Our newest guest, or rather a prisoner, was a blessing in disguise almost as much as he was a curse to have around.

On the one hand, he possessed a quality literally unseen among the natives - an actual, discernible willingness to communicate.

That was something hard to pass on.

It was something I was looking for the entire time, after all.

However, he was also prone to erratic, random behaviour, usually with little to no warning, which made my girls jumpy and agitated, and the human quite tiresome to interact with after a very brief exchange of words.

The prisoner wasn’t a man of few words, though.

Not only did he talk quite a lot, and notably faster than anyone I met before, I could reasonably assume that he could speak more than a single language as well, judging from the fact he used expressions with varying pronunciation that shifted each time something he struggled to explain to us failed.

At least, he made a considerable effort, even if it was clearly obnoxious to the entire horde of my monsters that didn’t appreciate his presence a single bit, and would not extend any amount of trust towards a human.

Even if his overall approach was a rare sight in those overly hostile lands, it wasn’t a miraculous solution to our problems.

He couldn’t speak English and the only reason I could pinpoint the variations in speech was thanks to our previous interaction with the captured merchant, without being able to tell what all of it meant, and most was merely a guesswork.

Unlike the scared trader, this one would not give up, and had a tendency to try different things each time he noticed we didn't understand what he was trying to say.

It nearly cost him his life though - the fact he wasn’t hostile didn’t make him any less suicidal than the others humans - and was nearly squashed by Kuma when he tried to jump up and run. Tama snickered at that.

My monsters didn’t like anyone getting too close.

After some yelling in his native speech, and some attempts at wild gesturing, we understood he would not flee or assault me, but merely wanted to gather the charcoal from the nearby campfire to scribble with.

Brilliant as it was, the symbols he was trying to write weren't English either, and we soon found out we didn’t have that many flat surfaces to write on to facilitate any meaningful learning.

There wasn’t any paper, we didn’t have any smooth boards to write on, and there wasn’t any chalk either.

Only things we could reasonably use were the broken cobbles of the road which essentially ended in the village we stayed in, and coals taken from the burnt wood, which made the communication through letters and pictograms extremely impractical, especially when the local script relied on symbols wildly varying in complexity.

Theoretically, I could have tested if my monsters’ control over their powers was fine enough to produce the writing, burnt into surfaces, shaped from metal, or from wood, but neither would help that much.

I didn’t need us to deliver messages in writing. At least, I didn’t at the moment. Even in the absolute best-case scenario, it would come later.

Right now, I need our prisoner to do so, and it was for the best not to break the momentum when he was willing. I was going to let him talk, noting the novelty of this entire approach.

He obviously realised that.

The unusual captive, in fact, tried the several symbols which he apparently thought told the significance and when it didn’t spark the reaction he hoped from, he stopped.

Still, he was paying acute attention to what I would say, and was less worried about the menagerie of monsters, despite Kuma nearly breaking him earlier, and focused on me instead, perhaps trying to think of the best method to actually speak with us.

It was important to me, but it seemed important to him too.

At least, I guessed as much.

Only thing I was reasonably certain about was that the prisoner wanted something from us, but that was it. I still wasn’t certain if I caught his name, or was another random term in the long stream of the words he spit at us.

I presumed this speech wasn’t swearing. This old man seriously tried to reason with us and was almost unusually enthusiastic about it.

He wasn't a very organised person, and neither was I, and without vocabulary or interpreter, even figuring out the very basics was exhausting.

At least we established he could write.

Reading and writing wasn’t a knowledge everyone would have. In ancient times, many people were illiterate, and sometimes it applied not only to the masses of peasants, but feudal lords as well.

At least, I guessed as much; there wasn’t much to go by considering our exposure to items left behind after various skirmishes. Paper could be prohibitively expensive to be found in the random poor’s dwellings, and villagers spending their time in one place didn’t need signs to figure out where something was.

Still, the other captive didn’t communicate in writing, either, though at least the merchant knew numbers and could do basic maths.

This one tried with letters.

Perhaps he wasn’t a merchant, but a scribe, or something very similar in function, and educated above the norm.

