Monster Evolution System: I became a Rat-Chapter 77: Coins and Language

Confused, Rosacer stopped. He decided to come back at night to follow the merchant. For now, he did not want to go near him. The experience was quite strange, something he had never felt in his entire life.

Instead, he decided to visit the library to learn more about the city’s basic economy and language.

He wandered through the streets, sometimes meeting dead ends and sometimes running into thugs in alleys.

By asking people along the way, he was slowly able to find the library. It stood tall on the eastern edge of the town, the sea breeze gently crashing against its giant windows.

The library was tall and long, like a tower, its walls filled with windows. The inside could be seen clearly from the outside.

The glass panes, shining and reflecting the tower, looked like the scales of a serpent, slithering tall through the city.

Rosacer gazed at it from top to bottom as he slowly entered the library.

Inside, there was a similar counter with a librarian, and side hallways leading to the reading room, while others led to unknown places.

The attendant, upon looking at Rosacer, did not even greet him. Instead, he let out a faint sigh.

Am I not welcome... Rosacer thought inwardly.

Slowly, he walked up to the counter. The man, with a tired gesture, said, "What do you want?"

Rosacer cursed inwardly.

After a brief pause, he said, "Books on language and finance. Where could I find them?"

The librarian looked a little amused as he replied in a hushed tone, "Toward the left. The reading room has all the general knowledge books."

Rosacer gave a faint nod. As he turned toward the hallway on the left, he muttered an obscene curse at the librarian while passing through.

Upon reaching the reading room, he discovered the massiveness of the building. The entire room was practically a house, with shelves lining every wall. To the right were tables and seats for reading, some placed in the farthest corners, perhaps for secrecy.

"So, that kind of book sells here too," he muttered as his gaze fell upon the corner seats

He quickly scoured through the bookshelves and picked up some books on general knowledge and languages.

The first book was titled General Knowledge for Fools.

The second book was titled History of Languages. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

The third book he picked was titled Ermanji: Basic Conversation.

He took a seat and opened the books, slowly reading their contents. The sun was already coming down when he finally finished.

It was getting late, as he put the books back on the shelves.

Then he turned to leave toward the right, he passed by a set of stairs leading upward. He looked toward them for a second, then returned to his path.

As he exited the entrance, he glanced briefly at the librarian. The man was still busy with himself.

Outside, Rosacer looked upward toward the sky. A veil of night was coming through as the sun set below the horizon.

"It’s time," he whispered under his breath.

The seal of the carving knife suddenly bellowed a cry again. It needed some food. Rosacer opened his inventory. There was one rat inside. He quickly pulled it out and fed it to the carving knife seal as it shimmered into existence, then quickly shoved it back into the inventory.

"I have to secure some food for it too..." he said, reminding himself.

Then he turned toward the marketplace, passing through the crowd at night. Sometimes hands tried to trifle him, attempting to steal, but as always, they found nothing.

Passing through the narrow passages, Rosacer finally arrived at the marketplace. The market was still bustling. Every shop was still open. For light, they used lanterns, beneath which were some kind of gems that kept the flame steady.

No insects or flies were attracted to the flames either, perhaps some kind of special protection the lanterns had. Rosacer slowly moved along the street, looking for Dua’s Antique Shop.

Soon, he found the tent. It was also lit by a lantern within.

Rosacer found an adjacent position to it, sat down, and waited.

Time passed as many customers went inside and came out, buying souvenirs for their trips. Many people came and left. No one seemed dizzy or strange like he had been.

He shifted his gaze to the souvenirs when someone brought one out in their hand. They looked normal too. Slowly, he began to doubt himself.

It would be long before the shops closed and Kirata came out, so in the meantime, he tried to capture some rats to feed the seal. Around a corner, he found a shop that sold traps. This time, he trifled some people around him and gained enough to buy a few traps, which he silently laid around the corner of the market.

He had already read from the book General Knowledge for Fools, the values of coins.

The Ernest coin was the most valuable, produced by both the Rein and Asmara Kingdoms.

The Shark Head coin, bearing a fin emblem, originated from the Makra Kingdom. Its value compared to the Ernest coin was ten to one. It also carried a portrait of Prime Minister Kingston Nowill of the former Rise Kingdom above the emblem.

The Cassandra and Caesar Kingdoms also used Shark Head coins, though they had their own variants, produced in lesser quantity. The Cassandra Kingdom, despite holding very little of the central area ruled by the Ackerman, produced Ackerman coins with an emblem of a triangle and three concentric circles.

The Caesar Kingdom produced a coin called the Brutus, bearing the portrait of a man with black wings riding a horse.

The value of these coins was similar to each other. They were worth half of a Shark Head coin and a quarter of an Ernest coin.

After setting up traps around the corners, he came back to his position. Slowly, while watching the market, his mind drifted, and he thought about the information written in the books he had read.

According to History of Languages, the Ermanji language was created by the Caesar Empire after they rejected the local language earlier spoken by the natives of the land. The natives used a ritualistic language called Mandarini, a rudimentary language that shared the same family as Ermanji. Ermanji was more of a branch of this language.

The natives did not revolt much, for Ermanji was easier for them to learn, as it shared the same roots as their own language. They were able to pick it up as a second language very quickly.

Similarly, the Ernst language shared the same roots as Mandarini. Both of them were like brother and sister. Their rituals were the same, and their words produced similar sounds.

Historians thought and compared all the western languages to create a Proto-Ernest-Mandarini, which might have been the first language of the West.

They named it Soma, from the eastern word for the Elixir of Immortality, for it had survived the ordeal of time and still stood, ironic.

Ermanji, being one of the modern languages, was pushed by the Caesar Empire to be available across the kingdom. Therefore, it became the most widely learned language. Even in other kingdoms, Ermanji was still spoken, as their languages were quite similar. The local languages were used as a base, mixed with older Ernest or Mandarini, to make them more sophisticated.

Other languages, like Michaalino, were spoken in Asmara and parts of the Rein Kingdom. It used Michaalino as a base and Ernest, sometimes Royal Ernest, for better pronunciation in sophisticated and formal speech. Michao, spoken in Asmara, a brother language to Michaalino, did not use Royal Ernest and tried to rely less on Ernest and more on eastern language words. Both of these languages were similar in grammar, with only a few words differing between them.

A collection of languages that used vocal tone for differentiation was found in Mount Har’Our. They were later transformed into a single language by a tribal leader named Jkoi Maysee from Veer tribe, also called the Betrayer of Mankind. The new language used Royal Ernest the most, along with bits of foreign languages Jkoi brought with himself. He called it Deathly Whispers.

This language became the base of study for the numerous tower mages that once stood in the western kingdoms, but they were eventually felled by the Sun Emperor, who sent his knights to eradicate the mages when the War of the Rising Conquest began. During this time, the Sun Emperor raised the Blackened Knights from the ashes of the mages. They later took part in the wars against the Eastern Continent.

Other languages like Syzelles and Sokwrath were spoken in the Makra Kingdom and the Cassandra Kingdom. They shared the same history as well. But instead of using historical lineage to create their languages, they used different philosophical subjects. Both of these languages borrowed words and pronunciation from different philosophies from eastern, western and obsolete islands, but they still were all part of the Proto-Ernest-Mandarini for using grammar and base.