It takes another few minutes before the excitement bubbles down. Then a few more minutes after that until I am able to understand the first few words they speak.

  “Think… like… city,” one of the creatures hums. Their voices, once translated, sound melodious. Almost musical. There is a rhythm to the way they speak that I cannot quite catch onto. There would have to be, given the fact that the humming seems largely reliant on that, but the way it filters through is kinda nice.

  I like it.

  “Very. Soon…”

  Bit by bit, the words grow clearer, and they notice we can understand them. Thatch whispers to Bay and one of the creatures replies. “Speak… more… learn!”

  Oh. They’d need to learn our language, too, of course. “Start monologuing,” I tell everyone. “They need to understand us.”

  A short pause. Opal laughs. “Alright, fine. Silence was wearing on me anyway. Hey, Inu, my shoulder’s tired. Carry Sylves for a while?”

  “Sure thing,” the kind girl replies, picking up the body of our friend as if it weighed nothing. Inu’s build is pretty heavy on the power. She’s been building a chunk of it naturally, too, from walking around in armor, and is able to soon find a spot where Sylves doesn’t get poked by any of the bits of metal.

  People chat a lot more, and I try to pick out some more of the conversations of our guides. “Soup… sleep,” one says. “Food only!” another mocks them. The hungry one grumbles. “Work only,” they hum back, and the group breaks out in a bit of laughter.

  One turns to me. “Understand?” they ask.

  I blink, and nod. “Mostly,” I say.

  “Will be enough. Improve faster when started,” they explain. That makes sense, too. ‘Knowing’ more words would make it easier to figure out what the others meant. It hummed a little bit, something that wasn’t translated, which seemed to mean it was mostly musical or introspective in nature.

  “You new here, yes?” they asked.

  I nod. “Yes,” I agree readily.

  “Expected,” it says. “Unexpected species. New new.”

  Slowly, I tilt my head, in what slowly seems to be becoming a universal gesture of confusion. “What?”

  “Ah. New to tower, not just new to floor,” they explain.

  Huh. “There are people outside the tower that know the tower exists, am I getting that correctly?”

  “Yes!” the alien buzzes happily. “Species, once integrated, eventually become part of the general floor 0. Think…” it pauses. “Islands. But bigger.”

  I see. “How long until our home planet gets integrated into this overarching floor?”

  “Ah. Decades. Half a century,” the creature explains. “Then it will be grafted.”

  “Grafted?” I ask.

  “Grafted,” the alien confirms. “Bits of it will be included into the floors of the tower. Bits of it refashioned into more islands for the outside, for floor 0. Ascendancy wells will stay, and the tower will be open to all who wish to climb.”

  “What about kids? Will people be born with skills?” I ask.

  “Maturity scan performed on integration,” the answer comes. “Eligible individuals receive skills. Ineligible are… in stasis, until floor 0 deemed stable enough. Then, the tower establishes spawn points in the major settlements. For new children? Awakening stones.”

  “Awakening stone?” I ask.

  The alien chirps, humorously. “Curious! Yes, awakening stones. Perform maturity scan. Bestow skills upon adequate personality development. Usually? Eighteen years. Sometimes later.”

  “Never earlier?” I ask.

  “Sometimes,” it shrugs. “Often in victims of trauma. People whose childhood was robbed from them. It’s deemed a tragedy.”

  I nod. “That makes sense,” I say. It nods, too.

  “That gesture,” it says, “is one of affirmation, yes?” Then, they tilt their head. “This one. Curiosity, yes?”

  Again, I nod. “Yes, and yes.”

  The alien hums a tune of happiness. “Very good! Ah. You may brush me with your mana. I shall reveal my job.” My eyes widen a little. You could do that? How curious. I take my mana sense, brushing it against them.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  [Anthropologist - 15]

  How bizarre. An alien who is an anthropologist. Have they ever even met humans? Most likely not. Does Anthropology then mean the study of general cultures of sapients in this context?

  I also note the different formatting. There’s a hyphen in there. That must denote that it’s a job, rather than a class or species. “What’s your species?” I ask. They smile.

  “Check again.”

  [Sumeen lv. 34]

  “And your class?” I ask.

  It hums. “Curious! Yes, check again.”

  [Ethereal Archer, 19]

  Hm. There is no level denominator. No ‘lv.’ sign. And there is a comma. Slowly, the pieces click. “Is the default display a class name and supremacy level?” I ask.

  The creature chirps happily. “Yes! That’s exactly right.”

  I hum for a moment, and that makes it tilt its head in curiosity. “What was that?” they ask.

  “Huh? What was what?” I ask.

  “That. You just spoke in Sumeean,” they say. I blink for a moment.

