Chapter Nine
The next month was a blur of activity that followed the same pattern the previous thirty days had. The morning was spent preparing for the day, the day was spent in slime destruction although all spent towards Joe’s growth as he no longer allowed the boy to kill slimes, and the evenings were spent preparing for sleep.
The first day was spent settling into their new routines, although the boy was quite surprised and maybe even a bit frustrated when Joe started taking all the kills. I hope he’s not too pissed? I don’t think it would be a good idea if he kept leveling with his learning hampered at one. Does he lose all the stat gains from one to six when I cure the curse? Joe wasn’t sure of the details, and didn’t want to cripple the boy’s future too much by allowing him to continue leveling. So, he took over the kills, allowing the boy only to help in clean up. During their day, Joe realized he hadn’t really got to know the boy’s name or tried to really begin learning the language. He considered trying to do it at the moment, but the confusion of battle and the swiftness of moving from one slime to the next left Joe a bit… discombobulated and left the conversation too broken to easily maintain a stream of conversation, especially since it was one dependent upon miming so much. So Joe decided to leave it for the evening meal.
On the evening run home, Joe kept up a conversation with the boy of a nonsensical nature, the silence between them uncomfortable. When he finally made it back to the inn, he initiated his language learning course.
“Ok, um…”
Joe stopped, realizing more words would actually be confusing, so he finally stopped, then grunted and tried to get the boys attention. When he saw the boy looked up, he quickly pointed to himself and said his name.
“Joe! Joe!”
The boy looked at him and cocked his head. Joe tried again and pointed to himself.
“Joe.”
He then looked to the boy and pointed at the boy, shrugging and offering a questioning gaze. He waited for several more moments then pointed at the boy, questioning for his name. It took several more iterations until the boy finally understood and replied with a pretty harsh guttural name.
“Garnedell. Glatergal ne Garnedell.”
“Huh… hmm… so did you just say My name is Garnedell? Seems like a couple words are missing? Or hm… but then Garnedell?”
Joe then pointed to the boy and repeated his name several times while saying his name. When the boy nodded with a timid smile, Joe reiterated his name, indicating to the boy to call him by name. The boy repeated his name, although it was a bit harsh rolling off his tongue.
The evening continued as Joe picked up item after item and asking for their name, beginning with his utensils and tableware and continuing on to his clothing and weapons. That evening actually went a bit long as Joe went through any item he could find, trying to learn new words. The language exchange continued as they went to the stream to wash up before heading home for the evening and to bed.
And so the routine continued. The day was spent devoted to growing Joe’s levels as much as possible, and the growth was excruciatingly slow, taking almost ten days for each level on his long journey to twenty. With the day done, they would return back down the long line of slimes, killing back to the road before heading back to home. Joe would jog down the road, trying to push the boy’s endurance each morning and evening as they traveled the road, although Joe didn’t notice any increase in his endurance since only a month had passed. The meal time would be spent enjoying their meal while Joe quizzed the boy with all manner of language instruction before bathing and turning in for bed. The days were quite grueling.
The first several days saw the boy and Joe developing a basic form of communication as Joe learned some basic words. Their growing camaraderie developed rapidly as they began to form rudimentary communication, but it quickly hit a massive block as Joe’s development slowed. While the words themselves weren’t too difficult, Joe found the grammar to be impossibly insane. He struggled constantly attempting to understand the more difficult sentences but often found Garnedell’s speech incomprehensible. Anything beyond two or three word sentences left Joe utterly confused.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Despite that, they quickly were able to develop a simple set of communication grunts, waves, and mimes that they quickly agreed to. Joe’s gregarious nature and jokes even started to come through, and the boy was smiling and even laughing at some of Joe’s more obvious slapstick and physical humor. With the boy beginning to relax around Joe, Joe began to feel more confident in his relationship and also relaxed in kind.
After a week had passed, Joe was able to speak rudimentary two or three word sentences, decently useful for simple things like asking for food or the bathroom, but pretty much meaningless for anything else. Most of it was really just a single word with Garnedell inferring everything else, but Joe was soon able to understand some few words.
