Leaving the camp was done without any fanfare, I simply walked out with the five people I couldn’t understand. I was a bit uncomfortable going along with them, as I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but on the other hand, it was far better than going searching on my own.
The first hour passed in silence, until I decided to introduce myself. I got the attention of the girl with syth ears, who seemed to be around thirty years old, gestured towards my body to get the idea across and said my name. “Lucas.”
She nodded, gestured towards herself and replied “Alya.” She then gestured to the girl with arms furred to the elbow, who seemed to be in her early twenties. “Lilya.” Next is the guy with slit pupils, who looked like he should be just out of high school, who introduced himself in a gruff tone. “Iosyo.” Then came the man with syth ears to match Alya, who was seemingly in his early thirties, who introduced himself with a slight inclination of his head. “Dmiyo.” Alya then pointed to the child , introducing him as Grigyo. Interestingly, unlike the rest of the group, he didn’t have any signs of having enhanced his mana. I looked over the group, noticing that they all have matching black hair and eyes, with extremely pale skin. Dmiyo was cradling his chest, and occasionally wincing in pain, so I assumed he was the one that got slammed by the wyvern the other day. None of them seemed to be particularly talkative though, so after our short round of introductions we all fell back into silence.
It wasn’t long until Grigyo started to chatter along with Alya. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but judging by the tone, Grigyo was complaining about something, a very common habit among children. I grinned, remembering how I used to bug my parents the same way.
We’d been walking for a while, when Lilya went off to the side to a tree I didn’t recognize, and climbed up it. I watched, trying not to admire the view too obviously as she shimmied up the tree, and she soon grabbed a few large pods of some kind that sort of look like gourds. They’re a dark mottled green, and without my improved vision, I doubted I would be able to spot them against the backdrop of the leaves.
She dropped them to the ground, then climbed back down, picking them up, and handed one of the gourds to each of the group, even handing one to me. I stared at it in confusion for a bit, and she points to the gourd like object, saying “yabka”. I assumed that was the name of the gourd thing, but I was still not sure what to do with it until she took out her knife and started to peel it, then cut off a bit of the flesh and ate it, gesturing for me to copy her.
I swung my backpack around, only losing my balance for a fraction of a second this time, and took out my knife to try it out. I skinned part of the gourd like object, then cut some flesh from it. Putting it in my mouth, I was instantly reminded of dragonfruit. While I wasn’t the biggest fan, this was the first piece of food that wasn’t meat I’d had in a couple of days, so I finished off the fruit and stared upwards. I’d probably climb up and get more if I wasn’t sure I would fall down with how unused to my current body I was.
Regardless of my current inability to climb, I memorized the look of the tree for the future. It had white bark similar to birch trees, but with swirling brown patterns within the whiteness. Looking up, I realized with my current vision I can just spot the fruits themselves, but it doesn’t hurt to know what the tree looks like.
We got back to walking, and eventually I decided to try and learn at least a little of the language they’re speaking. I didn’t know how long I would be with them, so it wouldn’t hurt to be able to understand a word here and there.
Pointing at a tree, I asked “What’s that?” in the most inquisitive tone I can manage. Lilya seems to get the idea though, and gave me a short answer that I assumed is their word for tree, and hopefully not the name of that particular type of tree. I continued to ask about what one thing or another is, trying to remember everything they’re saying, and wishing I had a pencil and paper to record it down. I eventually grabbed some twigs from the ground, and communicated that I want to learn numbers. Luckily, Lilya doesn’t seem to mind the constant questioning, giving me answers to everything I can ask.
I was trying to get an idea of what their analogue to ‘I’ is, when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, and grabbed my gun from the strap it’s hanging on, pointing it in the direction of what I could now see was a steel boar. I raised the rifle to my shoulder and hesitated for a moment. It was a pretty far shot, I would barely be able to see the boar before my eyesight was improved, but I decided to take the shot regardless.
I pulled the trigger, and growled as I saw the dirt kick up to the right and behind the boar, which turns to us as it heard the loud crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. My second shot however, managed to hit it in the head, and it dropped to the ground. I lowered my gun, and look around to see the group looking at me in curiosity. “What?” I say in an innocent tone, assuming they’d get the idea from it.
