Panicking was obviously not going to help. Good luck telling my body that, though. Regardless, I did my best to ignore the sensations of my heart starting to pound and my breaths coming in faster so I could focus on what was really going on.

“They’re saying that their Bloomwagons are better than the Preserves because they’re more… customizable,” I said. “And that they’ve got several that we can… inspect.”

I was picking up some of those from the context of what the Anymphea said that I could understand. But my slight hesitation didn’t go unnoticed, especially since it hadn’t been there before. I couldn’t pass it off as confidence issues.

Both the Councillors and the Anymphea glanced at the change in my tone, but I did my best not to show anything. No reacting. No letting them see that something was wrong.

Not until I had figured out what was going on.

They spoke some more, and I tried to pay attention to what was going on and nothing else. It wasn’t easy but I was starting to understand.

Looking back on it, the inability to understand some words had started as soon as the Anymphea had begun using those gestures to supplement what they were saying. Hand signals, twitching and twirling of their fingers, even their expressions turning far more expressive like their very faces were part of their language…

No way. Did their language—or rather, their method of communication—really rely on things that weren’t outright spoken that much? Of course the Weave wouldn’t be able to translate something like sign language.

“Interpreter Moreland?” Se-Vigilance said.

Crap, I was getting a little too lost in trying to figure out what was going on. “Sorry, was just trying to decide the right way to translate. The Anymphea want to know if space is available on Ring Two. That’s where they want to settle.”

“We heard Ring Two, yes,” Se-Vigilance said. She turned to Ascelkos. “What I would like to know is why.”

I translated that before Ascelkos answered. “Because, frankly speaking, it’s the main area of Zairgon that’s receiving the most effort.”

Yeesh, that was harsh. But technically not untrue. Although, I wasn’t sure if it was the Councillors spending funds, time, and everything else there so much as it was the nobles doing their best to separate themselves from everybody else.

More importantly, I had deciphered the whole sentence that time. There hadn’t been a single gesture or anything like that, which proved my theory that the Universal Language Approximator could only work on the verbal aspects of communication. And written aspects too but that wasn’t relevant here.

So how was I going to translate the nonverbal parts?

Because they weren’t stopping. Answering the Zairgon delegation directly didn’t involve those gestures and whatnot all the time. But when there were multiple people involved from the Anymphea side, they would often speak partially so that their sentences complemented each other to fill the broader picture with finer details.

I could understand said broader picture with the help of context, but it was the finer details I couldn’t get a hold of. That was bad. What was worse was that I couldn’t just admit to the Councillors I was floundering a little. That would just get me kicked out.

Nor could I just impose my will on the Anymphea and force them to either only speak or use written communication. That would be a diplomatic disaster.

What a quagmire.

“Ring Two will be difficult,” Wargrog said. “You must understand. There is a lack of space, and inserting a whole new nation in there will not be easy.”

The real reason was that snooty nobles who loved their land better than their families were going to be a pain in the ass about it. That wasn’t the Anymphea’s fault.

“That is **** ** our ********,” Helike said with a scowl, gesturing angrily. “We are ********* * service that ***** ******* benefit **** ****** ******. You would be ******* ** *** accept our *****.” She turned towards the older Anymphea, the man called Eilokolos, twirling her hand at him. “Isn’t **** *****, Eilokolos? ** can just **** **** *** *** wagons.”

Eilokolos had been frowning more and more as the conversation had gone on, but now, whatever Helike had said smoothed his expression somewhat. “Agreed. ***** *** **** things ** *** **********. Even if **** ***** ** *** **** of their *********, we don’t seek to **** ***.”

I hesitated in translating all that. For all that Helike had scowled earlier, she caught my face faltering and her expression turned more impassive like the other Anymphea.

That made me frown. Was she… Now that I thought about it, she was the one who had begun the whole gesturing and sign language complementation business. Had she started it on purpose to throw me off?

I did my best to interpret what I heard, but I knew it wasn’t the best translation. Both the Councillors and the Anymphea gave me looks that confirmed they knew what I interpreted was faulty at best, though I had done enough to continue the meeting.

“**** *****, Eilokolos,” Helike said, almost entirely with gestures. “**** **** **** **** ***** ******* ** **. **** *** **** *** ****** ****.”

Crap, I hadn’t understood a thing there. It didn’t really matter because it had been directed at another Anymphea, not something meant for the Councillors or the Zairgon to respond to.

“I’m curious,” I said during a lull in the discussion. “Are all those gestures and hand signals and manual articulation a part of your language?”