He even used the coal to draw a pictogram that very much resembled a scroll to me, and was not above using a pantomime which, in mind, ‌could be interpreted as unfolding the said scroll, albeit sideways.

Perhaps it was how manuscripts were supposed to be handled. After all, the local architecture strongly resembled the amalgamation of the Eastern Asian cultures, at least on the surface level.

I briefly considered my options.

Old man tried to emphasise what he said.

When he gestured towards himself after drawing the scroll, perhaps we were trying to tell us what his trade was. He was an ageing man, with similar vaguely Asian features as his countrymen, not quite fit despite the eccentric, energetic behaviour. He was very far from being a warrior or a peasant, or any profession that required a significant physical excursion, yet of the insufficient standing as the tone didn’t betray the arrogance of the powerful even the slightest.

He wasn’t trying to order us, that was almost certain.

It made a certain amount of sense - perhaps he was indeed a scribe, educated, with intellectual pursuit. It didn’t quite explain why he was there, and not at the residence of the local lord, or whoever lived in that castle.

Maybe he fell from grace, being thrown out of the fort for speaking too much.

He was certainly doing it now.

Or perhaps he was there to deliver the message I had no chance of understanding, there was no way of telling. It was a puzzle‌.

I still couldn’t pronounce the words.

It sounded something like “seh-kay-looh”, which I certainly spoken incorrectly, judging from the human’s reaction

The man wasn’t satisfied with my performance. I could read as much from his face, and I shared his disappointment as I wasn’t making any significant progress, even if the events finally played somewhat in my favour.

Even very basic “we came in peace” or “release my people or face consequences” phrases were still beyond my abilities. I, in fact, couldn’t say what the corresponding words were, or even ones for “stone” or “charcoal” despite being items at hand.

I was getting hungry too, though that could wait.

There was, however, another word which came out frequently that sounded a little like “Oscar” to me. After the immediate correction from our unwilling teacher, I think I nailed the pronunciation of “Pho-us-kah” well, whatever it was.

I couldn’t figure out what the word actually referred to - I was certain it wasn’t our prisoner’s name - it either meant literally “scroll” or the “scribe” or something associated with the writing. There was no dictionary to look into.

Trying to verify, I pointed towards his pictogram, repeating the mysterious expression. He seemed to appreciate it when I nodded to him, and even a sign towards himself.

I was certain he wasn’t introducing himself at this point though - the expression corresponded to, or was related to, the scroll.

Or was it a message he was supposed to deliver?

“Tama? Did he carry any letter, or scroll, or something similar when he was captured?” I asked, to verify my theory, glancing briefly back at Tama.

“No, Master.” She shook her head.

I mentally scratched the theory about the courier and returned my attention back to the captive.

He tried to say something again, gesturing with both hands. It involved a mysterious word.

Assuming the nodding was to express the acknowledgement in their culture, it was by no way given.

Guessing the language I had no basis for was harder than anyone would have thought.

At least, I think that the core of the problem was my inability to catch up on the entire learning process, combined with the local tongue being far too complex to understand in the spoken form, with several terms to describe the same thing.

Perhaps the local script was the way - unless it turned out to be more complex than I thought, making it yet another hurdle, and the scribe wasted quite a lot of charcoal to make only a handful crude symbols of the flat surface of a few stones, something quite impractical since we stood in the middle of the settlement where the one fork of the paved road ended.

There could be furniture left behind in some of the houses, tables or such, which would have smoother surfaces, or perhaps the floorboards to write on, but interiors weren’t exactly well lit, and would quickly go quite dirty with ashes smeared all over, making the lines drawn with coals harder to read even for someone who could discern the meaning of individual symbols.

I never thought something like this would pose a major issue, but obviously, it was one.

“Do you think there is any sand around?” I asked Miwah, then looked at the others: “A sand we can put in a small pile, smooth the surface and let him write in with fingers?”

“We will look, Master.” She confirmed, along with Tama and Narita. Only Kuma looked uninterested, as always, but she nodded as well. I was hesitant to try the same thing with mud, though I admit it would have worked relatively well, too.

I was accepting the fact this was taking forever.

