Once more shifted into zabna's preferred form they teleport to an out of the way position and start making their way down the road towards the town.

Looks like a fairly decent sized town - they can see farms on the long upslope hill from here already. There is a curving road with two patches of woods on either side that leads to the 'front gate' of the town.

They see two teens with baskets under their arms in the woods about halfway there. Foraging, apparently.

"Hello," zabna waves at them.

"Hi! You seen any monsters around, traveler? We're going out to look for Hearty Radishes, but if there are monsters in the area we'll just go home."

"I haven't seen anything in the little walking I've done but I'm just getting started for the day."

"Great, thanks for the info! Have a nice day in Hateno Town!"

"I hope you have a nice day too." zabna continues walking into town.

The town gate seems to be a formality. The road passes through it but there are no actual walls. It has a few more people coming and going, apparently headed to farms in the area, plus a pair of guards in steel armor - one young and one old. They look at Zabna critically. "Where are you from, stranger?"

"Many places but most recently from Rito Village. I bring good news. Vah Medoh had been retaken from Ganon."

"Vah Medoh?"

"The divine beast. The ones that've been causing trouble recently. Was a 'Champion of Air' involved, young one?"

"The champion's spirit now controls the beast. The hero of the age and her allies were the ones who freed him."

"The Hero's shown up? Purah will want to hear about that. You should go to the Ancient Tech Lab when you get the chance."

The young guard looks confused about that again, but shrugs it off. Old Guard knows what he's talking about.

"I was already planning to do that, could I trouble you for directions?"

"Straight up main street, right at the inn, left at the first windmill, past Jen's dairy farm, left at the next fork, should be by an apple orchard, then just keep going upslope. Not to be a spoil-sport, but have you got any proof about the Divine Beast?"

"Not that I could easily produce. I'm fairly certain I'll be able to convince Purah though. Worst case I can teleport her to Rito village and show her."

"I think I'll wait until I hear the same story from more travelers," the young guard says. "You don't think he's dangerous, though, Ren?"

"Nope. Friendly enough. Knows about the old legends. This isn't the sort of sketchy character we need to look out for. Have a nice day, now."

"Thank you, I hope your day goes well." zabna starts following the directions towards Purah and the lab.

He passes a variety of shops, including two cafes and a rather large, brightly decorated, and apparently magical dye shop, before reaching the first turn at the inn.

He gets some curious questions but "going to visit the Ancient Tech Lab" is plenty of explanation, everyone dismisses him after that.

The first windmill and Jen's dairy farm and the apple orchard as landmarks are all as described. And now he is on a long path up a grassy slope, cliffs on either side.

Signs posted in the ground bear increasingly stringent warnings about the dangers of the lab. The lab itself is a ramshackle-looking thing that appears to have been converted from a windmill, or a lighthouse. There is an impractically large telescope sticking out at an odd angle, and a furnace-like thing burning a blue flame, emitting a steady stream of mixed magic into some systems inside the building.

zabna looks at the building skeptically then fixes a smile on his face and knocks on the door.

A small girl looking about twelve answers the door, still peering at a book. The interior of the building has rather a lot of books and notes scattered around, stuck onto shelves, and so on. Plus a large Guidance Stone, like the one in that tall tower that Link downloaded a map from.

"Hi, welcome to Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, what do you want?"

"Hi there, Link sent me to talk to Purah. I'm interested in learning more about the local magic and technology. Also I thought she might want to know that we removed Ganon from Vah Medoh."

"-What? That's great news! She's making progress with the Divine Beasts! ...Wait a second, you know Link?"

"I met her in Rito Village and helped her with the beast. Well, more accurately, Alice did but we share a body."

"Uh huh. What device did she use to free the Divine Beast? Tell me that and I'll believe you. Oh, I'm Purah, by the way."

"The name of the device you're looking for is the Sheikah Slate. Once she activated the first terminal Revali started speaking with is and we had to fight Windblight Ganon before the beast was returned to Revali's control."

