Orc Lord

Wow. I slept great last night. For the past couple of nights, the heat has been bothering me. But thanks to forming a small layer of cool air just above my skin all night, I no longer have to be troubled by that.

I feel ready to start the day.

It's still just a little bit early for class to start. Well, I needed to prepare a few things anyway. Using , I prepared a few dozen tablets. The back and sides are hard like stone, but the front is slightly soft. I also prepared a few dozen thin stone styluses. They’re pointed at the tip, and considerably hard. Honestly, these things could be used as throwing weapons. They’re slightly bigger than a standard wooden pencil, because Orc hands are larger and less precise than Human hands. Lastly, I make one big stone and clay board to use for teaching. I carefully carve the alphabet in my neatest handwriting and haul everything over to the teaching site.

The students trickle in and start gossiping about the strange runes on the board. At the appropriate time, I begin the lesson.

“Good morning, class! Today, and over the next three days, we will learn how to read and write!”

“Eh?!”

Eh? That excited sound was Fiara, right? The girl with sparkling eyes, covering her mouth shyly? Ah, so she really was waiting for this.

“This week we learn the written language that I have chosen for us Orcs to use. Next week will be a brief hiatus due to mating season, but the following week will teach a language that humans use.”

That’s right, that book that I found in Durghan’s house when I moved in, I can now easily translate it to English and back. Well, it's not wholly my accomplishment. Elianora taught me how to pronounce the characters aloud.

“This here is the Alphabet. It's the series of letters used to represent individual sounds. When you combine the sounds together, you get words. The alphabet is written in a specific sequence called alphabetical order. It's important to remember the order, because things are sometimes organized according to it.”

“This first letter is A, you pronounce it “ah” or “aa”, depending on how it's used. And the second letter is called B, pronounced “b”. So if something is written starting with the letter A, and something else is written starting with the letter B, to put them in alphabetical order, the one starting with A has to go before the one starting with B.”

I went on to name all of the letters and give all of their sounds.

“It's a lot of letters to remember, but that’s okay, because there’s a song to help you remember the Alphabet. I'll sing the first part, and then you repeat it again with me.”

For tens of minutes, I did my best kindergarten teacher impression. When everyone had memorized the whole alphabet song, I moved on. I gave everyone a tablet and a stylus and showed them how to hold them properly.

“Now, I want everyone to copy on their tablet what I write on the board.”

And, slowly, I spell the word “Orc”.

“Does everyone have it? Good. Everybody say the names of these three letters.”

““O. R. C.”” They called out obediently.

“Good. Now O is pronounced “oh”, R is “r” and C is “c”. “oh” “r” “c”. Orc.”

“Oh~”

It looks like a few students are starting to get how it works.

“Now you know how to spell the word Orc,” I smiled.

The lesson continued with me spelling various words on the board and the class copying them down, then reading them out loud. I took word choices from the class to keep them interested. Things like food and meat got suggested more than once…

The board doesn't make a bad sound when I write on it, because the board is soft and the stylus is hard, not the other way around. To erase, I can just press on the clay-like surface and smooth out the scratches.

We started off with lots of simple words, but I'm going to expose these guys to the horrors of English spelling. Or so I was worried. But things like “gh”, “th”, “ph”, silent K’s, W’s, and E’s, didn't bother them at all. Could it be that the Orc language magic extends to written words as well? Well… I was able to read that human book, so I guess it must.

I had less questions to answer than I thought, and more time, so I taught the lowercase forms of the letters and then the basics of the basics of sentence formation. I can see Fiara in the back, absorbing it all like a sponge. She has long since stopped her chores and started practicing with a tablet.

For the rest of class, the students volunteer various sentences and we write them out. Class ends with even the male students looking somewhat fascinated, and I tell them all that they can keep their tablets for practice.

Then, now is the time when I would be training, but I'll be using this time to carve out the underground. It’s still somewhat like training… Well, it's fine because I'll be hunting Magic Beasts in between to replenish my magic power. Real combat is better than training anyway.

As for how big this area down here should be, if it can fit about three thousand of me, that should be good. Also, some walled rooms around the perimeter would be good. For the basic hollowing of the room, I’ll be using with the effects of and . Just in case, I'll leave a few sturdy pillars. I won't be able to get very far this stretch, since I already used up some magic power making school supplies. Some of it recharged during the two hours of class, but it isn't worth much against a project of this scale.

I wonder if Fiara’s busy, or if she’d like to join me on a hunt?