Chapter 21: Chapter 21 – Body, Center, Mind, Soul
Kyle returned to Samson's home and greeted the family.
"Samson money," he said.
"Understand," the wife said.
Then, with a smile, she took out an entire stack of children's books before handing it over to Kyle. "Learn!"
Instead of fearing the punishment that was learning, Kyle was thankful.
He wanted to be able to communicate with Samson more clearly.
"Thanks," Kyle said with a polite bow.
Then, he went to his room and immediately started to read.
There were illustrations in the children's books that demonstrated a couple of words.
'Wait a second,' Kyle thought as he realized something.
'These drawings look just like Samson's drawings.'
Kyle looked through the entire book and compared them to Samson's drawings.
Sure enough, they were almost identical.
'Wait, does Samson have a side gig as a children's book author?'
Kyle searched the entire book for the author's name but couldn't find it.
'That's weird.'
Then, after investigating for a bit more, Kyle realized something.
'The quality of the cover was what threw me off! These are actually not commercial books but books that Samson wrote for his own family!'
'These are not mass produced!'
At that point, Kyle's business mind activated.
'With the quality of these drawings, we could earn a fortune!'
But then, Kyle remembered something.
'This is fantasy land. I don't think they have book printers. Samson would need to draw every book on his own, and I don't think that's a good use of his time.'
'His gig as a monster hunter probably pays much more.'
'I wonder how they write books in this world. Are they just written by hand, or do they use some weird kind of spell?'
'If I want to make use of this, I need to learn more.'
'A printing press is actually not difficult to make. You just grab a couple of stones and put ink on them. Then, you stamp them down, and there you go. You got a printing press.'
'It's such a simple concept. It's actually baffling that it took Earth humans that much time to make one. Even the ancient Romans could have made that.'
'Grab stone. Put ink on stone. Press stone on paper. Done.'
Kyle shook his head.
'I should keep that idea in the back of my mind. We might be able to do something with this in the future.'
'But for now, I have to learn how to communicate with Samson.'
Kyle went back to learning.
After a couple of hours, Samson entered Kyle's room with several big pieces of meat.
'That's from one of the wolves,' Kyle thought as he looked at a muscular back leg.
"Small beast. 57 big money. Good job," Samson said.
"Thank you," Kyle said, trying to get the order and intonation right.
Samson smiled. "Good job. Learn more."
"I... will learn more," Kyle answered.
Samson left, and Kyle went back to learning.
A couple of hours later, he was done with all of the books.
At that point, Samson came in with a new stack of papers.
This one had fewer illustrations and more words.
'Grammar practice,' Kyle realized. 'Thank God. Maybe I don't have to talk like a caveman anymore!'
"Thank you," Kyle said.
"We are nilben sleep. You heft also sleep," Samson said.
There were two words Kyle didn't know, but he could tell what Samson said.
"Good night," Kyle answered.
"Good night," Samson said before closing the door.
This time, he didn't lock it.
'Guess he trusts me now to a certain degree.'
Kyle still learned for a couple more hours before he fell asleep.
"Good morning!" Samson shouted, opening the door.
Kyle was completely disoriented when the door opened.
He felt like he only slept for five minutes.
"Good morning," Kyle answered, sluggishly standing up.
"I will be speaking more fluently from now on. Do you understand?" Samson said.
Kyle didn't get all of the words, but he could make out their meaning.
"You... will talk faster. Correct?" he asked.
"Yes, and I will be using more words," Samson answered. "You are learning very fast."
Kyle understood the gist of what Samson said and nodded. "I will learn more... fastly?"
"Faster," Samson corrected.
"Faster," Kyle repeated. "More faster."
"No, just faster."
"Just faster. More just faster."
Samson had to laugh. "Let's grab breakfast."
The two of them grabbed some breakfast before leaving the house.
"Today, I'm going to introduce you to the team," Samson said.
"Team... many humans work together. Correct?" Kyle asked.
"Yes, that's correct," Samson answered.
Samson was actually surprised about the speed of Kyle's progress.
It's barely been three days since he started learning their language, and he could already communicate with them.
'As far as I know, dwarves actually can't put Ether into their minds,' Samson thought. 'Dwarves can only use Ether in their bodies, which gives them extremely powerful physical abilities, but they can't learn Sorcery, nor can their minds comprehend some more complex concepts.'
'Kyle is half-dwarf, right? He can eat beast meat like a dwarf, but can he also absorb Ether into his mind, center, and soul? His progress is astonishingly fast.'
'Based on his physical power, he's at the Early Squire Realm, but he learns as fast as an Early Apprentice.'
'Either he is some kind of unknown genius, or his Ether is also strengthening his mind.'
Samson looked silently at Kyle for a while.
"Poop more just faster," Kyle said.
Samson blinked a couple of times in confusion.
"Poop... learn... poop more just faster," Kyle said with an awkward smile.
In fantasy land's language, the words of poop and learn sounded very similar.
'He made a pun!' Samson realized as he politely laughed.
"Good one," he said.
"Poop faster. Poop just," Kyle said with a wide smile.
Samson just politely laughed.
'I guess Ether can enter his mind as well.'
"Poop more!" Kyle said proudly.
Samson felt a bit embarrassed.
'I don't think that's the conduct of a secret genius.'
'Well, he doesn't have to be intelligent. He just has to not be stupid.'
"More poop. Learn more poop," Kyle said.
Samson looked with concern at Kyle, who was laughing at his own jokes.