"Snap! That's correct. Come in if you want." She puts her book on a worktable and pulls out a notebook instead. "Champion... Of... Air... Still... Exists... In... Some... Way..... Aspect... Of... Ganon... Protecting... Controls. Good to see our research turned out reasonably accurate. Helping Link save Hyrule is very important, you know."

He follows her in to the building. "Agreed, it would be a shame to have to evacuate this world."

"Hey! Stop shattering my worldview. I need to know more about this option to evacuate the world. In case it turns out we really do need it. It doesn't sound very plausible."

"I'm from a long way away. I'm an explorer and a scout for the Starlight Institute for Advancing Studies. My working group would be capable of evacuating this world by teleporting people to one of our bases several light weeks away."

"Oh, you're a fellow academic after all! ...There's a lot of people. Getting everyone would be a challenge."

"It would be, still my estimate is that you have a few hundred thousand people in the area you call Hyrule and maybe a couple hundred regions of similar size. Our evacuation protocols are designed for cities with millions of people. The main issue is that your population is really spread out."

"Most of the world's land is not super populated. Hyrule probably beats them, even after the Calamity. Plus, a lot of people won't want to go. But anyway! I don't have so much as a census, let alone regulatory powers. So we should talk about academics. What do you want to know about Sheikah technology?"

"I want to learn everything but a good starting point would be the way it stores items. That's the most unlike anything I've encountered before."

"Ah! That is a bit mysterious even to us. We know a fair bit of the theory but can't make new devices... I'd be happy to explain what we know about it if you donate some money or tell us some interesting tech from your Institute of Studies."

Pause.

"...Not that I'm trying to be academically uncooperative! It's just that we haven't gotten any funding but what we can scrounge up for over fifty years."

"Well we're rather short on local currency so an exchange of knowledge it will have to be. To start with do you know about electricity?"

"Maybe I should go wake up Symin first. Two brains are better than one. Wait here, please?"

"Sure."

Off she goes to fetch her assistant.

She comes back with a middle aged man who looks much more academic than a small girl. Presumably Purah's form is not quite natural...?

"Ah, nice to meet you, I'm Symin. My specialty is sensors."

"As for electricity, there are some magical effects that can produce large bursts of it, like lightning does. There are effects than can provide resistance to electricity, as well. Sheikah texts refer to carefully controlled flows of electricity doing things in some places. It really likes metal and water. Some monsters use electrical attacks. It's related to magnetic fields... I could continue?"

"That sounds like a pretty good basis to work from. You can generate sustained flow of electricity around a closed conductive loop by spinning a permanent magnet inside a coil of wire. The basic uses for electricity are mostly heating and lighting. As for the complex use cases, the possibilities are nearly endless. The main step between the two categories is in using electricity to do math, with enough creativity and time almost anything we've encountered can be described by math and then we can use the results of that math to do things like make pictures, move objects and make sound."

"Funny you should mention that! Sheikah technology does math using mana flows."

"I'm not surprised. Given that it might make sense to continue using mana based systems instead of electrical ones, though I'm not familiar with the limitations of such mana based systems. Clearly they're rather powerful though. I'm happy to talk more about this or I could try to list other categories of expertise that the Institute has to offer."

Symin speaks up. "Mana-based computing operates using discrete packets of mana. Each packet can hold a lot of information when created by processes with a high complexity... It's either negative, zero, or positive for each level of complexity it has. But the packet only ever loses information when handled by something with a lower complexity. If you feed it back into something with a higher complexity, it reads the lost data as all zeros. I've been experimenting with these processes, but they're very hard to build..."

"That's a very different dynamic than electrically based computing. In electrically based computing everything is a stream of binary values represented in various ways, most commonly by high and low voltages."

"Cool! That sounds snappy! It's a great opportunity for some more discussion later. But I wanna know about other stuff you can do. You can cross large distances very fast, if your comment about 'light minutes' was not exaggerating, yeah?"

"Oh you're familiar with the speed of light. There are structures we call luminal threads that underlie reality with the right technology you can send things along those threads at the speed of light including people and vessels. Now, with technology alone you can't go anywhere you don't already have a receiver setup but we also have access to magic of our own which can obviate that requirement, though only for relatively small masses and volumes."

