A DIFFERENT KIND OF HIGH TECH

We reached our destination a few minutes after Delta Felicity retired to rest at the back of the bus. Harvey suppressed a sigh and his mouth pressed firmly down in sync with his laptop quietly shutting close. He had been unable to trace the discrepancy and was probably blaming himself again. Harvey can come down pretty hard on himself a lot.

{She wasted so much time.} Ben grumbled as he switched off his screen to put it away. Ki returned to us like a fresh breeze on a stifling day, he smiled like a flower to the sun and informed us, "I've made the adjustments to the security detail. Wolfgang and Gareth will be joining us by nightfall."

"Goddess, I noticed a teahouse on the way. Perhaps we can stop by after this?" Ki suggested.

I honestly didn't really care for tea, but how could I say no to that smile?

"Yeah, okay." I shrugged. For some reason, I had picked up a few bad habits over the last timeline, or this one, but I had a natural lorent shrug - the elegant one, that Lady Amber would do to show she was very neutral about it.

We all knew Ki was the one who was interested in the local tea brew.

Ben grunted a little, "Whatever. I'm hungry anyway."

He turned over to his cousin, "Hey, Oz. Let's stop at a teahouse after this stop."

Oscar downright panicked, "I'll work on making reservations for our party."

Ben pushed Oscar on the shoulder, "No need. There aren't that many of us. We can just walk in."

But what kind of beta would let their alpha just walk into a random teahouse without making sure the teahouse was ready to receive the super VIP with the appropriate preparation and fanfare?

I grinned, "Yeah, its fine. If we just walk in and act normal, they won't even realize who we are."

Oscar looked at me quite incredulously, but he didn't want to outright disagree with me, "Do…do you really think so, Princess?"

I laughed and shook my head, my blue hair stretching out as I stood up to alight from the bus, "No, I was just joking. But it's really okay. Don't worry, you'll see."

Poor Oscar. He had the most pitiful expression. He really didn't know how to say no to me, and he definitely didn't look like he knew how to report any of this to Uncle Louis without getting into trouble.

Uncle Louis was always nice to me, but I knew he wasn't as nice to those who worked for him. I mentally took note to praise Oscar to my uncle later. Just to make sure Oscar was in the safe.

The industrial hub turned out to be a town with stone buildings interspersed with a few taller concrete ones. At some parts, the road was still cobblestone, which was a first for me to walk on.

Oscar guided us through, telling us little tidbits of information like how these roads used to be actual roads for horse drawn carriages long, long, ago. The town itself was very old, and home to some of the finest workshops in the continent.

Today, this town has been reinvented as Night Forest's largest industrial hub, and housed light industrial factories and… we stopped outside a very large stone building, Oscar was going to bring us to their most successful case study for their efforts. We were standing in front of one of the oldest workshops in Night Forest. In fact, this workshop had its foundations laid even before the cobblestones were put into the road.

We stepped in and found ourselves in a pen shop.

"Your pack's new high tech investment is a fountain pen shop?" Ben asked.

"They also make very high quality paper." Oscar said. He introduced us to the owner, a very old man, Mr Tegan, who was the 6th generation craftsman. Right now, his grandson was at the helm, and they had developed some special technology that could mass produce super thin fine grained paper. They had also created patented inks and his proudest work were these fountain pens that their workshop produces.

They were special, not just because they were imbued with magic and used magic stones as their source of ink, but because they were made completely by machine. Even the magic imbuement was not done by hand as before, but through modern technology like lasers to cut and engrave the nibs and a magic and 3D printing but with magic stones to imprint the magic algorithms into the pen so that it would work as well as a pen made by a master craftsman.

It was amazing because it was an amalgamation of technology and magic.

I mean, when Oscar said high tech, I was thinking of some white and metal building with machines with AI or something like that. This was… well, it was super high level tech for sure, but totally unexpected.

Anyway, the automation didn't make the pens affordable. It took a long time and very expensive resources to create a single pen. It's only advantage was that such pens at such quality used to require a master craftsman to hand make it, and depending on the master's skills, the amount of resources wasted, or the quality of the final product would differ. But with this tech, they would be able to continuously create the same pen consistently with minimal waste.

"But you can't create anything different right?" I asked.

"What, what do you mean, Princess?" The old owner asked.

"I mean the design. Wouldn't you need a master craftsman to design it?" I wondered, "And if handmaking it is inconsistent, does that mean that a craftsman could possibly create an exceptionally good pen too?"

"Well… erm… yes. In theory, I suppose that is entirely possible." Mr Tegan nodded. But he proceeded to assure us that his tech was better, not just because a master craftsman was a rare existence in the plains, but also because lesser craftsmen were enough to reverse engineer the best pens so that they can be recreated.

"80% the performance of the original pen." Mr Tegan said, "Which doesn't sound like much - but 80% of a Class A magical item is still a thousand times better than a Class C or D magical item that our craftsmen can produce today."

I nodded because that did make sense.

Mr Tegan showed us the original pen they were replicating. He had to open his safe in his office and take it out to his private lounge to show us.

"This… this is my family treasure."