<~> Chapter 20After leaving the on shop I turned and noticed the sign the guy at the ter was talking about. It had big blocky red letters that I unfortunately couldn't read.

  “Beastkin and Demi-Humans are NOT WELE in my shop." Bel read out. "I'm actually a little surprised I didn’t notice it earlier, not that I'm used to being a beastkin," she added.

  “Does that kind of thing happen a lot in this try?”

  “Mmm, I haven’t done much traveling but I wouldn’t be surprised if it retty on. The Beastkin uess I should say beastfolk now, were known to be pretty bloodthirsty and ruthless fighters i war about five years ago. There are a lot of people that personally fought some of the beastfolk so tensions be pretty high sometimes. beastfolk are still sidered one of the civilized races though so after the treaty was signed individuals are free to e and go in most pces. Some people don’t care about that and will still ban people from their shops. While it’s most on for it to be aimed at beastfolk there are also pces that might ban elves or dwarves or something else instead. We should probably start paying more attention to the shops we enter just in case, we probably got lucky that time.”

  “I agree, that could have gone a lot worse.”

  “Oh by the way, now that I’m looking at this scepter more closely I thi an amazing deal. This scepter is actually really high quality. The magic crystal attached to this scepter is so high quality that it l already tell with my limited experiehat it will make my nature magic more powerful and more effit. It’ll let me do bigger spells with less magic,” she says beaming.

  “Yeah we certainly got luck…y” Huh, we noticed a shop we weren’t supposed to go into, the guy who would get mad at us for it wasn’t there, the clerk happeo have gotten a em for us and sold it to us at a steal just to get rid of it. Could this be the be of my high luck stat or is it all just ce? Gah, stuff like that is impossible to know and it starts making you superstitious about things. Best not to think about it too hard.

  I look up at the sky, It wasn’t quite su yet but it was starting to get to be pretty te afternoon. I didn’t get any armor yet but that could probably wait till ter.

  “Hey Bel, if you don’t mind, whe back to the inn will you see if you help me learn to read? I’m sick of not being able to and I’d like to read that ritual book we got from the guild. Oh! A’s stop by that guild store, we totally fot to pick up that magic chalk Mirianioned.

  “Sure,” she replied warmly. “It’ll be o help you out for a ge.”

  I reach out and grab her hand, g our fingers as we keep walking. I take a peak at her and her cute poiips start turning red again. How cute.

  The quick trip to the guild store retty uful. The store retty basieral store. There were things like nterns, torches, rope, and the like. If it would have been in my old world it would have seemed like a strange cross of a hardware store and a sp goods store. We bought a box of the magic chalk for 1 silver, a box of mundane chalk and a something akin to a bckboard for 30 copper, a leather-bound journal for 50 silver, oubsp;and Bel picked up a tough looking backpack for 80 copper. The prices holy seemed a little all over the pe but I had no text for what was easy to get and what was rare. Paper sure seems expehough, still this journal is really nid I needed something to take notes in.

  When I stepped in the door of our room I suddenly felt a wave of disfort e over me. Our sheets were messy and the room still smelled of sex. At only a gnce I could see the spot where I had been held down and vioted. It wasn’t until I felt Bel’s hand on my back that I realized that I had slumped against the door frame.

  “Maybe it would be best if we asked for a different room for tonight.”

  “Y-yeah…”

  It wasn’t quite diime but I had gone down to the open tavern part of the inn to wait for Bel to collect what was left of our things in the room and talk to the innkeeper. I hadn’t really spent time to process what had happeo me st night, I iried to distract myself with tasks ahings rather than front how I felt about what happened. I sat there and stared at the grain of the wood.

  Being vioted had been… awful to say the least but… How my body reacted to it was the worst part. Some part of me enjoyed being treated that way as horrible as that makes me feel. And as helpless and weak as it made me feel in the moment, being able to turn it around on him made that particur inadequacy pass. After taking my revenge on him all I was left with was my self-disgust. It had been easy to distract myself with other things but when I stepped bato that room it was like it came bad spped me in the face.

  I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. I ’t let this cripple me. I’m only at the start of my journey here. I don’t know where I’m going, or if I’m even safe quite yet. This probably just illustrated that I’m far from safe here. It’s not even like I was in a promised position, a dude just broke into my locked room and held me down. In this world of magic, everyone has a greater potential for individual power. Even if that means I bee stronger, it also means that I’m at greater risk from people who would do me harm. I ’t let this cripple me, I o keep moving forward.

  I his awful sario to be a lesson that I ’t let my guard down and I o surround myself with people I trust. Really the only reason I got out of that situation at all is because Bel helped me, ultimately I got lucky… Lucky huh? I don’t really feel all that lucky at the moment but I guess it could have been a lot worse.

