It is fun! Not very well-written, rather old, and all handwritten—they don't have the printing press yet and all mass-produced books were done so magically—but fun.

She grew up reading unprinted books when she read at all. Only modern textbooks and stuff are pressed.

It's a good read.

Eventually: "I think we should perhaps go eat something."

"Mm. Let me finish this page then sure, where ever you like."

"Sure."

Page done, book re-shelved, "C'mon Vasil."

Off they go to eat. As they walk more deeply into the village, the thing Kaede mentioned about this being on the prettier side of settlements starts becoming apparent: a couple of hanging gardens here and there, art pieces on walls, the cobblestone becomes—not more regular, but it flows, there's a sense of purpose to it.

"—you know, it's just occurred to me that I never actually finished explaining everything about magic."

"Oh, do tell? Also - got another idea of science, I'll tell you after you explain."

She looks around to check that no one's paying attention, then decides to switch to just telepathy anyway. Metamancers can let elementalists recharge their blessings' mana even when they're switched out. So I'm wondering if I couldn't do anything to raise your daily mana cap, somehow.

...That would be - extremely good. But be careful about it for Christ's sake.

Yeah, of course, won't do it until I'm very certain.

"Anyway, what were you gonna say?"

"Printing press! Stamps the size of book pages, or hundreds of letter sized ones arranged on rails, and you can make thousands of copies of a book much faster than hand writing them all."

"—not using magic at all, ooooh."

"Yup. They're... Well, they're what lets the UDF refugee schools exist. More people read than ever, reading is like a critical skill in the post-Neuroi world of tech."

"That sounds amazing useful."

"This unit can copy and write books very fast," Vasil pipes up.

"And that'll be handy, especially for books we want two copies of and not two thousand, but we're also talking about doing it without consuming mana."

The golem's silent.

"Useful. Oh and by the way those books I got mentioned some people with some similar ideas to the ones you've said but it didn't have details on them."

"Guess we'll have to look them up later."

"Yeah."

The city gets prettier and prettier as they walk, with the occasional statue decorating the streets—Vasil looks at them with what might be its own expressionless brand of longing—as well as small fountains and pieces of artwork everywhere. Every fifth piece is magical somehow, floating or glowing or swirling or moving, but they all seem to be strictly decorative.

"You guys can make all sorts of artifacts and here they're used for decoration. I mean, it's pretty. Really pretty. But magic decorations. Geeze."

"Oh yeah, people do this kinda thing everywhere here. It's usually a few people selling their services, some other artist comes up with a design, makes it, and pays the enchanter to make it come to life."

"I'm kind of being a hypocrite. But it just really hit me how differently you treat magic here..."