As Adam walked along with Seren, she pulled out a dark gray compass. The compass looked simple enough, but the direction it was pointing in kept changing. Seren would also walk in a different direction when the compass did this.
Adam was immediately curious at the mechanism and purpose of the compass and asked her to explain.
"The Northwestern grasslands act as a buffer state between Britain and the Fae's territories. It looks quite peaceful but is really a no man's land that has experienced countless terrible battles in the past. The scars of those battles coupled with the opposing, unpurified energy ripples interfering with each other have caused this area to become horribly enchanted."
"It is not healthy for any species to stay here for prolonged periods of time, oh do not worry, a few days is unlikely to cause any effects."
Seren explained patiently to Adam as he continued starring attentively at the compass.
"Another effect of this area is that it heavily disorients anybody in its vicinity. Your sense of direction is nearly eradicated without you even being aware of it, many unsuspecting travelers have died here before after walking in circles for weeks."
Adam was intrigued, and asked "so is that a magical device that is able to counteract this distortion of direction?"
Seren stopped walking and looked at Adam with a look of disbelief.
"No silly. This is a compass. These grasslands only cause you to lose your direction, it does not actually alter the spacetime in this area. That would be an S level threat at the very least, and the Royal Military would have completely locked down the area."
"You just need something pointing in a consistent direction to escape this area."
Adam nodded attentively. Such was academic research, even if you start with something small and specific, you will gradually be hinted at with further pieces of information that you did not intentionally search for, this slowly completes the puzzle. Like currently, by asking about the purpose of her compass, he had indirectly obtained a fair amount of information about this world's geography, political institutions, and power levels.
Seren also had some questions.
"So, how did someone of the East end up here?"
"I genuinely don't know, I remember being attacked by a political extremist, after that I woke up in that forest. It was already almost nighttime when I arrived. I spent the night cultivating and started exploring afterwards. Then I met you." Adam replied.
Seren thought about that for a moment.
"You may have some lost memories, there are a few possibilities for how you arrived here, but baseless conjecture is meaningless for now. Regardless, you are incredibly lucky to be alive if you truly spent an entire night in their forest…"
Adam was also beginning to feel slightly terrified at the prospect of what could have happened during his first night in the world. According to Seren these Fae sounded quite dangerous.
"Perhaps they have never seen a cultivator before, and were wary to approach me because of my unfamiliar energy?" Adam hypothesized.
"You probably just got lucky and none of them found you for the whole night since you were sitting motionless at the edge."
The duo chatted a bit more as they walked. Some of it was just merry banter, the rest consisted mostly of Adam inquiring about this world from Seren.
Great Britain in this world was a semi-constitutional Monarchy, with parliamentary aspects to its government while the royalty still retained a sizable amount of power. The country had about four billion people, and covered a land mass of about 14 million kilometers squared. The current head of the monarchy in Britain was Queen Victoria, a relatively newly crowned leader of age 35.
According to Seren's descriptions, Adam could tell she greatly respected and almost idolized her queen. She continuously praised her governing competency, talent in the holy arts, and daring political decisions. Adam wasn't sure if this was the result of some sort of indoctrination wave or if she was just a nationalist at heart.
After letting Seren ramble on a little bit about her queen's aspirations to transform the British Navy into the world's finest, capable of dominating the Romans at sea… Adam interrupted to inquire a bit more about the Eastern world.
"Oh," Seren looked a little embarrassed, as if her enthusiasm was unmannerly.
"I don't know much about the Eastern world, it is so far away from here. But if you really have lost your memories I guess my limited knowledge would help."
"The East is a very different world from here culturally and linguistically. They do not practice holy arts, but instead improve themselves through "cultivation," although I suspect you know more about that than me."
"The powers there consist of several small kingdoms. But the true power of the East comes almost entirely from an Empire in the center of all those kingdoms. This region has many names, we simply refer to them as the Central Empire to avoid confusion when conversing with other cultures. Their population surpasses several hundred billion, and their country's land mass is in the hundreds of millions in square kilometers. There are also numerous incredibly powerful beings there. Besides little bits of trade with them we rarely come into contact."
This was all wonderful information to Adam, who loved geopolitics and research. So what if he was transferred to another world? An ambitious person will always want to play on the big stage eventually, and Adam wanted to understand every intricacy about this world to ensure that his dance in it will achieve maximum magnificence!
Currently one thing was certain. From information about the two states mentioned along with their landmasses and population, Adam extrapolated that this planet/world was significantly larger than his own. If China and Britain's relative strength in this world was similar to that in his own, then this world should be around 60 times bigger than Earth.
"Say, Seren, who are the most powerful people in this world?" Adam purposely left ambiguity in his question to simultaneously probe the political and more literal answer to that question.
