Sharlan went to grab the dog and upon placing his hand on the dog, suddenly a message was conveyed directly into his brain using crazy radio wave magic or something along those lines. Audience, make sure you wear your tin foil hats at all times.

“Only the one who unclips this clip can add more plates.” a magic voice resounds in his brain.

What is this? Is this like the excalibur for weight lifters?

“The one who unclips this clip can add more plates?” Sharlan said aloud.

“Huh? What is that supposed to mean?” said George.

“That’s what the dog told me when I tried touching it while it was on the barbell.” said Sharlan.

“I think it’s some kind of curse.” said Lloyd.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to use this weapon then?”

Vroom Vroom. Skryaa pop pop. Halt. The car stopped.

“What is that!”

“You think we should turn back?”

The ground in front of them was gone.

“Oh, looks like a ravine.” said Lesli.

“No! This is much worse!” Quinci was worried.

“What is it?” asked everyone.

“I think this is the dragon’s doing.”

“Fr? On god? No cap?”

“Yeah, It must have just unleashed true dragon breath.”

“How are we supposed to beat this thing?”

“We need a strategy. I think we should find out where it is and attack it secretly.”

“Yeah, but how do we find out where it is?”

“Let’s see, my Int Factor tells me that the dragon is going to be in a cavern at the bottom of this ravine.”

“How do you know that?”

“My Int Factor is rarely wrong.”

They did what Sharlan’s made up ability supposedly suggested they do.

First, they sent Quinci down to scout. His ability was on the mark once more.

Then they dug a hole and descended into the ravine.

“Ok guys, we blast it with everything that we got and if that doesn’t work, we run up and block the tunnel behind us.”

“OK!”

They all launched their strongest spells and George and Bruh (I changed his name from Bro to Bruh for a future scene) bashed it on the head with a dumbbell and a sword.

Everything solid bounced off and everything theoretical unmanifested. Basically, it did no damage. But the dragon woke up. They all started running away but the dragon was quick with it. It opened its mouth and a huge burst of fire shot out. Lloyd tripped on a rock and turned into Armin. Everyone had already ran back into the tunnel. They were about to close it when Sharlan decided to go and save Lloyd.

“Sharlan! Come back! You’ll die!”

“I’m the DIVINE HEALER! I gotta save him! You guys get out. I know what I gotta do!” He grabbed the puppy and jumped back into the cavern.

“C’mon Styx! We gotta do this!”

“BĀRK BÁRK BǍRK BÀRK” -> “Why’d you take me in here!”

“BÁRK BǍRK BĀRK BĀRK!” -> “The king said that you’d be my protection against the dragon!”

“BĀRKA BÁRKA BǍRKA BÀRKA” -> “BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA!”

Sharlan ran up to and grabbed Lloyd off the ground. He then used magic to throw him and the dog by the barbell that was repelled by the tough exterior of the dragon.

“Lloyd! You’re the Cho…” the dragon breathed fire again which burned away at Sharlan’s body. Sharlan realized his flaw when his body was hurting and he wasn’t regenerating. Oh no! I gotta smash the rock against myself! Otherwise I won’t regenerate. But it was too late. Now, he was also Armin.

Thankfully, Lloyd was smart. He reached for the clip at the end of the barbell and through his powers as the chosen one let him unclip it. Due to the curse condition, “he who unclips the clip can put on more plates” means that Lloyd can now put more plates on the barbell. This means that he is strong enough to put more plates on the barbell and thus a bright light engulfed him and when it went away, there was a man who stood at the peak of human development. Lloyd got buffer than even George. He took a hold of the situation immediately. Picking up the barbell, he attempted to swing at the dragon’s leg. This time, instead of the barbell bouncing away, it made the dragon fall like you do to someone when you kick them from behind the kneecap.

This attack allowed Lloyd enough time to run and go help his friend. He used the RRR to heal Sharlan and now they were both ready to fight the dragon for real this time.

“Do you think you can kill it at your new power level?” Sharlan asked Lloyd.

“I don’t think I can last that long. I just hit it with all my strength and it just barely moved.”

