Adam didn’t exactly know what he had expected.

He kind of regretted not listening to Pete about how fantasy worlds worked. Right now, he was faced with five confused, dazed and somewhat scared people, all seemingly having their role. Maybe if Adam had focused in history class as well he could tell what all of these people were for, but for now, all he knew what that they were a unit of sorts, but without the numbers. In other words, a specialized hunting team. But that thought didn’t exactly cross his mind. All he knew were their names.

Somehow, he managed to earn their trust. Just a little. He knew their names, they knew his. The nice white-dress lady, Ungelica, introduced them to him. They seemed… wary, especially the guy he’d hit, Pritte, was it? Regardless, they seemed to be having some inner conflict. Ungelica was shouting at Pritte who was shouting right back at her. At times, they’d point at him, but other than that, they seemed to ignore him.

Sometime after Adam had gotten tired of listening to the argument and decided to sit down, the white-eyed archer-boy hopped up to him, face full of smiles.

“Bhjb? Hinkjb Katte! Bhbtfgiulk Adam bvtujb nmnkjby, nsjblow kvhbydua… Viåbhgh nkjhjtrfth?!” the boy said, eyes, although white, somehow filled with to the brim with excitement. Adam wasn’t sure how to reply, so he leaned his head, hoping the message got across. “Huhi?”

“Katte, Adam ijcnak askjnaskkc kasj,” Ungelica said, somehow noticing the conversation despite standing ten meters away. The boy, Katte, craned his neck over to glance at her, before looking back to Adam, squinting either in suspicion or thought. Probably both.

Eventually, the boy reached an epiphany, his eyes lighting up as he glanced back at Adam, who was confused but very, very intrigued. Humans. He liked them very, very much. How he had missed their touch. Katte pointed at himself, mirroring what Ungelica had done earlier, and then to Adam, and then made a heart with both hands, smiling brightly.

Adam did not have a heart, nor did he have blood to pump, and yet he felt his face heating up, and heart swelling three sized for this boy. Almost instinctively, he could feel his two main tentacles reach up and form a heart, much like the boy’s own. The boy in question could not have looked happier. His face contorted into surprise and absolute joy. A purer expression couldn’t be seen, and seeing such happiness made Adam equally happy.

The rest of the group didn’t exactly know how to respond to this. The creature, Adam, seemed passive enough, but even so, it was hardly a treat for the eyes. It seemed like an overgrown spirit of the forest, and that was no compliment. They had been sent out to defeat it, and just leaving it be wouldn’t sit well with the hunting association, much less the kingdom as a whole. Failing would only force the association to send out yet another party, and saying he wasn’t a threat would be a personal insult towards the sorcerer who originally posted the warning. A dilemma.

“Hey, can we keep him??” Katte asked, pumping his hands in excitement (Adam was parroting him if only for the fun of it).

“No, we ca-, or can we?” Ungelica said, suddenly plunged into thought.

“Hey, I was speaking!” Pritte complained, stomping his foot. “As I was trying to say, we should call for reinforcements! It may be calm now, but who knows when the lawyer could speak??”

“Pritte, listen. I may not have been a part of this team for long, but ignoring my takes could be the last mistake you make. This may sound reckless, foolish, even, but this wouldn’t be the first time a particularly intelligent beast has been tamed.”

“You’re not honestly suggesting-?!”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Ungelica said, turning to look at the happily wiggling Adam.

“I’m greatly opposed to this,” Pritte continued, “you saw what that creature was capable of! I FELT it!” Throwing his hands up in anything but defeat, he tried his very best to change her mind. If he was a spear, she was a boulder, and no matter how strongly he may try to break her down, she stood firm. “What will Listner say!?”

“Adam acted in self-defence. We’re lucky he decided to only do so little. Now, if there are no further arguments from you or anybody else, we’d better get some shut-eye before the sun rises.”

Pritte growled, glancing at Adam with no little amount of suspicion. With that discussion over and done with, the rest of the party agreed that it was way too late to do anything but sleep. Pritte and Katte would keep watch, Katte because he wanted to befriend Adam further, and Pritte because he had to keep an eye on the beast to make sure nothing happened.