Helike couldn’t hold back her frown, but thankfully, it was the others who answered first.

“It as an integral part of our communication, yes,” Kyris said in a very stately manner. “Although, it is used mostly when we speak with each other to hasten communication rather than going through formal oral motions.”

That made sense. I had noticed that the conversation from the Anymphea side were faster now with fewer words spoken and the gestures painting quicker pictures than words ever could.

“Why, is there a problem, Interpreter Moreland?” Kyris asked.

Crap.

“Oh no, not at all. I was just curious.” Powers of bullshit, go! “It’s just very early for us here in Zairgon, so I never got around to getting breakfast you see. The hunger is, uh, distracting. My apologies.”

That sufficed as enough of a reason for them to keep going, so I could focus on how to resolve the issue without needing to deal with unwanted attention. That said, I still noticed how I was getting looks from Helike. Hmm, suspicious…

The solution that I arrived at, as the conversation grew increasingly precarious because of my inability to decipher hand signs of all things, was a bit dire. But here went nothing.

When the Anymphea spoke next, once again adding those indecipherable gestures, I channelled Sacrifice, focusing on its Experientiality Affix.

Stolen story; please report.

It was a strange feeling. Mana surged within me, threading out from my mana core, but instead of emerging, all the strands went straight to my head. A chilling, rushing sensation almost gave me something like a brain freeze, like I was snorting powdered ice.

The weirdest thing was the tangible result. One moment, I was hearing the Anymphea’s language translate into partially legible sentences in my head. The next, complete silence. Even as Ascelkos spoke and gestured in line with the other Anymphea, my brain didn’t register a single thing. It was really odd.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Multilingual Statement. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Universal Language Approximator has risen by one Rank. ]

Ha, there it was. I hadn’t been totally sure I could Sacrifice what I heard, and certainly hadn’t been at all capable of believing that I could improve the Universal Language Approximator via said Sacrifice.

But it had worked. I had gained another rank in my Universal Language Approximator, and all I had needed to do was Sacrifice a chunk of what I was hearing. Bless my Experientiality Affix.

“—surely you *** *ot ******** ** of deli******** ********** you,” Helike said with another severe scowl. She really needed to practice other expressions one of these days.

“Uh, there’s been some slight misunderstanding,” I interpreted for the Councillors’ benefit, hesitating only briefly. “They believe we aren’t understanding them fully.”

It wasn’t fully accurate, and I concluded that only from how all the Anymphea had expressions of mild disapproval. They weren’t happy with what they had heard from the Councillors.

Not that I really cared just then. I was on my way to clearing things up. I just had to be judicious about which parts of what the Anymphea said I could Sacrifice.

In that halting fashion, I went on Sacrificing the words I heard. More specifically, I focused Sacrifice on the bits I couldn’t decipher, where most of the translation from Universal Language Approximator was trying and failing to work properly on the gestures and hand signs. So then, I wasn’t losing much of the conversational thread anyway since I could hardly understand them to begin with.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Multilingual Statement. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Universal Language Approximator has risen by one Rank. ]

Another rank. Good. A quick look confirmed that Universal Language Approximator was now at Sovereign V.

Kind of crazy, in an abstract sense, to see that I had something at a rank no one else in Zairgon had. As far as I knew, at least. Not even the Councillors from what I had heard had anything higher than Jade, which was one rank tier below Sovereign.

Even crazier that I was pushing the rank higher with so little difficulty.

“Furthermore,” Se-Vigilance was saying. “We are aware that this delegation barely represents one one-hundredth of your whole tribe. If you believe Zairgon can host all of you, much less Ring Two specifically, then I am afraid the negotiations must end here.”

“It would be improp** for ** to giv* you our ***ire populations stat******,” Eilokolos said. “However, not *ll ** us **** to set*** here perm******* either.”

“They believe there’s room for, uh, a compromise,” I interpreted.

“I believe we can host you, all of you to be exact, for some time,” Wargrog said. I was starting to sense some sort of good-cop bad-cop thing going on with how Wargrog and Se-Vigilance were conducting the negotiation, which was an interesting tactic to say the least. Not my business to comment on it, though. “A Blight Swarm needs us all to openly cooperate.”

Oh, hold on. They actually were talking with each other mentally, weren’t they? The impression they gave that they were only capable of normal communication was just a ploy. An act to help them against the Anymphea.

Because, I supposed, it would complicate negotiations further if the Anymphea knew that the other side knew had a way of talking with each other in secret.