"Cool! You wanted to know about the Inventory system... There are physical spaces that are not quite adjacent to this 'world', with its three dimensions of space and the passing of time. Since time doesn't pass there it's kind of hard to make any more detailed observations of it... Actually, we only know about it because there were ancient journals about it. It's probably one of the fields of Sheikah technology we understand the least. But, snap! We can use the theory, kinda! The Sheikah Slate's inventory seems to work by surrounding an object with mana and then moving the mana into this other dimension. It also stores a high-complexity mana packet which I believe is a metaphorical 'address' for where the Slate should reach when asked to retrieve the item."

"Fascinating, I wonder whether our magic uses that capability under the covers. We're still figuring out what its limits are."

"We should..." She strikes a pose. "Experiment!"

"Do you have a proposed experiment?"

"First of all, we should see whether your methods of detecting luminal threads can see inventories, and vice versa."

"I didn't notice anything like that when link was inserting and removing items from her slate. And I was mostly paying attention to things like that while Alice was using our body to help Link. As for detecting the threads, I'd be happy to run tests to see if you can detect the threads. I would like to note though that trying to send things unprotected by bobbles down the threads disintegrates them. It's also really power intensive so it isn't practical for use as a weapon."

"Symin, go get the mana-scope! And let me just put on my goggles..."

Equipment is fetched. Symin's looks like a small functional piece of Sheikah tech with a lot of other stuff tacked on to it. "Not entirely sure what we're looking for, but if you bobble something and send it a little bit let's see what we see."

"Well, as a control, I think I'll just bobble some air and let you examine that without sending it anywhere." A mirrored sphere appears in his hand.

"Hmm... Well, that's definitely visible. It's a hole with no mana, but a shell that shows up reasonably clearly. Symin, does it have a Sheikah signature?"

"No... The mana-scope says 'unknown item'."

"That's within the range I'd expect. Bobbles show up on all sensors as either blank spaces or perfect reflectors. I'll try sending it across the room." The sphere disappears from his hand and starts floating in the air on the other side of the room. 

"Snap! I think I might have seen something. It faded really fast. Too bad I don't really have a way to record the mana readings on these goggles."

Symin huffs a bit. "I told you, I could make that if you gave me ten thousand rupees for budget..."

"Oh, sorry~ I didn't mean it like that, Symin. Visitor guy, do it again? I'll pay closer attention."

"Oh, I neglected to introduce myself. I'm zabna." He produces another sphere on his hand. "On the count of 5." He counts to five and sends the new sphere to join the first.

"Nice to meet you, zabna!"

"Snap! I saw it a little better that time. I think I'm seeing the line it followed for a brief moment. It created a small mana disturbance in a line. Do it again but don't tell me when, I want to make sure that it's not confirmation bias."

"Alright." He makes another bobble and bats it around in the air in front of him for a few seconds. It disappears and doesn't reappear inside the room. "What direction did it go?"

She points. "North north-east, I think."

"That's correct. What would you like to try next?"

Purah is endlessly cheerful about experimenting with what she knows about Sheikah technology and learning about zabna's tech!

It turns out most Ancient Materials are highly resistant to bobbling, just like they're resistant to pretty much everything else... The ability to make more would be a huge breakthrough in a variety of ways, but they'll have to make do with bits scavenged off of old Guardians for now.

Symin is more interested in computers.

zabna is not particularly expert at computers by institute standards but he knows quite a bit and has textbooks in his mind to consult for additional detail. That topic can easily last for hours.

Very easily indeed! Processor architecture is fascinating! In fact it gives Symin a lot of inspiration for how Sheikah computers probably work and he has to cover the table with lots and lots of notes!

Purah ducks out of the conversation and works on something in the corner after about an hour.

"Hm, I think that about covers computers, at least for now. People literally dedicate their whole lives studying this stuff and I can leave you with a computer that you can charge by cranking that has more extensive information. I'd be happy to provide overviews of other topics, or talk more about the other things Sheikah technology can do. I could also solicit recommendations about other people and places to visit. I'm planning to visit all of the settlements eventually and I'd be happy to add other interesting locations to that list."

