"Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you're sick of me by all means go do something else but I'd appreciate having you around. I don't think I want to splurge on real estate but I guess I'll look around and get some sort of place with room for you. Is that going to look weird -?"

"Probably.  Why, does that matter to you?"

"It doesn't especially but if I don't know how it looks I can't, like, interact with people looking at it and know what information they're working with, and if it's really weird it might be too conspicuous."

"People tell me I sometimes have a blind spot about this sort of thing, but I think you can just tell people that you hired me to show you around because you're new to Cowcorn.  Anyone with Distinguished Mental Worlds Lv. 1 will keep separate track of the possibility that you're lying for the obvious reason, lying for a nonobvious reason, or telling the truth, and anybody else will jump to a conclusion.  I'd guess it would be the kind of thing that people remember, but not big news?"  Haroun's mind catches up with the rest of him.  "Except that, er... I sort of would like to have something to tell people that isn't a lie.  I guess it's not a lie that I am your guide in Cowcorn, we're not boinking, and we met when you rescued me from bandits and this led to some complicated other things we're not talking about.  If it's okay to tell people that?"

"Fine by me."

"Other questions?"

"Will I be able to audit classes?"

"Mm... it'd be nice to have Magister Sting sign off on that or at least a Professor.  Wait, what am I thinking?  Unless I'm wrong about what they pay for orichalcum or you have other unexpected expenses, you can afford classes.  And if you show up looking rich enough, people are much less likely to question you for hanging around.  Though I don't actually have a good concept of how much money it takes to look rich, if you're optimizing only for that."

"...I could go to a clothing store where everything gives you sticker shock*," she says, "and find a pushy salesperson and let them push?"

*lit "a crying purse"

"That'll just get you expensive stuff, I think?  We want stuff that looks expensive.  I guess it might end up being the same thing if that's how the 『Signaling Equilibrium』 works out.  But I don't know that for sure and I don't have a high-class 『Bargaining』(*) Skill... maybe don't spend too much the first time out, or in just one store."

(*) Lit『Division of Gains From Trade』.

"Okay. I wasn't thinking about enrolling formally because in my world you can't arbitrarily mix and match classes like that? Is that different here?"

"Um... you can buy either particular classes, or the buffet pass?  I'd advise the latter if you can afford it?  Though if you want to be one of the Upgraded students in a class who get particular attention and monitoring from the Professor, you need to pay the Upgrade fee for that class and get the Professor's agreement - there's no such thing as an Upgraded buffet pass."

"Buffet pass, gosh. Okay. - ohhhhh you don't have the whole credentialism thing because you can just put a drop of blood in a thing and it's super obvious what you learned."

"Yeah, how does that work where you're from?  No, sorry, I should be focusing on answering your Cowcorn-related questions before we get there."

"I have never been to college anyway so I don't know the details of the educational level at which you get more than very minor control over your class schedule. Uh, hm, how do people tend to pick schools - like, what makes it obvious that a school will be effective at teaching whatever you want to know -"

"Uh... right, got to state all the things that of course everybody already knows.  Nobody gets to be a Professor at Cowcorn unless they've maxed out all the Skills in the basic Teacher Class.  They've all got tier-2 skills, and some of them have maxed those out and gotten tier-3 Teaching Skills, which is one of the requirements to be a Magister.  Another requirement is that you have to be able to raise the Skills of your students quickly."  Haroun's voice takes on an awed tone.  "Magister Sting charges roughly nothing for Upgrades except to very rich students, but she's... the orichalcum guildplate SS-rank version of a Professor.  She has tier 4 Teaching Skills.  I took a math class from her once and learned all of the basic Inverse Probability Skills in two hours.  Cost me twenty copper for the Upgrade.  If she moved to the capital of a major country and charged what the market would bear, she could get paid in mithril."

