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Already happened story > Death After Death (Roguelike Isekai) > Ch. 17 – Lost in Translation

Ch. 17 – Lost in Translation

  “So there are actually other people here,” Simon said, testing his voice again as he y on his bed. “Cute ooo.” He smiled as he y there. Sure, she’d killed him, but that was almost uandable. That sort of thing happened all the time in zombie movies. What really mattered is that there were cute girls i and that zombies weren’t so tough after all. There was even beer! He just had to get down there, without trashing his voice again.

  Somehow he’d have to find a way to kill the slime with one spell, or with all. Even if he did that, though, it raised a whole new series of problems. It was easy enough to copy a si of sounds from one goblin, but did the pit really expect him to learn 50 different nguages for 99 different floors? That was more than a lifetime of work, assuming he could even find a tutor.

  Simon sat up. “Mirror - how do I improve my magic skill? How do I make it, so I don’t feel like shit every time I say those words?”

  ‘Focus and practice,’ was its cryptic reply. Because of course Simon hadn’t thought of either of those things before himself.

  “Fine, if you’re not going to say anything useful about that, then I want to talk about a very serious problem with this pce with Hedes.” Simon got up and picked up the witle. This time he didn’t pn to throw it, though, he just wao enjoy a drink without having to swallow with a throat that felt like it was made of broken gss. “The UI for this whole pce is kind of awful, but the nguages are going to be a real problem.”

  ‘What is the problem with the nguages i?’ The mirror asked, one character at a time.

  “Well, sihe main point of nguage is to be uood, and I ’t, you know, uand them, I’d say they aren’t doing their job very well,” Simon’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but he was sure that it went over the head of the mae or spirit or whatever was inhabiting the mirror.

  ‘I could teach you,’ the mirror typed. ‘Whiguage do you wish to learn?’

  “Teach me? You? You ’t even tell me basic facts about this game… I mean, pce.” Simon ughed derisively. “Tell me - how many nguages are written or spoken i?”

  ‘There are 5,486 nguages spoken i, and there are 8,933, different forms of writing.’ The mirror dispyed that like it erfectly reasonable fact, but the numbers staggered Simon.

  “So you think that in addition to learning to fight 100 different kinds of monsters, I should learn a thousand different nguages? You think that that’s reasonable?”

  ‘What alternative would you suggest?’ the mirror asked. ‘Strictly speaking, no unication is required to plete all 99 levels.’

  “I’d suggest that you let me talk to the boss a me work it out with her before I have to break you again,” Simon threatened. “I’m sure she cast a spell ive me an amulet of transtion or something and fix this problem with a wave of her magid.”

  The mirror stayed dark for almost a minute, and for a sed Simon thought that he’d scared the thing off with his threat. Finally, it started typing, and as it did a potion appeared oable in a fsh of light.

  ‘Her radiance, Goddess Hedes, dy of life ah, has seen fit to answer your plea.’ the mirror typed. ‘This potion will enable you to uand all nguages i…’

  Simon liked the sound of that, and looked away from the mirror even though it was still typing, to focus oion. It was dark like ink, with the fai swirls of light inside. He was grateful that she’d finally seen reason on something, but the way Simon saw it, this potion just proved his point. If she could have solved his problems so easily, then the fact that she hadn’t done so was just further evidehat she wanted him to suffer.

  He pulled out the cork and started to down the vile tents. It turned out that it didn’t look like ink. It tasted like ink, too. Ink that had been vomited up by an evil librarian in the depth of hell. That didn’t stop Simon, though. This was the first magical item he could actually touch without burning himself, and he wasn’t going to screw up something as simple as drinking a potion. That’s probably what that screwed up goddess wanted - to give him the answer and watch him waste it. The joke was ohough; he was going to use it to beat her at her own game.

  It was only when he’d finished downing the vile potion that he looked in a mirror to finish reading the rest of its message, ‘...though it should be hat the process of abs that muowledge will take some time. It will be extremely painful, and the elixir is best used in small doses over several days.’ Simon brushed off the warning and moved to sit down in his chair, but even that small motion made the world feel like it was shifting. He could feel something building now in the back of his skull. It ressure, bined with the faint haze of colors as he looked at the glowing monitor. It was almost like every light had a sort of aura to it now.

  Aura. That word triggered a memory about his mother and her migraines, but that memory and the idea that he might be in the process of experieng something like that only outran the oning pain by a couple seds. He leaned heavily on the chair as memories and after images of nguages he’d never heard, and words he’d never spoken, began te him. Simon tried to sit down so that he could put his head in his hands and try to shut some of the light out, but somehow he mao entirely miss the chair and nd on the floor with a thud. He wao rise, but suddenly that felt like too much effort. The words were ing fast and furious now. He was in a text maelstrom now, and no two words were from the same alphabet.

