[ Claude's in the middle of lifting his glass to take a drink, but Jayden's joke will get a wide grin from him before he completes that action. He's no stranger to jokes others might deem less successful - especially after working with a knight whose specialty was truly awful jokes by any rating scale, but. He still has a genuine appreciation for them all the same, especially so since this one ties in nicely to the topic. ]

Lots more advanced. There's several things Cadens has that I'd never seen until I came here, and a handful of others, like printing presses, which were deliberately suppressed. Not that many knew that was the case as evidence of that was also kept hidden, but it was possible to find through other means. Magic replaces a lot of what the Free Cities uses in their mechanics but even then, there's no denying Fodlan is behind.

[ With a shrug of one shoulder since there's the simplest way to explain it without going too far into more of it that doesn't exactly make for the lightest gathering-in-the-tavern conversation - even if he'd already been the one to broach as much by bringing up the state of impending war. That feels different enough to Claude, though. ]

That was also the case regardless since several nations had more at their disposal than Fodlan did. What's your world like?