"We should probably pay you for the computer... Hmm... I don't know if there's anything we have that's valuable to you except explaining Sheikah technology some more? Oh! If you visit Kakariko Village, tell Elder Impa that Purah sent you. We're old friends."

"Thank you, I'm sure that will be valuable in its own way. The learning tablets, which is what we call the device I'll be giving you, are intended to be given to intelligent people on the worlds we visit. I don't need to be paid."

"If you insist! If you see Link again, remind her that I can upgrade the Sheikah Slate's runes with some ancient materials. It'll be a snap. And feel free to come visit again!"

"Thank you, I'll be sure to tell her that and with teleportation it isn't that hard to make a return visit. If you don't mind, is there anyone else in Hateno that you recommend I meet?"

"Hmm... Honestly they don't like us very much up here... Sayge would enjoy the learning tablets, and maybe he could teach you something about dye? You might want to meet the mayor at some point, but it's probably not urgent."

zabna nods thoughtfully. "Thank you again." He sets off to wander the streets a bit.

There's a lot of terraced farms. The main crop is some kind of rice, with a sort of wheat being more popular on flatter areas. A few farmers have goats. He gets waved at a couple of times by farmers hard at work.

Lower down, the windmills are still turning steadily. As points of interest there is a large inn, a clothes shop and a general store, the dye shop, and sounds of construction (plus a blue-glowing shrine) on a small hill off to the side of the main village. Children play in the street and old ladies gossip by a semi-enclosed communal kitchen.

He goes to investigate the dye shop. Purah's comments intrigued him.

The dye shop is highly visible.

Its products are surprisingly high-quality. Smooth, neat, even colors on various forms of fabrics, with a pretty varied stock.

Sayge's lab, however, is a mess. A mess that is emitting slightly noxious fumes as the dye-maker mutters to himself while mixing up something in a glassware contraption that is more 'mad scientist' than 'scientist', occasionally grabbing fresh ingredients from shelves, or scribbling down notes.

His wife talks to customers. "If you want to talk to him about something custom, he's interruptible enough."

"I'm just looking around. I've heard good things and the quality of the product on the shelves seems to bear them out."

"I'll pass on the compliment! He's quite proud of his dyes. Almost too proud and obsessed sometimes, but," shrug, "Husbands and their work, what am I supposed to do? He loves it."

"What sort of custom jobs do you get requests for if you don't mind me asking?"

"Paint is usually special order for us. Wood stains and painting metal on another metal and painting things rust-proof and hair dye..."

"Interesting. So generally ways to turn things various different colors. Has he figured out how to make things glow in the dark?"

"Oh, yes. But luminous stone is rare and expensive."

"Interesting, that wasn't the type of glow in the dark I was thinking of. There are ways to make things glow in the dark that charges with sunlight and then continues glowing for a time after the sun has set, possibly the whole night depending. One of the more common ways to do that is with a compound made from zinc and sulfide."

Sayge looks over towards him, still pouring red fluid blindly.

He sets his stuff down and walks over towards the counter. His bright blue hair tries to distract from a somewhat buggy-looking face. "Well, well, well! Please, continue explaining!"

"So, materials like the one I mentioned are called phosphors, when they're hit by light they get charged up and reemit light slowly over a period of time, less expensive ones don't last that long I think the zinc sulfide mix lasts less than an hour after it stops getting hit by new light, more expensive ones use rarer metals but last much longer. You can also mix them with radioactive substances to make the glow continuous but that gets dangerous in large amounts."

Sayge wants to learn all about phosphor chemistry! Glowing dye that's cheaper than luminous stone is an exciting idea!

Magical plants here have somewhat weird interactions with chemistry, has he tried using roasted armoranth to- No? Okay, he'll have to experiment. He can probably make zinc. He can definitely make sulfides.

zabna is happy to indulge. He knows a lot about pure chemistry but not much about magical plants.

The magical plants are a big deal. Sayge doesn't really have formal chemistry-type understanding of them, but zabna can definitely learn a lot. Sayge is a chatterbox.

zabna does learn a lot. Eventually, he wishes Sayge well and promises to come back at some point and talk some more. Then he heads back out and continues wandering the town. While he walks he keeps an eye out for anything magically strange nearby.

