Of course, after the party breaks up when they get back to town, Henry is off to see the butcher. And honestly, he isn’t wrong in his opinion. The butcher can help him. In fact, with the limitations placed on the butcher by Ace, it could even be seen as safe.
Yet still, Henry is about the only one who is regularly getting lessons that hasn’t been assigned to do so. After all, even if Ace doesn’t like the butcher, Ace also understands they need his knowledge. As it stands, even if they had a person who lived their entire lives as a true butcher, they’d be out of sorts.
How are you even supposed to deal with a monster that is more rock than meat? What do you do with a plant that seems more animal than not? That and more to stumble across out in the wilds.
In fact, Ace and Jim both have made it a requirement that anyone who is assigned to exploration needs at least a few lessons. If only because magic can do some crazy things to biology. Still, those lessons are closely watched, whereas Henry is just sort of hanging around in the butcher shop unsupervised.
His party sort of noticed this, but it isn’t like they can do much about it. Though maybe they would have been more worried if they knew of just what he was doing during their days off. Because learning how to butcher what are pre-butchered chunks of meat isn’t going to do you much good.
Henry, encouraged by the butcher, was going out and procuring his own materials. At first, that meant buying some hunters catch every once in a while. It cost a little, but he didn’t have to get his hands dirty or leave town.
The butcher, however, ever so slowly pushed him towards sourcing his material directly. To go out and find monsters and animals, then use his knowledge to start the butchering process even while hunting it. After all, the only way to know how the meat was damaged before under the knife, is to be the one that damaged it.
This does not go unnoticed. Both Ace, Jim, and even Melonie have their eyes on his current activities. Though for the moment, things are harmless enough. Not that they trust things to stay this way.
And so, in the middle of this intrigue, down in the dungeon, the ageless ant queen finally figures things out. Through the magic of shenanigans of three types; path, system, and dungeon, she is able to pick up how to communicate telepathically. Mind you, it isn’t like she started speaking Doyle’s language. That will have to wait either for the language pack to be bought or for her to learn the language naturally.
Doyle puts quite a lot of weight on this. While the rough communication with his kobold boss is alright, for someone meant to basically act as a spy, he needs better. Though that does raise a question for him. ‘Hey Ally, how does all this language stuff work with the system? Like, I can understand to some degree if once I get the language pack, kobolds I spawn can speak kobold. However, what about those who are already alive or even when respawning don’t start fresh like my kobold boss and her friends?’
Ally frowns, ‘Give me a moment. I’m going to need a little prep to explain this as it is more than just a simple “system injects the language” sort of thing.’
Doyle nods his core and then sits back to watch as Ally begins to bring up various panels and displays, sorting through them and altering things. Neither of them are really paying attention to the time and so it flies by, first minutes then hours pass as she readies herself. In the end, it takes her a good 18 and a half hours to gather all the material she wants and to perfect it.
Ally turns to Doyle and taps the largest screen of her presentation. On it are the pictures of a human in simple clothes, a dragon that looks bored despite Doyle’s lack of ability to judge its facial expressions, a kobold wearing what appears to be a toga, and a regular enough badger if not for the fact it is wearing glasses. ‘These are the four broad categories into which sapience is split. Now, language is not some inherent property of being sapient, but with broad strokes there are three types of language based around sapience.’
Doyle raises a piece of stone he had shaped into a hand while waiting. Ally quints at it but finally relents, ‘Do you have a question?’
Doyle raises a second piece of stone, this one in the shape of a hand pointing at something and has it do so towards the screen. ‘You say three, but I see four.’
Ally’s mouth tightens before relaxing, ‘The fourth can be seen as a wild card or a grab bag. To explain that, let’s put labels on these pictures.’
Underneath each picture, a label is revealed starting with the human; born, growth, work, and chance.
Doyle nods, ‘That makes some sense, though aren’t sapient animals also a work thing?’
Ally laughs, ‘If it was that easy, Moota wouldn’t have so much trouble with getting bovine worshipers. I mean, sure, an animal can work towards sapience, especially those who might have some kind of heritage that comes from the growth category. Overall, a badger gaining sapience when, as a species they aren’t already developing towards sapience is for our purposes a random chance.
‘Anyway, the three others should be easy enough to understand. Humans, elves, dwarves, and so on are all born sapient. They get handed a soul just for existing. Some beings, generally those you would describe as mythical, will gain a soul upon growing enough. This doesn’t always mean maturity. Though with certain species like with dragons, becoming sapient is considered one of the requirements to be seen as an adult.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
‘Then finally you have the poor kobolds. Like humans, they keep coming into existence all across existence and yet they drew the short end of the stick. While the spark of sapience is there, it takes work to ignite it. In some dimensions, this is easy, even to the point that if one of the parents are sapient, the child will be born with a soul. Other dimensions make it so hard that even normal animals have a greater chance of gaining sapience.’
Doyle raises his “hand” again, ‘What is our dimension like?’