  In the er of my eye I spot Bel walking back downstairs with our stuff, she’s walking over to the innkeeper to talk about sing rooms. I feel a little bad making Bel do this for me but I suppose I he help right now. It’s not just for my own be that I o get stronger, I o get stronger so she rely ooo. I ’t shut down and bee a wreck. It’s not just me that would suffer. Bel and I o survive this new world together, she’s in daoo now because of me. Because I took her soul… because she was also turned into a succubus demon.

  I sigh again. I’ll put this behind me, let this bee something that makes me stronger, not something that defines who I am. I look up as Bel es and sits down across from me.

  “How did it go?”

  “No issue at all. She gave me a new key oher side of the hall and took the old one. She didn’t even ask me why.”

  “...Thanks.”

  “No problem Lilith.” Bel smiles warmly back at me. Ah, my heart, she’s too good to me.

  “Do you want to go back up to our room now? I was kind of hoping you could help me with reading.”

  “Sure.”

  We head up the stairs to our new room. It’s a little bit bigger but the shape of the room is a little different so the yout ged too. Luckily this one has a table and chairs in the er, perfect for a study session.

  Over the hour Bel wrote out something half way between an alphabet and a sylbary for me and then wrote out some basitences. It’s pretty weird learning how to write a nguage you already speak while a transtion yer coverts everything for you. When I’m trying to focus on the sounds words make, I clearly hear the uage. Then, when I’m trying to uand a word’s meaning, I ‘hear’ it in English. It’s pretty iing though, once I had a grasp of the sounds I could just try to sound out a word and once I said it out loud, I instantly uand the meaning and could sciously speak it again with perfect pronunciation.

  I wrote out a little cheat sheet with all of the pronunciations of the letters in my journal and started practig by transting the magic ritual book onto the chalkboard so I could uand the words. The ringing of the status was going off periodically but I was too engrossed in learning about magic, it was super iing. After awo hours of reading through the book on my own something just clicked and I was suddenly able to read this nguage as effortlessly as if it were written in English. Unlike when I spoke, I could still tell what nguage I was reading but I suddenly didn’t o transte anymore I just knew the words. On a hunch I decided to open my status and I saw that I had missed some notifications. So much so that the skill level ups bined into one big one.

  [Linguistics Lv.1 unlocked - Successfully created a transtion tool][Linguistics has increased by 9 levels to level 10][Linguistics Skill Ability Sightspeak has been unlocked]

  [Sightspeak - Lingustics Skill Ability]Sightspeak gives the skill holder the ability to perfectly read and write any nguage the user fluently speak. The skill holder must be able to identify the nguage in order to uand it.

  Welp, if that isn’t some skill synergy I don’t know what is. I feel like I’ve leveraged my title in a way that’s just cheating. But hey, I’m not pining, I holy wasn’t looking forward to having to learn to read and write this new nguage anyway. Transting the magic ritual book would only have kept my attention for so long, nguage is normally a pretty use it or lose it skill so it would normally would have taken a lot more practice than that.

  Doesn’t Sightspeak feel pretty powerful for only getting a skill to level 10 though? And was what I was doing really enough to level something to 10 so quickly?

  “Hey Bel, apparently i two hours I got Linguistics, got it to level 10 already and got a new ability called Sightspeak. Is that normal?”

  “What? You got ten levels in linguistics already? I thought you might get a skill like that with what you were doing but that seems a little extreme. What exactly were you doing again?” She walks back over from the bed and pulls her chair o me.

  I show her what I was doing, just taking a sentend using my cheat sheet to rewrite the senten English as practice.

  “What’s this nguage?” She says pointing to my English transtion.

  “Uh, that’s English. It was the main nguage of the try I came from… At least I think so.”

  “I’ve never heard of English before, maybe you got extra experience for transting the book into a rare nguage. That or the reverse would normally level up a skill like this faster.”

  “Would it level up that fast if I was the only one who spoke or uood English though?”

  “Probably not, but there are other World Travelers, so maybe one of them speaks this nguage too. If there are books written in this nguage here, even things like diaries than it would probably t.”

  “Huh, alright then.”

  “It’s fairly on to get new skills when hitting multiples of 10. What does Sightspeak do?”

  I read the description to her verbatim and her eyebrows raised.

  “Wow, bined with the World Traveler title that seems really good.”

  “If it was going to be so easy to learn to read and write everything I would have liked it to have just e with the World Traveler title.”

  “Well, most of the time skills are rewards for effort not logic. You got the skill because you put effort into learning, not because it made seo pair it with your ability to speak all spoken nguages. Not everyone cares much about learning to read, there are probably many world travelers who didn’t even bother.”

  “If you say so...”

  Saine

  Hello! Not much to say this week, so as always, thanks again for reading!

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