At that news. Lena and Thallion take a step back and head nod reverently. I am still confused, so I do what I do best. Tell the truth.

I shake my head, pull out my work phone and gesture towards the workshop table where the four of us can sit down. The woman agrees and we all sit. Sighing, I place it on the table. At least this one does not hold Wikipedia. I gesture to the woman, who sits to my right, and push the phone towards her. She picks it up as if it were a holy relic that she is not worthy of being in the presence of. I then show her the button on its side. Carefully, I have her put her thumb over the button and press it.

It buzzes, scaring her as she seems to expect it to hurt her. Quickly, curiosity settles over her. She reaches for the translator.

“It’s… It’s working?! H-how?! It’s not taking any from me! But it definitely is magic powered! It’s also still running. In fact it’s becoming more active!”

I shake my head, thinking we have a Clarke conundrum here. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Shutting it down, I grab what can only be described as a spudger, and carefully split the back off the phone, revealing the battery pack and main circuit board, along with the usb daughter board.

“I can see that this is the inside and you are trying to prove something, but either than material, this is still the realms of magicians. Wait! Look at the detail! Look how fine those wires are! The inscriptions are dense. May I?”

After some consideration, I nod apprehensively. She takes the opened phone, grabs a magnifying glass. Her mouth drops in awe.

“The detail here is nested! These wires are not even the smallest, I see holes that dive into the board. This inscription is stacked in 3d! And then there are these black squares. I cannot see more detail, but the number of metal pads around them are dense. And then this big one! There must be hundreds of wires going to it!”

She grabs a pair of tweezers, and starts poking at the main chip. I quickly pull the phone back, and pop out the battery. I then use another pair of tweezers, and short out the 2 contacts, draining all capacitors within.

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The needles in her detection devices max out and some fly off the scale and across the room from doing so. I frown. Is anything here built for durability at all?

She doesn't even notice, even hushing Lena when Lena starts to state how much broke just now.

She is completely engrossed in the phone’s guts. Thallion, seeing what happened, leans over and starts looking too, writing down many notes of what I can only guess are general observations.

He then grabs the battery, looking at it in various orientations, making a rough sketch of it, and then starts poking the terminals of the battery. I look at him apprehensively, and then he touches both contacts together.

A few sparks fly, and he immediately drops the battery back on the table. Luckily the terminals come detached upon impact with the table. Some more testing equipment hands spring off. All their eyes go wide at seeing the sparks fly, and they turn to me.

“You bottled ?! The grandmasters have been trying for eons to do so!” the woman shrieks in excitement. “And you just walk in, casually show it off to me, a nobody, and you cannot even talk to me! Let me be your apprentice! Thallion, I don’t care if he has to go to school, I’ll come just to learn from him. Hell, I’ll let your class tour here again if I have to! Let me learn!”

I stand in shock. How do I explain I did not make this, and if anything, need to be able to communicate before I can literally do anything else!

“I’ll give him language lessons after class given the knowledge and comprehension he has of higher subjects and direct operation of grandmaster level systems. Hopefully his learning of language will be as smooth as his grasp of geometry!” Thallion agrees

“I think we have a more pressing matter at hand though. Given what he knows, and how different he is, isn’t it likely that he is a summon? Or more likely, THE summon? The one the red guards were after?” Lena interjects.

“I am not letting my only chance of learning slip through my fingers. If you blab about this, I’ll no longer supply you with your resources!” the woman replies.

They stop passing the translation stone, so I only get what the woman says now.

“I am serious, this change is enough to overhaul the entire system, and I am not letting this pass me by. By coming here, you pulled me into this, whether you like it or not!”

While they argue, I reflect on what they have been saying, and what and my phone have in common, along with how they interact with the translation stone.

The revelation hits me like snow down the back of the shirt. “Magic is Electricity?!”