monologue then I have to avoid verbalizing anything dangerous.

Which is damn near everything since magic is involved. For all I know wiping out a city could be as easy as telekinetically squeezing a mass of hyd....

Nope, don't think of that. Absolutely do NOT think of anything like that.

I also made a mental note to never wear any kind of head gear they give me. Every non-invasive measurement device ever invented had some sort of a range limit, especial ones that have to deal with extremely noisy signal sources like the brain. Which would explain why the translation device looks like a tiara, instead of a ring or staff or neckless or whatever, So any piece of head gear they give me is a potential magitech mind reading helmet.

"What happens when It fails translation? Say when I mentioned biology to you for example."

"It feels like the tiara is reaching out to something that isn't there."

Situlo seems to hesitate a little, glancing at Faidea again before he continued.

"You should ask Priestess Faidea about this, she knows more about spell mechanisms then me."

I turned to Faidea and asked her to explain.

"The translation circlet can not translate a word if the concept the word is pointing at isn't in the users mind. What ever this 'biology' thing is we probably have no direct analog to it in our world."

"That doesn't sound right, biology just means the study of life in general. How do you not have the concept of it in your language?"

She paused for a bit before answering

"We have botany, agriculture, anatomy and something that translates to mana biology and monster biology in your language but the general concept of studying life isn't really a thing in our language."

An idea suddenly dawned on me. biology, Engineering and Science are simple words that encompass a large collection of concepts that were once separate. If so then the same analysis can be done to these words.

"What are the closest concepts you have to Science and Engineering?" This time the tiara flashed purple. Maybe because I explained the concepts to them? I already have a test to see if that's the case but I will handle that later.

"Hard to say. From the way you described it Engineering can apply to many things from architecture to enchanting. Science sounds like a weird mix of natural philosophy and divination."

"Alright here is a more concrete example. Do you have Chemists? how about Alchemists? Astonomers? Astrologers? Do you have the concept of Statistics?"

I got a green flash and a head shake for chemistry, astronomy and statistics, a purple flash and a positive nod for the rest. Not enough data, I need more and I would rather do this quickly.

"Don't bother answering I am going to relay on your tiara's flashes. Electricity, magnetism, voltage, current, resistance, gravity, calculus, germs, steam engines, crop rotation, stainless steel, linear algebra, gunpowder, concrete, Newton's laws of motion."

I have gotten a purple on Electricity, magnetism, resistance, gravity, crop rotation and got green on the rest from Situlo. Faidea was much the same but with a purple flash on gunpowder. This combined with what I saw so far painted a very confusing picture of their tech level. Like, how the hell did they get this far without having the unified concepts of Engineering and Science? how do they know about electricity and magnetism while not knowing current and voltage are a thing? Also do they knew any of Newton's laws of motion? And what is up with gunpowder?

That last part seems very give me an idea.

"I am going to tell you about contraption from my world, we called them 'airplanes'. They giant towers made of lightweight materials that use an alchemical reaction to generate a a jet of flame, which in turn is launched from it's bottom end at high speed creating a reaction force that sends it flying upwards. Can you imagine that in your head?"

The two nodded though Situlo didn't look nearly as excited as I expected. He was tilting his head again in a manner eerily similar to a dog.

"Alright let's test out my hypothesis. Airplane."

This time when I said the word their tiara flashed purple, indicating a successfully translation. A bit disappointing sense this means I can't use the tiara to verify facts or falsify hypotheses.

"I see, so your translation circlet seems to go by your understanding of what a word means, not necessarily what it actually means. Am I correct?"

I glanced between the two to try and read their body language. Situlo's expression didn't change but his ears drooped a little. Faidea on the other hand had a neutral expression that some how looked very disturbing to me. an awkward moment of silence stretched before Faidea spoke up.

"That is correct."

The silence continued, prompting me to speak up again.

"For the record the thing I just described is real, they are called rockets and not airplanes and the use chemistry and not alchamy."

Situlo's ears perked up for a second and his tail wagged a little but his expression remained a mask. I was getting the feeling that I may have broken an unspoken cultural rule. Or maybe they are hiding something?

The awkward silence lasted for way to long before Faidea finally broke it.

"Perhaps you would prefer if we go to a more private place? There is a guest room nearby where we can get you some proper clothes and continue our discussion."

I agreed. My robes remained warm for a lot longer then they should but they were starting to get cold, and the thin air didn't help either.

We walked away from the monastery and towards a two story building in the distance. Situlo offered to give me his shoes and Faidea offered to have one of the vampires carry me. I rejected both and walk on the cobblestone path, gazing at the planetary ring in silence.

I remembered a conversation I had with my dad, the two of us wondering how it would feel like to look up to an alien sky, on an alien world.

Well, now one of us knew. And the other is probably looking for his missing daughter.

Authors notes:-

Hi, to the one or two people who have been following this series. Sorry or the long hiatus but I got horribly sick and then had to deal with some irl stuff. To make matters worst this chapter was exceptionally hard to write since I was trying to write a smart character, which is NOT an easy task.

Worst yet by the time I was done, The chapter was over 60,000 characters long. So I was forced to trim it down. I tried to do so without cutting out any major paragraphs but couldn't get it lower the 41,000. Just above the 40,000

At that point I just gave up and removed and entire section that was written from Situlo's POV. The only important detail in it was related to the books Faidea bought from the Ferryman, but I can just put that in a later chapter. And I believe the readers can guess what I am talking about.

This chapter was my best attempt at answering the question 'what would happen if a very smart science nerd got isekai'ed Into a magic world?'. As a result I had to pay extra attention to the details to avoid making Curie do something too stupid. I also had to make sure that her thoughts follow each other in a coherent manner.

Which is why this chapter was such a nightmare to trim down.

I initially had slightly different plans for this chapter but scrapped those after some feedback from comments on the previous chapter. I wanted this series to have a weekly release schedule but from the looks of it this might not work out, There is just too much detail in each chapter to keep track of.

Please leave any feedback, I am practically starving for those.

thanks for reading, see you next time.