Ally shrugs, ‘While not particularly one way or another, since kobolds are at least humanoid in form they’ll have an easy time spreading sapience once the ball gets rolling.
‘Anyway’, and she pulls over a smaller screen. On it are a bunch of languages arranged as three groups, though some such as kobold are more in between than others. ‘This is the three main language groupings.’
Ally points towards the group with Doyles language in it, ‘This is what is generally referred to as the civilized languages, a slightly bigoted way of saying they’re from beings which are born sapient. The next group with Draconic and what not, are genetic languages. Technically, they don’t only show up in the growth type sapients, but for the most part that group does have a lock down on them. These are a funny group of languages as even if the creature should be incapable of understanding it, if they’re related to the right species they’ll still be able to understand it.
‘Then finally we have racial languages. As you might have guessed, these belong to the sapients that have to work for it. Instead of there being one language that all members of the species can speak, it is instead a grouping of languages close enough that knowing one version will get you by with another. The basic idea is that while a species like kobolds don’t innately have a language, something about their mind or body makes it so that when they do develop a language, even without having ever heard the kobold language before, they’ll end up developing kobold.
‘Though notice how I place the kobold language somewhat between racial and genetic. Remember, their written language is draconic. So, while they aren’t directly related to dragons, there is a mystical connection. No matter how weird a kobold is, at worst their own version of the kobold language will end up sounding like a heavily accented version of mainstream kobold. Not all racial languages are that close together.’
Doyle nods, ‘So how does this relate to jamming languages into my monsters?’
Ally points towards the civilized language group, ‘These are completely free form languages. Just on your planet alone with only humans you managed to develop hundreds of distinct languages. Of course, it doesn’t have to work that way. The more magic a world develops with, the more likely it is that they’ll end up having one planet wide language, even if that language ends up changing.
‘It is so much easier to spread a language when you can have one dude who can teleport around and force others to speak their language. These are shockingly easy for the system to stick in someone’s head while also being the hardest to learn.The only physical connection they have is pronunciation and so the system can basically plop the entire language into someone’s mind in the form of a seed. Sure, they won’t be speaking it like a native from the get go, but they can work towards that if they need to. I’m willing to bet the language pack the system is offering will be almost entirely civilized languages.’
Doyle, ‘So, if the civilized tongues are the easiest for the system but the hardest to learn naturally, which of the other two are the reverse?’
Ally shrugs, ‘Not really the reverse per se, but they are different. For example, the kobold tongue will be harder for non-kobolds to learn and yet a snap for kobolds or any related species. In fact, the system doesn’t even really have to implant kobolds with the language. If the civilized languages were a seed, then for kobolds learning kobold, it is more like the seed is already there and the system just needs to water it. For others, the system has to go in and make some special connections because they don’t have a kobold body.’
Doyle, ‘Does that make the genetic languages the toughest to learn?’
Ally shrugs again, ‘Eh, in theory they aren’t really all that much tougher to learn than a racial language. In theory. The difficulty doesn’t come from learning the language, but rather using it. Notice how kobolds only have the written portion of draconic and not the spoken. Most genetic languages are actually primal tongues that hide great power.
‘The primal bit and the fact that over the entirety of history, not every creature has kept to their own species means that the languages are relatively easy to understand. Even pre-system, your planet had some draconic bloodlines kicking about. Where the problem comes in is using genetic languages. The various written forms are the easiest though you better make certain to not try and use it for magic purposes. It is the spoken word that most find themselves incapable of.
‘In fact, most believe that the only beings who can fully speak a genetic language are the language’s origin species. People generally are happy to be able to even just say a single word. Of course, that is mostly because if someone lucks out and can say fire in draconic, it will allow them to boost any power they have related to fire. Though if the language comes from something with only one type of power, the language will only be able to boost stuff using that power.’
Doyle, ‘I’m guessing the system isn’t going to automatically unlock all the draconic words I’m capable of speaking?’
Ally laughs, ‘Exactly. It will teach you how to understand the language, but to use it verbally you will have to experiment with it yourself. The system won’t even give you a clue.’
Doyle, ‘So how does the system implant them if the others were seeds and watering or what have you?’
Ally shrugs, ‘No one knows. While they’re called genetic languages, that is because the easiest way to judge who will be able to speak them is genetics. As far as most researchers can tell, the genetic languages aren’t even stored in the mind or body while the soul doesn’t show any signs of it. Genetic languages are one of those mysteries that even True Immortals haven’t figured out entirely. Not even True Immortal dragons know, though there is a rumor that upon becoming a True Immortal, those with an inborn genetic language will open up an even higher level of said language.’
Doyle sighs, ‘I just realized something. Knowing what I know now, I would have held off on designating my ageless ant queen. As it is, once I get the language pack, she will have to get used to the language and grow into it. I’m assuming if I had waited to designate her the system would have instead been able to create her with the knowledge fully formed in a similar manner to how I can create animals fully grown.’
Ally just smiles and shrugs.