When Richard had sat on the dragon, Gregory, on their way here, he had been thinking about what the daughter that Gregory had mentioned would look like.
He had originally thought that his daughter would be a relatively small dragon. Compared to Gregory's enormous fighter body, which was the size of a plane and more than ten meters long, his daughter might be four or five meters long and weigh several tons. Although he had imagined her as a small dragon, the creature was still more imposing than a giant crocodile.
But just a moment ago, Gregory had transformed into a middle-aged strong man with a sallow complexion. This had led Richard to think that if his daughter took a human form, she would be a muscular girl with a height of about 1.7 meters, similar to a female weightlifter in modern times.
Richard had not expected Gregory's daughter to be completely different.
A petite girl came up from the foot of the mountain, slowly approaching them, and finally appearing fully in their line of sight. She was a human girl, only seven or eight years old. She was about 1.2 meters tall and was covered in purple.
Her hair, as smooth as a lilac, was purple. Her clothes were purple and had a faint lavender fragrance. Her eyes were also purple. They were like two amethysts, crystal clear and transparent. Indeed, the pendant on her tender white neck and the bracelet on her slim wrist were also purple. They looked like purple stars that had fallen from the sky, shining brightly.
She seemed to be like a girl who had come from a purple world.
The purple girl—Pandora.
However, compared to her appearance, the most striking part about her was the extremely cold aura she exuded. She seemed to be telling strangers to stay away.
As she came closer, the expression in her eyes and the aura she exuded seemed to say one thing: Never mess with me or look at me, and don't approach me, let alone talk to me.
Tap, tap, tap.
The dragon girl named Pandora walked towards them, giving Richard an extremely cold glance. She then turned around and icily walked away into the black castle.
Richard thought that she resembled one of the characters in Detective Conan—a powerful girl named Ai Haibara.
"So do father and daughter live separately?" Richard muttered to himself as he stood in the same place. "But your daughter is different from what I thought." He then shook his head to get rid of such thoughts. He had been kidnapped and, if he was to be the playmate of such a young girl, it would be more complicated than he had thought.
However, it was not important. The important thing right now was that he had to continue with his research and figure out the truth of this world. In other words, if there was even a dragon, there had to be many more magical things waiting for him here.
In the evening.
A bonfire had been lit in the open space between the black castle and the giant dragon cave, a large hare being grilled over it and cracking. The fat in the hare's meat oozed out bit by bit, flowing like gold on the surface, and occasionally dripping onto the campfire below. When that happened, there would be a sizzling sound, followed by the strong aroma of meat.
Footsteps could be heard coming from the black castle. The girl named Pandora approached him and stood still, watching three or four meters away from the campfire.
Richard turned his head to look, a flash in his eyes. He pointed at the hare over the fire and asked, "Wanna eat that?"
The purple girl did not answer, her eyes remained cold and indifferent. She did not seem to have any desire for the food. Instead, she seemed to be expressing her dissatisfaction and giving him a warning, as though saying, "The hare is so adorable. If you dare to eat it, I… will just eat you."
Without a tacit understanding between the two parties, it was impossible to communicate through exchanging glances, especially when one of them looked emotionless.
Richard's eyes flashed, and he asked again, "Hungry?"
There was no answer. It was as if she did not understand him.
Raising his eyebrows, Richard remembered that he had used the continent's current lingua franca when communicating with Gregory, and they had been able to have a normal conversation. However, it could be that Gregory had led a longer life and hence he understood the language. In that case the girl, Pandora, might not speak the current lingua franca, and perhaps he had to use another language.
"Putton?" Richard asked in a different language.
There was no answer.
"Kling?" Richard changed to another language.
There was still no answer.
"Fijian?" Richard changed to a third language.
There was still no answer.
"Ascar? Masco? Lakda? Munpa?" Richard moved to a fourth, fifth, and sixth language and kept trying.
After living in this world for 15 years, Richard had a comprehensive grasp of certain things, especially languages. Although it was impossible to master all the languages here, he had learned the most relevant languages of every major language family. This was so to prepare himself for exploring the world.
After all, this was a real world, and Richard knew that it was impossible that everyone on one continent would speak the same language.
However, the problem now was that after testing all the seven or eight language families he had mastered, Pandora still gave no response.
"In this case…" Richard rotated the hare on the fire. He did not give up, and instead he started considering other methods.
Language was regarded as the most important communication tool of intelligent creatures (human beings), and it was also the main method of communication. Generally speaking, language happened in a specific environment for survival purposes, and this specific environment inevitably influenced the languages used.
From a biological perspective, languages evolved from a specific proto-language in accordance to their special environments. Based on the relationship between each language, they could be divided into several language families. Within the language families, they could further branch out into language groups and divide into language branches, which were ultimately divided into different language types.
Simply put, languages could be divided into four tiers: language family → language group → language branch → language type.
If he looked for the origins of a language, the most fundamental parts of the language showed its specific proto-language characteristics. Languages under a unified proto-language could be very different, but these were not fundamental differences. Some were even very similar, such as Chinese and Japanese. As long as he could determine the language family of the other party, he could reduce the language barriers to a large extent. He might not be able to communicate smoothly any time soon, however he could express some simple ideas.
Since he could not use the language families in this world to communicate with Pandora, what about some languages on Earth? The language system on Earth was even more comprehensive, including 13 language families, 45 language groups, and countless language branches and language types.
In that case…
After making up his mind, Richard did not hesitate. He looked at Pandora and started to use some of the widely used language types from these 13 language families.
"English? Sanskrit?" He tried to use the Indo-European language family.
Pandora did not respond and just gave him a cold and strange glance.
"Finnish?" He tried to use the Uralic language family.
Pandora remained unresponsive.
"Mongolian?" He tried the Altaic language family.
Pandora still remained unresponsive.