[Ok, I don’t know what I expected. I mean, we’re in another world and even Bob’s species speak a different language, why would humans speak English?] – I couldn’t help but sigh and resign; I would have to find a way to communicate with him.

“Mmm… eat?” – I know, quite clumsy, but I don’t know what else to do, so eating my meat and saying that was the only thing I could come up with.

“Kresh.” – So I’ll assume that’s a “thanks” considering he took the meat. I chewed my own Panther’s tight and crushed its bones with my teeth until nothing was left. Ok, I know I used to keep the bones, but teeth are bones, and my bones are strengthened so chewing bones is quite easy now; not only that, but the Panther’s bones are not that tough, so they’re quite useless to me.

As I finished my portion, I looked at the ‘human’ and saw him watching me with his eyes wide open.

While he finished his piece of meat I went to the kitchen to eat some more. I mean, I have to get to two hundred before the tier two meat works his magic, so I have a long path ahead.

***

Unknown POV:

So imagine you pass through a near-death experience and fall unconscious, and then the next thing you see when you wake up is a 5 meter tall Ape with double the limbs he should have and aspect of being able to kill you in his sleep.

Yep, not a nice way to wake up, but the fact is he wasn’t making any threatening moves; it seemed more like he was watching over me. The moment he realized I was awake, he jolted up and smiled, which startled me even more.

I was under the impression that Koloss were all but nice. No one who had encountered one of them had any impression of them being able to be forced to submit. It’s not strange, though, they respond only to pure strength, and people who could be benefited to make one submit didn’t have the pure strength to make them. A pity they didn’t respond to technique, or else there would be quite a few already submitted to humans or horghs. They would make quite an efficient work force, with their strength.

I took a moment to look around and realized I was in a cave. The walls had been polished roughly, probably without any Earth user or else it would be as smooth as a weapon’s edge. I was on a makeshift bed made with hide and fur. The hide was probably from a sklarr, but the fur was something I had never seen. It seemed to diffuse light as it…

[It can’t be… Who the hell would use Niigh’s fur as a damn blanket?!] – Niighs were little furry cans with fur as dark as night. They were fast and blended perfectly into shadows, they ate mostly meat, but were not predators, they were born thieves thanks to their special fur, and only few people could hunt one, so their hides and fur were very precious. People would make shaded cloaks to hide in the shadows, useful for rangers, or luxury clothes for spoiled brats, but a blanket?

I looked around some more and saw some things; there was a makeshift table that was filled with huge leaves, with some sketches on them, probably designs from whoever made the table. There was also some kind of shelves with a few fangs that had been modified into knives. By the aspect of it, they seemed from either sklarrs or wuulfs, quite sharp and tough, and useful if you don’t dispose of metal.

I suddenly heard a light step and turned my look towards the only entrance I had seen to this room. Standing there was the same human that had saved me. He had a serene expression and firm but slim muscles, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, which I thought was strange, because most humans were quite modest, except a few barbarian tribes that coexisted with horghs.

He was carrying two legs of meat, probably sklarr, for the aspect of it. He was eating one like it was nothing and I couldn’t help but feel amazed; ignoring the fact that not a lot of people could eat sklarr meat without danger, he didn’t even drain the damn meat of blood. The acidic blood was scurrying by his mouth without even sizzling. – [What the hell is this human’s skin made of?]

He extended the untouched meat and said some words I had never heard before: “Want some meat?” It sounded like a question, and I assumed it was about the meat, but what the hell? All people on this planet spoke the same language except a few intelligent beasts, so I was amazed a human didn’t speak the common tongue.

“Kih has kjoug?” – Who are you? A simple question, and easy to see if he speak the common tongue too or he just spoke that strange language. The face he made when he heard me told me that he didn’t speak the common tongue and he was expecting me to speak whatever language he spoke.

