Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1793.12.13]

Zeph’s plan to compare the units of time and length was quite simple. He knew the exact length of the blade of his combat knife, and the rest could be calculated from that alone.

It was the first time they weren’t on the road or preparing for a fight, so he finally had some leeway to do his own thing. Especially because without that knowledge, he was sure to attract unwanted attention. They were back in civilization, after all.

It was a shame that the Advanced Learning of the Cir language, that he went through after arriving to this world, only provided a translation from English to Cir, not the other way around. Sure, the translation was shown in a few different contexts, but some details were left off still. Instead of learning about Corora’s widely-used units of measurement, he knew how to describe the Earth’s units in a way the locals would understand. More or less, at least. Some of the words he learned were plain archaic or taken from no longer existing dialects, though.

He wondered how much of it was a deliberate decision made by the System.

It would be better to just read and learn from his Cir language Skill, but he always had more pressing matters to attend to. The number of the General Skills he possessed was becoming his undoing – he simply didn’t have the time to read everything deeply enough. When he tried, he felt like he was just wasting time. Most of the basic knowledge could be acquired much faster using traditional methods – by learning about them from others.

Or his reading proficiency was still way below average… it was hard to tell.

Zeph was slightly jealous of the natives. They had their whole childhood to learn as much as they wanted from the General Skills, and train the reading, just to stay in their ‘early twenties’ for a prolonged period of time while gaining access to even more knowledge.

Well, maybe that was the main reason most of the ‘Cororalings’… No, it sounds wrong… Most of the ‘Cororanians’ looked at life from a long-term perspective, being irritably patient towards certain aspects of life.

He, at least, could understand that it was like being jealous of a new generation having free access to the internet. The means weren’t dictating the results.

But those musings weren’t here nor there. He needed to update his vocabulary, and fast. It was one of the reasons he bought so many different maps – he hoped the extensive descriptions included in them could help him sharpen his language.

But after the meeting with Ghrughah, he knew it won’t be enough. The technical language, which he avoided like fire when speaking with him, was much stricter. If he wanted to speak with crafters, ingeniators, and other technologically-inclined people, he had to know more than just the meaning of the words. He had to know the exact values, the state of math and physics, and more.

The vacuum tube was ready. It wasn’t up to the Earth’s standards, of course, but even four times lower pressure would help. Even on Earth, without Mana making the air slightly more adhesive, the air resistance had to be taken into account if one wanted to measure things precisely.

The difference in gravitational acceleration on this planet posed a small problem, but from what he remembered from their early measurements, it was between 3 and 5 percent greater than on Earth. He could live with a 1 percent error margin.

The vacuum tool was a simple device – just a tube with something resembling a one-way, rubber vent on its tip. A handheld pump with a crank was used to suck off the air from inside. It was built like a syringe but with an additional mechanism lifting the plunger. A viscous liquid in the upper half of the pump’s chamber was responsible for keeping the plunger airtight.

In enchanting, those tools were used to mix reagents that were easily reacting with oxygen – some reactions were much more volatile than they should be. People on Corora still didn’t discover methods of producing pure, non-reactive gasses to use instead of a partial vacuum. At least on this stratum – Mana could do a lot if shaped properly, so it was possible a Spell that filtered the gasses existed higher up. If it did, though, it was probably accessible only on higher strata if the ‘technology’ was not operable here. He had no doubt it would leak downwards if it existed.

Firstly, Zeph compared the units of length. His combat knife had a standardized, 20-centimeters-long blade, so it was easy to do.

A Finger was an equivalent of around 1.4 centimeters. An Ell was around 70 centimeters long, having fifty fingers. Zeph wasn’t even surprised by the familiar names – all humanoids ought to think similarly. Of course, the populace was using those units more frivolously – the exact measures were standardized but only used in that manner by crafters of all kinds.

The names of the higher units were more abstract. Fifty ells, so around 35 meters, made a Boat. Five hundred boats, so around 17.5 kilometers, made a Range. From that point, ranges had prefixes similar to Earth’s kilo, but set every one hundred instead of a thousand; the same as with boats.

People tended to use time instead of length when speaking about distances of a length somewhere between a boat and a range, though. No one had a smartphone with a function to calculate the distance, after all. It was much easier and much more clear to say ’20 minutes by foot’ instead of counting the boats.

The numbers were quite intriguing, though. Zeph could clearly see the influence of the System on their culture. At 50 and 500, each PE gave an important Energy Enhancement. It wasn’t strange that they started using those numbers as a base for multiplying the units – they were probably in use long before standardizing the lengths.

Next were the time measurements. They put a wooden plate at the bottom of the vacuum tube, to prevent it from cracking, and placed a metal bead inside. Then, they suck out the air and used a magnet to raise the bead to the height of 20 centimeters along the tube’s wall. By using the standard equation for uniformly accelerate motion, Zeph knew it should take the bead around 0.198 seconds to fall down. All he had to do was to measure it with the enchanted timer used by P’pfel and compare the results to the Earth’s second, as the device used Corora’s units.

