If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians came to us here and one said ‘I want to be baptized!’, what would happen? Martians, right? Green, with long noses and big ears, like in children’s drawings? When the Lord shows us the way, who are we to say, ‘No, Lord, it is not prudent! No, let's do it this way’. Who are we to close doors?

-Pope Francis

==Caden==

They stared at each other, man and alien, or more correctly alien and alien—for this is what they were to each other. Alien meaning different, alien meaning unknown.

-Harry Harrison, Plague from Space

I had no particular desire to talk to anyone naked; I wasn’t a nudist. Some prurient part of myself was amused by the thought, but even back on Earth, when I was alone in my apartment, I had liked to at least be in underwear. However, given that I hadn’t managed to figure out a way to make clothes for my avatar, this would have to do.

After all, managing some form of coherent communication was one of my most important goals. Having a body, assuming someone could even see me in this form, would help immensely. Body language was a major part of communication. So, embarrassing as it might be, I went to meet my guests.

Here’s hoping they can see me.

Like many of my wishes lately, it was half granted.

The humans entered and ignored me, but the Adar stopped and stared. He was walking in last, so none of the others noticed. Since this was a test designed to be taken individually in different rooms, I should be able to just talk to him then. Honestly it was probably easier to talk to just a single person anyway.

I assumed that as projection of my soul, his connection allowed him to see me.

There was no stone statue for this test. They were pretty self explanatory, and each door would only let a single person enter. They each divided and took a door.

I followed the Adar into the door he had chosen and shifted the room around as soon as they entered. Various puzzles, matching games, and other designs crammed themselves into the back of the room. I had more important puzzles to work on right now.

Two chairs lifted up from the stone, a stone table between them.

I pointed at one of the chairs.

Sit.

I took the other chair and waited.

A book made of stone with metal rings binding each page materialized at my direction. I would need a good way to take notes.

My Adar guest seems nonplussed, but he sat anyway.

It was time to begin to communicate.

==: Zidaun==

I was not sure what to make of this new form of communication. I had already taken steps to solve the language barrier, but it looked like the dungeon was already taking matters into its own hands.

And, strangely, it had hands… of a sort. It wasn’t physical, whatever it was. The others had completely failed to see it at all. I could see it, and more than that, feel it. I felt a hum in my soul. It was the same hum that I had felt with my former ancient and dungeon. A connection of purpose and belonging. I had to reach out to it to sense it, however.

For it to appear in the shape of a human was not anything I had ever imagined possible.

Regardless, I had my duty to do.

I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair, even though it was made of stone. Even as I watched, more stone was manipulated into stone statues. They were statues of my team, myself included. The dungeon pointed at each in turn and said a word. The word was the same for all the others, and then the dungeon pointed at my statue and said a word I recognized. Adar.

I started a little bit. How did it know what my race was called? Had it had experience with us in the past? It pointed at the statue of me again, saying Adar again. It pointed again at my teammates and looked at me expectantly. Was it asking me? Well… it certainly seemed so.

I lifted my finger at a single individual, shaking slightly.

“Human.”

The dungeon nodded. It opened the stone book in front of it and I could see writing appearing on the page in a different colored stone.

It was recording the word that I had just taught it. This was a small thing, but it said a great deal about the intelligence of the dungeon. It understood recording information and interacting with humans well enough to take on a human soul form. It was obviously writing in a language that it already knew as well. It was disconcerting, but it was easily the most relatable dungeon that I had heard of. I honestly had no idea what that meant for me.

The dungeon pointed at me again.

I wasn’t sure what it was asking.

Well… it was pointing at me. Did it want my name? Probably. There were too many other options though, my chest, skin, clothing, etc…

Well I would try to make myself as clear as possible.

I tapped my own chest, and then point at the statue of me.

“Zidaun.”

I then pointed at each of my teammates in turn saying their names.

The dungeon dutifully recorded each name and then repeated them back to me. I only had to correct it when it said “Gurak” instead of “Gurek.”

Then the dungeon did something I was not expecting. It tapped its own chest and said a word, a name.

Caden.

It had a name. With the nature of the dungeon so far it shouldn’t be surprising, but it was. A name… said something about the thought processes required to even have one. No dungeons had a name other than one given by others for convenience.