“Mmm… Eat?” – He tried again, chewing on his piece of meat and offering me the other one. I looked at the leg he was offering me and realized it was drained, so it seemed he understood people normally couldn’t drink that blood. I took the meat and thanked him. I bit a piece of it and realized it was fresh. Fresh meat from beasts was very useful for the body, so I wondered why he would offer it to me.

I looked at him to see if I could decipher why would he offer fresh meat and saw something amazing. He was biting on the bones of his piece of meat, and crushing with his bare teeth, then swallowing it like it was nothing…

It was something to drink the blood, if he could resist it, but eating the bones?! The bones of a sklarr were tough enough that I would need a full strength chop with my ax to crush it, so the fact he was chewing on bone like it was a kid’s candy astounded me. Not only his teeth were amazingly tough, he had to have a huge strength on his maw… I mean jaw!

I wondered if I had lost the ax forever… It was my grandpa’s gift when I reached adulthood, I hope I can recover it, or else I will get a beating once I return. Well, if I ever get to, I still don’t know why he saved me or what’s he planning to do with me, so I can’t be sure I’ll ever go back to home.

He disappeared for a few minutes while I dealt with the piece of meat he had offered me, and when he came back… he was carrying lots of meat, and I mean lots. He was carrying maybe 3 legs and quite a few ribs. The ribs were cooked, which meant it was probably from an old prey, I mean, the meat conserves itself well, but after a few days, most of the energy inside it’s gone, and people can’t ingest a lot of meat at once, not fresh meat, at the least, it’s too rich in energy, so it’s hard to digest.

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That’s what I thought, but he offered one of the ribs to me and it was still full of energy! He had cooked fresh meat?! – [The hell’s wrong with him?! This way you lose half the energy inside! Why would he do that?] – I swallowed my shock and refused, one piece was enough to me, I was full and didn’t even notice the missing food for the past week.

“…”

He ate it all. I don’t mean I stayed with him for a few days and he ate it all, no, I mean he ate it all in front of me. Three legs of fresh meat and a full rib cage, and he ate it like it was an appetizer. This guy had to have a bottomless pit for a stomach, how the hell did he eat all that and where did it go? For the calmed looks on the Koloss it seemed he was used to him eating like that, and if so, how the hell was he still alive and why wasn’t he fat like hell?

It’s true that fresh meat is rich in energy and thus very nutritive but it’s also hard to digest, and so most people even if they can eat more than a piece each meal, contain themselves, or end up looking like meat balls. But not this human, no, he was eating more than 5 horghs and still looked slim.

“Speak, I will learn.” – He suddenly talked and I came back to reality.

***

Lyon’s POV:

After watching him be shocked three times, I decided it was time for me to be able to talk to him, and if we didn’t speak the same language, I would learn. I wasn’t bad in languages on my world, so maybe I could learn a new one on this one.

I approached him and spoke: “Speak, I will learn.”

He tilted his head and raised his shoulders. Wow, so this is the same here? I mean, if the language is different, the body language should be too, up to some point. Well, at least I know he didn’t understand what I said, so I just needed to make him understand.

I pointed at my ears, and pointed at him, followed by pointing my mouth and then moving my hand as if to mean speak, and repeated again: “Speak.”

“Kjoug ilkan ksho uon plar?” – He pointed at me and then at himself, then at his own mouth and repeated my hand moves. I nodded, thinking he understood, and when his eyes lit up, I knew he understood me. I was glad, this would have been a pain in the ass had he not understood me.

Now I just need to learn a new language, devour two hundred of each species and get out of this forest. I hope I get the chance to kill that Dragon, but sadly, I doubt it. I’ve been training for a while and I’m not close enough to have the strength to hurt him, so even if I was fast enough to keep up with it, I would be standing there not being able to do anything to it.

Anyway, the date I would leave the forest was getting closer, and I was excited about seeing a new world, not only its beasts, and see how the people here had developed.

I smiled, planted my right hand on my chest and said: “Lyon”.

He responded to my smile and planted his hand on his own chest, and said out loud: “Shawn.”