Interestingly, P’pfel knew the equation, but it was slightly modified. It had to take into account air resistance and Mana density – the two had too much influence to be overlooked, even in theoretical problems.

After repeating the measurements many times, to find the best way of releasing the bead without the magnet interfering with the reads, Zeph quickly calculated the value and error range.

It seemed that Corora’s Second was equal to 1.2 of Earth’s Second. Fifty seconds made a minute, which was almost identical to Earth’s, funnily enough. Fifty minutes made an hour. The day was exactly 30-hour-long, or around 25-Earth’s-hour-long. Zeph was slightly bitter his team didn’t manage to measure the length of the day; he would have another reference point for his calculations then.

But those were technical units of time. The populace was using the Wadoki hour, also called a cycle, which was 2.5-hour-long, so lasted around 2.08 of Earth’s hour. There were 12 cycles in a day, 6 for the night and 6 for the day. That was the reason the simplified Wadokei in Ghrughah’s workshop only had 6 toggle switches to measure the ‘hours’ – for each cycle they did a half-rotation, with four intermediate states every 45-degree angle, to show smaller time increments.

Happy with the results, he started asking for other units – those for volume, mass, density, et cetera.

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The mass had only one unit that was called Unit, which he already knew about – it was around 2 grams. He was surprised by the brazen naming until P’pfel explained the history of it. There were, supposedly, many different names for a mass of different materials. Mana, as well as Magicules, tended to float upwards, but their behavior wasn’t that easy to understand. Even ignoring the differences between the buoyancy of different Magicules, the forces created by naturally-forming internal Mana flows, the capacity of material, the external Mana density, the tendency of Mana to conglomerate around ‘energy-rich’ phenomena, and even more strange effects were modulating the weight of material at all times.

Effectively, the porous floating rocks could have a mass of a few million units, but a negative weight that additionally changed in different environments. Thus, the overflow of units describing the amount of matter. Some of them were still in use, like a Stack, which meant ‘two times the weight of a person’ for non-porous, non-Mana-resistant materials – a name that the Head of the Barringstone used while promising them some Hydrargyrum.

Only when a specialized Spell was introduced to the planet’s population by someone from a higher stratum—the person donating it for every native (which, of course, Zeph wasn’t, so he never saw the option)—as a non-Class-specific Matrix, people started to use the Unit. The System allowed the Spell to be for free, even. But because no one really knew what exactly it was measuring physically, or how, the very generic name stuck as a result.

It was quite fascinating, but also problematic. Even people without Matrix space to have it prepared at all times could just shuffle their Skills if it was necessary.

“Heh, thankfully no one will suspect a thing,” Aisha interjected the discussion. “No one tries to cheat on weight anymore, it’s beyond rude to even try.”

“It’s still too easy to see through… I will need a good excuse for the lack of access to the Skill…” Zeph said bitterly.

“Just tell them you are in training,” P’pfel said. “Teachers can be quite strict as to the Skill composition of their pupils. That’s actually one thing a Guild of ours would be good for – virtually restricting your selection of Skills, as well as covering for other aspects.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” Aisha said thoughtfully. “We would need a Scholar to make sure all of your bases are covered, though…”

“Can we get back on the topic?” Zeph said impatiently. “I need to go soon, and we don’t even know if the Guild will become a thing. You better tell me what people are using to measure things here. I know some devices and words, but for all I know, it’s a ten-year-old, obsolete knowledge…”

~~~

It was getting late when Zeph finally walked out of the orphanage. He was greeted by a nice weather for once. The sun, which was slowly setting down, painted the landscape around in warm colors, the light reflecting from the puffy snow in all directions. Only his heavy backpack was breaking the serene atmosphere, irritably pushing him down to earth.

The closest parking lot for rented wagons was half an hour’s walk away from the building, which was fortunate. Zeph wanted to relax a little after the intense session of learning from his two companions, and the picturesque landscape was perfect for it.

He took a deep breath of the cold, refreshing air, and started slowly prowling through the unploughed streets of Lurona.

A few skied carriages passed him, moving relatively slowly on the white road that was rimmed with leafless trees. It was another wonder of this world – with the speed the wagons were moving, even in warmer seasons, it was almost impossible to kill a person in an accident. Well, besides young kids, but they were always protected, one way or another. The effect was that, except for high-traffic regions, there were almost no laws on how to move along the road.

If he wanted, he could start running on the road, cross it whenever he wanted, or even ignore the rule of thumb on the crossroads to move faster. The last one was a rude practice, even if not forbidden. No ‘magical healing’ existed, so having your animal hurt during a crash was quite costly. Strangely, the order was kept even without the Guard interfering during such events.

The alien mindset of Corora’s inhabitants was showing up again. Evidently, people with money liked to show that fact by paying generously if they caused any problems, so the situation of a person leveraging their social or economic position on the less fortunate was a rarity here.

Before he could start pondering on the custom of Duels, he arrived at his destination.