“What if I keep healing you?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“That might work, but the longer we go on, the riskier it gets.”

“Then I guess we have no choice.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Imagine that during this convo they’re having, they are jumping around dodging the dragon’s attacks and trying to do their best to fight back.

“I’m gonna do what the king suggested and use the dog!”

“What does that mean?”

“I finally figured it out! Lloyd! Distract the dragon!”

Sharlan used a spell to leap onto the dragon’s back while holding the dog. Upon placing the dog on the dragon’s body, knowledge flowed into his mind. However, something went wrong. Sharlan’s brain shut off from the insane quantity of information that just flowed in.

“Sharlan! Wake up!” Lesli was sitting over him.

“Where am I! What happened to the dragon?”

“Lloyd grabbed you and Styx and dug his way out of the ravine. We’re taking cover a couple of miles away from the ravine.” said Quinci

“Uhh. I have a headache. How’s Styx?”

“He hasn’t woken up yet. He seems to have a fever. It’s probably from the heat of the dragon’s breath. Why’d you do something so stupid as taking the king’s words seriously and bringing the puppy to fight the dragon with you? You could’ve gotten both of you killed! I bet the king was just making a stupid joke and you…”

“He wasn’t joking. It worked.”

“Wait what? You mean, you and the dragon had se…”

“No! Of course not! Think about it for a moment. The dog can translate languages and we can’t beat the dragon in a fight. That means that we have to talk to the dragon!”

“So then, using the dog as protection makes sense. But what did he mean when he said you had to give the dragon your seed?”

“GodTongue”

“GodTongue? What is that? Is that the language of the dragon’s”

“Yes.”

“Well, since you could speak to the dragon using Styx, why was it still attacking you and how did both of you even lose consciousness? I didn’t even see you get hit!”

“It’s because of the language. I almost died.”

“What do you mean? Is it really that hard?”

“No, it’s harder.”

“Tell us how it works. Maybe we’ll be able to help and figure it out together.”

“Okay, this is what I got before I lost consciousness.”

Okay audience. Get ready for a bit of a lecture. This is actually super complicated.

“So, basically, the general concept is that the language is the most natural language you can have. Its foundations are built on nature but in a different way than you’re probably imagining right now. Okay, so what is the natural equivalent of Yes and No in nature. Or True and False?”

“Yin and yang?”

“No, think non conceptual. But rather something that exists.”

“Ok, so like fire and water?”

“You’re closer. But why are they the natural equivalents for true and false?”

“What do you mean? One cancels out the other.”

“But, you’re missing one major detail here. Water and fire aren’t true opposites. Instead, they are opposites because humans decided that they are opposites. Same reason why up and down, hot and cold, tall and short are opposites.”

“So, what does this have anything to do with this GodTongue?”

“Basically, the language is structured on opposites. However it uses the most logical conclusion that you can come to when analyzing what qualifies as an opposite in nature. Take a blank slate. Imagine the world before anything existed. There is nothing. However, nothing is conceptual. The language does not use any conceptual words whatsoever. This means that there are no verbs, adjectives, or anything of that sort.”

“Then how do you communicate what is being done in this language?”

“It uses positive and negative relations between objects to determine what we would imagine a verb to be. Well, let’s go back to before anything exists. Supposing that nothing is the False in nature. This means that God is the True. Because He existed and that was the opposite of not existing.”

“But isn’t God just a concept?”

“That depends on whether you believe in Him or not.”

“So, basically you’re saying that God is the natural equivalent of True or yes in this language. So, what would the negative or no be? Void? Emptiness?”

“No, both of those are conceptual.”

“Wait what?”

“Both of those mean the absence of something. Absence is a concept. So it is better to just act on it. Instead of having a word for it, not saying a word is the equivalent.”

“How is that supposed to work? Wouldn’t being silent mean that you’re constantly saying ‘no’ or ‘false’?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t really make sense.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll show you what I mean.” Sharlan took out a piece of paper and a writing utensil. He wrote down the following.

SharlanLeg Store

“What is that supposed to mean? Sharlan leg and store? Also why are the words arranged like that? Are you saying you kicked the store?”