On the second week of their mutual quest, Joe found a moment of quiet terror as they began combat with a slime, quickly staking it to the ground. Even has he readied his spoon spear, he heard Garnedell’s terrified cry behind him and turned to see a slime coming into range and squaring to leap at him. Joe leapt forward, swiping the boy’s legs out from under him even as the slime leapt. Joe’s kick had unbalanced him, leaving him overstretched and collapsed on his side even as he kept his eyes on the second slime. Even as it landed, Joe saw the slime contract to begin its leap once again and rolled towards the boy bringing his spoon spear in front of him horizontal to the ground. Joe was uncertain if the slime would target him or continue attacking Garnedell, so had to defend both of them. Holding the spoon spear horizontally in front of him at head height allowed him to block the entire distance in front of him and Garnedell.
The slime came towards him and Joe jerked his hand to the side as the slime had come directly towards his hand grasping the spoon spear shaft. Even as he moved his hand to the side, he angled his spoon spear such that the slime would collide with the shaft as soon as possible. It slammed into it and quivered to a halt, its ooze enveloping around it. He sat up as high as possible and rotated the shaft till it was vertical to the ground and slammed it into the soil as he usually did with his disposable wooden stake. Well, that’ll teach me to have a backup wooden stake around! The spoon spear punched into the ground in reverse, anchoring the slime on the shaft a good meter above the ground as it slowly oozed down the shaft. Ewww… I’m going to have to hold that, you disgusting ooze!
Joe glanced towards the first slime and saw that it had extricated itself a good distance off the stake and he whipped out his spear and leapt towards it before it could pull itself off. He stabbed his spear deep into the slimes guts and quickly flicked the slime gem out of the ooze’s depths, automatically flinging it at a distant tree trunk without even much thought, the action almost instinctual by now.
“Garnedell! Get that gem! Now!”
“Kasha! Joe! Tu ne gala ngaragan”
Joe ignored the boy and quickly sheathed his spear on his back. He ripped the stake from the puddled ooze on the valley floor and ran back towards the second ooze still slowly sliding down his spear spoon shaft. A deep sigh passed his lips as he once again considered how disgusting it would be to touch the shaft covered in the excrement of the slime but didn’t slow as he brought his stake down into the slime’s body and ripping it downward to the valley floor and staking it firmly there. The ooze seemed to part from the spoon spear shaft and Joe grunted with some frustration as he realized that he hadn’t been able to rip any of the slime’s body off. It was staked completely intact on the valley floor. Joe grabbed his spoon spear and reversed it, bringing the spoon bowl downward and plunged it into the slimes body before ripping the slimes gem out of it, again bouncing it off a nearby tree trunk with practiced ease.
The gem slipped just out of his reach to his right and Joe turned to mark its spot even as he pulled out a prepared whisk. A couple of seconds pushing through some underbrush revealed the gem and a quick whisk brought a status update informing of his kill. Joe stood up with purpose and speed, but with a bit less stress as he turned towards where he believed Garnedell was.
“Hey, kid. You OK?”
Joe looked around as he walked back, holding his stake and spoon spear in hand and soon saw the boy crouched over the gem, poking it every once and a while, playing with the ooze. Joe crunched his eyes in with some concern. Why is he playing around in a situation like this? Joe felt his anger rise a bit until he saw the boy look up and a look of relief obvious on his face even as he handed the whisk to Joe. Joe’s anger immediately melted and he smiled. Seriously? He was trying to save the kill for me?
Joe shook his head and pointed at the boy, trying to let him know to kill. The boy showed some confusion until he seemed to understand, and he quickly, efficiently, killed the slime. Joe pulled the boy up by his hand and hugged him, pushing him back and looking him over carefully.
“You OK, son? You get hurt anywhere?”
Joe continued his ministration, but found nothing wrong and stood, clapping him on his shoulder before squatting to look into his face, eye to eye.
“Alright, son. Listen. Don’t save the kill in this kind of situation, got it? We can’t afford it. Neither one of us can afford to get hurt! Just kill it, fast! OK?”
The boy looked on with confusion and Joe sighed with some frustration as he realized that the boy didn’t understand. He tried to think of any vocabulary that he had recently learned that may have proved useful, but he couldn’t find anything in his limited vocabulary. He finally resorted to miming. After a few moments, the boy began to nod tentatively, and smiling a bit. Joe felt satisfied that he seemed to have gotten it. Joe looked around quickly, not finding any nearby slime, and pulled the boy over for a short break before continuing the rest of the day.
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