Within the deep dark

Chapter 9-The other side

Izuku sighed, two of the three journals he found on his lap as he sits cross-legged on top of his sleeping bag. He had been trying to decipher the language written in the books. He would look over sentences from the book that seemed like a journal, with pictures of animals and other things like machinery equipment or some sort of fantasy monster. But it was information on the moss surrounding him that caught his attention.

Detailed drawings of the moss, seaweed, screaming bowls, and the large figures were depicted on the pages near the back of the book. Each of them had sentences that possibly explain their structure and actions, but since Izuku didn't know what they meant, he had zero clue what they meant.

However, the journal also detailed animals like cows and sheep. This gave Izuku a possible way of deciphering the words. But it wouldn't be that simple. See, every word in a different language had different numbers of letters. For example, cow. In English, it's a three-letter word, but in Chinese or Izuku's mother tongue, Japanese, it was a single word that looked like a drawing, 牛 (pronunciation, "Niu" in Chinese. "Ushi" in Japanese). A single drawing-looking word that represented a three-letter word in English. And not to mention the words could be like other languages like Russian or German, a language Izuku wasn't fluent in yet, even with the help of Duolingo. Izuku shudders at the thought of his email account being flooded by threats and cries from the green polyglot bird for him to return to his german classes.

But the words were tiring Izuku out. The words from all three books made absolutely no sense to Izuku. The words written down were simple lines and dots with the occasional curves. They looked like the earlier version of the ancient language, much simpler and way harder to decipher.

In order to decipher a letter, he had a word that he was certain that was referring to the exact same word he was using, like the word cow. Once he knew what the letters were spelled to reference, he would then have to find other words with a similar letter that he knew the meaning of. For example, "ᓵ", while the letter looks like an "i" with a curved tail, it's actually a "c", hopefully.

This process would take ages, not to add the possibility that a single word could have a different number of letters spelling it. And to add salt to the wound, the paragraphs/sentences that explain each animal, creature, and machinery(?) were written without any spaces in between like a paragraph in Chinese or Japanese.

(Example:

English: This is a chicken.

Chinese: 这是一只鸡。Zhè shì yī zhǐ jī.

Japanese: これはニワトリです。 Kore wa niwatoridesu.

Minecraft language: ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ╎ᓭ ᔑ ᓵ⍑╎ᓵꖌᒷリ.

Now imagine an nine-year-old minor, stuck alone in a dark cave with dangerous life forms that want to kill him with minimum water and no proper nutrients deciphering (possibly) an ancient dead language in a run-down hut whose only light source comes from glowing berries that he consumes.

Seems hard right? )

And after several days, Izuku places the books neatly on the ground next to the other book, which was a weird Pictionary of random things like different species of flowers, building blocks like bricks, some reason, logs. But this helped him in deciphering as whoever wrote the book, had placed a single short line of letter that most likely was pointing out towards the drawn-out picture of the objects, like 'sunflower' or 'brick'.

Izuku rose from his sleeping bag, and move towards his back bag. He opens it and reaches his hand into it, trying to get a can of water, only to be treated to a horrifying realization. He had finished all the remaining cans of water.