“This is just a simple example of how you’d use it roughly. Basically, first of all, all the words in the sentence exist, at least from the viewer’s perspective. Notice how Sharlan and Leg are combined. This means that there is a positive correlation between them. In other words, my legs are attached or I used my legs.”

“Leg.” Quinci corrected.

“No.” Sharlan incorrected.

“What do you mean NO?”

“There is obviously no inflection in the language and hence no declination as well.”

“What do those words even mean?”

“That’s not that important right now. Just accept that “Legs” doesn’t exist. You just use “Leg.””

“Ok fine. But then why is there a space between SharlanLeg and Store?”

“This means that there is a negative relationship between them.”

“So Sharlan kicked the store with his leg?”

“Well, that could be an interpretation but without any context it could mean multiple things.”

“Such as?”

“The way I would interpret it is Sharlan walked to the store.”

“Wait, but wouldn’t that be a positive relationship?”

“No, because the distance between the two decreases. It could also mean Sharlan landed on the store. Or Sharlan stood on or in the store.”

“But isn’t that too vague? How are you supposed to tell which one it is?”

“Entirely contextually. But even then. It’s almost impossible to figure out what exactly is being said.”

“Then how do the dragons talk?”

“That’s the thing. They evaluate all likely and unlikely possibilities and they figure it out.”

“That’s crazy! So there are no other verbs in this language?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I mean. It doesn’t sound that bad.”

“So how many words are there and how do you pronounce them?

“There are only 20 words.”

“What?! Then how do you say more complicated things?”

“You combine them.”

“Okay, then how do you say house?”

“What dialect?”

“Just the base language?”

“No such thing.”

“Well, what are my options?”

“Any positive integer. These are what constitute the dialects and what are known as the seed values.”

“OH! Now I get it!”

Everyone finally understood the words of the king.

“Wait wait wait. Any positive integer? That’s an infinite amount of numbers! An infinite number of dialects.”

“Yes, it is. That’s why I got knocked out.”

“So how many dialects do you know?”

“About 43.”

“That’s it? Then how did you get knocked out?”

“Just because there are only 20 words, doesn’t mean that that’s all I learned. My brain nearly exploded from the billions of calculations that needed to be done for every combination of the base words and memorizations of the twelve tones.”

“Twelve tones?!”

“Yes. The base tone is different for every dialect and the rest of the tones are used for compound words.”

“About how many compound words were in each dialect?”

“At least as many as you’d find in any ordinary language.”

“So, wait. Based on all of this, will you be able to speak to the dragon?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What do you mean? You know 43 different GodTongues! Why wouldn’t you be able to?”

“The thing about GodTongue is that when greeting the other person, you use the seed value to set the dialect. Whichever one of us sets the dialect first is the one that we will be using. And another problem is that GodTongue includes so many sounds that you have to hash across to get the selected dialect. Most of these sounds are not things ordinary humans can make. I heard about 2 billion different sounds at the same time. I could only comprehend and replicate like 100 of them.”

“Then why don’t we just write a message to the dragon? There has to be written GodTongue, shouldn’t there?”

“There is. But apparently among the dragons, it is the greatest dishonor to not greet someone before you write to them.”

“Then, let’s do both. You should say hello to the dragon and then hand it the letter that you wrote beforehand. That way, you will be able to make peace with it.”

“Speaking of which, how do you write GodTongue? I’m assuming it’s some crazy looking characters that are really hard to write?”

“Well, it’s nothing like you’ve ever seen before. The writing system is non-phonetic and non-logographic. And you use omnidirectional writing to signify the start and end of characters and sentences.”

“I can’t even comprehend what that means.”

“Here, I’ll show you. Say that we wanted to write the sentence “Let’s make a peace treaty””

“We would first need to convert it to pseudo GodTongue. So that means I would say the closest pronunciation of Sharlan available in the selected dialect and a positive relationship between me and the dragon. Now, of course, we can’t forget to put the seed value at the start to indicate what dialect the language is written in so that the dragon knows my name.”

“So, let’s start with the seed value."