The insulationist want only strong mages, the group he joined wants free school for everyone, the expansionist want to involve the outside world in the college for money1

Tyrion was setting up for what he did the last chapter, setting off the attack and endebting the emperor to him

Couple of points:

Ryoka described the penicillin mold to Octavia, and has been shown to be fairly knowledgeable (even to the point of it being somewhat unrealistic).

Laken didn’t just describe a trebuchet to his villagers, Ryoka had given him.drawings of them. Drawings plus an explanation would make a trebuchet not terribly hard to construct, in a general sense, they aren’t exactly complex devices. The hardest part is getting the proportions correct, which in this case was aided considerably by one of the villagers getting a skill.

Steam power is great, but many creations built around that technology would be impractical in Innworld. Trains don’t just need locomotives to run, they need tracks. Tracks which would be constantly destroyed by monsters, or torn up by goblins and such to use the metal, etc.

Much of the other uses for steam power can be done directly.by using magic. Yes, steam would give non-mages a nice boost, but its effects would be hardly revolutionary to the world.

Hot air balloons and zeppelins would fall under the same issues that trains would have. Great in theory, until the first wyvern sees one. Even modern airplanes and jets would likely have issues with aerial monsters.

As for how stupid many of the Earthers are in general, besides many of them being quite young, schools don’t often teach a lot of practical knowledge for how to construct or create things at their most basic level until university classes, and even then often not in many classes. Unless you were an engineering student of some sort, most of your knowledge would be more theory or just wholly inapplicable. There would be some stuff people could probably make, but most people are also used to having at least the parts themselves already creates. Having to make those base parts first would hold a lot of stuff back.

As an example, when Erin was in Pallass, basic gears seemed to be a completely novel item, thus they wouldn’t be readily available to use to build stuff. Any components like that that aren’t already in use would need to be created, and if people don’t know how to obtain those, they can’t build anything that utilizes them.

Tyrion, just like other people guessing Flos, would have zero reason to want to help an Emperor.

In addition, neither of those two would have likely known Laken was even an Emperor at that point. Tyrion seemingly didn’t find out until after even Magnolia did. Flos would have required complicated magical message shenanigans through Ryoka’s phone, facilitated by Wistram, which would probably not be something they wanted to do, and Ryoka would have likely rather destroyed her phone than allow that to happen.

The people from earth got to wistram the same way as everyone else, paying the gold and being able to stay there for a month until the big test.