41. Overqualified teacher

It has been slightly more than a month's worth of time since Liam spoke to the tsakarems of the Tipani and Omatikaya clans.

He might have overreacted due to his inclination for paranoia in rapport to the meeting and the amount of lethal force put into the preparation. It ended with each cordially saying their goodbye and he assumed they traveled back to their respective clans.

No deal was done with them, not for the fault of not asking but Neytiri denied it saying it was pointless, that her clan didn't need to learn more from his likes. If his appearance as a human displeased her this much then that was her problem.

She was foolish, even if he knew she instantly had second thoughts on her words but she was too proud to come back over them and excuse herself. But her words are mostly her own biased opinion of him from his appearance and her past experience with humans, so he didn't truly care.

Primitive arrows even if equal to ballista bolts won't be enough against helicopters, he can only hope she realizes this fast, and the same for the rest of her clan, and Jake as well. He needed the Na'vi to become truly united.

For Hakuto it wasn't a full-on refusal but more along the line of needing the accord of his Tsahìk and Olo'eyktan, which in his clan were one and the same to proceed further. He showed great interest in the prosthetic.

As for the Olangi, all went smoothly, extremely so in fact. And as of now, they should stay in his 'general' location for as long as the rainy season still lives on and the newborns need to commune with the Tree of Divergence.

A very important and dangerous aspect of their culture that needs great preparation and one that even affects where and when mothers should give birth which is also affected by simple deduction when the act of procreation must happen. Even if he knew they were good at using various methods of contraception.

All in all, it didn't really help him because he doesn't have any method of knowing how long the rainy season will last, and that the Na'vi were exceptionally bad at telling the time to others considering they can't count past sixteen, he assumed it was some sort of biological clock or how they spoke and listened to Eywa. So he asked Max.

He got his answer a few hours later and from what Max said it should last till mid-September. He was now, not only busy doing what he usually does but also being in almost daily contact with the Na'vi.

The deal of knowledge for knowledge not directly being the only reason, as to put mildly he was a novelty, curiosity and an object of… something akin to adoration for a no small amount of the Olangi, mostly the younger side but not uniquely.

Sometimes surprisingly to the point of lust, in big part from female teenagers he remarked but not only, he wasn't interested in kids and sadly that wasn't much different for the adults. There were more pressing matters than useless romance and drama for satisfying something as animalistic as lust.

A good aspect of his body or newly gained experience or that were not humans, in all cases he felt exponentially less craving of the flesh than he did before, not that he ever was 'THAT' depraved to begin with but it kept things effective and to the point.

Though he could roughly understand the origin of such attraction, he was 'exotic' so to say, and important by their standard while an anomaly he was far from even remotely being considered ugly. And not forgetting his actions and connection, all of this affected how the Na'vi of the Olangi clan perceive.

That didn't equate to every Na'vi liking him, far from it, such as the family related to the hunter who tried to kill him. But from what he gathered it was quite mid as they themselves condemned the hunter's action.

And there were a few others, but at the end of the day the leaders and nearly every member of the clans possessed a positive image of him, that he could guess was in grand parties thanks to Askwey, Marali, and the teenage couple aka Tutee and Mìruk. He wondered when they would assume it because the two seemed pretty dense and more than just 'best friends'.

Liam knew of all this because he came several times per week to the Olangi settlement, situated not far from the entrance of the Sacred Hallows. It was for teaching and learning. It was an experience, to say the least.

And he was currently walking within the edge of their camp, Occiden and Septen on each of his titanium shoulder pads, unnoticeable grips were specifically added for that purpose, his war scythe placed diagonally behind his shoulder and above a bag.

His inventory didn't need to be known, even now, the Tsahìk didn't mention it so even if foolish he refused to risk his most important asset being discovered this way.

The Tsahìk and Olo'eyktan might be capable of keeping it a secret but he doubted others even without malicious intention will be capable of keeping their lips sealed with something like this, something magical, even probably divine to them.

Na'vi, males, and females were working in tandem, some sharpening stone arrowheads, some weaving plant fibers into baskets, some taking care of the direhorses, and kids that were too young to help were running around playing something akin to catch.

It was normal, lively yet alien, and a bit out of time from his perception due to Na'vi being for all intent and purpose at the Neolithic stage.

The similarities between them and humans were flagrant but it made the many differences that much more obvious. Not that it needed all of what was mentioned to be remarked. They weren't humans, but they still were people, with the good and bad that came with it.

All of them stopped what they were doing as he began to be noticed, his smile grew slightly as he waved while his two tetrapteron glared with a kind of subtly at anything and everything. Though unlike Gladius they weren't the most intimidating so the effects were insignificant.

One of the young kids, a boy two heads shorter than him, his name was Ehaniu ran up to him a flat piece of dry wood with black lines scribbled on it. This almost earned Occiden jumping onto the kid's head, glassy claws wide open ready to thread the boy's eyeball out but he stopped it before it even happened.

<Teacher! I did it! Look, look!>, said kid exclaimed, waving the dry wood in the air for Liam to take.

Which he did with a simple movement of his hand, one faster than the kid could perceive, the writing was barely comprehensible but he could guess the gist of it and it was the response to the basic multiplication table from one to ten and line of numbers going to two hundred he asked to do last time.