  He tried to breathe slowly, f himself to calm down. He could do this. He could ehis fresh hell that Hedes had inflicted on him. Closing his eyes didn’t help, he realized betedly, and breathing deeply didn’t do much either. Even if he shut out the offending light, the words still came. He could hear them now as much as see them. Whispered words in a hundred different voices began whispering, but that many whispers still added up to the sound of a r jet ehat was when Simon started to scream. Every aspect of this torment got worse minute by mi was like having the worst hangover of his life times a hundred while he was at a particurly loud rock cert.

  After less than an hour of enduring the tide of words he thought about killing himself. He only decided against it, because he was sure that the potion wouldn’t carry over to his body. He would leave that behind along with his wounds. Only the knowledge f itself into his brain would carry over. So he had to ehis. There simply wasn’t another choibsp;

  Simon mao get to his feet long enough to make sure the door was barred, and then he crawled into bed and waited for death to take him. Mercifully, he slipped into unsciousness within the hour, but his dreams weren’t aer than his waking life. There he was drowning in ink while the whales deafened him with their song, one sonic bst at a time, and by the time he woke up again, he was vinced he was bleeding from his ears.

  Over the wo days, he slipped in and out of his troubled sleep. He tried drinking the etle of wio dull the pain. Nothing helped, there were just interludes where the barrage of knowledge soaking into his mind wasn’t quite so bad. He had plenty of time to hate himself for not following instrus, and plenty of time to hate Hedes for doing this to him, but her of those helped either. Eventually, though, Simon woke up to the surprising sound of silehe goblins had apparently not mao break in and murder him in his sleep, and a throbbing headache was all that remained of his torments. It was a monster of a headache that was at the upper end of normal, and no lohe sort of thing you could only experiehrough maliagic.

  The very first thing he did was brave the sunlight to get some more water. He’d been out for half a day, and there was no way he could face the goblins, let alohe skeletons like this. He slowly stumbled to the stream, squinting hard. He would have given away both his magic words food pair of sungsses right now, sadly that wasn’t an option. The pit had no cash shop for etic items. Once he had drained his skin once more, he set out for the only pce he knew of that he could test to see if this had worked without res to bat: the temple ruins just south of the path.

  As always the trip there was utterly without i, and when Simon arrived at the eroded marble he got the surprise of his life when he could actually read the writing that had survived on the walls and ns of the most sheltered areas. It was like going to Egypt and suddenly remembering that you’d actually majored in hieroglyphi college. The knowledge was just there, like it had always been there.

  Despite his throbbing head, Simon was too intrigued to stop, and spent the couple of hours reading every scrap of writing he could find. They might just look like swoopy, flowing pictographs, but to him, they had a whole set of meanings as well as enough cultural text to uand what they were saying. He read about the teags of an a healing god, Kanuthep. It seemed like sort of a fertility/healing god to Simon, which struck him as kind of half ass. They could have made up two different gods, so the symbolism wasn’t quite so crowded. Most of the writing oemple he found i about the day of flowers, which was their version of the end of the world, after all the warriors had killed each other and there was nothio do but let the flowers bloom.

  That struck Simon as vaguely creepy, and also somewhat like the plot of a manga. It didn’t quite make seo him in that specific Japanese way that they did so often. It was holy pretty b stuff. Normally Simon would have given up after like ten minutes of dealing with this artsy bullshit, but he’d suffered greatly for this superpower, and he was going to use it every ce he could.

  Finally, that actal persistence paid off wheruck pay dirt. he end of a pilr talking about herbal remedies and their uses, which he didn’t give a shit about, there was a se about a prayer that you could recite before the gods. Most of it seemed like it was boilerpte nonsense like a catechism or whatever, but the st part was just two words, and Simon doubted that it was a ce. After all, the only spell he knew was two words long, so, taking a moment to sound them out and make sure he got them right, he said, “Aufvarum Hjakk.” This time he didn’t yell the intation because his head wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t think it would make that big of a differehough.

  When nothing happehough, he sighed as he stood up, unsurprised that nothing had happened. Of course, it was too good to be true there was no way Hedes would leave a healing spell around right outside The Pit, he thought as he started to walk away, would she? That thought stopped Simon in his tracks. That’s exactly what she would do. The purpose of the pit was to get hurt and die, over and over, for her eai. The only thing that would make that better is if help was right there the whole time, but it was in a dead nguage no one could read.

  Simon turned around and walked back to the pilr. This time he didn’t just say the words. This time he forced his mind to quiet and imagined his terrible headache fading away. Even if he never cared much for the whole “power of positive thinking” that his selor always tried to get him to do, it was impossible to deny the liween the fire spell and the vividness with which he imagined his enemy bursting into fmes by now. When he opened his eyes, he said it again, “Aufvarum Hjakk.” This time he was only a little surprised that his headache blew away like dandelion fluff in a breeze. The words still felt wrong to him, and they still carved their way into his soul, but they were nowhere near as violent or as hard on him as the other spell had been.

  Simon smiled. This was real progress.