"Hmm, I do not know. The queen and the admiral are very powerful beings, the leader of the Romans, Caesar, and the Emperor of the Central Empire are legendary figures… however my rank as a Gold-class knight is too low to have knowledge about power on that level." Seren shook her head.
That made sense, Adam was still in the early foundation establishment stage, which to recall is literally the early, early phase of the Qi Condensation realm. Although he used a completely broken technique for building this cultivation, it was still a fact that him being such a low leveled cultivator and having almost zero fighting experience could hold his own against Seren. Hinting that a Gold-class knight was either a very low rank or the West was just not very powerful. Considering that Adam was an epic IB student with international mindedness, he chose to believe in the former.
They continued their conversation for about twenty more minutes before arriving at human construction.
"This is Abbotsham Town that I was talking about. I have been staying here while conducting my investigation." Seren explained.
"I've already talked to most of the people here, and I've also done some independent investigation. There's nothing suspicious about the place."
Adam thought about this for a moment and then asked.
"Wait, you claim that you're here to investigate strange Fae activities in this area, but from your descriptions they seem like an extremely dangerous group and no offence, but you don't seem powerful enough to take on a large amount of armed and trained combatants based on your fight with me. How come you were exploring the grasslands by yourself?"
Seren blushed a little and looked inventively at Adam, surprised at the young man's keenness.
"Yes, patrolling the grasslands was reckless and not part of my original mission, it's just that I came all the way here and I really don't want to return empty handed. I was hoping by uncovering a Fae conspiracy that perhaps I could be one step closer to achieving the Platinum class…"
Seren sounded strangely dispirited when mentioning the last part. Adam understood there was probably a good reason a disciplined and intelligent knight wanted to climb her ranks so desperately, and decided right there not to press her further as well as keeping her exploration of the grasslands a secret.
…
It was a sizable town, Adam guessed with some quick approximations in his head that there should have been several hundred inhabitants here.
It was a lively place. There were shops, restaurants and other utilities along both sides of the main streets. The place's architecture had a Scottish touch to it while still having enough differences to remind Adam that this was a new world.
Its inhabitants mostly just looked like Adam's white friends, an Anglo-Saxon-esque ethnicity, with certain exceptions of northern and western European faces here and there. This entirely human composition slightly disappointed Adam who was half-expecting catgirls in this fantasy world…
Adam looked around the fascinating shops with all their strange and foreign products. Although he did not buy anything because he didn't possess any money from this world, and Adam would never borrow from someone he just met.
After strolling for a while longer, Adam realized that there were necessities he still had to attend to, namely food and shelter. He inquired Seren about these expenses.
"Oh, if you want to eat at a restaurant, the pricing is generally about two to three silver pieces. The Inn that I stay at still has some spare rooms if you don't mind a minimalistic residence, a night there is three silver pieces."
Before Seren could even make the offer to lend Adam some money, he had already begun his big brain IB plays.
Adam immediately took out his phone and disassembled it with his Qi energy, after which he began meticulously separating the device into individual elements. Because of his low cultivation, Adam was sure that even with elevated senses he would still be incapable of having considerable precision when working with atoms, he could only expect about 70% purity for his products, but he suspected that was good enough for this small border town in a civilization that had medieval, or at most renaissance level science.
After separating the elements and solidifying them into neat little blocks on his hands. He rushed over to the nearest alchemist. Being a codeforces legendary grandmaster programmer, Adam was perfectly capable of memorizing long and disorderly directions in a foreign environment, he had already perfectly mapped the portions of the town that he had walked through with Seren.
"Hey, mister! I would like to sell some materials. Yes, right here! I have copper, silver, gold, lithium, cobalt, aluminum, silicon, potassium…"
The old shopkeeper stared back initially with some confusion, but once he laid eyes on the elements Adam was trying to sell his expression immediately changed.
"Oh yes, ya little laddie! Dis er sum fine metals ma boy! I really lika da silvary ones! Tell yer what lad, I give you ten silva peecies four these!"
After a merry exchange between intellectuals, Adam happily returned with twelve silver pieces.
Seren looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or sigh, "you truly have a diverse set of skills."
They continued after that, Adam first used five silver pieces to by himself a brown coat at a nearby shop to replace the jacket he had been wearing that had its sleeves brutalized by Seren's attacks. During this process Adam was surprised to see that the wounds on the back of his forearm had almost entirely healed, there where only small white marks left where Seren's
After that they had a fine meal of an interesting meat dish with a sweet gravy, paired with potatoes and some interesting vegetables that looked vaguely like tomatoes to Adam.
"Hey Seren, what is this meat? It's genuinely very good." Adam casually asked after swallowing a bite of food because he wasn't a monster that chewed with his mouth open.
