Chapter 83: Talk
83 83 - Talk
"What language is he speaking? I can"t understand what he"s saying..." Jasper said as he looked at the rest of the group, but everyone else held an expression as confused as his own face.
"I don"t know; it looks like he"s sad," the group healer said as she looked at the dwarf with concern. She was the one who had a cousin with dwarfism, and looking at this dwarf in front of her. Having lived with her cousin, she was able to deduce that he was something around the age of 13, but that did not mean that she could understand a different language.
The dwarf looked at the face of each one them there in the group and realized by the expression of doubt on their faces and by the strange language they were speaking, they could not understand him just as he did not understand what the humans were talking about. But there was one human among them who looked at the dwarf with a different expression.
"Can you understand me?" The dwarf said in a low voice to the human. As the other humans were arguing about something he didn"t understand, only that black-haired human who held a dagger in his hand heard what he said.
To the dwarf"s surprise, the human nodded in affirmation, but before the dwarf could get excited and say something out loud, the human made a sign by placing his finger in front of his mouth, as if trying to tell him to not let the others know that he understood. Thinking he didn"t have much of a choice, the dwarf nodded slightly in confirmation for the human to know that he understood.
Then, from the dwarf"s perspective, the human looked at the rest of the group and said something that he understood perfectly, as if he were speaking in native Khuzdul, the language of the dwarves. This already surprised the little dwarf, and what surprised him even more was what the human said.
"I suppose he wants our help for something. Maybe his relatives are gone and only he is left?" Noah suggested in a calm voice to the group.
The little dwarf managed to understand perfectly what Noah was saying, but since he was an intelligent child, he quickly understood what Noah was trying to say by this. He didn"t want his companions to know that they were able to communicate. The dwarven child could not understand the reason, but if collaborating with this plan would help him to get out of there alive, the little dwarf didn"t have to think twice before accepting and playing along with that human, pretending that they could not understand each other.
That"s exactly what Noah wanted since he himself didn"t know why he could understand what the dwarf was talking about while the other Blessed couldn"t. For Noah, it was like the dwarf was speaking perfect English, but in reality none of the other Blessed Ones understood what he was saying.
[As the lord of h.e.l.l, Lucifer dealt with humans everywhere. After a while, he became the ruler of h.e.l.l for other races like dwarves, elves, gnomes, pandaren, nekos, trolls, mermaids and mermen, ghouls, orcs (as long as they had enough intelligence to speak), frogmen, centaurs, and countless other races throughout the universe. To deal with these races, Lucifer developed a way to talk to whoever he wanted without depending on language just with the intention of what he wanted to say, and this was integrated into the system, giving the user that same ability.]
Noah was surprised by this. Nowadays, humanity had adopted English as their universal language. Regardless of the country or planet that the person was in, the language spoken there would always be English. Of course, there were still some variations like the different accents and the use of certain words from planet to planet, but it was not something that prevented anyone from talking.
So, because of that, this functionality was not so useful for Noah when it came to other humans, but when it came to other species, it was perfect. The humans who invaded the Elven Fortress said they tried verbal and non-verbal communication, but nothing was understandable on either side. Then the war started, and they had to kill the elves. Now, Noah could understand this dwarf perfectly, and according to the system, as long as the other being had enough intelligence to speak, even if it was an orc, Noah would be able to communicate with it.
But Noah didn"t want the other Blessed to know that he could understand the child, since if they knew, when they would speak to the government agent responsible for the reports, it would probably create a lot of unnecessary trouble for Noah which he definitely didn"t have the capacity to handle right then. "I don"t want to be studied and a.n.a.lyzed like a lab rat," he thought.
Upon hearing Noah"s suggestion, the other Blessed looked at the dwarf"s expression and realized that given his circ.u.mstances and how he was acting, this was very likely to be really happening.
"This little guy really seems to need help. He doesn"t look like a monster to me, so I think we might as well try to help him out," Jasper said in an uncertain tone.
"Hmm..." Marcel put a hand on his chin and watched the little dwarf, who looked at the speaker each time, but with a confused expression as if trying to understand what they were saying. "Apparently neither can we understand him, nor can he understand us. What might we do to make communication possible?"
The Blessed Ones thought, truly trying to find a solution since they did not want to let a child die for no reason. That was until Noah offered a solution out loud.
"My mom had an amazing understanding of body language; since I was little she had taught me it. I didn"t learn so much that I was a human lie detector, but I learned enough to understand what someone meant. I believe that if he tries to gesture what he is expressing while saying it aloud, I might be able to understand what he means."
Hearing what Noah said, the Blessed raised an eyebrow and were slightly surprised. This was a very useful skill to have, and it explained why Noah was able to understand a little of what the dwarf was trying to say before while the rest of them hadn"t.
To prove what he was saying, Noah approached the dwarf and said slowly while gesturing everything he was trying to say.
The dwarf could understand everything Noah said, but he had gotten into the character and pretended to pay attention to what he was gesturing instead of what he was saying.
"We want to help you. What do you need?" Noah asked.
The dwarf pretended to think about what Noah was saying and also gestured back while speaking in Khuzdul, a language that no one but Noah was understanding.
"My parents were carried away by these monsters. I remember that my father joined the other men to try to protect everyone, but I didn"t see what happened except that the monsters did not seem to try to hurt the women. I hope that nothing has happened to my mother..." The dwarf started to have a shaky voice before starting to cry and became unable to speak any more.
The other Blessed Ones looked at Noah, waiting for his answer. Noah pretended to think for a while and try to work out what was said in a way that they would understand things the way he planned it, until he finally responded, "He said something about the monsters invading here, and while the men tried to protect women and children, they were hurt badly, but strangely the monsters didn"t try to hurt the women."
Hearing Noah"s explanation, all 14 Blessed were wide-eyed and speechless. In their view, the child was just waving his hands around like swords and imitating monsters, but somehow from these precarious signs, Noah was able to decipher it all.
"Are you sure that"s what he said?" The lightning magician asked in an uncertain voice.
"At least 90% certain. Probably something around 10% of the information was lost along the way, but I believe I have captured the essence of it," Noah said, as he turned to look at the humans, once he saw that the boy was recovering quickly from the emotional crisis he had.
The Blessed were looking at each other with petrified faces. They did not believe that reading body and facial expressions was so useful as to be able to communicate with someone without using words. In their minds, if the humans who invaded the Elven Fortress had had someone like Noah on the team, what happened there would definitely have turned out differently. Perhaps humans could have even made friends with the elves that would have brought humanity to another level.
Noah was beginning to form theories with the information he was receiving in this Fortress. If what the system was saying was correct, the dwarves and elves lived in the real world, and not just in a fictional Fortress like what was commonly believed, and that the divine fragment that Noah absorbed from the dwarves he burned could actually have been a Blessing given to them by the same G.o.ds that Blessed humans... If that were true, what the Blessed Ones were thinking about bringing humanity to another level would truly come to fruition, and Noah would play a big role in that...
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