Even if the whole idea of moving from spoken word to writing seemed quite complicated, time consuming, and dependent on many factors, it was better than nothing.

However, our scribe, assuming he was indeed one, wasn’t satisfied with that, and looked quite impatient despite having been harshly handled by Kuma, which I’d assumed gave him a lesson against making sudden movements.

When I thought of it, I wasn’t even certain he indeed spoke the same tongue as others.

After an hour of exchange, and the man’s ranting, I wasn’t certain I caught enough. One wouldn’t believe how complicated it was to understand the basic expression of stone after pointing at one. Perhaps there was something from the gesture itself.

If I could compare the speech against something we already heard, and were reasonably certain of.

“Mai? Do you remember anything from what the other human said?” I asked.

Even though I felt this was going in circles, with no significant advancement, it was this or consigning myself to more violence.

“I remember something, my Master. I don’t know what those dirty humans say,” my lizard-like follower confirmed, even if she didn’t look too pleased about it. If anything, she was showing a notable amount of unspoken disgust towards our unwilling guest.

It wasn’t sure if I wanted to push perhaps the most notably misanthropic of my followers into the spokesman's role. Besides, she wasn’t around the conversation I tried to make with the merchant, even though she might still have a recollection of it through the same link all monsters shared.

Her general attitude towards humans also served as a stark reminder of how differently they perceived me compared to locals, and I refused to poke this, especially after I realised I promised Mai to make up for the jailer duty dealing with the human she found revolting.

“You weren’t around. Sorry.” I summarised and directed my attention towards my other aide.

Mai blinked, relieved she wasn’t forced into this.

“Narita? Can you remember some words?” I queried, realising I remembered only the word which the merchant had for us - if it meant an insult, it would not be going to help us.

“Yes-yes. Some. Master!” She said,

“Numbers, perhaps?” I suggested, “Could you try?”

They worked earlier, and it was the most reliable way to tie what we already knew with the unfamiliar terms, in alien tongue

“Yes-yes, Master.” Narita said, without hesitation.

I gestured her forward.

“Human-thing!” She spoke to the captured scribe and, despite the method of address, she was still considerably more approachable than Mai was. Maybe, in the future, Narita could do the talking herself. Though the rat-girl certainly disliked humans, she wasn’t stand-offish, had the smarts, and could be more equipped to even learn what I could not.

“Narita.” The rat girl introduced herself, with a sign made with her free hand towards her chest.

Man responded. I could guess it was a name. The “Hyun” sounded like one among all the gibberish the fast talking usually produced, though I would still refer to the human as the scribe.

“One. Two. Three.” Narita tried with several hand signs, followed by the words in the local tongue I didn’t quite remember, but the fact my monsters did filled me with confidence they could act as messengers - at least ‘Alphas’ were. It was the matter of finding out which one was best suited for the task.

I didn’t feel like being a linguist, and I could always try to delegate.

Whether the scribe played along, however, I wasn’t certain.

Momentarily, I diverted my attention towards the new monster striding through the crowd of the smaller ones, a red-headed vulpine with rusty fur and white-ish pattern, distinctive from how the currently silver-furred Tama once looked like. I even had to look back at the original, sporting a grinning expression.

I almost forgot that getting involved with Tama would make a new ‘Alpha’ grow. She just took the worst possible moment to show herself, in the middle of the conversation, though I couldn’t blame her for spending her time on guard duty left behind as the rest of the horde moved.

I felt guilty, even.

“Helmy. You grew.” I remarked.

She indeed did. Dressed in one of those local armours which hid the perky features our prime vixen shared, helmet under one arm, and the sheathed sword in another, she smiled the equally foxy smile at me, then shot a hateful glare towards the prisoner and I was certain she was more than willing to do some chopping. The second fiery vixen certainly didn’t appreciate having humans around.

“My beloved Master! I missed you.” She said sweetly, and I could still recognise her voice, even if her new form came with a hint of mannerism borrowed from Tama. I didn’t have time to ponder about that. Maybe all ‘Purifiers’ were like that. I wasn’t able to tell around their smaller versions.

The scribe, at least that’s who I thought the captive was, didn’t like something about his current situation. Not the imprisonment, that was understandable for him to dislike, but the lack of comprehension from us.

