"What do you think?" Illianna showed a small cylindrical object that fit in the palm of her hand to Sian.
Picking up the object, he examined it carefully.
"What's this?"
As someone experienced, Sian had seen many things, but this object was something new to him. It looked like a lighter, but it was still different from a normal lighter; he couldn't feel any mana stones inside.
"It's a lighter that doesn't use magic," Illianna replied.
Taking the lighter from Sian's hands, she pressed her thumb on the lid, causing it to lift as it made sparks appear, and soon, a small flame appeared.
"That's impressive," Sian muttered without taking his eyes off the small tool in Illianna's hands. "I've never seen a lighter that worked without magic."
"That's a fairly common thing where I come from."
Using her thumb again, she lowered the lid, extinguishing the small flame.
Since the street was quite busy in the morning, Illianna preferred not to make it explicit, but Sian knew that the place she was referring to was her previous world.
"There are a few things that make me curious about this world," she muttered. "Considering the amount of years that races of high intellect have been around, why the technology doesn't develop?"
"Doesn't develop?" Sian got confused, and just as he was about to continue, a pleasant smell entered his nostrils.
Grabbing Illianna by her arm, he dragged her to the next street, where the fairs usually took place. Once there, Sian was impressed. There were so many more stalls than usual that the street seemed narrower.
The place looked completely different from before, even the people looked better dressed than usual.
Navigating through the crowd of people as he dragged Illianna along, Sian noticed that the food stalls that were previously not open in the morning were now spread out all over the place.
Everywhere they looked, they could see vendors shouting vividly, trying to attract customers.
"Even if it's not much compared to a big city, it's still a lot compared to a few days ago." Sian said.
"That's probably Charlotte's doing," Illianna looked around before continuing, "she must have started with her plan to turn this town into a commercial center."
As Illianna had said, Sian also believed that this was Charlotte's doing. The number of merchants passing through town had increased in the last few days, and the same goes to the peasants that were already working in the fields and preparing the soil for planting.
"If you have nothing else to do, let's go back," Illianna said.
The reason they were there when he had work to do was because they had gone to pay a visit to the mayor. Illianna wanted to rent a space on the town's notice board to use as a form of advertising, in order to attract more customers to the hotel.
Ignoring her words, Sian moved toward his goal as he dragged her to a small stall that was in better condition than its peers. Behind the counter, a bald middle-aged man was fanning the wood with a fan while roasting skewers of meat.
"Hey!" Sian called out. "What's that meat from?"
Seeing his prospective customers, the man cracked a friendly smile. "It's a Thorny python."
Intending to visit the place later to hunt down the possessor of a meat that smelled so appetizing, Sian asked where the monster had been hunted. But according to the merchant, he was just lucky to find it on the road. Which was strange, since Thorny python was a monster that usually stayed in lakes in forests.
Since Sian was almost drooling from the pleasant smell, he bought all the available meat skewers.
***
"Hmm, that was false advertising." Sian said as he finished devouring a skewer of meat. "How could I say it, despite the good smell, it's not that tasty. The meat is a bit rubbery and lacks seasoning."
"You are very picky." Illianna nibbled gracefully on the piece of meat. "I think it's fine for street food."
"It's good because the meat itself is good, but it could be better if it were seasoned well and roasted properly."
"That doesn't matter, let's go back to the subject of before. Why hasn't science and technology advanced even after 100,000 years?" Illianna looked at him with a confused expression. "Where I came from, that would be enough time for countless inventions to emerge. Even exploring the ocean depths, colonizing Mars and the moon would have happened by now, but still..."
Illianna gestured with her hands, causing Sian to look at the houses on the clay street they were passing. Many of the houses were made of clay, even if you considered the entire town, it was hard to see a house made of a different material.
Only a few small houses made of stone or wood could be found in the vicinity of the mayor's house. On the outskirts of town, the houses only got worse.
"A great part of all the houses in this town are made of dry branches of plants reinforced with clay. For the amount of time that has passed, people should have developed much better materials by now to erect the buildings."
"I don't understand what you are trying to say." Sian cast a look of confusion at her. "There are mages who can make and reinforce constructions."
"But that involves magic, something that only the rich have access to," she explained. "What I'm getting at is that there are no useful tools and inventions that don't involve magic and are accessible to lower-class people."
"Oh, I see what you mean." Sian nodded. "According to what I learned when I still was in the orphanage, that's kind of taboo for the church."
"The holy church?" Illianna was surprised. "Why?!"
"How can you not know something so simple?" Sian stared at her. "The church says that miraculous inventions that don't use magic go against the principle of magic granted by the gods."
"In other words, the church wants to prevent people from having a comfortable life while keeping them in misery so they will always pray to the Gods for better times?" Illianna inquired.
"Well, I honestly don't know." Sian shrugged. "It's just a rumor, but I heard that was the idea of one of the combatants. Apparently, he said that the advancement of technology and science without the involvement of magic would make people lose faith in the Gods."
"Are you sure about that?" She asked.
"No, that's why I said it was a rumor. To be fair, I have never heard of the church openly suppressing the advancement of technology without the use of magic. All I know are rumors and assumptions that are out there. They say that people who researched very deeply ended up dying or disappearing."
"If true, that would be like a witch hunt, but with the reasons reversed." Illianna sighed. "In this case, I think we'll have problems if we keep all the tools I've prepared for the hotel."
"I believe everything is fine," Sian replied nonchalantly. "Everything was made with magic and needs magic to work."
Among the magic tools Illianna created for the hotel, all needed magic to operate. Moreover, most of them already existed, if one difference had to be mentioned it was that the ones she created were more efficient.
Although the solar plate that transforms the sun's rays into magic is something innovative, Sian did not believe it was a big deal. Initially, Illianna intended to create this plate to decrease the consumption of the hotel's magic stones, but they turned out to have a low efficiency.
"Out of curiosity, have you ever had any conflicts with the church?" Illianna asked.
"Just a few minor disagreements, but nothing serious."
"Since they have roots all over the world, I believe they already know that you have this hotel. So let's put paintings of the seven main gods just to keep up appearances and show our devotion to them."
***
Back at the hotel, Sian was immediately greeted by Emily who grabbed one of his legs.
"Good morning, my little princess!" Holding her in his arms, Sian kissed her fluffy cheeks, "I have good news for you."
"What is it?" she jumped energetically in his arms.
"Your condition is already good, so starting today, we will start training magic."
"Can I get as strong as Daddy?" She asked with shinning eyes.
"Of course, my little princess is going to be the strongest little girl in the world." He squeezed her cheek. "But before that, let's have breakfast and then we'll go to the training center."
After the breakfast, while Illianna went to finalize some small things, Sian took Emily to the training center.
Going to the plot of land given to him by Charlotte, Sian met the children of the orphanage. Even though they were initially afraid of Sian, that fear soon disappeared with Emily's help. Tempted by the power, they accepted Sian's offer and started coming to train with him daily.
At first, the training center was just an empty space where Sian put the children to fight the golems. But having witnessed the scene, Illianna came up with an opportunity to make money. Then the small training center quickly became a huge building.
According to Illianna, this would be the place where people in the future would pay to train and exercise their bodies.
Even if Sian was skeptical about it, Illianna believed it would be a success because of the golems he made. It was possible to adjust their power level, which enabled training that would push people's bodies to the limit as if they were in a strenuous life-and-death struggle, but without the risks of death.
Facing the 16 children in the orphanage, 17 if that included Tina, Sian took an upright stance like an army commander and shouted.
"Enough of lazing around, it's time to get started!"