~~~

During the travel, Zeph read the contents of his maps in preparation for tomorrow’s tour that he planned to make. The ‘Lurona Technology Solutions for Curious’ and ‘Detailed Map of Traffic’ were his books of choice. The plan was to get used to the city’s structure and communication routes, as well as the technology that was commonly used around those parts, while reading the books.

Aisha promised to introduce him to a few places dedicated to mercenaries who wanted to hunt on the lands adjacent to the city, but it would have to wait until after the potential forming of the Guild. Those were places that welcomed adventurous people, and Zeph was in need of personal kills of the wild animals. Soul fragments from domesticated animals weren’t enough, they weren’t sending ‘positive Soul wound’ fragments for the most part, so Gru’s cheat didn’t work on them with any meaningful efficiency.

But, he had to admit, it almost felt like he was to become a member of an Adventure Guild. A shame such an institution wasn’t a thing. He was quite excited about the prospect, though.

Either way, he wasn’t to search for those places, or the churches for that matter, in the next few days. Instead, he decided to better acquaint himself with the city.

For today, he had basic errands to make. Firstly, he visited the main building of the Production District to deliver the feathers to Ciriyal and ask her about the possibility of a closer collaboration in the future. He hoped her financial situation was bad enough for her to actually consider working under their group. Having an information network directly accessible would be a godsend, wherever they formed a Guild or not.

She wasn’t against the idea, which was promising.

Next, he visited Ghrughah to deliver the samples of alloy and Phleya. Along the way, he bought reagents necessary to work with his spear, making sure they were delivered in a few days to Kwan’s place. Thanks to P’pfel and Aisha marking the proper places to buy those on his map, he saved a few hours of idle searching. Sadly, no reagents used for aerostats were sold on the free market – he would have to contact Guilds responsible for those materials. The problem with mass production surfaced again.

After giving the samples, he invited the giant to an official meeting in three days. Aisha wouldn’t trust any other method of delivering the message. Ghrughah promised to meet them in Kwan’s place and to make sure his visit stayed secret. Both sides preferred anonymity in this case.

They spoke shortly about the ‘watch project’ and possible enchantments Zeph’s new armor could have. The tests would take more time than the blacksmith guessed at the beginning – the alloy was quite problematic. Zeph didn’t care, as long as it was finished before the New Year. But if it had to take more time, he could as well make sure it was enchantment-compatible.

Then, he visited all the marketplaces around the city. Each one had an information board, so he registered his commission for the atypical Alchemist. He set only four meeting spots for the interested – administrative halls that rented safe rooms. They would process the applicants and would make sure they could be interviewed in an orderly manner. Also, it would be a hassle for his future employee to travel half a city only to meet him in hopes of getting a job, so there was no going around it. People in those areas weren’t wealthy by any means, so even wasting their time could be too much.

He suspected that the recruiting process wouldn’t be so easy, though. Because of that, he also added a monetary reward for people with information about individuals who may help him in his endeavors. It would diminish his funds – he was sure to meet scammers – but a few gold wasn’t enough to scare him off. Thankfully, a simple lie detector was included in the price of the administration buildings’ rooms, so he would be able to at least scare off the low-level swindlers.

The thousand gold he prepared for the whole process looked small in comparison to his wealth, but he knew this one-time boost would end sooner or later. At least he was investing in something meaningful, so his heart wasn’t bleeding as much at the expenses.

He returned to the orphanage late at night, again. Hopefully, the kids wouldn’t mind…

===============================

The next two days passed in the blink of an eye.

Zeph toured the city for the most part, but also reserved more time for the kids. It seemed the therapy, focusing on him simply being in the vicinity, was super effective. As such, he didn’t have the heart to cut them off from his schedule.

Aisha contacted Pavail, the Hannyajin doctor from Kwan’s group, on his behalf. The official opening of Kwan’s business will take place tomorrow, and along with it, P’pfel’s and Zeph’s quarters and workshop areas would be revealed. He hoped Pavail could use a part of his area to start experimenting, so he wanted her to be there during the event.

He was also given a memory amulet. Aisha made sure it was delivered before Zeph would move to his new quarters. As always, it was a simplistic device but had a function to record how much he had sent to the city’s Mananet, thus freeing him from spending long hours in the orphanage to pay their bills.

During the few days he spent there, though, Zeph was able to send almost fifteen million Mana on account of the facility. It was enough to pay taxes for the next thirty days. It didn’t sound like much, but he would be visiting the place every week, so the amount would increase still. He was left with the orphanage’s amulet for that exact reason, but it had an additional value. He could always identify as a person working with Leilucia’s Temple.

With all the happenings around, Zeph was quite excited for tomorrow. With a calm heart, he drifted into a deep slumber, for the last time this week surrounded by the sleeping kids.

Gru, though, wasn’t able to sleep that night. He had a bad premonition for the first time in his short life, and no idea what to do with it…