Milo scrambled back to where he’d left all of his stuff, panicked despite the fact that everything was going mostly fine. Well, other than the fact that he’d fallen down and gotten wet. Stupid magical fear.

Sure, he hadn’t managed to kill the cassowary with the rock, but all he was really trying to do there was save a little mana; he could just pick it off later from a distance. He’d been on the fence about trying to off it with the rock in the first place, but Milo was a sucker for efficiency. Why spend resources when you don’t have to?

It was just too bad his aim had been thrown off from only having one hand to guide the heavy rock.

He knew he wouldn’t have a ton of time once he was noticed, so he’d carefully prepped everything to the point that his backpack’s straps were parted just so to shave off the extra second or so it might have otherwise taken to slip his arms in.

His binder was leaning against the tunnel wall behind the backpack. Lamenting the fact that he’d now be sitting on it with wet pants, he activated Fetch Book and mounted the now-floating binder. He then summoned the textbook, lying on the ground nearby, and hugged it to himself.

With both books supporting his flight, he shot up and out of the tunnel before any of the monsters were within spitting distance of the archway.

Time to check up on my old buddy Backlebutt. Wonder what happened to his clothes?

Backlebutt was more than a little surprised when something large shot out of the tunnel’s mouth only seconds after Milo’s retreating form had entered it.

It took him a second to realize he was seeing a seated Milo, now wearing the backpack he himself had been wearing earlier.

Flying.

He could only stare as Milo casually soared through the cavern, heading his way.

That’s...what? How??

Milo noted with some alarm as he flew toward Backlebutt’s little wall-cave that there were a whole lot of crocodiles lingering in a semi-circle around the shore’s edge beneath the cave. They looked torn up, though, so it appeared the man had managed to do some damage to them somehow.

Still, he’s got to be pretty happy to see me. I can’t imagine he’s trapped up there because he was winning.

He touched down delicately, trying to avoid landing on the man’s clothes laid out on practically every inch of available space in the cramped hidey-hole—with the exception of a dried-out human skeleton. Milo wasn’t sure what to think about that, nor was he particularly keen to land on it.

He must have gotten wet, like me. Milo really hoped no water was soaking in between the binder’s covers, ruining his precious paper.

Backlebutt wasn’t being very helpful. He didn’t move to give Milo any more room to maneuver or make any motions to get his clothes out of the way. The man simply stared at Milo like he’d never seen anyone flying around on a book before.

Come on guy, you live in a freaking magical video game world. Get it together.

He finally nudged Backlebutt’s jacket over before getting his feet fully under him. It was just in time, as Fetch Book had nearly run its course. Eyeing Backlebutt, he decided to settle in a little more and give the guy some time before trying to communicate. He looked...poleaxed.

Milo mused internally for a moment, distracted. Poleaxed. That was one of many words he had picked up from fantasy novels but had never had the pleasure of using in normal, everyday life. People gave you odd looks if you tried to casually use those kinds of words. It fit here nicely, though.

He was just about to shrug off his backpack when, suddenly, the man attacked.

Or at least, that was what Milo’s mildly paranoid brain tried to tell him, still under the effect of the cassowary’s cry. He barely stifled the impulse to shove the man aside into the waiting mouths of the crocodiles below before Backlebutt grabbed his shoulders roughly, shaking him with an enthusiastic grin on his face. Then, to Milo’s horror, he came in for a hug.

It was awkward. Milo was still wearing his backpack, so Backlebutt couldn’t really reach around him. Also, Milo hadn’t ever really been much of a hugger. Plus, his arms were trapped. He stood there uncomfortably as the man briefly mauled him before standing back, returning his hands to Milo’s shoulders. Still smiling, he shook his head, saying something unintelligible. He shook Milo once more before he removed his hands. Then, he punched Milo in the arm. It was clearly friendly, sort of a “you old rascal” type of punch, but it kind of hurt.

Milo smiled at him uncertainly. He much preferred the man’s stoic, quiet side.

“Good to see you too,” he said.

It really was, unwelcome physical contact notwithstanding. Although, he did have concerns about how effective they’d be fighting together—especially since Milo could now see that Backlebutt was injured. The wound on his leg looked pretty grisly.

Much of Milo’s current fighting style was centered on the ability to kite enemies, fleeing before they could get close and deal any damage. Backlebutt would actually be a liability in that regard.

