Chapter 38: The Unreadable Invitation

Zeldryn remained alone in his room, staring at the door Kera had just slammed shut. Several seconds passed before he finally sighed and began pushing himself up from the floor.

“Whatever.”

At least his body no longer hurt after Kera healed him. Zeldryn straightened himself and looked around, only to find the sheets of paper Kera had tossed still scattered across the floor.

He clicked his tongue.

'Seriously... does Kera not have even the slightest bit of manners or empathy in that brain of his?'

The man had entered his room without permission, beaten him for almost twenty minutes, insulted him repeatedly, sat comfortably on his bed, and then thrown his notes everywhere right before leaving. Zeldryn had met plenty of irritating people during his previous life, but Kera had managed to make an astonishingly strong first impression in only a short amount of time.

He crouched and began collecting the papers one by one. Once he had gathered all of them, Zeldryn carried the stack toward the table, straightened the pages, and sat down in the chair.

The same chair he had been sitting in before everything went wrong the previous night.

Zeldryn stared at it for several seconds.

'This damn chair again...'

It was where he had been sitting before losing consciousness and becoming trapped inside those endlessly repeating lives as Reka. Strangely enough, however, that experience wasn't what bothered him most right now. There was something else demanding far more of his attention.

Zeldryn rested one hand against his chin and looked at the notes Kera had returned.

'So now it's clear.'

This world used a different writing system.

Kera had been completely unable to read what Zeldryn had written and had even mistaken the letters for meaningless scribbles made by a child. That confirmed at least part of the suspicion Zeldryn had developed the previous night.

If the writing system was different, then the language itself was probably different as well.

That was exactly where the situation stopped making sense.

'If the language is different, then why can I understand everyone?'

Hera, the servants, the guards, Henry, Aeglo, and now Kera had all spoken to him without causing the slightest communication problem. Zeldryn understood everything they said naturally, and whenever he answered, nobody reacted as though his words sounded strange.

To his ears, everyone was speaking English.

The more Zeldryn thought about it, however, the more absurd that explanation became.

'How the hell would everyone in another world be speaking English?'

He slowly tapped one finger against the table as another possibility began forming in his mind.

'Or... is there some kind of automatic translation?'

Perhaps the people in this world weren't actually speaking English at all. They might have their own spoken language, but for some reason, whatever they said was automatically translated into a language Reka could understand. The same process could also be happening in reverse whenever Zeldryn spoke, allowing the people around him to hear his words in their own language even though he himself perceived them differently.

In other words, something could be translating both sides of every conversation without either party noticing.

'Some kind of translator?'

Zeldryn sat quietly as he developed the theory further.

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'They speak their language, but I hear it as English. Then when I speak, they hear whatever language they normally use?'

It sounded reasonable enough, at least compared to the alternative of an entirely different world somehow developing exactly the same spoken language as Earth.

The real problem was that Zeldryn had absolutely no idea what might be causing it. It could have something to do with the body he now inhabited, mana, the process that had brought him into this world, or something else entirely.

“Hmm...” Zeldryn scratched his head. “Complicated.”

He simply didn't have enough information to reach an answer. Thinking about it endlessly wouldn't magically give him knowledge he didn't possess, so there was no point wasting the entire morning on speculation.

'I'll deal with it later.'

Zeldryn picked up one of his notes. If he couldn't solve the mystery now, he could at least make sure he didn't forget about it. He added a short note describing his theory about the spoken language and some kind of automatic translation before putting the writing tool down again.

His gaze then shifted toward another object resting on the table.

The invitation Kera had given him.

Zeldryn picked up the envelope and examined it.

“Hmm...”

According to Kera, it was an invitation to Marquis Zorin's birthday celebration.

In other words, it was an invitation to the birthday of the father of the body Zeldryn now inhabited.

He opened the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.

The moment he saw the page, Zeldryn frowned.

“...What the hell is this writing?”

He tilted the letter slightly, studied it again, and then brought it closer to his face. None of those things helped.

The page was covered in symbols completely unfamiliar to him. Some of the characters curved around one another, while others consisted of more complicated shapes that occasionally appeared to connect with nearby symbols. To Zeldryn, the entire thing resembled the script of some ancient language he had never encountered before.

It was completely unreadable.

He moved the page farther away, as though changing the distance might somehow make the symbols understandable.

Nothing changed.

'Damn it. I really can't read this world's writing.'

That made his earlier theory even more convincing. For whatever reason, he could understand spoken language naturally, yet whatever mechanism allowed him to do so clearly didn't extend to written words.

Zeldryn stared at the invitation with growing frustration. He knew it concerned Marquis Zorin's birthday, but that was essentially all he knew. He couldn't determine when the celebration would be held, where exactly it would take place, what he was expected to do, or anything else written in the invitation.

“Why does everything have to be this complicated, damn it...”

He was just about to put the letter down when three knocks suddenly came from the bedroom door.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Zeldryn immediately turned toward the sound.

“Excuse me, Lord Zeldryn. It's Hera,” a woman called from outside. “I've brought the food you ordered yesterday, Lord.”

Zeldryn blinked.

'Food?'

A few seconds later, he remembered what she meant. Yesterday afternoon, after attempting to understand mana for the first time, he had become extremely hungry. When he left his room, he discovered Hera sleeping outside his door because she was still following an order given by the old Zeldryn.

That had been when he changed several of the rules surrounding her duties. One of them was that Hera now had to bring him food three times a day.

Zeldryn placed the invitation back on the table.

“Come in.”

The bedroom door slowly opened, and Hera entered while carrying a large tray of food with both hands. She walked several steps into the room before stopping politely.

“Lord Zeldryn.”

Zeldryn looked toward her.

“Where should I place the food, Lord?” Hera asked.

He glanced briefly around the room. His table was already covered with notes and the invitation, leaving little room for the tray.

“Put it on the bed.”

“Yes, Lord.”

Hera walked toward the bed and carefully lowered the tray onto it, making sure that none of the food spilled. Once everything was secure, she straightened and gave Zeldryn a slight bow.

“Then I will take my leave, Lord.”

Zeldryn watched as Hera turned and began walking toward the door. Something about her behavior caught his attention before she had gone very far.

'Hmm... she's changed pretty quickly.'

He still remembered how Hera had behaved when he first woke up in this body. She had trembled constantly, struggled to look him in the eyes, and immediately tensed whenever Zeldryn moved even slightly closer to her.

Now she remained extremely polite and still maintained a careful distance, but the overwhelming fear that had been so obvious before seemed to have diminished slightly.

'Is it because I told her about the memory loss last night?'

Perhaps learning that Zeldryn had supposedly lost most of his memories gave Hera an explanation for the sudden changes in his behavior. Things that would otherwise have seemed inexplicable might now make more sense to her.

There was also another possibility.

'Maybe she's starting to adapt to Zeldryn's body now that Reka is the one inside it.'

Then again, Hera might still be just as afraid as before and had simply become better at hiding it.

'Or is she just pretending to be strong?'

Zeldryn couldn't know for certain. Years of fear and trauma obviously wouldn't disappear after only a day or two, especially when Hera had previously been terrified simply by making eye contact with the person whose body he now occupied.

He let out a small sigh.

'Well, who knows.'

For now, there was something far more useful he could do than speculate about Hera's emotional state.

Zeldryn's gaze slowly shifted toward the unreadable invitation resting on the table before returning to Hera, who was already nearing the door. A small smile appeared on his face as an obvious solution presented itself.

“Stop,” Zeldryn said.

Hera immediately stopped walking.