A signature down a side-path, a little away from the town proper, is like the Goddess Statues he's seen a couple of. But not quite like them.

He walks over to it and studies it more closely.

This statue looks... Different. The face is angry, and it has a pair of horns. It's not Hylia. Or else it's a corrupted version of her.

There is an extremely strong connection here. A thick tangle of magical power, shaped into a - almost a barrier? If the magic in the statue back at Rito Village was a comms link, this would be more like a sophisticated network firewall.

Interesting, he'll have to mention it to Link at some point when he sees her. Presumably if it weren't for his anti mind magic defense it might be trying to communicate with him.

The eyes glimmer if he looks at them just right. But the filthy, unwashed stone is still and silent. It doesn't have a clearer way of communicating than that, apparently.

He shrugs then continues exploring the town. Eventually he feels he got a sufficient sense for it and picks out the next closest settlement from his map.

Kakariko Village is closest by road, but a coastal village called Lurelin Village is closest as the crow flies.

He'll visit Kakariko, he's being fairly open with his teleportation but it's best not to have to resort to that explanation.

Kakariko Village is past some interesting rock formations, another tall tower like the one Link activated, a long crumbling stone wall and a swamp full of heaps of destroyed Guardians, and a mountain road.

The village itself seems peaceful and quiet. It has a markedly different building style, and lanterns, wooden charms, wooden arches and ropes trailing over entranceways decorate the whole area. Everyone here is wearing a different sort of clothes than other Hylians, too - possibly traditional in some way.

zabna stops by the Guardian wreckage. Is there anything salvageable?

An occasional bit or bob is salvageable. But there's a lot of wreckage, to be thorough he'd be here a while.

He has time and it might give them a better sense for the structure and vulnerabilities of these guardians.

It's pretty difficult to understand how Guardians work just from looking at the wrecked ones. Once again, the materials they're made of are clearly magical in some way. The legs' joints seem to be a weak point. He can eventually work out approximately where the power source and central computer would be.

He'll add some of the scrap that looks potentially valuable to his bag and also keep an eye out for valuable looking plants as he continues to walk.

The road past the Ash Swamp is sparse on valuable-looking plants. Around sunset he arrives at the bridge that marks the last leg to Kakariko Village.

He starts walking over the bridge.

A man on a horse travelling the other way passes him. He waves cheerfully. "Say, lad, it's almost sunset and it's still a bit of a walk from the village. Are you going to be alright at night?"

"I'm not too worried. I wouldn't say no to a ride if you're offering, if you think it's wise I can also pick up my pace."

"I think that'd be wise. Night monsters are not to be trifled with."

zabna chuckles slightly and then breaks into a quick run.

The remaining distance to Kakariko Village evaporates quickly - he arrives just after sunset.

The streets are largely empty. The architecture here is different, the few people still out and about dress differently, plus there are wooden charms and arches strung up everywhere.

zabna looks around for a campfire to wait out the night or failing that a nice place to sit.

There's a cooking pot with a fire under it and a little outdoor eating area next to a grocery store.

Too bad it's kind of raining out.

He looks around for somewhere that won't turn to mud in the rain. If that doesn't work he has a few rupees, he can afford to stay a night in an inn.

The wood-decked cafe area won't turn to mud and he can get a little charging out of the fire, protected from rain by the cooking pot over it, until it runs out of fuel.

He'll go with that. Hopefully the rain will have passed by morning.

The rain has indeed passed by morning. A middle-aged woman wanders out of the store next to his chosen resting spot and asks, "Couldn't afford the inn, stranger?"

"I probably could have but I don't mind the rain and there's a certain beauty in storms."

"Well, each their own. Welcome to Kakariko Village. Would you mind rekindling the fire since it warmed you up through the night? My wood pile is just over there." She points.

"I'd be happy to." He sets to work placing kindling firewood and tinder, then with a concealed laser the fire is lit in short order. He straightens up and looks around.

