"I don't know how you did that but I'm still pretty sure it wasn't magic."

"Wanna go watch people fight demons?"

"I had a concussion last time but I remember swords."

"The fighters use swords and the wizards cast fireballs or blind people or whatever but they mostly save them for when they'll do the most, since you can do swords all day and you can't do fireballs all day."

This is all extremely imaginary and he has no idea what the point is! Are... Numerians with high tech... infiltrating the superstitious barbarians... with technology they're passing off as magic... to keep the demon population down, or spy on people or...

She Detects Thoughts when he doesn't say anything but it's not very illustrative. "Is there something that would convince you that there was magic."

"I never really thought about that before."

"I guess you can be skeptical about magic if you want to. How do people sail their space ships without magic?"

Uhhh what's common knowledge that it won't be a huge betrayal to say. "They need a lot of electrical generation capacity, same as what charges the gun, and in-system propulsion is different from what jumps between stars -" And he can explain in the loosest possible terms what the deal is there.

"Electrical generation? Do you know how that works?"

"There are a lot of ways to do it. I don't know how to build a modern reactor from scratch."

"Well. Maybe the crown will fund an expedition to Ibyabek to learn."

"How would you get there without a ship?"

Sigh. "With magic."

Well, he got here somehow. He has no idea how though.

"Are there things your world has invented that mine has not that you do know from scratch? Even if they're things that are trivial to your people they might be very impressive here."

"I... know how to make bricks?"

"That one I think we know."

"Modern technology is more complicated than bricks."

"Cheliax is the greatest country in the world and we have the most people in - jobs that require you to be very smart - and if anyone can figure it out I bet we can."

"I'm not an engineer, though." And even if he were he wouldn't go around telling strange planets beholden to alien genetic engineers how to build spaceships.

"What do engineers study?"

"...engineering. Physics and materials science, I suppose."

And probably he wasn't tracked for those. "Okay. I guess we can put it together ourselves, or go there and see it and learn from your people."

"I would appreciate the ride home if the... magic... works that way." Assuming being ?drugged? by aliens isn't the sort of thing you have to go to the hospital about but it's never come up and there's no sense borrowing trouble expecting it.