A model of a core appeared in front of me. It was not made of perfectly smooth panes of ebony stone like I had been expecting. It had clear stress lines and entire sections looked like they had been sheared off. It was irregular. I had no idea what had happened to make it turn out like this. It was was obviously damaged, but had obviously survived that damage as well. Had it been quietly recuperating here in these remote mountains for untold millennia? I knew there was a civilization that had lived in this area several thousand years prior. Was it a remnant of the cataclysm that had destroyed them? Or was it even older? It could have been sleeping here for tens of thousands of years, untouched by the cataclysm and many others, buried miles below the surface. It couldn’t be much older than several tens of thousands of years old though. Not since it knew the Adar.

It pointed at itself again and then at the dungeon core. Caden.

So it was the dungeon then, I had wondered if it might not be somehow. It had seemed unlikely, my soul connection should only happen with the dungeon.

Then another voice spoke, the other voice of the dungeon.

Exsan.

Caden pointed at the core again and repeated the word.

Exsan.

There were two, and they were both the dungeon. Well I was talking to Caden for now. I would deal with the other one when it was relevant, because I had no idea what to do about it now.

==Caden==

After introducing the different names it was not much of a stretch for me to get the word for name.

Probably.

Maybe.

Admittedly, it could be some other form of identifier that was part of the language.

Ugh. I was going to need to do this for an entire language. The only thing worse than learning an entire language without a translator was not being able to communicate and learn the language at all. At least I was dealing with humanoids.

Gender was easy to get too.

I had tried for the pluralization of their word for humans by taking the group as a whole, but either I wasn’t getting my point across or the word for human was the same as a singular and a plural, like moose.

After that was shapes, all very easy with the basic geometric shapes.

Then came numbers.

I used my own Arabic numerals, and Zidaun immediately pulled out notes of his own. He had obviously been keeping track of the numbers on the little marker coins I had given out. So as a pleasant surprise I would draw a number, say the word and be able to get both the word and symbol that he would point to from me.

It wasn’t much, but I was getting the start of their written language.

Not to mention they used a decimal system for their numbers, which included the concept of zero. I was not looking forward working around it if they didn’t. So thank God.

The numbers were slightly different though. The notation was easy, but the language had a slight hiccup. Their teen numbers were more logical than English. It went from ten to one teen, two teen, etc… And when I got up to the thousands each order of magnitude had its own designation. It made the language sightly harder to memorize.

Zidaun also only knew words up to the ten million magnitude. After that he just shook his head and remained silent.

I didn’t know much about the society Zidaun came from, but his lack of knowledge of anything higher than the ten millions was highly suggestive of a preindustrial society. Admittedly, I had been pretty sure that was the case already, but it added a bit of additional evidence. Of course, with magic, I didn’t know how society would form. Maybe magic let them mass produce food in the same way that the industrial revolution had. I didn’t know. Honestly, there was a lot of that.

Oh well, there was always more to learn and teach. Addition, subtraction, and other math. These would let me show true and false statements, and from there I would be able to start with yes or no questions and do more than point at an object and say “name.” One step at a time.

Teaching Zidaun math bore unexpected fruit when I got a notification.

You have gained a new skill:

Calculation II

Calculation is the practice of doing mental math and understanding the instinctive value of numbers, geometry. and how they relate to the world.

It was certainly a surprise, since I had already done plenty of math as I made the dungeon and recorded knowledge from Earth.

Was it just coincidence that it showed up now? It was possible, and maybe I just needed to show mastery of the basics. Or perhaps there was something about teaching someone else that brought the skill?

It had already been a few hours, so I left shortly after getting the skill. I reset the room so Zidaun could complete the puzzles as well, and then I wandered off to go experiment with my new skill.

It proved useful quickly. I was getting an instinctive sense of how long monsters took to go through their life cycle, which let me time a few things more tightly when I was breeding them. I could also feel the approximate volumes of water that was flowing through any of my areas. It was strange, since that was definitely not something I had really been aware of before. It should make creating areas of the dungeon easier. Hopefully I wouldn’t accidentally flood areas anymore.

It was strange to look at arches and feel the tiny imperfections in their geometries. Regardless of the strangeness, I corrected them.

The skill was quite subtle, but I could feel that it helped in countless small ways. It added to my efficiency, simply because I knew more about what I created, and I didn’t need to measure it in other ways. I just knew.

Hours having passed, I teleported my avatar back to the top of my aura, barely exposed to the outside.

I cleared away the snow to a crystal clear day, except for the giant hunk of rock that was protruding up a mile directly overhead.