Sienna, who had left early in the morning to visit the royal treasury, returned to their hotel sometime after noon.

“Do you guys know what this is?” Sienna asked with a smirk as she strutted over to them, her chest puffed up in pride.

She reached into an inside pocket of her cloak and drew out a card that shone with a platinum sheen.

Waving it in front of them, she answered her own question, “This is something called a card.”

“...Uh-huh.”

“Um, yes…?”

Eugene and Kristina just nodded in response with bewildered expressions on their faces.

Sienna was slightly taken aback by their reactions, but she soon smoothed out her expression. Having returned to civilization after hundreds of years of isolation, Sienna was unfamiliar with the modern conveniences used in this era, for example, things like this card.

“Ahem…. I had noticed that kids these days weren’t carrying around pouches filled with coins. I had thought that they might just be using pockets lined with spatial magic instead, but it seems that they’re using small cards like this in place of money,” Sienna said, only to stop and shoot a glance at Eugene and Kristina through narrowed eyes. “You two aren’t, by any chance, feeling like there’s something like a generational gap between you and me, are you?”

Eugene hesitated before changing the subject, “Um… when I first saw those cards, I was also quite surprised. It made me think that the world really has gotten a lot better.”

“Right?” Sienna nodded excitedly. “You felt the same thing, didn’t you? Really now, the world has seen a lot of improvement. From what I’ve heard, it isn’t just their money pouches; did you know that kids these days don’t even need to bring a cart to carry their equipment when traveling? They say that every cat and dog[1] goes around carrying spatial magic artifacts.”

Eugene tried to rein her in, “Well, it’s not like spatial magic is really that widespread….”

“I know, I know, but setting that aside,” Sienna waved him off with a proud look, “If you really look at it, isn’t all this progress a result of my achievements as the Wise Lady Sienna? Just think about it. Do you know what you had to do to learn magic in the old days? You needed to apprentice yourself to an elderly wizard who might pass away at any moment, follow them around while brownnosing them, doing all sorts of chores in return for a worthless mental training method—”

“But you learned your magic from the elves,” Eugene pointed out.

Sienna snapped, “Of course, I’m not talking about...