They chattered amongst themselves as I jogged over to the dead boar, and started cutting it open to get at the core. I soon have the core, and throw it in my backpack after wiping it on some leaves to get off some of the blood. I was going to leave the rest of the body there, as I didn’t have any way to bring it wherever we’re going, when I noticed Iosyo is right behind me. I jumped a little in surprise, and that got a grin out of him. I wondered how on earth he had managed to be so quiet with all the leaves on the ground while he started to cut up the carcass, cutting out all the guts, then putting a large slit in its neck before taking some rope and hanging the corpse up, I assumed to drain the blood.
We waited for a moment, and they brought the cart over to us. After maybe an hour of letting it hang, they put it on top of the cart, Iosyo lifting the carcass as easily as I would handle a bag of groceries. I shook my head, I still wasn’t used to my new body, I could probably handle the corpse myself, maybe even without body strengthening magic, though I wasn’t sure quite how strong I was at this point.
The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, Lilya putting up with my constant questions about what this or that was. By the end of it, I could name quite a few things in their language, but I still needed to figure out the grammar structure, and there was no way I was going to understand any conversations for quite some time.
Eventually, it started to get darker, and we set up camp, eating a decent amount of the steel boar and cooked the rest. They were going to throw away the rest of the body when I decide I want to keep a few of the bones to make things with. I slowly peel the flesh away from two of the massive leg bones and tied them on top of my backpack as it’s already pretty much full. I was wondering what we were going to do if a monster attacked at night, but Dmiyo sat up, grabbed an hourglass form the cart, and set it up next to him. I assumed that it was to count how long he was going to be on watch, so I simply went to bed.
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I was awoken earlier than I wanted by Lilya, who said something I didn’t understand, then brought me over to the hourglass, flipped it, and headed off to her own tent. I grumbled, It seems I wasn’t going to get out of watch duty just because I didn’t understand the language. The sun had partially risen by the time the hourglass was mostly empty, and I realized that they had been nice enough to leave me the morning shift, rather than one where I would have to wake up then go back to bed after.
I continued watching the forest as the rest of the group woke up, and watched as they packed up the tent, then took out their weapons and squared up against each other. I’d seen them sparring back at the camp, but this time with my new eyes, I could keep up with them much better. I also noticed that they’re using practice weapons they took from out of the cart, which made me sigh in relief. While Lilya and Iosyo spar with each other, I saw Alya teaching Grigyo, which was absolutely adorable, until I realized that the ten year old kid was probably a better fighter than I was.
Dmiyo seemed to notice me looking, and took out another set of practice weapons, gesturing for me to take them. I waved my hands in denial, but he pushed them towards me with raised eyebrows, clearly insisting.
I gingerly took the practice sword and shield, holding them in a way that had to show how uncomfortable I was with them. Dmiyo laughed, came over, and corrected me in how to hold them and how to position my body. He then demonstrated a basic slash, and had me copy him. I tried to emulate the ease with which his sword moved, but everything felt terribly awkward, my mana and body being recently enhanced compounding upon the fact that I have no clue what I’m doing.
Dmiyo didn’t seem to mind though, he simply continued to correct me, and I soon realized that this will probably be a very good way to get used to my new strength, so I get back to the practice with more fervor. Maybe an hour later, after I failed at slashing, failed at stabbing, and generally just failed at everything, I realized that I was smiling. At least I was enjoying my abject failure. Dmiyo then grinned, and took up his practice sword and shield facing me, and I instantly turned pale. This was not part of the plan! I very hesitantly took up my sword and shield facing him, and could only track him moving towards me due to my new eyes.
His sword crashed into my shield, and I shout in pain, that freaking hurt! I growl, and swung my sword back at him, but he blocked it with ridiculous ease, a grin on his face. He then slowed down, his swings becoming much easier to see, and slow enough that I could block them. I let out a sigh, and relaxed, only to get hit because of the relaxation. My growl was met with a grin, and we continued the dance. I tried to swing my sword the way he had showed me, while doing my best to keep my shield between his sword and my body. I wasn’t particularly successful with that, but about halfway through I realized I was starting to grin a bit.
When he finally finished, saluting me with sword pressed horizontally over his shield and with a tilt of the head, I tried to emulate the action, and I handed back the practice weapons. Once I’d handed them back, I let out a laugh, the exhilaration from the sparring coming over me. I sat down, and watched as Dmiyo then began to spar with Alya, and I noticed that he’s moving at the same speed he was for the single strike at the beginning of our fight. I sighed, without my guns I’m just so weak. I paused for a moment then, Dmiyo had been cradling his chest just the other day from his injuries, was he already healed somehow? When he had to stop the sparring halfway with a wince however, I realized I was just so easy to spar with he didn’t bother his injuries whatsoever. I sat there in shame for a bit, but decided that I was going to continue to practice with them as long as I stayed with them until I could at least not be an utter embarrassment. While building my resolve, determined to not feel all ashamed of my skills for long, I wonder what happened to my injuries.
