On Currency

With unease and a hint of curiosity, Maggie followed Rebecca to the large building known as the Magic Technology Research Institute.

It was said that this was the highest research center for Cecil's Magic-Conducting Technology.

It was said that more than half of those incredible Magical Devices, capable of tremendous power and utility, which members of the old royal capital's Mage Association called "perfect runes unexplained by luck," had been born within this research center and its affiliated facilities.

Maggie had once visited the southern region with Victoria, but she had not had the chance to tour this temple of technology then. Yet today, she had been invited here to become part of some great project. It had to be said that fate worked in wondrous ways. Driven by intense curiosity, Maggie could not help examining everything within her line of sight: everything here was exceptionally fresh and new to her.

The Magic Technology Research Institute was not as magnificent or lavishly decorated as the royal capital's Mage Association she knew—the closest facility of a similar nature that she could think of—but this large, multistory building possessed a distinctive beauty and solemnity of its own. It consisted of a main building and three annexes. The foundation of the main building was supported by neatly arranged columns, while the rooftops of the annexes each bore one concise, forceful word:

Curiosity; rigor; perseverance.

Perhaps this reflected part of the Cecil scholars' attitude toward research.

"These three words were proposed by Master Camil. They were supposedly principles upheld by scholars of the Gondor Empire in those days. Ancestor thought they made a lot of sense, so he had us hang them on the rooftops of the institute," Rebecca said happily beside her. "Remain curious about the world, and discover the unknown through curiosity;