Otherworld Adventure

Lucia and the Village

Cecil was thoroughly dumbfounded by the unfamiliar scene that he was currently witnessing. The girl that was pinned underneath Silver was a half beast half human person. She was the so-called demi-human from the fantasy novels he's read.

The girl had golden eyes and platinum hair with animal-like ears on her head. She had screamed something earlier, but Cecil couldn't make out what she was saying. It felt like she was screaming in a foreign language so it was most likely some native language of this world, Cecil thought to himself.

'Crap, doesn't this make information gathering and blending in even harder? If I don't know this world's language how the hell am I supposed to get by?'

"Ugh, another problem added to my already long list."

He mumbled as such while holding his head.

"D*** ***l **! ****s*!"

'Ugh, there it is again. I really can't understand a thing. I'll tell Silver to get off of her first.'

"Silver, it's alright. She's not hostile, it seems."

Silver responded with a bark and stopped pinning the young girl down with his paw. The girl, after being freed from Silver's claws, quickly backed away from them in fear.

"* *** ** ****y"

"Ugh, I don't understand…" Cecil replied with a vexed look.

"****?"

"Can you understand what I'm saying?"

"**** *** *** ******?"

Cecil began sighing when he saw that the conversation was going nowhere.

'Crap, this is going nowhere. How the hell am I supposed to communicate with this girl.'

"Raa!"

"Huh? ** **** ********** **?"

"Grrr, raaa!"

"**** * **e, **** **** *** ** *** ** e****."

"Woof!"

Silver started barking at the girl and she rigidly responded to Silver's barks, like they were able to communicate or something.

'Huh? Silver can communicate with her by barking?'

"Woof!!"

Silver turned toward Cecil and barked at him, clearly trying to tell him something. Cecil stared back at Silver dumbly, obviously not understanding what he was trying to convey.

'Silv, I know you can understand what I'm saying but I'm no dog! How am I supposed to understand that?'

Seeing the pensive look on his owner's face, Silver shook his head and turned back towards the girl and began barking at her again. Judging by how the beast girl was 'talking' to Silver, they seem to be holding a pretty decent conversation with one another.

Cecil felt a bit left out so he dejectedly started walking back to his campsite.

"Silver, if you can communicate with her, ask her who she is and what's she doing here."

Leaving those words behind, Cecil walked back and from behind him, he could hear Silver and the girl have some sort of conversation. The talk seemed to be serious, but the only problem with this situation was that Cecil couldn't understand whatever it was they were saying.

With Silver's barking and the beast girl blabbering on about something, Cecil stopped caring and continued to grind away at the bone knife. Seeing that Cecil had returned to sit by the fire, Silver stopped his conversation with the girl and went back to lie down on his previous spot across from his owner.

The beast girl followed behind Silver and sat next to him. Cecil thought that the girl would just up and leave when they let her off earlier, but it was the opposite. She instead came to sit with them besides the campfire.

Cecil didn't really mind and thought that the girl was pretty interesting and gutsy...or naive. He took another look at her before shifting his focus back to grinding his bone sword, but suddenly the girl started trying to talk to him.

"***! *** *** ****** *** **d******** * ***d ** *****g?"

Cecil raised his head and looked at her with a confused expression.

"** *** ***e…"

'What the heck, is this girl mocking me or something?'

"Raahh!"

After Silver barked something at the girl, in the next instant her face changed and it looked like she just saw the most unbelievable thing in the world as she stared back at Cecil. With the girl's change in expression, Cecil's face turned even more confused. He started wondering just what Silver said to her to make her face changed like that.

'Man, if only I could communicate with her somehow.'

"Woof! Raahh!"

"****, ** *** *** ** *** **** *** ***ch ***."

"Woof!"

The two started conversing again and Cecil turned his focus back to grinding his bone sword. A little after that, Silver got up and came over to Cecil and nudged him on the leg. Cecil looked at him questioningly and Silver placed his paw on the rock that had the bear meat that Cecil was eating.

"You want me to give her some?"

"Woof!" Silver replied with a shake of his head at Cecil's question.

"Okay."

After receiving a confirmation, Cecil began cutting up the meat into smaller bites and gathered them together. After cutting up a good amount, he stopped.

'I guess this is enough for her to eat.'

Cecil picked up a flat rock that he had washed earlier and placed the meat he had portioned off above the rock. Since there were no plates, Cecil had found and washed a somewhat flat rock clean to use in place of plates.

Cecil then brought the meat over to the girl and she accepted it graciously with both hands.

"I didn't season it, but it's still good."

"****? ***** ***!"

'Man, what a bother. I never thought it would be so hard to talk to someone.'

After handing her the stone plate of meat, the beast girl stared at the meat and then back at Cecil. She looked at him again and then pointed towards his waist.

Cecil follows her finger and saw that she was pointing at his bone knife.