Seren took it even further, she took a sip of water and wiped her mouth before answering. "Oh, this is sweet honey roast duck, it's a specialty here. Those birds are everywhere around these areas." After which Seren promptly pointed up right as two ducks flew by overheard.
After finishing their meal, Seren advised Adam to continue familiarizing himself with the place independently, as she still had some work to do. Adam nodded as they parted ways for now.
After some further exploring, Adam discovered an interesting little market advertising a variety of different books, what really intrigued Adam was that some of these books had numbers on them.
As Adam approached the shop he discovered that the front desk was currently quite crowded. A diverse group of adults and children alike were crowding around a middle aged man with an annoyed expression, who must have been the shop owner.
Once he edged closer, Adam's elevated hearing could pick up their conversation.
"Wat kinda question is that eh, old mun! Just drinka da wota or buy a new glass!"
"It's a very simple question… why I even bother? All I'm doing here is trying to spread the wonders of number studies, yet you numbskulls refuse ta even try me question!"
Another large burly man bellowed, "Well yer question is stupid ol'man, now ye giving da free stuff er not?!"
The shop owner replied angrily, "it's not stupid, it's simple logic problem I make to attract smart kids who I can pass on me knowledge to. You have three jugs of 8, 5, 3 litre capacity, you start with full 8 litres jug and other two empty. All I'm asking is for you to split the eight litres evenly among two jugs. If you find the solution I will give a free book from my store. That was what I said!"
A round of laughter erupted from the stall.
"Completely pointless question!"
"Impossiber question to at-ract custermers eh? HAHA nice try ol'man!"
Some of the crowd kept sneering stupidly. Others gave responses that they believed were witty but were in actuality just stupid. While the rest were thinking hard for a solution but obviously could not come up with one.
Suddenly, a different tone spoke up from behind the crowd.
"I'm assuming that barycentric plots are not common knowledge within this world. In which case your question is exceptionally stupid as it has no mathematical relevancy."
The crowd's chatter seemed to die down a little as this strange statement made its place, coupled along with a 17-year old youth that pushed aside several large muscular men seemingly effortlessly to get to the front.
"Oh," the shopkeeper looked a little interested, "do you have a solution to my problem?"
Adam only continued, "so the purpose of you doing whatever here is not conductive to the mathematical research of this world. In fact it's counterproductive."
"Let's imagine what's going to happen here if I didn't arrive, some kid with a half-decent short term memory and is willing to guess and check will eventually get to the answer you want."
"And then you'll praise him publicly and inflate his ego despite him not having put in any of the rigor or effort to deserve the praise of being someone with mathematical talent."
"And then the kid will become an incredibly egotistical asshat that will brag, or more accurately, fantasize about being a genius to his peers. He will get bullied for that, but at that point this will only reinforce his ridiculous fantasy of being some misunderstood and oppressed intelligentsia minority."
"What you will end up creating is diluting the little academic talent in this town by encouraging elitism, and as a natural social result, anti-intellectualism from people who despise the snobbish attitude of these pseudo-intellectuals and associate their behavior with all academics."
"In the end you will have a society where all social outcasts will flock to a cult like pseudo-intellectual and egotistical group where minimal actual academic progress is made, while the remaining population increasingly embraces conservative values and rejects scientific progress. This isolation and misrepresentation of science will become a culture of anti-intellectualism, which will become a tradition. Over time this will spread throughout your entire country and turn it into a backwards sh*thole that will only wake up when some other imperialist state starts knocking on your doorstep with far superior technology and weaponry to shove drugs down your throat."
…
The shopkeeper stared blankly for a moment, but then smiled and replied "well lad, that's a fine story you have, but can you solve me probl-"
"[8,0,0] → [3,5,0] → [3,2,3] → [6,2,0] → [6,0,2] → [1,5,2] → [1,4,3] → [4,4,0], it's not f*cking difficult. You can solve it in two seconds with vectors and a three dimensional plot, and the problem is so infantilely simple with only three variables that are directly related, that you could solve this by guessing and checking in at most a few minutes if you are willing to put in the time."
At this point, everyone around the stall and the shopkeeper were speechless, and just stared back at the fuming young man with an insane passion in his eyes.
"Holy sh*t, I actually hate people like you so much. You're so insecure that you desperately want to create some elitist society with you at the top. And you're willing to curb the entire next generation of actual technological progress just for your fragile individual pleasure."
"All while being a pseudo-intellectual r*****. I bet you have never done a single rigorous mathematical proof in your life."
At this point Adam slammed his hands on the market stand's hardwood table, which cracked severely around his palms and nearly completely shattered from his foundation establishment level strength.
"You know what? Give me all your mathematical, or as you call them, "number studies," books, yes, put them all right here. I'm going to f*cking check through every single of these pages, and if I find more than 100 mistakes in total I will end you and your entire family up to four generations…"