Andrew lookeded at him gripping his axes, But the man in front of him raised his arm as if to tell him to calm down.
He traced the sword on the ground in front of him. He seemed to be testing if he could read their language. But what happened next brought great surprise to Andrew as the man drew out perfect english.
"Can you read this?" Andrew mumbled out loud before looking up at the man in front of him and nodded slowly. Which surprised the man greatly.
They looked at each other for a couple of seconds in a mix of shock and disbelief. Their spoken dialog had almost zero correlation and to think that they both had the same written language was almost unfathomable.
Andrew was overjoyed and deeply interested in where they got the knowledge of the written language from. As well as the fact that the same letters produced completely different sounds to each of them. But regardless of the answer Andrew looked around the area for a stick to use himself because the axes were too short to write comfortably with.
'I come in peace.' Andrew finished his messy scribble on the ground and looked at the man in front of him who looked rather pleased at the message.
"$@#%#@!" He called over his shoulder and Andrew could see everyone's shoulders sag with commutative relief.
Andrew was then led towards the village where they stared at him with a mix of interest and dear still lingered in their eyes. It seems something was keeping them on their feet.
The old man in front of him turned around and handed him a small bundle of paper and a crude pencil. He then picked up the same materials himself and beckoned him to follow. Andrew nodded and followed him closely while taking in the village around him. It was an old medieval wood village, but they seemed to be farther on than some cities in his home world as they used magic.
Andrew was first astonished by the fact that they would just leave poles in fire as streetlights and expected to see them go up in flames and burn down the entire forest around him. Which never happened as he walked along and watched the fires flicker with life and provide a unworldly large field of light.
They reached a large building that had a set of double doors blocking entrance front the outside. Following the strange old ram person Andrew looked down at his bundle of paper and began to write a couple of basic responses to help him with daily communication.
Inside the building was a large table with multiple small rooms to the sides, it gave the feeling of a town hall. But with a couple of glances inside the rooms one could see that this was probably more of a town home or an inn.
Taking a seat on opposite sides of the large table the ram person began to write out a long list of questions.
"What brings you here? Where are you from? Who are you? What species are you? Are the wolves bothering you?" Andrew read off the long list of questions before looking down at his paper before scribbling out his own response.
"Nothing in particular, just looking for some people to camp with for a while. I'm from a planet called earth, I don't know if you have heard of it but I'm not native here. My name is Andrew Smith, A human and no, the wolves aren't being a huge issue to me" Andrew finished writing multiple responses in a paragraph, which made him cringe a little bit.
Writing such long paragraphs with jumping topics was odd but it worked in this situation as Andrew passed his sheet of paper over before writing his own set of questions to find out more about the village and the world around him.
The crude pencils whittled down into almost nothing as they exchanged sheet after sheet of questions, answers and even a little bit of friendly banter towards the end. Andrews hand was starting to become numb from holding a pencil for hours on end.
The village he was currently residing in was indeed Montec and from what he could be tell the village wasnt in such a dire state. The influx of wolves in the area has caused a slight food crisis and a weariness to hunters as they didnt want to be injured. The world that he was currently in had no name as they had never thought to name the entirety of it. This village has had no contact with any outside life in over a century, which caught Andrew off guard.
'I mean, to have no contact to anyone but the same set of people sounds agonizing. But also kind of nice.' Andrew leaned back in his chair a little bit and rubbed his eyes.
Other topics they discussed amounted to the strength of their village, From the description of the strength and "heroic" feats of the village was that they had maybe double the strength of a regular human on earth and it also seemed that they had no system.
'So this world is an… unreached one? What would you call this?' Andrew asked the system in his brain.
[From what i can tell, they do infact have some parts of the system. But the odd part is that they dont have the main function. They have magic, which the system itself provides beings with. But they dont have the ability to grow any stronger. Like they are just set characters in a book.]
'So NPC's' Andrew thought carefully and then came to this conclusion. After all, this was a trial and not another world. So it seemed that everything is a preset for the mission. But that still didn't feel quite right, each of them seemed to have their own set of emotions and higher level thinking. Almost way too high to be just a random NPC for a trial test.
Regardless of what Andrew thought he was stuck here, so when they wrapped up their odd conversation he was guided to a small room with a hay stuffed bed. Which was uncomfortable, but way better than the cold ground so he didn't complain.
Andrew blinked his eyes open as someone knocked on his door to ask if they could come in. Andrew responded by sitting up quickly to scramble towards the door to open it. On the other side of the door stood the man from yesterdays conversation with an exhausted expression and he was breathing heavily before speaking to someone behind him rapidly.
Behind him stood a woman with a large sheet of paper who scribbled down his words before showing the sheet of paper towards Andrew with eagerness. The text seemed to have been shortened vastly and compressed to be conversed quickly
"Wolves, can you help?" Andrew read the text before looking up and giving a short nod, This might be what the trial was talking about.
After rushing behind them with messed up bed hair that partially covered his vision Andrew followed them out the front door to find multiple people lying down on the ground injured and panting from a fight. Multiple women and a couple of men were attending to the injured in a hurried fashion to move on to another.
Andrew looked forward to see multiple people fighting with each other to hoard a swarm of wolves away from the village. Many of them looked tired and weak, some of them looked energetic as they got their turn to fight.
Andrew nodded at their way to manage fighting against the wolves. They didnt know how many there were so they put out just enough people to keep them at bay without any major loss.
Andrew ran forward after understanding what he was asked to help with and ran towards the swarm of wolves. Bringing his axes out to launch into combat.