As was usually the case with these things, Aarav’s eyes tingled in their sockets. The Optic nerve that seemed to connect to his brain thickened and became a little more complex. It would have been nice have gained full avian sight, but maybe that is asking too much…better eyesight was always better but no colour…Oh well, moving on!

Okay, that was odd, he was getting a 50% boost for creatures of water and earth before but now it was 3% on everything? Maybe that is better? He wasn’t sure. Time would tell. However it did not seem like this was a choice…Hmm

As usual the gains were small but it had been relatively quick to put down the creatures, even if it had then taken a full day to subsequently consume them.

He had not expected to be sitting quietly on the rooftop making no noise and hoping that none of the people below would notice. But in the end that had been his entire first day, with the carcasses taking a full day to Consume, even with Consuming Blorenar it was slow going. In the end, he decided it was more important to take the parts of the kills. Besides, he was there to observe and while he would have preferred to be able to move around, viewing people milling around during their daily lives would still give him ample information.

If he had hands to rub he would have been rubbing them with glee. It was honestly a little creepy. The little voyeur was just swivelling his beady eyes back and forth trying to taking everything at once. It was a breath of fresh air to be able to watch human beings. The forests sounds he had loved when the people sounds became too much. He never thought he would have missed it.

As the sun rose over the horizon that first day the various shades of gray touched his body and the warmth hit him first, the winds had no died down any but in his mind he knew that the sun’s rays were the colour of syrup and the glow perked his mood up considerably. Murdering a family of innocent animals would sour anyone’s mood, especially a forest lover like Aarav. Considering he had defeated the birds in just a few minutes the next part was excruciatingly slow. For that reason he decided that the best thing to do was to start with the smallest of the lot. See if anything useful came of it.

Meanwhile the bustle of the village was given voice with people yelling greetings in some language that he had never heard before. It was too much to expect that English would be prevalent n this world as it had in the last. With the archaic setting before him communications was probably subpar as well and that usually meant that there would not be a universal language across this world. It would be more primitive, similar to Earth two hundred years ago, but with magic…not unlike a few of the stories he had read.

He tried to understand the implications of the words being used; it was all very unclear but with the words came gesturing, it was not as expressive with the gestures as perhaps Italian from his old world would have been but much more than most of the languages on Earth.

One middle aged woman below was gesturing to the central establishment that looked like an inn and with the gesture there was a sort of head movement, almost like “go away” gesture with the jaw. It was incredibly odd. Aarav couldn’t figure out if it was mechanism of the language or if it was just the woman’s tick. As he glanced around to others in his field of view he saw that others were doing other gestures. Nothing was overly expressive but definite unconscious movements that seemed to go along with specific works. An old man closer to the building where he sat was indicating a windmill with a sweeping gesture. A younger lanky boy was talking animatedly with a young woman, talking about some field or other further away with a point and curve of his hand.

After exploring the movements and signals for a good half day trying to piece together the meanings, nothing was exact. He got the message he had been hoping for.

Hmm, so zero percent, absolutely nothing…I guess that makes sense, I have never actually spoken a word of it. I guess once I start speaking it the language will almost learn itself. Meanwhile all the languages I used to know are fading into the dust, really should use them to make sure I don’t forget, even though they are all useless now…might never have a reason to use them again.

“Jambo, Hello, Kemcho, Kese Ho, Bonjour!” Resh muttered quietly in his inhuman coarse voice. With those simple words, new knowledge of the languages was unlocked…was it really that simple? Just utter a single word from each language once a day and master it in one hundred days? It seemed broken but then again this world had stats and Skills and numbers. Not that Earth wasn’tgoing int hat direction.

With his smart watch he had been able to boil down his fitness and body components to numbers right? Not exactly the same thing I know but still... Anyway, learning languages made easy, no more google translate, or duo or rosetta…what was it again? Was he forgetting things? He was sure he should remember something like that. It had come in handy when trying to learn Madarin for his brief stint in China but then again…an idea came to him. He had never fully learned the language but maybe…

“Ni Hao, Guten Tag, Ciao Bella, Gracias, Eppati Irukkirirkal” he whispered. He felt like a total spies whispering secret code words but in reality it was a god-awful slime with grotesque features cheating his was to language learning for dummies.

Huh, so it really is that simple. Just one word of any language and I can get the ball rolling on it. How would that even work for languages that have never been spoke on this world? Scanning his brain for any other one-word wonders he knew of ended with him just giving up and letting it go. He would find more when he found them. It wasn’t as if it mattered right now. It did beg the question, did everyone learn languages like this or was it just him? Maybe he could get a job as a translator. That’s a laugh, in this body who would take me seriously?

“Tavern” he whispered the Darfan word for an inn and followed with the gesture he had seen and waited for the pop up.