"Woof?!" Motan instinctively repeated, then gave the canine girl in front of him a puzzled look and asked, "What's up?"
The girl's charming eyes curved into crescents; she nodded happily and said, "Woof!"
This girl is impossible to communicate with!
Motan certainly can't decipher her intentions by having her "woof" back and forth like the previous lady, although it does feel quite cute...
"Is there anything I can help you with?" Motan asked cautiously, gently removing the girl's hand from his arm. "Try to express your intention. I'll see if I can understand... It would be better if you could say something that I can understand."
Her nails are a bit sharp…
"Woof~," The girl shook her pair of fluffy gray animal ears happily, then reached out her little hand to Motan with her palm facing up, "Uhm… Woof! Road… not woof... know."
Motan looked down to see a string of numbers on the girl's palm — 17502. Considering her stuttering words, he vaguely understood her intention.
The E-level mission with the number 17502 should be to help the lady named Molly in the south district of the market clean up her garden. Although Motan memorized all the numerous E-level missions of the guild with his photographic memory, he definitely did not want to forget them as quickly as the average person...
In general, the duration of our routine photographic memory should be comparable to the length of time spent transcribing English during morning school.
"You don't know the way?" Motan asked the girl who was still holding out her hand. He nodded for her to withdraw her hand and asked with a smile, "How do you know that I do?"
The dog girl tilted her head, licked the back of her paw covered in soft fur and said vaguely, "Long time, woof map... you woof!"
If Motan didn't interpret it wrong, she probably meant 'You read the map for a long time'...
Suddenly, he felt so tired.
As far as Motan knows, the common language should have already been universally adopted across the continent. Despite the different languages of various races, from his hearsay as Hei Fan, from Captain Nade, and even from Mage—who chatted with him casually—'common language' has somehow become the lingua franca across the Innocence Continent.
But there are always exceptions...
The dog girl in front of him looks quite normal indeed with her beautiful and slightly cold face, her shoulder-length silver-gray hair is neat and refreshing, and she's wearing a set of brown soft leather armor. You'd think from a glance that she's quite seasoned. No wonder Motan would have that wild misunderstanding before...
But as soon as this girl opened her mouth, uh~ Not only does she not speak clearly, but even her 'woofs' have a hint of dialect.
Facepalm...
"So you just wanted me to guide you?" Motan laughed at her, "Just because I was looking at a map?"
The dog girl with apparent language barrier gesticulated excitedly for a while before finally blurting out, "Feel... feel...woof you~ person~ good woof!"
"Alright then, it's always better to be a good person." Motan shrugged, turned around and led the way, "Follow me. Will it be okay if I take you to the north district where your mission is?"
The girl happily hopped along behind him, nodding vigorously, "Woof! Back, can, smell woof!"
Her ears were pinned back at some point, and her tail wagged furiously~
Motan sighed silently, buried his head down, and led the way...
Whether it's the adventurer's guild or the Mage Notebook, both have maps of Anka Market. Just now, Motan has already overlapped the memorized details with his surrounding environment. He's having an easy time guiding the way now.
Motan has always been sensitive to maps, not because of higher intelligence, but mainly due to his pitiful sense of direction... so pitiful...
No matter when or where, or which persona he is in, Motan is perpetually lost. Whether it was at the orphanage in his earlier years, in his current home vicinity, or at the elementary school he attended, he got lost incessantly.
Until junior high, when Motan just couldn't take it anymore and started to purposely train his map reading abilities. Once he made some progress, he started constructing bird-eye-view images in his mind, and tried to locate himself in those images. Now, though his sense of direction is still zero, Motan who successfully learned the entire world map has basically eliminated getting lost.
As far as Motan was concerned, who maintains a bird-eye view of his surroundings, all he needed to know was up, down, left, right. Who cares about not finding north…
By using the map from the "Mage Notebook", he found the Adventure Guild, and updated the details of the past few years with the guild's latest map. Now, he is very familiar with nearby environment.
Leading the way to the lost dog… or I mean, dog girl doesn't sound hard at all~