"You need this?"

"***!"

She nodded in response.

"Hmmm…."

Cecil glared at her vigilantly. Seeing Cecil looking at her like that, the beast girl starts panicking and waving her hands while talking in that indiscernible language again.

"**! * **** **** *** ****! * **** ***** *** ** *** ****!"

"What?"

"Woof, woof!"

Silver barked at him. He glanced back at his pet wolf and his wolf just stared back at him calmly.

'I think he means it's alright?'

"Okay, here then."

"***** ***!"

After handing her the knife, Cecil thought back on the words that the beast girl had just said.

'I think it means 'thanks'?'

"Hey, does ***** *** mean thank you?"

"****?"

When Cecil asked her that, it was the girl's turn to look back at him questioningly.

"Raaahh! Woof, woof!"

After Silver barked at her, the girl's eyes lit up. Then she started nodding her head up and down at Cecil with a bright and wide smile.

"***, ***** *** ***** thank you!"

"Okay…"

'Heh, my first word in another world was actually 'thank you'.'

Cecil smiled a bit while thinking that and returned to his seat.

Seeing him smile, the beast girl's eyes lit up even further. She then started cutting up the meat and began stuffing it down her mouth vigorously.

'Woah, aren't you one hungry little thing…'

Cecil involuntarily let out a slight smile after seeing the girl's puffed-up cheeks and the wide and happy smile on her face as she began chewing on the meat in her mouth.

'Heh, how cute.'

He then continued grinding the bone sword.

In only a minute or two, the beast girl had finished the entire plate of meat. When Cecil was observing her eating, he turned astonished at how agile the girl handled his knife. It was plain to see that she was pretty adept with the knife despite her young age.

Not like he was one to talk, considering how adept he was at handling not just the knife but various other weapons.

"Heehh, you're pretty skillful aren't you?"

"Thank you *** *** ****!"

"You're welcome."

'Well I guess practice makes perfect, maybe I can ask this girl to teach me the language of this world.'

With that thought in mind, Cecil proceeded to ask.

"Hey, can you teach me?"

"****?"

From the girl's response, Cecil was sure that she didn't understand so he tried gesturing to the girl what he wanted hoping that she'll at least get the meaning behind his words. After 5 minutes of an exhausting back and forth exchange, she finally got the gist of what Cecil was trying to imply.

"****, *** ***** *** *** ** ****!"

She nodded her head in affirmation but then she pointed towards the rest of the meat. It was going to be an exchange. She gets more meat while he gets to be taught.

"Okay, I give you meat, you teach me," Cecil nodded his head in affirmation.

"****!"

The girl cheered in delight. Cecil gestured towards her again, and the girl nodded her head vigorously while giggling.

"Well, I guess I finally have a goal to work towards for now."

'It'd be cool if I could follow this girl back to the place she's staying at, but I feel like it's too early since I can't even communicate with her, what happens if there are others like her? It'd be pretty awkward and it might even cause a misunderstanding.'

"Umu, ** **** ** ****!"

"Huh?"

After saying something, the beast girl walked over and handed him back his knife after which she grabbed hold of his outstretched hand and tried pulling him up from his seat.

"What do you want?"

The girl started pointing to somewhere beyond the forest clearly conveying to Cecil her intent to take him somewhere.

"What? Do you want me to follow you?"

"Woof!"

"Huh?"

Silver came over and started nudging Cecil from behind. His wolf was telling him to follow the girl. Seeing that even his wolf wanted him to go, Cecil decided to trust the girl.

"Okay then, if you say so Silver."

After agreeing with Silver, Cecil then gestured to the girl for her to wait. He turned around and quickly began packing up all his stuff. It was a good thing that the fur had already dried. The smoke from the fire had also flushed out any bugs that were still crawling on it but it made the fur smell smoky.

Cecil quickly stuffed all his belongings into his make-shift bag and cleared the camp. He didn't forget to wrap up his cooked meat and after finishing all that, Cecil turned towards the girl and indicated to her that he was ready.

The girl was staring back at him with a curious look on her face and this prompted Cecil to ask, "What's wrong? Let's go?"

Cecil gestured to the girl that he would follow her. The girl smiled at him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him along while pointing in the direction from earlier. Cecil followed and let himself be dragged by this platinum-haired 3-tailed beast girl.

'I don't know where she's taking me, but I have a feeling that it's the place where she lives. If there are any other people like her, I hope my presence doesn't cause a misunderstanding.'

The worst possible situation would be that her fellow kinsmen would attack him just because Cecil was of a different race from them.

The girl turned her head around and pointed at herself. Then she started saying something to Cecil.

"Lu***," The girl said.

"Huh?"

Cecil only replied with a dumb look so the girl reiterated once again but much more slowly.

"L**ia!"

"Lu*ia?"