  “Oh, this?” I ask, then hum a little bit again. The alien nods vigorously. “I’m humming. Humans - our species - do it to communicate simple emotions. Thoughtfulness, curiosity, happiness, sometimes annoyance or anger.”

  The sumeen tilts its head in curiosity. “I see. It is a supplement to your main language, then? That… clicky string of noises and pauses?” they ask.

  I nod again. “Yes. We’re speaking a human language called English. There are loads more, but most of them involve similar sounds.”

  “Must be related to your biology?” the alien guesses, and I nod.

  “Do you have the concept of names?” I ask.

  “Oh! How rude. I have not yet introduced myself. My name is Paulino,” they say.

  “Great. I’m Ion. Do you… understand what I mean when I say gender?” I ask.

  The creature pauses, confused. “... No,” it says, slowly shaking its head. “What is that?”

  I take a deep breath. “Humanity requires two members of its species to create new members,” I say, as simply as I can. “These involve some biological differences. From this, there have been societal roles and expectations created for these two different members. These roles are gender roles, because while one may be born as one gender, it is possible to change into the other.”

  “You shapeshift?” the alien asks.

  I blink. “... Not quite,” I say. “It’s called transitioning. It can be personal, in which case it is only related to an internal sense of identity and belonging. It can also be social, which means asking to be treated differently by one’s friends, peers and associates. It can be legal, in which case it often involves changing the name one’s government uses, and the marked biological characteristics in legal documents. And it can be medical, in which case it involves medical procedures to change one’s body.”

  The alien takes this all in. “Fascinating,” it says. “Fascinating! There are two-sex species in the tower, of course, but few who bother to mark those differences in language - is there anything outside of these… two options? I do not believe either of them would be well transplanted upon the sumeen.”

  “Yeah!” Opal says. “Tell them what being enby is all about, Snow.” They grin at me. Thatch also gives me a smirk, and Sylves winks. They look encouraging, as if asking me to talk about my own experience.

  “Don’t cancel me,” I say, smiling faintly. I’ve lived more than enough of it to get it right. “Yes. Many humans are also not quite happy with this rigid binary - binary meaning something with two options - and thus, it was expanded into a spectrum.”

  “Does your species often use such… geometric illustrations for personal identification?” Paulino asks.

  “Well, spectrums are quite common in classifying humans, since they can allow identification of similar traits, while allowing personal nuance,” I explain. “They are used in mental assessments as well, in order to determine how typical your thought and behaviour patterns are.”

  “Fascinating,” the alien repeats. One of the other ones, the pathfinder, elbows them.

  “Make sure to pay the human for the service,” they say.

  Paulino waves them off. “Sure, sure. Now, tell me more, please.”

  “Right,” I say. “My friend, Gem,” I point to Opal, “doesn’t identify with this gender binary. They are thus nonbinary, a term for anyone who does not neatly fit into either descriptor or role.”

  “Did you just… put a term that generally means ‘to decline’ or ‘to refuse’ in front of the term used to denote the state of things you described to me before?”

  I nod. “Exactly.”

  “What an efficient way of describing things.”

  “Yeah. So, this generally means they do not use binary pronouns. Pronouns are… personal participles that refer to someone without using their name. I. You. He,” I point to Thatch. “She,” I point to Inu. “They,” I point to Opal.

  “Some people use ones that are different from those three, but they are the most common ones. ‘They’ is usually used on anyone whose gender you do not know, or anyone who may fall outside of the binary. Not always, but it is usually a safe bet,” I explain.

  “I see,” Paulino says, nodding. “Then, since gender does not apply to us, you would use this… ‘they’ for me and my colleagues, correct?”

  Slowly I nod. “Yes. Mostly. Sometimes, for nonhuman creatures, we also use ‘it’. This generally denies someone’s personhood, though, so it’s often considered to be unkind to use on sapients.”

  Paulino draws in a long breath, walking on. “Is this sort of… two-sex biological reproduction method common where you are from?”

  At this point, the conversation moves on from my niche set of interests. Instead, I elbow Inu. “I’m out of people energy,” I say.

  She gives me a long look, then a suffering sigh. She turns to Paulino. “Yes and no,” she says. “It is common, but by no means universal. Even for humans it’s not-”

  I tune them out. She’s probably going to briefly touch on intersex people, maybe even artificial fertilization, and while the first is cool, I don’t care that much about the second. Plus, I talked enough. Paulino, clearly, is an extrovert.

  Instead of dealing more with them, as my party starts chatting with the aliens, I pull out my twice improved mana maze. My finger traces its side, finding the faint ridges of runes. A small smile spreads on my face. I follow the lines, leaning on the essence packet I got from reaching level five in my job.

  We walk through the tunnels, but my focus on the mana maze almost lets me forget about the discomfort on the soles of my feet.

  I love magic.