Aqua Regalia [Monster Progression LitRPG]

Cas checked herself over with paranoid intensity.

She was surprised to find herself completely unharmed. The fire had done laughably little damage. She hadn't even needed to heal.

In fact, the fire hadn't affected much of anything.

The trees -- even those in the center of the Conflagration -- were completely unharmed. A dim line of white embers smoldered through the ground cover like a cigarette, but even this junior flame quickly died after a few hundred meters. Cas – who was from California and therefore unaccustomed to seeing an unburned forest – paid close attention to the spreading ground fire.

She watched it crawl through the detritus with drunken, wavering motions.

She saw, how, despite these random movements, it always managed to avoid approaching the glowing shield of Aura that covered the living trees.

The undergrowth, too, came to life after the explosion. Thousands of panicking bugs and spiders and grubs wormed their way out of the understory, skittering in a thousand directions to escape the spreading heat.

Most of them crawled up the nearby trees, using their unburnt trunks as islands of safety.

Some of them crawled up Cas, others took flight in great swarms.

Cas snatched a weevil out of the air, holding it close to her face as it tried to buzz out of her grip.

A glowing ember was stuck onto the creature's left wing; its panicked wingbeats stoked the ember hotter and hotter. But, no matter how hard the beetle buzzed, and how hot the ember grew, it never managed to burn through the insect's wing.

Cas blew softly on the weevil, sending the ember flying.

The beetle, calmed by the sudden safety, buzzed its wings in a short test and hopped forward to rest on Cas's shoulder.

It seemed everything with an Aura was handling the fire just fine. Even parts of the ground cover, certain fallen branches which still had traces of Aura, seemed to either miraculously avoid or completely ignore the fire.

Something inspired Cas to look at her status sheet.

When her aura leveled up. A new skill had popped up, and it had come with a 'revelation'. As always, a cryptic one.

[Shroud of Fate]
[9E+203]

[Reality is a consequence of its own decisions.

Now, it may be inclined to make judgments in your favor.]

And that was the mystery of it.

The more proficient one grew in Aura, the more 'revelations' one got. The more mysterious 'I just know its''.

And now Cas knew that [Shroud of Fate] was a thing. She also knew that it wasn't a new skill. She always had the [Shroud of Fate]. It was just that now... she knew that she had it.

It was the most perplexing thing, to be subjected to sudden knowledge.

It was also frustrating.

Suddenly realizing something obvious often came packaged with a feeling of general stupidity.

Cas wondered how many skills she had right now but just didn't know about. Certainly, she'd never suspected she had anything like Shroud of Fate. Being a self-healing slime had done a lot to obscure its protections.

In fact, back in the village, just for fun, Cas had once walked into a bonfire and been completely unharmed.

At the time, she thought it was the water evaporating from her slime body which created a shield of steam, but now she was of a mind to realize it -- that was probably her [Shroud of Fate] protecting her.

Despite this certain knowledge, Cas didn't know exactly how the shroud of fate was protecting her.

Curious - Cas did what she always did in the face of inscrutable magic and turned pyromaniac. Picking up a burning piece of charcoal, Cas held the flame to her skin.

It felt warm but didn't burn. It was also directly contacting her skin. There was no shield or repulsive force that she could detect, and Cas knew – the same way she knew everything else about Aura – that body strengthening wasn't enough to explain this.

The [Shroud] was protecting her from the heat, and she had no idea how. Certainly, the description was unhelpful.

Cas couldn't spend too much energy on discerning [Shroud of Fate], however; for there was another revelation at hand.

When Aura leveled up from 6 to 7, Cas received the knowledge that… mind control was impossible.

It was even on her status sheet:

[Suspension of Mind]

[You are the sole owner of your actions, your thoughts, your intentions.]

Cas had become dimly aware of this fact when her Aura proficiency increased to 'Superior Novice'... after the fight had ended.

She glared at her status sheet. 'You couldn't have "revealed" this to me before I made an ass out of myself?'

Boore-Saa had been looking at her weirdly ever since, not that Cas could blame her -- even despite the demonesse's history.

Truly, once you tallied the recent murder attempts in their little band, Cas was the donkey in the equation, and she was adult enough to admit that fact.

Eventually, Cas managed a strained apology to Boore-Saa for trying to kill her, and a genuine apology to Sara for destroying her tent.

Finally, after all apologies had been made, and after explaining her actions thoroughly, Cas was again trusted with the expensive scroll – the one which would hopefully explain how demon contracts worked.

Once in hand, she read it with much interest.

At least, she tried to.

The text wasn't particularly advanced. According to Sara, it was meant for 'the amateur student of history'.

Amateur or not, however, Cas found herself unable to read a single sentence without an aneurysm.

Because, sure, the people here spoke English, and quite a modern version to boot, but even a brief interaction with their written language left Cas bewildered and hyperventilating as she tried to make sense of the gobbledygook. It brought back horrible memories of her elementary school career, and the English teacher who was overly fond of pop-quizzes.