"**! Luci*!"

After a few more exchanges, Cecil finally got the word that the girl was saying.

"Lucia?"

Having her name said properly, the girl gave Cecil a satisfied nod and once more iterated her name.

"Lucia"

"Ohh, you're Lucia?"

Pointing at her, Cecil then said the same word he said earlier. Lucia nodded happily before pointing back at Cecil and asked something.

"*** ***?"

Somehow, Cecil knew what she wanted. So he points to himself and said.

"Cecil."

"Ce~cel~?"

"CE-CIL"

"Ah! Cecil!"

Cecil smiled at her after she said his name right. Then he pointed towards Silver.

"This is Silver."

"Silver!"

'What the? Isn't this just total bias?!'

For some reason, Lucia was able to pronounce Silver's name properly right off the bat but had some difficulty pronouncing Cecil's name.

"Haha, Lucia, Cecil, Silver!" The girl said in delight.

"That's right, I'm Cecil, this is Silver and you're Lucia."

"Hihihi!"

Lucia was smiling and giggling happily after saying each of their names. Cecil thought she looked real cute smiling and laughing like that.

'So my first friend from another world turns out to be this platinum-haired, golden-eyed, 3-tailed beast girl named Lucia, huh'

Cecil was following behind Lucia while keeping a vigilant watch of the surroundings. Lucia was walking at the front so carefreely so it sort of baffled him. He didn't know if the girl was fearless or there just weren't any dangers around their present location. It could also be the fact that she frequented this path they were walking and knew that it was safe so she lacked any form of vigilance.

'Anyway, it's better to be cautious. I can't let my guard down.'

Even though the path seemed safe but nothing was absolute. They were still off the beaten path so it meant that monsters could still potentially attack them. As Cecil was vigilantly observing their surroundings, Lucia who was at the front, raised her voice in delight.

"Cecil, **** ****!"

"Hm?"

Looking past her, Cecil saw a path up ahead. Although it wasn't paved with cement or anything, the path—or rather the road was quite large that it could fit 2 large cars side by side on it.

Cecil walked over and observed the road and thought, 'this road is frequented by travelers and wagons... I guess no monsters would dare come close if that was the case.'

The path had plenty of tracks from wagons, carriages, footprints from people, but most importantly, there were no monster-like tracks on it. When Cecil looked around he saw a sign that was pointed towards the small path they were on and it had some letters that he couldn't read on it. He took a glance and gave up on reading the unintelligible letters and symbols.

After walking onto the main path, Cecil turned around and looked at the path they just left. Sure enough, the small path with the sign next to it stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the other areas around the large road.

'I guess it was frequented by a lot of people, I guess they would fetch for water or even fish in that river from earlier, I guess?'

While he was thinking as such, Lucia grabbed his hand again and started dragging Cecil away.

"Cecil, **** **!"

"Oh, okay…"

'Man, although it's nice to have a girl holding my hand while walking, this feels more like she's guiding a blind guy around the area.'

They continued to walk on the path for a while. When they set out from the river it was deep into the afternoon. Looking up at the sky, Cecil saw that it was already in the evening.

'The walk from the river to the road was pretty long huh?'

While on the road, they didn't come across any wagons or people walking on it even after about an hour or so which prompted Cecil into thinking that the people didn't travel at all when it was close to nighttime.

They continued walking for another half an hour before Cecil noticed a fork on the road. The main road kept going straight while the other road led to the left going straight through a forest. Lucia immediately took this left path and led Cecil down it.

'I guess her house is on the other end of the path?'

Lucia seemed excited and started running, of course, with Cecil in tow. After running for around 10 minutes, the forest opened up into a wide field. They stopped and Cecil was able to take in the view in front of them. He saw a village with wooden houses at the end of the path.

Since they were on slightly elevated grounds with the forest behind them, Cecil was able to take a good look at the village. Lucia said something to him while pointing at the village.

"Fa***!"

"Fakse?"

"Fauxe!"

"Ohh, Fauxe."

Cecil turned his site towards the village and thought, 'So this village is called Fauxe. Odd, it sounds almost like 'fox'. Fox village? Come to think of it, in the novels, the beastmen always had a certain type of animal that characterized their facial and body features like lions, wolves, cats, dogs, lizards, etc. I wonder what Lucia is?'

While he began to wonder, Cecil had unknowingly cast quite the heated look at Lucia. The young girl had a rather cute face which given time would undoubtedly blossom into a beautiful one. She had triangle-shaped ears on top of her head which were somewhat like wolf or cat ears. She also had 3 fluffy tails which grew somewhere around her tailbone area. Cecil continued to observe her with interest but he couldn't tell which animal she was based on.

'Crap, that's bad, I shouldn't say animal, it sounds really racist and wrong. It might even be considered a taboo here in this world. Better keep my thoughts and mouth in check when I learn their language later,' Cecil quickly thought to himself.