There are a few shops on what passes for this place's main street. The general store that woman came from, an inn, what looks like an archery shop, and a clothes store. There is a small pool with a statue of Hylia placed near it, and a large, important looking house that has a spear-armed guard out front. More houses and some crop fields or gardens go off into the village. There is a patch of woods at the top of a cliffy path to the east.

He'll go visit the Archery shop at least to start.

There are arrows on displays! Including some of those red-tipped 'fire arrows' they discovered earlier. And bows! And a bored-looking shopkeeper. "Hey, welcome 'n stuff," she mumbles.

"Hello." He looks around but if she's not looking to talk he'll go check out the general store instead.

He doesn't seem to be buying anything. "Another person who's not interested in archery? Some days I think I should just close up this place and go work in my husband's pumpkin field..."

"I don't have the funds to buy a worthwhile bow. I guess I could make getting the funds a priority but it doesn't seem too urgent, I don't fight monsters very often and the weapons I have already have sufficed thus far."

"Nooo, it's okay. I'm just moping. I just really like archery and everyone else really likes, I don't know, farming."

"I always like hearing people talk about their interests. I'm sorry I mistook your resignation to an uninterested public for a lack of interest in your business."

"Oh! Well, uh. So should I talk about archery at you then?"

"I'd be happy to hear about Archery."

"Well I just think proper bow form is so graceful and cool, like old knights or something. It's a matter of diligence and skill! You have to stand firm, see, and hold your arms like this..."

Archery! She can talk about it enthusiastically.

He'll listen and ask questions. At some point, he'll explain the concept of compound bows if she hasn't heard of them before.

Compound bows are really hard to make! And not exactly traditional, are they? ...She is of undecided opinion on them.

"I'm not too big on tradition personally, but I suppose that makes sense given that my job is to explore and introduce people to new concepts. Compound bows are harder to make I guess, and around here you can use magic to compensate for some of the shortcomings of traditional bows. I'm not used to magic being so widely available. Where I come from it's used very conservatively."

"Magic is in just about everything in Hyrule. Thank Hylia for that. Makes life wonderful most of the time."

"It's certainly a different experience. Shame about the monsters."

"Yeah, shame about them. I hear they weren't nearly as bad before the Great Calamity."

"I've heard that as well, hopefully the Hero will succeed in removing Ganon and make the world a safer place."

"There's a Hero? And Ganon's still out there? Huh, I thought that whole thing was resolved a hundred years ago..."

"Vah Medoh was cleansed of Ganon recently and the Hero is planning to cleanse the rest of the Divine Beasts before facing Ganon's main avatar in the old castle."

"Oh. Huh... Why'd the hero wait all this time then?"

"They were hurt really badly during the Great Calamity. They spent most of the time being healed by some old magic."

"Huh... Magic is weird sometimes. Well, good luck to them?"

"I think they'll succeed. Anyway, it's been great talking to you, I should head out."

"Thanks for stopping by! Have a nice journey wherever you're going!"

"I hope you find more people to share your excitement about archery with." He walks out of the shop and heads to the general store, he still hasn't sold off the Guardian parts and plants he's salvaged or gathered.

The general store has that kindly looking middle-aged woman in it. "Hello again, traveler. Have you come to buy something, or to sell?"

"I have some parts from a broken Guardians that I'd like to sell, and a few magical plants."

"I'm sure I can find a use for the plants. Guardian parts...? Well, I suppose I could sell them on. Let's see what you have."

He takes out what he has and shows her.

"Hmm. This is a fair bit of goods. Good, useful ingredients. The Guardian parts I'm not sure about, but... How does a hundred and fifty rupees for all of it sound?"

"Works for me. Thank you."

"It's no trouble. Would you like to buy anything as long as you're here?"

"I'm not sure, there's nothing I came in looking for but I'd be interested to know what you have to offer."

"Oh, mostly food of various sorts. Fine vegetables and rice, eggs, fruit. Some monster parts in the back of you're interested in brewing elixirs."

"I think I'm all set then. Thank you for your time."

"Have a wonderful day in Kakariko Village!"

Next he'll go visit the house with the Guard. He expects it's the home of the Impa that Purah said he ought to speak with.