Though, hypocritically, they were doing exactly that with their indecipherable gestures.

I continued trying to find ways to use more of Sacrifice without, well, sacrificing my ability to keep up with the conversation and interpret everything correctly enough. One thing I made sure not to do was give the idea that I was starting to understand their hand signs and gestures much better as I kept ranking up Universal Language Approximator.

Two fingers slashing through the air meant no. Pressing both palms forward meant calm. Tapping one’s chest with the thumb and little finger signified something like communication, suggestion, or saying. All of which I pretended I still didn’t comprehend.

From an academic perspective, it was kind of fascinating to unravel what felt like a neat little mystery. I wasn’t well versed in sign languages from back on Earth, and it made me wonder how I could have used Universal Language Approximator back there.

My mind was mostly focused on my job, though. On the curious things I was discovering as I began to understand more and more of what was going on.

The Anymphea weren’t just talking with us. I had intimated it earlier to some extent, and Kyris had somewhat confirmed it too, but now it was really clear that the manual articulation part of their language was more about talking among each other than it was to speak with the Zairgon delegation.

Now, as I began deciphering just what they were saying to each other solely via their gestures, I began to see why they didn’t want us to interpret things.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Multilingual Statement. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Universal Language Approximator has risen by one Rank. ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Sacrifice Aspect has risen by one Rank.

Sacrifice: Silver IV ]

Ah, interesting. Besides getting a rank in Sacrifice, I had broken through to Paragon with my Universal Language Approximator. It was a little heady to I had something ranked up all the way to Paragon. Wild. And now, everything the Anymphea said—or didn’t say, and just gestured instead—was perfectly comprehensible.

While the Councillors were speaking to the Anymphea leadership, I focused on the seemingly hidden way Helike was gesturing at Eilokolos.

“They don’t need the important ones,” her fingers read.

It was extremely weird to have the meaning of the signs simply pop into existence in my brain. This wasn’t me somehow understanding an unknown language I was hearing. My mind was interpreting manual articulation into a legible sequence of words. I was pretty sure the signs were only displaying the key words and terms of a given message.

Universal Language Approximator was just filling in the blanks to make them cohesive sentences. Pretty neat.

“Certainly, these Zairgonites may not be the smartest folk in existence,” Eilokolos signed back. “But won’t it be discovered that they’re receiving faulty wagons?”

“Perhaps,” Helike answered back. “But you see, they can’t blame us. It’s much more plausible that their handling of technology they barely understand will undoubtedly lead to problems.”

Her signing paused. While she had been “conversing” with Eilokolos, her face had been fixed on the exchange between Ascelkos and the Councillors, like she was pretending to pay attention. Maybe she really was, maybe she wasn’t, but it was still obviously a cover for her actual secret chat with the elderly Anymphea a little behind the other two representatives.

“You seem to have thought it through…” Eilokolos signed.

Despite seemingly not facing the older Anymphea, Helike apparently had no trouble deciphering what had been said to her.

“I have already made some of the preparations and spoken with others,” she said. “No one wishes to part with our heirlooms. But you, unfortunately, remained unreachable till now.”

Eilokolos looked down with something like shame or regret.

I frowned, but smoothed it quickly, while continuing to interpret what the Councillors and the Anymphea were conversing about. At the moment, they were negotiating other sources of “payment” that the Anymphea could offer that would help mollify the current inhabitants of Ring Two.

But I wasn’t paying much attention. Instead, I had now nearly completely figured out the plan the Anymphea were cooking up in the background. Some of them, at least.

It wasn’t anything truly evil. Just a somewhat nefarious way to dupe the Councillors and make sure the Anymphea came out on top. It was a simple plot too, where the Anymphea would grant Zairgon older Bloomwagons, some that were purposefully sabotaged, especially ones rigged to more or less self-destruct if anyone tried to reverse engineer them. Still, evil or not, the whole thing was pretty dishonest.

This was why I was here, after all. The reason they needed an interpreter who could understand all sides and aspects of the Anymphea language.

I cleared my throat. “Sorry, but can I take a moment?” All eyes turned to me, some surprised, some puzzled, and some obvious ones scowling back at me. “I think there’s a mismatch we need to clear up.”

“A mismatch?” Kyris asked.

Se-Vigilance echoed the same question.

My eyes were focused on Helike only, whose scowl was ever so slowly giving away to the first hints of panic as my gaze was resolutely on hers.

“I want to know,” I said. “Why the Anymphea are short-changing Zairgon in this deal with old, broken Bloomwagons.”