"So you mean that through this ring it's possible to exchange information from anywhere in the world instantly?" The queen asked in shock.
As a ruler, she knew what a powerful weapon fast information could be, both for winning wars and for maintaining order in times of peace. It was visible in the gleam in her eyes that she realized this was revolutionary.
Noah nodded with a small smile. "Yes, that's one of the main functions. With this, you can communicate with anyone connected to the internet in seconds."
Seeing that she had already understood the strategic value of the tool, Noah decided to show another side.
"But beyond that, there's something I found particularly interesting." He turned the floating screen towards her, displaying his own profile. "On Facebook you can create a space of your own, a place where anything you write can be read by other people, and if they like what you say, they start following you."
The queen arched an eyebrow. "Follow?"
"It's like... showing interest. People start following everything you post. And not only that, they can like and comment, react, debate, praise." He said, confident that the share of attention she would receive would be very attractive.
For someone so fixated on beauty, obsessed with being the most beautiful in the kingdom, Noah was sure that the queen would also want people to enjoy looking at her, just as she had when he recognized her beauty a few minutes ago.
The queen remained silent, staring at the screen.
Her fingers slid slowly through the air, observing Noah's profile, then a small smile formed on her lips, almost imperceptible.
"So... everything I say will be seen? By everyone who follows me? And is there any way for people to admire my beauty?" She asked interestedly.
"Not yet, that's a feature I haven't managed to develop yet, but it's in my future plans." He answered honestly.
Noah had actually tried to make it possible to take pictures with the internet, but compared to modern cell phones that had cameras to take pictures, the magic rings didn't have anything like that.
So the only way to deal with it would be to learn some similar magic and use the knowledge of that to implement it on the internet.
This left the queen slightly disappointed, but thinking of the other functionalities this internet had, she was excited again and felt a new wave of respect for this young nobleman she had rescued.
'Who would have thought that someone I rescued on a whim would turn out to be such a genius wizard?' she thought with satisfaction.
"Is there any danger in wearing this magical jewel?" She asked as she looked at the ring on her hand with interest.
"No, the ring extracts some of your Mana to project the internet screen in front of you, but apart from this consumption, which is extremely low, there is no danger in wearing this magical jewel." Noah explained patiently.
Receiving a nod of confirmation from the magic mirror, the queen finally gave in and put the ring on her finger.
At first nothing happened, until she injected some Mana and a holographic screen appeared in front of her, just as it had appeared in front of Noah a few minutes ago.
Reading the welcome screen, she wondered about the Nickname, so Noah explained.
"When you go online for the first time you can choose your Nickname, which is how people will see your posts. You can either put your personal name to make it easier for people to find you, or you can put a nickname that hides your identity." He explained.
Hearing this, she asked. "What name did you put?"
"Since my name is Noah, I just put my name as [N], the people closest to me will know that the [N] is me, but anyone I don't want to know my identity will just think I'm an ordinary internet user." Noah explained.
Hearing this, the queen thought for a few more seconds before typing in [Fairest].
With her name decided, Noah began to explain the functionalities of [Facebook] while she explored the application with curiosity.
Every now and then a new post would appear from a random user telling her about something random.
[HorseLover]
[Today I discovered that my horse's new master feeds him red apples instead of green. He swears it makes his coat shinier. I wonder if it's true. I need to test it].
❤️ 9 likes - 💬 4 comments
[HealingPassion]
[I discovered that boiled selthar leaves help with night fevers. A lady in the village woke up singing after drinking the tea].
❤️ 14 likes - 💬 7 comments
[HammerMaster]
[I'm posting here just to see if this ring really works, is anyone else from Bellshore using the Internet? The guard who sold me this ring vouched for the quality of this...]
❤️ 22 likes - 💬 7 comments
[BlueFlower]
[I didn't see it myself, but they say that the Grand Councilor's daughter had a dress embroidered with gold thread... just to splurge on wealth during her visit to the Duchess].
❤️ 47 likes - 💬 26 comments
Seeing these publications, especially the gossip that was that last publication, even though she didn't know who the Grand Councilor's daughter was, or who the Duchess mentioned was, the Queen felt as if something inside her was being stirred up there.
As she was the queen, interesting gossip like this hardly ever reached her, as people were very careful around her, so being able to see stories like this seemed much more interesting than she had initially thought!
With her interest piqued, several minutes passed with the queen just getting used to controlling the internet and reading various gossip stories about people she didn't know, but which managed to make her angry, embarrassed and various other emotions.
Meanwhile, Noah also had the internet open, but instead of looking at the [Facebook] posts, since he was the one who had created them, he was now looking at the application's backend data.
In addition to the data showing that there were now 2 users online, Noah was looking non-stop at the number of Points he had available in [Store.exe].
During the first few minutes, nothing had changed, but after an hour that the queen had started using the internet, his points total finally changed from 103 to 103.01, an increase of 0.01 points after an hour of using it!
Seeing that the gain wasn't even a full point, Noah was a little disappointed, but remembering that as long as he kept developing the internet, at some point he could have thousands of users, or even millions, at that point wouldn't he receive hundreds/thousands of points per hour?
Using this to calm himself down, Noah was no longer disappointed with the small amount he had received, but was excited to continue spreading the word even faster.
Now that he knew what a user's income was on the internet, he could spend points with peace of mind to make more rings.
Seeing the powerful monarch of this country acting like a gossipy teenage girl from his previous world, Noah cracked a small smile that didn't go unnoticed by the sharp gaze of the queen, who realized what she had done and felt her cheeks turn slightly red in embarrassment.
"I apologize for my lack of decorum, Lord Noah Noyer, the magic you've developed is so interesting that I didn't notice the time passing so quickly..." She said slightly embarrassed as she tried to disguise it.
Noah just nodded, unconcerned by how she acted, since he was also focused on seeing how many points he could gain by using it.
"It's okay, Your Majesty, just knowing that you liked my creation makes me feel honored." Noah replied with decorum.
"Grimhilde." She said in a firm tone. "From this moment on, you, Noah Noyer, will be received in my castle with the highest prestige, being considered my guest of honor, so just call me Lady Grimhilde."
Hearing this, Noah was surprised, but without much thought he nodded and replied. "Thank you very much, Lady Grimhilde, I'm honored, please just call me Noah too."
Nodding to Noah, they chatted some more about some doubts Grimhilde had about the internet before she dismissed Noah, saying she had important things to do.
But when he was alone in his room, and saw from the [Facebook] backend that the user [Fairest] was still scrolling the application's homepage non-stop, he laughed, until he realized that at this rate, maybe the queen would get to the point of realizing that the internet really was empty!
So without thinking twice, Noah logged into his fake accounts and started programming other posts, so that the internet would always have a new post every hour, to encourage the queen to always stay connected, to find out what was going on with other people.
In a world without entertainment like this, being able to find out about everything that was happening to people all over the world was much more interesting than just reading a generic book for the hundredth time.
And for Noah, who came from a time when it was very common to create crazy stories to post TikTok videos of Reddit stories, even if he couldn't make stories as interesting as those, making some simpler ones was still easy.
And while Grimhilde was using the internet as a young teenager, the little mermaid princess Ariel was looking hesitantly at the strange magic ring she received from the human she saved.