They needed to strategize. They’d gotten on before with charades and context clues, but Milo was going to need to learn the local language at some point. Might as well be now.

Not super happy that he would be filling up his final skill slot, he brought up his skill screen and found the language learning skill, Polyglot.

-

Polyglot: You learn new languages with incredible speed, and can even tease out meaning from ancient texts written in long-dead tongues. Passive.

-

Looking out at the sea of enemies, he didn’t see a reason to hesitate. He’d be getting a lot of XP pretty soon, enough to level again. That should open up another skill slot so long as the pattern of one being unlocked with every even level held. He took the skill.

After acquiring it, he immediately checked and was surprised to find that the skill lacked any modifiers. It was the first skill he’d found without one.

Actually kinda nice not to have to worry over whether to spend modifier points or not. Decision fatigue was a thing.

Finally setting down his backpack to relieve his aching shoulders, Milo turned his attention to Backlebutt. Time for Altabarian Language 101.

“Can you say something?” Milo asked. He mimed opening and closing a mouth with his right hand, then pointed at Backlebutt. The man looked confused, but after a little more prodding he began to speak, somewhat hesitantly.

The difference Polyglot made was immediate. Where before everything out of the man’s mouth had just sounded like a string of nonsense syllables with no breaks, Milo was now able to tell exactly where one word ended and the next began without trouble. He was also able to identify which words were connecters and which held the meat of the meaning in a phrase, even without yet knowing what the meaning was.

This would have made high school French so much easier.

He held up a hand, signaling for Backlebutt to stop. He singled out a word the man had used, repeating it back to Backlebutt, whose eyebrows rose. Milo wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe his pronunciation was better than expected? The word had easily rolled off his tongue, where before trying to pronounce “rock” had felt foreign and awkward.

Backlebutt glanced at the human skeleton before looking back at Milo. His head lolled to the side, eyes rolling up, jaw hanging open.

Ah. Dead. That made sense; the word had intuitively felt like an adjective to Milo.

Alright, here we go.

“Rock means—” He pointed at a rock. “Dead means—” He pointed at the skeleton. He’d used Backlebutt’s language for ‘rock’ and ‘dead’.

“Means means…?” He had to do it twice more before a light went on in Backelbutt’s head.

“Means,” said Backlebutt, and the word immediately felt right to Milo.

It took a bit more creativity and coaxing before he figured out the word for ‘word’.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Polyglot was really an incredible skill. He never forgot a word, never had to wonder if he had a word’s meaning correct. He sometimes had to try a few times to get the right translation, but when he hit upon the correct meaning the skill seemed to simply know.

The skill also helped connect everything together. By simply having Backlebutt talk for a while, it was able to pick out patterns and draw meaning from context. In truth, simply listening to the man was much more effective than Milo's earlier attempts with charades. All he really had to do was occasionally ask for Backlebutt to clarify the odd vocabulary word, and it was usually enough just to have him say a few more sentences containing that word. The learning process actually got faster the more he knew, the skill building up more and more linguistic knowledge to work from.

Milo had always felt the hardest part about learning a new language was fluency, the art of making things flow automatically and cohesively without hunting for the correct connector, conjugation, or word choice. You could know all the vocabulary in the world, but still sound like a mentally challenged third grader to a native speaker. Polyglot made all of the tricky nuances of learning a language positively trivial.

Backlebutt was, of course, astounded by Milo’s progress at first. He quickly realized that a skill was at play, though, and seemed enthusiastic about helping Milo to get the most out of it...once he’d had more of Milo’s Soylent. He drank like a man dying of thirst, making Milo realize it must’ve been quite some time since the man had had anything to eat.

After a while, they fell into a pattern of Backlebutt speaking for ten to twenty seconds, after which Milo would repeat back what the man had said. Backlebutt started with recounting what had befallen him after he’d separated from Milo. After that, he moved on to simply talking about what he saw around him:

“That is a (jacket). It is made from (cloth), (sewn) together with (thread). It keeps me (warm), and the (cut) and (design) of the jacket (indicate) I am a man of (means).”

Milo would pick up some of the new words immediately, then ask Backlebutt to use any words he didn’t understand in another context. It worked wonderfully, and the fact that he only needed to hear and understand a word once for it to be magically at his beck and call thereafter meant he made ludicrous progress.

And that was why, before very long at all, Milo was ready to ply Backlebutt for answers to some very important questions.