Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Language

“Mystical languages… Are there other languages in this world that are richer in spirituality?”

Looking at the annotations in the old book in her hands, Dorothy quietly thought to herself. Previously, she had exchanged three characters of the Nain Dragon Language using Prit’s universal language, realizing that the spirituality contained in a thousand universal vocabulary words was equivalent to one character of the Dragon Language.

If Dorothy wanted to exchange other Dragon Language characters using only the universal languages of various countries, wouldn’t she have to learn eight foreign languages? That would be incredibly inefficient. If there were a more spiritually rich mystical language in this world, it could greatly enhance efficiency.

While pondering, Dorothy continued to read the last section of the extensive annotations in the old book, which was also the most important part.

Here, the annotator had organized the obscure content of prophetic tales into clear and understandable spells—spells for mimicking forms in dreams. Although the book contained many stories, the annotator seemed to have limited energy and had only organized one, which was the spell for the flying thief transforming into a bird in the story of the thief and the miser.

…

“First, let me clarify: not the entire spell needs to use a mystical language, only the key fields need to be in a high-level spiritual language. For example, in this segment of the spell that mimics a bird in the dream, the language needed is Harpy Language.

“Harpy Language is the language of the Harpies, who were active from the Second Era to the Third Era and are now mostly extinct. Their empire once ruled the skies, so many rituals and spells related to flight, beasts, and the sky need to use Harpy Language. This case is no exception.

“According to my summary, the spell to mimic a bird in dreams is as follows:

‘In the name of Shunur, I am born with wings. My strength can soar to great heights, my balance can traverse storms.’

“Note that the beginning ‘Shunur’ refers to a deity. In the secret histories, He is known as the ‘Black d*ath Wing’ and the ‘Sky d*ath God,’ a deity of the realms of ‘Stone,’ ‘Lamp,’ and ‘Silence.’ Legend has it that He once wielded control over the sky and was thus worshipped by the Harpies. However, He has since fallen, so there is no need to special-case His name; just reading it in the universal language will do, and it is placed at the beginning of the spell merely for formatting requirements, not to ask for His power.

“Next comes the key part: the subsequent two keywords, ‘strength’ and ‘balance,’ must be pronounced in Harpy Language. I apologize, but my proficiency in Harpy Language is limited, and I do not know these two words. However, after comparing it with the Abyss Language translations, I can barely deduce two likely pronunciations—one is ‘yita’ and the other is ‘yaya.’”

…

“The deduced pronunciations… Are they reliable?”

After muttering a few words of self-deprecation, Dorothy closed the old book in her hands and let out a long sigh. Now everything was ready; she just had to enter a dream and experiment with the spell.

Then, Dorothy placed “The Dream Explorer’s Record” in her suitcase, closed it up, and stuffed it under the bed. Next, she changed into her pajamas, turned off the light, and lay down in bed.

Tucking herself in, Dorothy began self-suggestion using the method taught in the old book. It was simple yet effective, and soon Dorothy felt drowsy and fell into a deep sleep.

…

Upon opening her eyes, Dorothy found herself in her own room. After glancing around, she got out of bed.

The room was eerily silent; not a sound could be heard.

“Then… I must be in a dream now?”

Talking to herself, Dorothy looked at the gas lamp on the table, and suddenly, without anyone operating it, the lamp lit up.

Dorothy confirmed it: this was a dream, her dream; she had entered it while being fully awake.

Once confirmed, Dorothy smiled slightly. Now that she was awake in the dream, the next step was to recite the spell and transform into a bird, then enter the Dream Realm.

Recalling the contents of “The Dream Explorer’s Record,” Dorothy closed her eyes and began to recite the spell.

“In the name of Shunur, I am born with wings. My strength can soar to great heights, my balance can traverse storms.”

As Dorothy chanted, following the annotator’s instructions, she mostly read the entire spell in the universal language but substituted the key terms “strength” and “balance” with the Harpy Language “yita” and “yaya.”

After completing the incantation, Dorothy waited for a change. Suddenly, a purple mist enveloped her body; when the mist cleared, what appeared was not a bird at all.

Where Dorothy had been standing, a strangely shaped fish about half a meter long was flopping around on the floor. It had arms but no legs, with a set of drab wings on its back resembling chicken wings without feathers, and a large tail that slapped against the ground. Its bulging eyes and wide-open mouth made it look like a dehydrated fish on the brink of d*ath.

“Bang!”

With another burst of purple mist, the bizarre fish flopping on the ground transformed back into Dorothy, who was now coughing in the smoke.

“Cough cough cough… What the heck did I turn into? That thing is a bird? It’s more like a salted fish!”

While coughing and loudly complaining, Dorothy began to wonder why she had suddenly transformed into such a bizarre creature.

‘Could it be that I mispronounced the spell?’

Dorothy thought, though she felt it was impossible, as she had practiced and confirmed these lines many times in reality. It shouldn’t have been mispronounced.

So there was only one possibility…

‘This spell itself is problematic…’

Dorothy considered. According to the annotator’s words, the key terms of the spell needed to be spoken in Harpy Language, but that annotator had limited knowledge of Harpy Language. He did not know those two key terms, so he approached it from the translations of Abyss Language and Harpy Language, deriving the pronunciations based on Abyss Language.

In other words, the pronunciations of those two keywords were merely the annotator’s guess, and it was entirely possible he made an error. Since he derived them by comparing Abyss Language and Harpy Language, he might have mixed up the pronunciations at some point. Perhaps the keywords Dorothy spoke could be pronounced in Abyss Language…

That’s why she turned into that peculiar thing.

The annotator not only had limited knowledge of Harpy Language but also possibly had just as scant understanding of translation…

“Ha… This is really harmful…”

Letting out a long sigh, Dorothy then sat down at the desk in the dream and began to ponder what to do next.

“Without the correct pronunciations of the keywords in Harpy Language, I can’t activate the spell… But I don’t know Harpy Language, and the annotator’s linguistics are mediocre at best… What should I do?”

Rubbing her chin, Dorothy contemplated carefully.

“The keywords are balance… strength… strength… balance… Fus… Ro… Rus! Ro!”

Suddenly, a light bulb seemed to flash in Dorothy’s mind, and she slammed her hand onto the desk.

“‘Strength’ and ‘balance’… Aren’t the two meanings of the Nain Dragon Language I know also strength and balance?”

—Fus— corresponds to strength in the Dragon Language, and —Ro— corresponds to balance.

What if I replaced those two keywords in the spell with the Dragon Language?

It seemed worth a try.

If Harpies once reigned in the skies, their language would be remembered by the heavens; why couldn’t dragons be recognized similarly?

Having thought of this, Dorothy quickly took out a piece of paper and wrote the new spell on it. After observing it carefully, she crossed out the name of the deity worshipped by the Harpies, the now-fallen god Shunur, and replaced it with another name.

“Akatosh.”

This was the Dragon God of Time in the Elder Scrolls world, the progenitor of all dragons in that world. To maintain symmetry in formatting, Dorothy thought to herself that since the keywords were replaced with otherworldly Dragon Language, the deity at the beginning should also be changed to an otherworldly dragon deity.

After all, the name of the deity in this spell only served a formatting purpose and did not have any real effect. The power of the spell came from those two keywords.

Once revised, Dorothy’s spell had transformed into:

“In the name of Akatosh, I am born with wings. My strength can soar to great heights, my balance can traverse storms.”