***

Two weeks later, Shawn’s POV:

This was not how I expected to pass my time in the forest, but it seemed it would be more profitable than spending the time on the forest just hunting beasts like I was supposed to do. Lyon was a great student as far as the language is concerned. It took him barely a week before he could start asking more specific doubts about the common tongue, and after another week, we were having clumsy conversations and I finally dared to ask him for help, for him to train me, and he accepted.

I was on a clearing of the forest, holding my ax, which he apparently kept and decided to give it back after a few days, once we could understand each other up to some point. He was in front of me, with no weapons on him. His tail was swinging on his back, without any of the dangerous spikes I had seen the day he saved me, and he was smiling, making it quite obviously he enjoyed fighting.

I dashed at him holding the ax near the edge while he stood there without moving at all. Once I was close enough I summoned all my strength and swung my ax while letting slide up to the point I was holding near the end, giving it much more momentum than if I hold it near the edge, but doing it in a fluid motion to surprise the opponent. This was something that only worked against conscious intelligent beings, because a beast didn’t care how you carried your ax, it would try to dodge or it wouldn’t, depending entirely on its nature.

Lyon, though, didn’t respond as I would have expected; even more, he didn’t respond at all. As I was nearing him with my ax, he suddenly tilted to my left, the side the ax was coming from, and I felt myself lose control over the ax. I managed not to let it go, but had it been a real combat, I would’ve been killed three times in the time it took me to recover. I looked at him and saw his tail swinging merrily and I realized.

“You not usedh to tail on opponent?” – He said what I feared, and I couldn’t help but smile; he was fast, even though it’s true I wasn’t used to fighting anything humanoid with a tail, and the beasts with usable tails I had found were nowhere near close to his level of control, the fact was that its speed was what took me more off guard.

I had been paying attention to each movement of his, but didn’t even see the tail move when he acted.

“I am not, but even if I was, you’re too fast for me.” – I gave him an honest answer, there was no need for me to lie, he knew he was stronger already, so why would I keep the false image of pride in trying to deny it?

“I was hoping you would contain a little more with me.” – I hope he will, otherwise this will be hard for me.

“Hahaha, not too fast, Shawn, just smart moves.” – What did he mean? – “I not move faster than you, I made you think I did by using smart my moves. Repeat same move but slowly.”

I did as told and swung my ax at him, and observed at his tail, which was… swinging? It seemed random, but it wasn’t! He was positioning his tail where it had to go while hiding it behind the natural moves of his tail! That’s why I didn’t see his tail move.

“I saw you! You positioned your tail on my left, right on my blind spot when I’m swinging the ax and only pushed my ax on the last moment.” – I smiled and put my ax down, and I was rewarded by a nod and a bright smile.

“Yes, me tail on place before needed is smart. Then move not fast, but short so it seems fast and you can’t respond.” – He was amazing; I would’ve never seen it had he not moved his tail slowly while I dashed at him at a slower pace than the first time. He made it apparent but without saying it to me, this was just like father. Father never answered questions directly; he provided the means for one to answer them.

“Let’s do it again, Lyon!” – I was excited, so I grabbed firmly my ax and dashed at him again. This time I took a more unfocused look at him. I observed him, but I didn’t focus in anything in particular, letting me see the whole picture, and see where he was and how he was standing.

This time I swung the ax before I was at his range and watched how he responded while I was approaching. He was tilting slightly and his tail was ready to intercept the axe, but I grabbed the ax with my right hand at that time, and swung faster, doing something akin to a loop. I swung sideways, raised the ax, and chopped downwards, all in a fluid motion, making a move he didn’t expect.

This time he reacted in a hurry, raised both arms and the claws I had seen when he saved me appeared between his knuckles, forming a cross, which he put in the way of my ax. This was a full strength chop, so I couldn’t just stop mid-ways, and was really scared I would hurt him, but my fears were cleared and renewed when he didn’t even budge, and instead my arms trembled while my ax bounced from his claws. What the hell were his bones made of?

Training with him was going to be fun. I smiled and dashed forward again.