14 Growth and Development

Neverwinter had continued to develop. There was an influx of population from the surrounding regions. Furthermore, the alchemists and astronomers in King's City were quickly moved to Neverwinter, where they began learning science. The influx of skilled workers with some background in their fields had helped propel Neverwinter's scientific development forward.

With the increase in food production from the introduction of Golden Ones, the amount of population that Neverwinter could support also increased. The increased labor pool helped to expand the production capacity of the city. The education program was also proceeding smoothly and there would soon be a new batch of skilled workers and teachers.

When the next group of Sleeping Island Witches had arrived, Roland had already been forewarned about Iffy. So, he was able to coax her into revealing her belief that combat witches were superior to support witches. Seeing as what was done in the original timeline was effective, he once again arranged a duel between Iffy and Maggie. Iffy's defeat was able to convince her that your ability isn't everything.

In addition, Roland prepared another trump card to deal the final blow to Iffy's problematic attitude. Roland had already arranged for his agents in the Kingdom of Dawn to find Annie. Annie and her companions, Broken Sword and Hero, were sent to Neverwinter. When Iffy first arrived, Annie was hidden but now Roland brought her out to face Iffy.

Initially, Iffy was shocked and didn't know what to say. Immense feelings of guilt and sadness welled up within her. The two of them looked at each other silently for several seconds. Then, Iffy hugged Annie and broke down crying. After Iffy blubbered on for several minutes, Annie spoke up.

"It's not your fault Iffy", Annie said. "I don't blame you for me being left behind. It is all that bad woman Heidi Morgan's fault. Now that we are together once more, we can be friends again."

Iffy felt comforted by Annie's words, though she still felt guilty about what she did. Eventually, she stopped crying.

Roland started speaking. "You know, Heidi Morgan will probably come here eventually." The implications of his statement were clear to Iffy and Annie, who became worried. "Don't worry, I have a plan, but its going to need you two to help."

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In Hermes, Steven began teaching science to the people of the church. All of the pure witches had to participate, and there were also several ordinary people who were selected because of their high intelligence. In the future, there will need to be more teachers, so the ordinary people in the first class will become the seeds for the new education system.

The most pressing concern at the moment was basic education. Most of the population was illiterate, and that is the first thing that needed to change. Schools were set up to teach children how to read and write. That was the most basic goal that needed to be fulfilled since without literacy, none of the other knowledge brought would be usable. It was hoped that by the time the students had learned how to read and write, the people being taught by Steven would be ready to teach the new group of students. To this end, the ordinary people taking Steven's class not only had to learn the content, they also had to learn how to teach, mainly through emulating how Steven was doing it. Steven in turn, was teaching based on how he was taught back on Earth. Copying someone who was copying how to teach would probably result in suboptimal teaching methods, but it was the best they had so far.

Classes had been proceeding well, the students had been able to understand the basics of mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry. The witches had not yet been able to evolve their abilities yet, but Steven was confident that with time and more learning, some of them would be able to.

During this time, Steven continued to teach Zero in one on one lessons. Zero was very good at processing and understanding information because of the experience she had from her ability. As a result, Zero was quite the fast learner. She has already learned calculus, intermediate biology and chemistry. Steven even taught her economics, something not taught to the rest of the students because it was less critical at the moment. Since Zero was going to be leading, she needed to learn economics in order to best understand how to manage the economy. Despite having some grasp on economics, there were many abstract theories which Earth had developed that were confusing, so Zero continued to rely on Steven for advice on how to restructure the nation.

At the moment, Steven was teaching her physics. They were in the middle of studying Faraday's Law. Electromotive force is equal to the negative the number of coils times the rate of change of magnetic flux. Faraday's law described how changes in a magnetic field creates voltage - the concept that Mystery Moon uses in order to generate electricity. Zero was quite fascinated by the concept since she finally understood how electricity was generated. Learning about electricity and how circuits worked made her understand more about electrical equipment and she was already excited for electricity to finally become widespread.

At the end of their lesson, Zero asked, "So how is everyone else's learning going? Are they working hard?"

"Yes", Steven answered. "They all seem to be putting their effort into learning and they are progressing quite nicely. None of them have managed to evolve their ability yet but it is only a matter of time."

"Am I going to be able to evolve my ability?", asked Zero. "I have learned more than they did."

"Well…." Steven appeared unsure of what to say. "The issue is that back on Earth, souls weren't really a thing."

"People on Earth didn't have souls!" Zero was shocked at his statement.

"No", Steven quickly said. "It isn't that we don't have souls, it is that there was no magic so there was no proof that souls exist at all. There is no scientific method to detect the existence of a soul. I am afraid that means that you won't be able to deepen your understanding of souls from learning science."

Zero looked quite disappointed with what Steven said. "Are you sure there is nothing that I can learn that would help?"

"There are some things that might be useful, but I have no idea whether it will work or not", Steven answered. "Perhaps learning about the biology of the brain might give you a better understanding of how the mind works. However, given that modern science did not have evidence for a soul, that might be a long shot. It's entirely possible the soul isn't related to the brain."

Then Steven seemed to have another idea. "There is one more thing. Learning mathematics might be the best idea. I remember reading that biology is applied chemistry, chemistry is applied physics, and physics is applied mathematics. So, mathematics is the foundation of the universe. So if you wanted to study such an abstract topic as souls, maybe learning mathematics might help."

"Hmmm", Zero leaned in closer to Steven. "And you will teach me advanced mathematics."

"Yeah I will", answered Steven. "In fact, I might know a bit more than what is in these books. Roland was never able to understand proof based mathematics which was more abstract. It doesn't have much practical value at the moment, so it wasn't really very important to him. However, I do know a bit from what I studied in college. I will be glad to teach you some of it, and I do hope that you will be able to evolve your ability. But I am telling you now, it's going to be a long shot. Even if you aren't able to, its fine. I think you are great just the way you are right now."

"Thanks", said Zero. "Also, once more and more people need to start learning science, it might be too much for you to handle. How are you going to deal with it?"

"Once we get enough people who have learned it already and can teach other people, it should become a self sustaining cycle", answered Steven. "But in the meantime, it will be a problem. There is only so much time in the day for me to teach. I have an idea though. Back on Earth, there was a new idea in teaching. In a traditional class, the teacher would lecture during class and teach the students the content during that time. However, a different idea was created where students would read the book at home and come into class with questions. If I did that, then classes would just be me explaining a few ideas to some people and it would be a lot faster since students would have gotten most of the learning done at home. They wouldn't be able to understand everything by themselves but it would go a long way toward reducing my workload."

"That is a good idea", said Zero. "I hope this means that we can speed up our development. After all, the demons aren't going to wait for us."

The new steam engines had been set up in Hermes. At the moment, they had set up factories to produce textiles since those were easier to make. It would get the people used to steam engines - and people do need clothing. Production on more steam engines was ongoing and eventually they were hoping that they can start building factories for everything else, especially weapons.

The church controlled a large amount of territory so there were easily able to find resources such as iron and coal to support industrialization. With the knowledge from Neverwinter, they were able to begin large scale steel production.

Also, the Golden One seeds given by Roland were planted and crop yields were expected to greatly increase. Before this, there were many places that didn't have enough food and there was a risk that a large scale famine might take place. In some places it looked as though there would be refugees fleeing church controlled lands. However, the influx of new food was able to stabilize the region and people were able to get enough food to eat, plus some surplus. Soon, the church would start moving people into cities so that they could work in factories.

The gears of industry were turning, and soon the world would be changed forever.