"Gosh, okay, yeah, I should have thought of that, you can just also make the teachers produce all their - wow. - How does the whole Skills thing interact with, like, interpersonal rapport, does it just cover modifying one's approach per student as part of the skill? I've had teachers who were really good with some kids and didn't get anywhere with others and that's somewhat correlated with but not completely predicted by which kids bother trying in general."

"I wasn't speccing myself to become a teaching professor, but, uh, I mean, obviously all those quantities interact?  Goodness of teacher times talent of student times compatibility coefficient or something like that - though I'm speaking metaphorically, the second two quantities aren't ones we can measure.  I learned a lot from Professor Nightstar really quickly, but not all of his students learn that fast from him, and I don't learn as fast from other Professors.  And, not to brag or anything, but other students have been known to take whole days to learn subjects from Magister Sting."

"Aha. Still, sounds like less of a mess than what we have to deal with to get anybody to know anything."

"Did you learn anything useful that our civilization ought to imitate?  For sorting things out when nothing is measurable, I mean?  Or is it just a giant mess?"  Haroun has now forgotten his sad, brief attempt at having priorities.

And so they arrive at Cowcorn.

This is a city proper, much larger than Relis.  It has concentric circles of walls where the city outgrew itself again, and again, and again.  Permanent structures are already sprouting like weeds and spreading like ivy around the latest boundary of spell-raised stony bulwarks.  Buildings look gleaming-sparkling-shining clean, not just non-dirty.  If Bella wasn't from Earth, she might be impressed.  There's even a murmuring city noise in the background, not as loud as an Earth city of course, but clearly audible from some distance off.  From the center of the city rise academic towers white as polished bone, thin curved buildings like tusks rising towards heaven, deliberately taller than the city walls were allowed to be.  (Don't worry, the stairs are enchanted with pseudo-lower-gravity and won't be too awful to climb.)

Haroun's student medallion commands more respect than Bella's guildplate, here, but both command sufficient respect to let their carriage pass after a brief search and a few raised eyebrows for all the bloodstains in back.

There's a huge Adventurer's Guild building close by the city gates, bustling enough that there's people and horses and conveyances constantly arriving.  It's a busy time of day with many Adventurers returning from missions, and Haroun and Bella will have to wait a minute or three before somebody arrives to valet their carriage.  Bella gets her first look at an enchanted hover-carriage, gleaming in platinum decorations and with brilliantly blue-glowing repulsors on its underside; the conveyance of a Duke's offspring at least, if not higher.

She is in fact impressed by the hover-carriage and gives it a longish stare that is hopefully possible to write off as her being a hick. And the architecture is pretty, and different, even if it isn't as tall as downtown Phoenix. She does sort of wonder when exactly walls prove necessary in the course of municipal defense - she has no idea what warfare looks like with magic - maybe they're mostly convenient scaffolding for defensive spells? Can the offensive spells not just arc through the air artillery style? Maybe the walls are anchors for dome shaped spells.

She waits patiently to turn in the orichalcum plate.

Haroun stops first to deliver all the letters that Marussa and Aralin were couriering on-the-side to Cowcorn - those are heavy to carry around.  (And so their last mission is completed.)

Asking where to turn in the accidentally discovered guildplate of a high-ranked adventurer gets them directed to a desk on floor nine of the building, which will be Bella's first chance to experience half-gravity stairs.  In her current state of dexterity, navigating them is so easy that she doesn't even notice when she gets the Low-G Maneuvering Skill.

And then they're at the desk on floor nine, facing a solemn-looking man in leather armor forged from the skin of black wyrms, looking very mournful and solemn in it.  At least until Bella places an orichalcum guildplate on his desk.

He picks it up.  Stares at it.  Turns it over several times in his hands.  He tries an enchanted device on it and frowns when nothing happens.  He summons a runner and sends for somebody who has the Skills necessary to determine whether this plate is actually orichalcum.  "Where under the skies did you find this?" he says to Bella.

"The ground? Near a stream. I don't know what it was doing there exactly."

"What stream where?"