Somewhere along the duration of the night, Katte had the bright idea to introduce Adam to the concept of drawing with sticks in the sand, which the man-slug-creature took very well to. At first, the two newly-made friends just drew random things in the sand, Katte laughing as Adam’s awakened instincts made him draw a flurry of dicks on the ground, which is something anybody in that situation would.

But, at some point, Katte decided that it really wouldn’t hurt to teach Adam a thing or two.

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“This,” he pointed to an odd word he’d drawn in the sand, “means ‘Adam’!” At this time, a mere 200-ish years after the rip, few people were actually literate, and most couldn’t read any sign barring them from entry. Because they couldn’t read. So, the fact that Katte could write should have been at least a tad bit suspicious. Hunters were not known for their intellectual prowess, except for the few sorcerers or believers who joined their ranks.

Adam did not know this. All he knew was that Katte had written a very strange thing in the sand, and said his name while pointing to it. Adam mimicked the motion, of course using a tentacle instead of the boy’s hand. He was met with a fierce nod at the motion, leading Adam to understand that this word was his name. So… not only was the language different, but so was the written language? What a bother.

In turn, Adam wrote Katte’s name, and pointed to the confused archer, who, much like Adam had, mimicked the motion. Adam nodded. Communication is key. As if struck by some sort of inspiration, the little archer proceeded to draw a stickman with a bow and a big smile in the dirt, right underneath the “Katte” name. Like the socially adept man that Adam was, he soon caught on, and drew himself underneath his name. Now, Adam was by no means an artist, but even Katte could clearly see that what he had drawn was not a large blob with tentacles and two eyes, but a smiling stick-man, with short, jagged hair.

Katte frowned at the drawing. Yup, that was not what he looked like. If anything, that was more similar to how Shaun looked, minus the spear and constant frown. Still frowning, Katte pointed to the drawing and back at Adam, followed by a questioning tilt of the head. Adam glanced between the drawing and Katte, his gaze eventually falling on one of his sizable tentacles, glowing that odd blue hue. Katte could almost imagine the creature sighing at the thought, even though he had no mouth.

In a state of clear melancholy, the creature drew a circle with many tentacles and a pair of eyes, before drawing an arrow from the smiling boy to the blob: his current form. Solemn. That was the best way to describe how Adam had become. A narrative took form in Katte’s head. Of a boy transformed into an amorphous blob, forced to live a life of isolation, years passing by until his mere words were outdated. Katte had a knack for letting his imagination run wild, and in this case, that might just have been a good thing. It’s not like Adam could have described exactly what he went through if he wanted to.

Shedding a tear, Katte unhesitantly placed a hand on Adam’s freezing cold shoulder.

“You sure have had a tough life, huh?” he said, nodding solemnly to the warrior in front of him. If Adam hadn’t been touch-starved to the point of malnourishment, if he hadn’t been completely deprived of social interaction and sympathy, he might have been confused. But, instead, he was touched.

Tears flowed down his eyes, crystalizing into ice and snow, his body temperature dropping with every second. He really couldn’t stop himself. Adam had always been a bit of a hugger, even when he shouldn’t have been. Uncaring of the consequences, he pulled Katte into an ice-cold bear-hug, his body and tentacles almost completely encapsulating the poor unsuspecting lad.

Pritte had been observing for a while now. Not only did he not only have anything better to do, but this was also the main reason he’d decided to stay awake. Why was he the only one who took the situation seriously? Sure, he knew Katte had a knack for understanding people and things, a trait he no doubt shared with his sister and tribe, but he still didn’t see any reason to lay their defences down.

But it was only now that he intervened.

“Bastard, get your hands off of him!!” he called out, sword raised and pointed straight at the odd bunch. Both Adam and Katte shuddered, one at the sudden barrage of threats, the other at suddenly being enveloped by a cold mass that was likely below zero. Pritte jerked the sword at Adam, very clearly noticing that the creature wasn’t quite reacting to him as he’d want. Sure, it was crying like a little kid, but it should take his threats more seriously! “Bastard-!”