Having lived her early life outside of the states, Cas was used to the horrors of learning English as a second language, especially when it came to spelling tests, but she never imagined she would have to do it all over again!

After several minutes of staring at the same paragraph, eventually, Cas got frustrated and began Conflagrating.

Things became a lot easier to understand once she realized that this version of English lacked silent letters. "Wore", for example, was simply spelled: 'Wor'.

The writing system further distinguished itself by giving almost every sound a different letter, so things like 'ch" and "th" had dedicated characters:"Ð" and "Ꞵ" respectively. At the same time, it did away with the 'redundant letters'. Taking a moment to go word hunting revealed not a trace of the letters: "C", "X", or "Q".

This was worrying, because Cas remembered signing her name on some important documents, and her name started with a 'C'. Then again, those documents had all appeared in her status sheet. And they all used the version of English that she knew. Probably, some sort of translation spell had handled everything.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

With this in mind, and Conflagrating like an Adderall addict, Cas returned to the scroll with renewed vigor.

After all, this wasn't so bad.

It was still English after all, it just had a more consistent writing system. What was wrong with that? Hadn't Cas wished for this back in elementary school after failing her spelling quiz?

"In ðə stʌdi ʌv hɪstɔri, ju wɪl faɪnd hɑrdli ænd dɪsəɡri-"

Cas turned away from the opening sentence like it was a distasteful picture.

Ugh. It was horrible.

Skipping the first paragraph, her eyes skimmed the article, rolling along until she came across a sentence which at least looked familiar.

"Ðə diimon ðen swor kompliit loiəlti tu ðə hai king ænd ał hiz naits ænd subjekts."

She read it slowly.

"The demon… then swore complete loyalty to…the high king and… all his… knights and subjects."

Cas had to whisper the words aloud as a crutch. She found herself squinting, as if to offset the confused dizziness the strange lettering inspired.

"Having trouble?" Boore-Saa slithered behind her. "I can help teach you," she offered. "I've trained extensively in Kwisonian, and I've helped teach it to many demons as a second language."

Following their little tiff, Boore-Saa had become intensely friendly and hospitable.

Gone were her quips and insults, replaced instead by an almost artificially friendly and corporate facade. It was like talking to Ned Flanders, an especially jarring transition after Boore-Saa had spent the past night tormenting Cas with her flagrant and continual sluttiness.

Cas pulled the scroll to her chest. She hated when people looked over her shoulder, and the insinuation that she of all people had trouble reading was doubly annoying, even if it was true in this case.

Boore-Saa remained outwardly friendly, but this only made Cas more suspicious. Not to mention, the demoness was tall as all hell. She was 6'4" by Cas's estimation, a perfectly devious height for looking over people's shoulders.

"It's not my second language, actually," Cas said, enjoying the chance to correct the demoness for once. "It's called English, and I've been speaking it since I was five."

"You only learned to speak when you were five"

"No, I spoke a different language before that."

"So... it is your second language...." Boore-Saa corrected.

Cas drew in a murderous huff. "Well... the point is I can already speak it fluently!"

The demoness, an expert in sass, noticed the heaping slathering of it Cas had applied to her response. "You know," she said, "you could afford to be a bit nicer?"

"Really? Why's that?"

"Well, you did just try to kill me," Boore-Saa pointed out.

Cas reached up a hand and patted the demoness's shoulder. "There, there," she consoled sarcastically, quickly returning to the scroll and... immediately struggling to read it. She turned the scroll like a steering wheel, as if reading down-hill might make things easier.

Boore-Saa raised a brow. "Didn't you tell me yesterday that you reincarnated here from a different world?"

"Yes."

"And, the people in your world speak Kwisonian, too?"

"English," Cas corrected, "and yes, it's one of the many languages on my world. The international language, in fact. It just so happens that it also exists on this world."

"You spoke the exact same language on another world?" Boore-Saa said. "I find that highly improbable."

"Tell me about it," Cas muttered bitterly. "Apparently the writing system didn't make it over."

"How would you write this sentence on Earth, then?" Boore-Saa pointed to the sentence Cas had been reading, showing far too much interest for it to be genuine.

"Do you have a pencil?"

"I do," Sara approached curiously, handing her a note-book. It seemed she was interested in seeing another version of her language.

Cas felt an undue amount of pressure as two people scrutinized her hand writing. Nevertheless, she managed a legible rendition of the same:

"The demon then swore complete loyalty to the high king and all his knights and subjects."

Boore-Saa held back a laugh, quite poorly in fact.

Sara looked on with what seemed to be mild horror. "Oh… my," she said, keeping things polite. "That certainly is an… interesting way to write a sentence. What is that word supposed to be?"

She pointed at "Knights," and Cas told her.

If anything, the look on Sara's face only grew more distraught.

Boore-Saa interrupted. "I'm still wondering how two different worlds ended up speaking the exact same language. What are the chances of that? The humans in this world alone speak thousands of dialects."