He looked at her, at Narita, and me, then protested. I, of course, didn’t understand a single sentence from the long stream of speech, but I was quite clear he was unsatisfied with something, and angry enough to face the consequences.

The scribe tried to jump up, but was tackled to the ground once more by Kuma, effortlessly so.

Helmy let her trophy helmet, an item that gave her name, loose, and drew the sword.

I stopped her.

“No, Helmy! Don’t harm him.” I said, decisively. Helmy was quite aggressive even for already pyromaniacal ‘Purifiers’ standards and I would not watch her behead the man or something very similar.

“Kuma, let him go.”

The huge ursine lifted the man up once again with equal ease. With her considerable strength and bulk, the captive was nothing more than a weightless rag doll to her, entirely at her mercy.

The scribe yelped in pain from the rough handling and expressed his protest in his own tongue, which I still didn’t come close to understanding, but Kuma’s brutish behaviour made him reconsider his actions.

Strangest part of it was that the man didn’t turn aggressive.

Instead, after the temporary pause, he went back to explaining something about his pictogram, though this time he was quite more reserved after he experienced the manhandling by my bear monster.

He gestured around his letters, and finally, himself, more careful this time, yet still determined to explain something I wasn’t quite able to comprehend.

Said something, insisting on judging from the tone.

Then, went back on his knees, with more scribbling in the symbols I didn’t get all around the limited space of the road he was given, surrounded by the monsters that guarded me.

Despite everything, he still wasn’t to give up in his effort to communicate something of great importance to him.

And then I finally understood.

Not the words, those remain as foreign to me as they were before, but the overarching topic of this strange conversation which eluded me for so long.

The ‘scribe’ wasn’t describing his trade to me, and he wasn’t pointing out the message he carried. Man wanted me to give him the ‘the scroll’ and would make the sacrifices, including the pain inflicted upon him, to get it.

He paused when he tried to get up again, which none of the increasingly more annoyed monsters would allow.

More talking in his native tongue, but I didn’t pay it in mind, distracted by the sudden comprehension.

At first, there wasn’t any logical explanation why I, a stranger lost in the alien world, should hold any item of great importance, and why all those mystical symbols hold any meaning, but it wasn't quite so. There were no logical explanations for him to assume I would have something like this.

Except, it was in fact, “the scroll” was something which supposedly started all of this.

“The second scroll” which the nebulous system referenced implied there was a first. I even figured as much a few hours ago.

I made a plan to search for the mysterious item, to to finally seize control of my destiny in this strange world filled to the brim with aggressive humans and the new life I didn’t ask for.

What I didn’t expect was being reminded of it almost immediately after. It was almost eerie, the circumstances.

“The scroll.” I repeated, this time, aloud.

This time, it was the human who was surprised.

However, before I could shake him down for the information he wasn’t likely to get, I was interrupted, once again, this time not by the ‘scribe’ or even by my ignorance, but the red, ruby mist, spitting a couple respawned monsters with no explanation or warning, or the annoying floating screen.

The destiny I thought about seconds ago had unique plans.

“For Master!” The little, cute monsters cried out as they formed, warning me of the unseen danger closing by.

This time, I didn’t need to demand an explanation from my ‘Alphas’ or sense the shaking feeling in the back of my skull, the pattern was getting far too common and this time, it was my anger that grew stronger than my frustration.

A couple more monsters cheated their death, respawning nearby, as so many times before.

“I hate humans, Master.” Helmy expressed her predictable disposition for the first time in words, gripping her blade.

We all knew this hearing was over for now. My girls didn’t need the order to drag the prisoner away.

When another ‘Corruptor’ materialised, with an usual phrase reflecting on the unusual distress, a little cute lizard girl to hug me, I didn’t need Mai to translate this for me.

It was the same problem, all over again.

The words weren’t helping, regardless of whether I could actually speak them.

There might be exceptions confirming the norm, but overall, the humans of this world would never change, taking every excuse to continue the fighting even as I tried to split my head over their native tongue.

The scribe was perhaps willing to talk, but his countrymen certainly weren’t.

I would have to make them.