"No offense and I don't mean to make light of your overall situation, but some days I envy you and wonder what it would take to get shanghaied for my own cross-country trip."

Haroun just looks a bit at the notebook from which Bella has casually erased text, in the out-of-the-way corner where they stepped to try it.  It's Bella's second time doing it, which means that this time she just used Eval.  For Haroun it's going to be more like a year before he can do that - less if he focused purely on getting that one Skill and nothing else.  Pretty soon she'll be able to search inside books too, at her present rate of mana-capacity growth.

"No offense and I don't mean to make light of your overall situation, but some days I envy you and wonder what it would take to get shanghaied for my own cross-country trip."