Faelyn mentally scrolled through his to-do list, a phantom checklist in the theatre of his mind. Item number one, flashing like a neon sign in the mental darkness: Communication. It was annoyingly basic, right up there with breathing and not spontaneously combusting.
Without the ability to effectively bleat at the locals, he was functionally a very confused, slightly damp, and paperweight. Even assuming, against all reasonable evidence, that someone, somewhere on this country, or this planet, or possibly this entirely different dimension, spoke English – a monumental leap of faith. Wandering around yelling “Does anyone speak English?!” felt less like a solid plan and more like a prime way to attract trouble.
Therefore, logic, in its cold, merciless way, dictated language acquisition. Now, for the average person, this would involve dusty textbooks, awkward pronunciation drills, and the soul-crushing realization that conjugating verbs was apparently some kind of ancient torture ritual. But Faelyn, blessedly or cursedly depending on the day, was not average. He had a skill system. And while whipping up a universal translator out of thin air felt a tad ambitious, learning a language via listening? That sounded… almost reasonable, in a profoundly unreasonable situation.
He dredged up dusty memories of university lectures, fragments of information clinging to the cobwebbed corners of his brain. Language acquisition. Yes, that was the vaguely academic term for how toddlers babbled their way to fluency. First, the delightful cacophony of listening. Babies, apparently, were just tiny audio sponges, soaking up speech patterns, tones, and rhythms like they were going out of style. Step two: mimicry. Babbling, cooing, eventually stumbling into something vaguely resembling words. Step three, the Rosetta Stone of babyhood: association. Linking sounds to squishy toys, parental figures, and the existential horror of being left alone in a crib. Step four, grammar, the linguistic scaffolding that held it all together, slowly, painfully, pieced together through observation. And finally, refinement. Years of input, practice, and the occasional mortifying grammatical blunder in public. A charmingly inefficient process, but effective.
Faelyn, having mentally speed-runned a developmental linguistics textbook, took a deep breath. Skill creation time. He felt a faint, almost imperceptible tremor of… anticipation? Excitement? No, probably just indigestion from whatever questionable ship food he’d consumed. Still, deep breath taken. He was ready to architect a linguistic miracle.
Conception. Step one. He knew what he needed. Clarity was the issue. He needed to be able to osmosis language. Learn by… listening. Hence the profoundly unoriginal skill name that was already forming in his mind.
Clarification. Step two. He mentally replayed the language acquisition process, each step a clumsy pantomime in his mind’s eye. Babies babbling, toddlers pointing, teenagers agonizing over Shakespeare. He visualized the whole messy, beautiful process, trying to distill it into its core components, like some linguistic alchemist attempting to turn baby babble into skill gold.
Crystallization. Step three. He braced himself. Activated the ‘concept engine’… nothing. Right. Apparently, miracles weren't instantaneous. He tried again. And again. Failure. Failure. Failure. Annoyance began to prickle at the edges of his calm. He stopped, forcibly untensing his shoulders. Centering. That was the key, wasn’t it? He took another deep breath, longer this time, consciously slowing his heart rate. He closed his eyes, willing himself to feel. As his thoughts, the impatient whirring of his brain, began to quiet, something shifted in his perception. A faint glow, behind his closed eyelids. Like looking at a dim light through muddy water. Blurry. Pulsating. Then, a mental nudge, subtle but undeniable. Something extra. Like a phantom limb, suddenly present, waiting to be flexed. He knew, instinctively, it was the concept engine. Waiting for him to… activate it, properly this time.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He repeated crystallization. Engaged the concept engine. Nothing. Frustration bloomed. He knew he was doing it right. Or at least, he was following the vague, internal instructions that felt less like instructions and more like… intuitive nudges. Then it hit him, a mental facepalm moment of stunning obviousness. Focus. The three steps, conception, clarification, crystallization, they weren't just steps, they were a process. A meditative, focused process. His mind needed to be fixed on the concept, laser-focused, undistracted by impatient thoughts.
Sighing, a sound that was becoming his personal soundtrack, he went through it again. Conception. Clarification. Crystallization. This time, he actively pushed away distractions, picturing a single, unwavering beam of mental energy focused on ‘learning by listening’. As he activated the concept engine, a wave of mental sluggishness washed over him, his thoughts suddenly thick and slow, like wading through treacle. Then, a chime. A clear, bright bell sound, like a microwave announcing the end of its cycle, except… inside his head. He was too muddle-headed to properly process it at the time. It took a few minutes for the mental fog to dissipate, for his thoughts to unclog and start moving at something approaching normal speed again.
“Whew! That was scary!” he muttered, rubbing his temples, feeling faintly like he’d just run a mental marathon while simultaneously suffering mild electrocution. Summoning the interface, now a familiar, slightly surreal digital overlay on his vision, he immediately noticed the points counter in the top right. It had jumped. By a rather impressive 1000 points. “At least my Bachelor’s degree in Education didn’t go entirely to waste,” he thought wryly. Apparently, even theoretical knowledge of pedagogy had some sort of… point value in interdimensional skill crafting.
Below his name, nestled under the familiar ‘Marketplace’ option, a new button shimmered into existence. ‘Created Skill’. He selected it. A list popped up, stark and minimalist. One item. ‘Learning by Listening’. Beside it, a tantalizingly clickable button: ‘Equip’. He clicked it. The interface dissolved back to the main screen, the newly minted skill now displayed proudly below his name, complete with a toggle switch on its right. He toggled it on.
And then, the world exploded. Not literally, thankfully, or that would have been a truly anti-climactic end to his linguistic efforts. But his senses… sharpened. No, not sharpened, exactly. More like… tuned. Sounds resolved into distinct components – pitch, tone, rhythm, loudness, nuances he hadn’t even registered before. It was as if someone had upgraded his cognitive operating system, installing a sensory enhancement package he hadn’t known he was missing.
“No, no, senses aren’t enhanced,” his analytical brain, bless its pedantic heart, interjected. “Cognitive framework. That’s it. The skill modifies the cognitive framework to facilitate accelerated language learning.” Right. Cognitive framework. Much more scientific sounding. And likely to be significantly less helpful in the future. But hey, baby steps. Or, in this case, baby babble steps. First, communication. Then, world domination. Priorities, after all.