Who Needs Magic in a Fantasy World Anyway?

Chapter 108: Engrish

"Whatever this puzzle is, it looks like reading English is the only way to pass through it." Richard stated. "That being said, why is it taking you so long?"

"Hey, shut up. Do you realize how long it's been since I've even seen the regular version, much less this old stuff where they used to talk and write funny?" Koko defended herself as she examined the table. "Not to mention that half of it is worn away..."

"I'm just still impressed that you're capable of understanding it at all." Christina said excitedly. "I never would have thought that you knew how to speak another language, much less one that looks as strange as this one."

"I'd hold off on that if I were you. Reading old cursive would be difficult enough for me even if it was intact." Koko sighed in reply as she thought furiously about what she was looking at.

"Cursive? I thought that you said it was... English?" Christina asked in a tone that betrayed her wondering if she'd gotten the word right.

"It is English, though cursive was another way of writing it than how it was done in later years." Koko answered while purposefully speaking as if English had been used by a lost civilization or something similar. "But to be honest, most of it is looking like gibberish to me right now."

"Well that's unexpected given your roots." Richard laughed slightly as he spoke.

"If you want to cheat your way through it, then go right again." Koko gestured towards the table, daring him to try seeing as she knew for a fact that Mr. Transmigrated didn't have to relearn how to read and write like she'd had to when when she was born or he wouldn't have been able to enter the adventurers academy while so young. Because even if the language that they were using was identical to English, the writing system was completely different.

"I don't have any special power like that though." He defended himself.

'Actually, I should probably tell you that you aren't really speaking English or anything close to it right now either. You just think that you are.' The goddess's voice suddenly entered her mind almost as if she was coming to Richard's defense. 'I helped both of you understand and speak Elnor's common language, though he did get help with the reading and writing.'

"Does anyone else here have the ability to read this writing?" Dedrick asked, though after looking around him to see that no one had answered, he sighed and turned back to Koko. "Then it looks like you're our best shot."

"Yeah, sure. Just leave it to me." Koko replied as confidently as she could.

"Koko, a few parts of this looks like it just repeats itself." Richard stated thoughtfully as he continued to look at the table. "Do you think that it's just the same phrase that's being repeated over and over again?"

"With any luck it will be, because we'll never know how to lower the drawbridge otherwise." Koko replied before looking at the few words that weren't eroded. And after seeing that Richard was right and that the ends and middles of some of the faded words were the same as other complete ones, she eventually began to piece together the single sentence that was being repeated over and over again on the tables surface as the adventurers took their time to relax around them.

"Bequeath thine secret unto me, for it is mine own..." Koko read the words out loud awkwardly while hoping that she got it right. "What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"Seeing as there doesn't seem to be any riddle or puzzle and that the drawbridge didn't lower when you read it, how about trying again but saying it in that... whatever language it was." Dedrick suggested.

"Uh..." Koko replied uncertainty, unsure of how to do such a thing seeing she'd only just found out that she hadn't been speaking English all along.