Lucia began growing shy and embarrassed at Cecil's heated gaze. She started blushing and after not being able to take it any longer, she cleared her throat and said something Cecil didn't quite understand. However, because of her actions, he finally realized that what he was doing was pretty rude.

After a quick apology, Lucia started dragging Cecil over to the village below. As he got closer to the village, Cecil started getting pretty nervous. He was worried that something bad might happen. He couldn't speak their language so he wouldn't be able to communicate with them. He didn't want to be misunderstood and get driven out of the village or anything.

'Hopefully, everything turns out alright. Please, let it be alright.'

They finally reached the village gate, the sun was about to set and the village was already lit up with what appeared to be lampposts. It wasn't the typical kind of lampposts that Cecil was used to because it was actually just a pillar that had a round glowing sphere on top of it.

'So I guess they were lampposts, although I doubt that those spheres are light bulbs like back on earth.'

When they arrived at the village entrance, what awaited Cecil and Lucia was a group of villagers and at the head of the group was a very buff… beastman? He looked somewhat feminine, but he was without a doubt a male considering he was very muscular and tall, being almost 2 meters in height.

He also had the same ears as Lucia but instead, it was golden in color. His hair and eyes were also gold, and he was, at the moment, glaring sharply at Cecil. Behind the buffed man, who Cecil presumed to be the village's guard or something, was a tall young woman who looked like an older and mature version of Lucia. She had the same platinum-colored hair as Lucia too, but her irises were red and she looked young enough to be Lucia's sister.

The rest of the group also had similar animal features like Lucia. They had the triangular ears on top of their heads and their bushy tails were somewhat the same, however, it seemed like only Lucia and the young woman who resembled her, were the only ones that had 3 tails. The rest of the group only had 1 or 2 tails at most.

Stopping in front of the group, Lucia started saying something. The couple in the front, as well as the rest of the group, had a somewhat surprised expression after Lucia said... whatever it was she said.

After her explanation, the wary looks from the villagers turned into looks of curiosity instead. Except for the buff man, he was instead glaring even harder and more harshly at Cecil after Lucia's explanation.

'Holy crap, he's scary. I felt a little bit of bloodlust there.'

Sensing the faint amount of bloodlust, it put Cecil on edge, but honestly, with how the man looked, it seemed impossible for Cecil to win in a fight against him. Lucia released Cecil's hand and continued speaking to the villagers.

The villagers began discussing something and they all turned a curious eye towards Cecil right after. Lucia started to frantically say something to them, she even looked pretty flustered.

'How cute... Holy hell, this isn't the time to be thinking that!'

Cecil looked at the villagers and saw them staring back at him. The looks they were giving him were all varied. Some with disbelief, others with suspicion, but the most severe one was from the buffed man. He looked like he was about to eat Cecil alive. The man walked up and started saying something to Cecil. Despite having a somewhat feminine, good-looking face, he had a deep bass-like voice.

"*** *** ****** **** * ****** ****?"

"What?"

"****?"

When the man started speaking to him, Cecil could only stare back and not say anything. He presumed that the man had asked him a question, but he didn't even know what the question was so he couldn't answer it. Sensing that things were going nowhere Lucia said something to him and even Silver started barking at him.

"*****! Cecil ***** **** *** *********!"

"****?"

"Woof!"

After the man took notice of Silver, who was lying prone behind Cecil and out of sight, he looked somewhat surprised and started holding a 'conversation' with Silver. It was a repeat of what happened back with Lucia and after an extensive 'argument' between the two, the buffed man turned towards Lucia and said something to her.

"****, *** *** ***** *** **** *** ******."

"***!"

Finishing his conversation with Lucia, he took another look at Cecil and Silver. After that, he turned towards the villagers and said something, and then the group of people all started to disperse, heading back to their homes like Cecil was now no longer a problem.

Once the villagers left, the only people remaining at the village entrance were Cecil, Silver, Lucia, the buffed man, and the young woman who looked like Lucia's sister, or mother. Lucia ran up to the young woman and hugged her. The woman hugged her back with a gentle smile.

They said something to each other and Lucia came back over to Cecil and started dragging him into the village. The buffed man and young woman turned around and started walking further into the village with Lucia following behind them with Cecil in tow.

"Hey Silver, you can talk to them right?"

Silver responded with a bark at his words. It wasn't like he actually understood what his pet was saying, but he got the intent behind it.

"Ask them if they can teach me to speak their language later, okay?"

"Woof, woof!"

The 3 people in front looked back at Cecil who appeared to be talking to Silver. When Cecil looked ahead again, the man and woman had a softer look in their eyes. Although the man's glare was still a bit menacing, at least the faint bloodlust from earlier was now gone and like this, he was dragged deeper into the beast kin village by Lucia.