Limits

The next morning my training started. I stood there inside the pass and let the wind currents pass through me as if I was invisible. I was trying to determine the currents and any signs of wind movement before such current would hit me. I stood there for awhile and got bombarded with the wind. From left, then right, then above and left again. Sometimes the wind would even make me lose my balance but I didn't give up and simply stood there with my eyes closed.

I didn't know what Shelly was doing but I imagined it was bored as I stood there in the pass, while it had no real things to do. The pass was very quiet and it was much easier to cancel out the other noises made by birds for example. The wind was also more noisy in here. 'I knew this will be the perfect environment for me to practise this' I thought and lost myself in my training.

When I opened my eyes, it was already evening and I could hear rumbling coming from my stomach. I was very hungry now, I skipped a meal which was important for my body to function properly. I stopped my practice and went back to our shelter. I saw that Shelly hunted some boars and brought couple of them back to our shelter.

The boars were still fresh, I butchered them and started to roast the meat. Shelly returned when I was roasting the meat with another boar. It probably killed a whole group but had to drag one after the other here. I said "The food is almost ready so take a rest. Thanks by the way, for hunting the animals. I again lost myself in my training". Shelly simply nodded and didn't mind. It knew that sometimes I was so focused on my own things, that I didn't notice what was happening outside of my mind.

I said to Shelly "I know you will be pretty bored while I train but we will stay here for no more than a week. I just want to test things out and it already seems promising". Shelly looked at me and then started drawing on the ground. It looked like it didn't mind if we stayed here for longer than that. I said "Maybe but my primary goal is to train the Stringed Hidden Weapons to mastery first. I can then think about other skills. After a week, we will got to a new location. I'm curious myself what those noted locations on the map represent".

As usually, Shelly went to sleep not long after we had our food and I decided to read some books. I took out the Slash of the Thousand Arms from my bag and started reading. I was trying to figure out the best way to apply that in close combat. Although it might seem I wouldn't need it when I master my Stringed Hidden Weapons skill but that would be a misconception.

Close combat was not the same as mid range combat. Stringed Hidden Weapons would have the range of 5-10 metres while close combat promoted very little distance between opponents. Fist attacks or dagger attacks would be considered close combat because their range was really as long as ones arm.

I already had the general idea on how to train my close combat according to that skill but I wanted to try and modify it to suit me and my daggers better. After the read, I went to sleep. When I opened my eyes, I was back in the usual dream witch the dark figure talking away. I listened attentively and then something hit me. 'I already know couple of words so it wouldn't be wrong to assume what followed them were the usual words that we humans used' I thought.

Stuff like "I am" or "You are". I had the words for "I" or "You" so what followed those words could mean the same thing as with the common human language. I listened and tried to figure out if the words after the ones I already knew would repeat all the time or change.

After couple of repeats, I found out that the words which followed the ones I translated would mostly repeat but sometimes they would be different. If that was the case then the usual translation would be something like "I am" or "You are" but then the other words would mean stuff like "I have" or "I went" which would make it more troublesome. Nevertheless I applied what I found out after couple of more repeats and found this out.

Fe Lei would mean "I am". Lak Lan would mean "You are" which I also had in my original list. Lan was one of the words I set to translate. If that is correct then Lan would mean "Are". Ak Ji which I already knew would mean "It is" but if I turned it around, would Ji Ak mean "Is it?" as in a question instead of assertion or statement. I decided to categorise it like the human language and that was how human language operated. So far it seemed plausible for this mysterious language to follow the same rules. In that case, my translations would most probably be correct.

I needed to figure out more words and their meanings. The more words I had, the more I could extrapolate and assign new meanings. 'Although I already spent so much time on this, no one said translating a language that no one speaks was easy. It is even harder for me than it could be. If I had a person who spoke this language in reality, they could just point towards things and say the corresponding word. Here I don't have that benefit'.

The dream soon finished and I woke up in my makeshift bed. I saw improvements when it came to translating that language but the road ahead was still long. I still had a long way to go in order to translate the whole thing the dark figure was saying.

I got up from my makeshift bed and ate my breakfast. I trained the two modified diagrams from the Strength Manual and went back to the pass. I wanted to spend as much time as I could in the pass to try and grasp a method of finding and predicting wind.