With no more threats and no more words, Pritte thrust the sword into Adam’s crying mass of a head, a blow that would normally kill any creature. But Adam wasn’t any creature. Instead, the blow only managed to bring him out of his sorrows, his gaze fixating on the man in front of him, ideas of how to take revenge flashing quickly in his head before his body actually reacted to the blow, namely by falling back, freeing Katte from his icy cold grip.

Katte gasped, fell back, his teeth clattering and his arms throwing themselves around him in a vague attempt to retain the little warmth he still kept. With a sneeze, he turned to Pritte, halfway between thanking him for saving him from that icy vice and scolding him for hurting his friend. In the end, he simply sent the man a stabbing glare and turned to the dazed Adam, wondering briefly if he should fetch Ingeri to heal him or something.

That brief moment passed quickly, leaving Katte to instead baffle at the sight of one of Adam’s many tentacles purely instinctually create a spell circle to heal him. And heal it did. Within mere seconds, an absurd time, the wound was replaced by a stretch of that thin, translucent skin. In all honesty, it was sort of amazing to look at.

“Whoa!! How’d you do that??” Katte said as he glowed in amazement. He’d seen healing before, Ungelica did it often after and during battles, but this obviously and instantaneously… impressive! Pritte couldn’t much react. If he tried to say he hadn’t secretly hoped his blow would have killed that damn thing, he’d been lying. No, what truly set his hair on end was how easily it had shrugged off a good blow. Katte was too blinded by amazement to realize the graveness of the situation. Perhaps everybody but Pritte was.

The night passed. Pritte reluctantly put down his weapon, Adam didn’t hold (too much of) a grudge, and Katte had his hands full trying to coax more cool spells out of Adam, who reluctantly showed him a bit of his arsenal. This resulted in the utter obliteration of several trees, and at a somewhat early time in the morning, the awakening of the rest of the gang. At this point, Pritte had grown too tired of their antics to take any notice, not even when Adam fired off a ray that froze a good amount of trees right in place.

In the end, it was decided that Adam would join them, no little part due to the puppy-eyes Katte produced from nowhere. Adam was too happy to join them if only to meet more people. At some point during the long, tedious walk (mostly due to how slow Adam walked) Katte had decided that riding atop Adam’s back would be the coolest thing ever, but, sadly, Adam was a very cold creature. If he grew too excited, which Katte was usually the cause for, the ground below him would freeze solid, any poor plant life dying as a cause of this. He couldn’t help it.

But, clever as he was, Katte produced a solution: a saddle. It was really just a blanket folded three times, but it worked very well! Adam couldn’t tell whether to be excited or insulted. The social creature he was, he took on what Katte felt: happiness. After about a day of slow walking (some of the members discussed whether or not to carry Adam all the way there but decided against it) and Katte happily teaching Adam a couple of basic words like “hello” and “excrement”, they reached the magnificent town of Principatus.

Originally, the town wasn’t much to look at, but once a hunter’s association set up quarters there, the industry sort of boomed. Even so, compared to any place Adam had ever been to before, this place was more of a slum than a city. Considering how much filth and waste littered the street, he actually found himself happy he didn’t possess a nose or mouth. People wore heavy, woollen clothes, all clearly drenched in sweat and other bodily liquids Adam didn’t much care for.

All and all, it was the picture of a medieval town, and the rest of the group didn’t seem to mind it in the least. Even so, seeing people was an absolute delight. Sure, they all looked at him as people might look at a bear on a leash, but even so, it was a step up from being hunted. After a while of trudging through the trampled dirt roads of Principatus, they found themselves in front of a building that looked very much similar to all the other buildings.

Inside, they found a mostly empty space, with a board filled with requests and wanted posters, as well as an empty receptionist desk. Pritte hollered from someone in that weird language, and after a time, a grim-looking man emerged. A retired hunter, perhaps? What followed this was a long conversation Adam understand, where they pointed at him, said his name, and… not much more.

That was how he joined their unnamed team.

He came along with them on missions, learnt the language (apparently it was Augur, the country being (Augurium), and joined them.

But all good things must come to an end.