Just two days ago I had bruised myself pretty badly with my falling down in my attempts to run. Twisting my arm to the side, I go to examine the cut that I’d acquired in one of my falls, only to be met with only slightly pink skin where the cut had been. I ran my finger over it, wondering why exactly it was already gone. While it wouldn’t have taken too long to heal, it should have at least taken a few weeks to get to this point. Dmiyo came by, and asked me something I couldn’t understand, so I simply shook my head. He repeats one of the words, and when I still have no clue what he’s talking about, he takes out a core, points at it, says one word, then points at my eyes, saying another.
At this point I realized he’s probably realized what’s going on, he has to be trying to tell me that it has something to do with the wyvern core. I nod in acknowledgement, and get a grunt of approval while he puts away the core and gets back to packing everything up. I’m not sure how he realized what I was wondering about, but figure it’s due to him noticing the cut earlier.
Once we’re all ready to leave, the day passed in much the same fashion that the previous had. We found another one of those trees that has those gourd fruit, and this time I risked climbing up to knock a couple down, which I barely fit into my practically full backpack. While I walked, I eventually run out of things to ask the name of, so I took out some of the wyvern scales and continued working towards making my cuirass.
The day passed in peace, and I managed to pick up a couple new words, but the main progress was in how used to my new body I had become with walking and jogging, and with the cuirass I’ve been working on. While not close to done, I had the front portion of the cuirass about three quarters done, though it wasn’t shaped to me yet. I admired my work as we set up camp again, and we’re soon going back to sleep.
The next morning, the sparring was repeated, but this time after it was over Dmiyo pointed to my guns and asked a question I couldn’t understand. I showed it to them, showed them the bullets, putting a bullet into the chamber manually rather than with the magazine, and shot a tree nearby to show them how it works. I then hand it over to Dmiyo for him to examine, and he looks it over for a bit before asking something I don’t understand. He then starts to pantomime for a bit, but after enough time, he managed to get across the question of if I’m the one who made the guns. I nodded and made a sound of agreement, and he looked quite interested, making me wonder if he wanted me to make something.
I took back my guns, and we’re soon back to walking. I spent the rest of the day going over the vocabulary I was trying to learn of whatever the language they’re speaking is and working on my cuirass. The day ended uneventfully, only having shot a couple of syth and collecting their cores, and we set up camp for the night in a nice little clearing next to a bunch of the yabka fruit trees.
The night passed in peace, with me having the morning watch again, and morning came along with the daily practice with sword and shield. After that, the days started to blend together, practice in the morning, working on my cuirass and learning the language during the day, and getting not quite enough sleep at night due to having to get up for watch.
The days eventually turned into weeks, and I started staying up at night worrying that we were never going to find another gate. The constant relaxed expressions of the group managed to keep me reassured enough to not panic however. After some time I finished my cuirass, only needing some leather to work as straps, and I eventually end up brain tanning part of a steel boar’s hide, cutting it into strips and scraping off all the fur. My new armor was far lighter than I’d expected, not even being as heavy as my backpack, and I shaped it for a few days until it was quite comfortable, even without anything like a gambeson under it.
My excitement over finishing my armor faded over the next few days however, and I started to worry again. I’d just started up my old habit of chewing on my nails in worry when we come across something the relieved me, a road. It’s a simple road, closer to a dirt path, but it’s easily four meters wide, and stretched to the horizon in an unerring straight line.
Nobody shouted in joy or anything, but we all visibly sped up as we arrived at it, and grins were shared all around. That day ended not long after we found the road, and we camped on the side of it, snacking on the massive amount of extra steel boar meat we had along with some of the yabka fruit.
Our trek continued, though it was much more comfortable walking along the road compared to through the forest, and it wasn’t too long until we saw something in the distance. We approached it, and as it slowly grew in size, so did my surprise. Rather than the chain link fence and couple of buildings that had made up our camp, it had legitimate walls made of stone, and a multitude of buildings. I gasped, this clearly wasn’t a camp we’d made, and my thoughts about the group I’d been traveling with solidified, it seemed earth wasn’t the only world that had gates to this world.