"I've been thinking about that, too," Cas attested. "On my world, we had a game called Siablo which had a story based around the history of this world. I've been told that ideas and stories can be transmitted between universes."

"They can," Boore-Saa supplied.

"If that's the case, who's to say the reverse didn't happen with English? That would explain on why the people here speak an Earthly language."

Sara scoffed. "I'm sorry to interrupt your fantasy, dear, but I think it's obvious that you're speaking our language."

Cas didn't blame Sara for the scoff, because she was in the middle of her own. "Uh… no." Cas said. "I'll have you know, my roommate's boyfriend was a linguist. English has a history on Earth. It's a natural language. If anything, Kwisonian got it from us."

Sara crossed her arms, looking deadpan. "I must resolutely deny your conclusion."

Cas resisted the urge to 'Nuh uh'. She was far too mature for that. Besides, she understood that Sara was the religious sort. Probably, she believed that god created her world in the center of the universe or something. Of course she'd just assume that English was developed in her world.

"Come on, Sara." Cas said. "English is obviously an Earthly language. You can't just assume that your people came up with the language because you speak it."

"Of course I can," Sara said. "In fact, it makes complete sense. This world is specially chosen by God. He gave us Aura. It's obvious the influence of our world warped Earth's history so that you ended up speaking Kwisonian."

Cas was gentle when disproving Sara. "Nuh-uh," she said reasonably.

Sara only crossed her arms. "You spell 'Naits' with a 'K', Cas."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It has everything to do with everything!" Sara said, growing heated. "Your spelling system makes no sense! It was obviously cobbled together to represent an alien language."

A common sense argument, but one that Cas was well equipped by years of scholarly research to disprove.

"The spelling system is just a historical artifact. Besides, I'll have you know English spelling has a lot of advantages. It allows for complex poetry, humor, spelling Bees, movies about spelling Bees. Have you ever seen Lamilla and the Bee? I have. Way too many times."

"Spelling bees?" Sara looked confused. "You have Bees that can spell?"

"No," Cas denied, "it's a competition to see who can spell the most words correctly."

Sara, looking ever more horrified: "Cas…."

Cas had to admit, that was a strong argument. But she refused to give in.

"I mean, really, the spelling system actually proves that English was invented on Earth. It has the idiosyncrasies you'd expect from a natural language. I mean, English has a thousand years of history and evolution. We have the linguistics to prove it."

"Right…" Sara said. "Well, Kwisonian has a history here, too. It evolved from early Ecloptian, which itself evolved from archaic Kamri. Would you mind beguiling me as to the history of English?"

It was here that Cas remembered her roommate's boyfriend. The linguist.

He was a strange sort. He had a scruffy beard which could have looked nice if he'd trimmed it. But, obviously, looks were not on the man's list of priorities, considering he walked around wearing a rash guard and a crazy expression.

Despite his idiosyncrasies, he was a nice enough fellow, and always regaled Cas with etymological facts whenever she felt kind enough to try and engage him in a conversation.

--

"So," Cas said, making a smoothie on the kitchen counter. "Jen said you're a linguist?"

The guy contorted his body to stare at her over the backrest, looking like a fish who saw his favorite lure. "Yeah!" he laughed awkwardly. "I love it."

"Oh, that's cool," Cas said, trying to keep it cool. "So, you speak any languages?" attempting by the question to segue into a conversation about their histories. After all, she spoke another language.

"Nahhhh," he laughed. "Like, no wayyy broo. Linguistics isn't about languages, man. It's about language! Ya know." He raised his hands in a celebratory fashion when he said language. "Anyway… I actually got this white board. I can show you, like, the history of English if you want…"

And that was the last time in the next four hours that Cas got a single word in, as the guy drew out on his portable white board the multiple lines of convergence which brought about the modern language.

--

Cas, therefore, having been subjected to enough hours of linguistics lectures to get a fucking minor, actually did know some of the rough outlines.

It was only after she started answering that Cas realized, via the dawning horror on both Sara and Boore-Saa's faces, that she was describing a plot more convoluted than most fantasy novels.

"Well, you see, it starts with German, basically. Well, not really German, but a precursor, which I think got mixed with French. Then the vikings invade or something. And then, they got invaded by a completely different group of guys, who then got invaded back by the French. And then the two languages mixed, and then Latin got incorporated or something. After that, there were a lot of Greek words. And then, finally, there was a vowel shift.."

"A vowel shift?" Sara interrupted. "What's a vowel shift?"

Cas shrugged. "It means that people started pronouncing all the vowels completely differently."

"Why in God's name would an entire population start doing that?"

Cas shrugged. "They just did. It happened for no reason. Anyway, after that-

"Oh lord I'm speaking your language," Cas stopped suddenly, resting a horrified hand against her temple.

Sara, for her part, had a smug look. "See?"

"There there," Boore-Saa patted Cas on the back.