It was written with a charcoal pen he gave the knowledge of, he didn't make it for them. They were apt enough with this information to do it themselves.

He had become a teacher of sorts, and the title of teacher had sometimes 'Metal' added in front of it thanks to his specimen implant and how he wore metal as armor.

In Na'vi it was Fgnap Karyu. But that was of no importance here, he rapidly went over every result and he nodded, pleased.

This was easy, incredibly easy and that would still be an over-exaggeration of how easy it was.

But the Na'vi needed to learn from scratch at a level even lower than kindergarten such as how foreign the concept was to them, and this in approximately two hours of class per week fully focused on that.

It was more than explaining addition, subtraction, and multiplication, they needed to learn how to count and truly understand it, not just parrot what he says. It was math not understanding was going to be obvious and a big problem.

And he did an order of magnitude more complicated for the older ones, but he was starting to explain their division.

He was someone capable of doing calculus that perfectly explained how to create a stable and safe method of teleportation between several points in the spacetime continuum and he was teaching third-grade mathematics to 'primitive' tall blue cat people.

It was ridiculous, ludicrous, it looked and sounded like an insane joke but it was his life. This was the result of his actions and choices.

Anyway, one of his best in that age group, adult and teenager, was Mìruk, both surprising and unsurprising. The teen held such a high opinion of him it might even be considered unhealthy by some.

Overall he found teaching a relaxing and pleasant experience but that was mostly on how eager his students were and that they held great respect for him.

And that he promoted competition. The healthy kind, at least he hoped it was. He did this by giving recompense to the ones giving correct answers multiple times, and speed being an important factor as well.

He gave recompense, only to the lower end of the age spectrum, it was snacks, like candies, smoked meats, vegetables, and fruit. For the really young he gave toys, there needed to be a motivation, and he preferred to use the carrot than the stick.

It was possible to do this because his classes were relatively small, never going past thirty individuals and he only had two of which one-half didn't need this treatment.

The adults were the ones that gave him things, such as a type of alcohol; however, Na'vi didn't have problems eating things more than what he was used to traditionally eating.

Such as living purple larvas, nothing he wouldn't have been able to guess, it didn't even taste bad. A mix between sweet and earthy with a crunchy outside and soft meaty inside. Though he never was a fan of food being able to move or fight back in your mouth.

One of his rules however was always to give it a bite before judging its potential taste from appearance or prior ideas. Tastes were the most important aspect of foods, even if aspects and presentation were important too. They just came second and always will come second to him.

It was a cultural exchange, both learning from one another.

<These are correct. Good job and as promised…>, Liam trailed off, his left hand going into his backpack where he took from his inventory a beige articulated figurine, to be customized, made of a natural polymer he turned into biodegradable plastic.

It was of a long since gone animal from Earth, he 3D printed it with his fabricator basing himself on models he has from tekgrams of various artificial creatures in his mind, which was most of the vertebrates from the games.

Not the most exact, far from it in fact, but he wasn't a paleontologist so it mattered little so he couldn't 'fix' them to be right, and neither did he care.

The flesh and blood creatures from the game were the result of GMOs pushed to the extreme without regulation, it was a given they weren't going to be accurate or be regular animals at all.

<Wow! Thank you! But what animal is that?!>, Ehaniu grabbed and marveled at the 60-centimeter (~23.6in) tall four-legged figurine, it had two pairs of thick legs, a long tail, and a long neck ending in a comparatively small head.

It was such an alien creature.

<It's called a "brontosaurus", one of the largest land-dwelling creatures to have ever lived. Specifically, it's a "brontosaurus lazarus", it feeds exclusively on plants.>, Liam explained to the Na'vi who was already playing with it.

<It's big compared to Eimip's one…>, the kid noted, it was intended to be this way, they were scaled down but compared to others were rightly proportioned, and even if the brontosaurus was of right proportion it would still have been one, if not the biggest and certainly the heaviest land-dwelling creatures of Pandora.

One of those big stegosaurus-like creatures in the great plain, while clearly bigger and bulkier than an elephant, were lighter by a bit more than a third, and it wasn't only the moon's lower gravity at play. It was funny in a way but again lighter didn't mean weaker and nearly all veritable have carbon fiber bones.

And this figurine was made with the measurement unit he got from the smartwatches of the scientists by doing a simple light trick and use of the screen he got it to the millimeter and everything after is divided by ten.

It was just a quality of life, though one that could minimize the risk of future problems and accidents. As history proved, using two distinct measuring systems in a high-precision project was a very bad and stupid idea.

After this Liam moved through the crowd giving snacks as he did so until he was face to face with hunters, from teenagers, and adults to olds, both male and female none was set aside. All were currently in the middle of training with bows, daggers, and polearms, that consisted of spears, and battle staff.

He gazed at a spar between two teenagers in the distance, he supposed they were around Mìruk's age, going at one another with blunt spears, one had a scar above his right eye and the other was slightly bulkier.

It was fascinating even though he didn't understand all of the reasons behind most of their movements and actions. Though they were quite 'slow'.

The two kept eye contact with one another, their ears were flattened and tails swishing back and forth when suddenly the one with the scar moved his left foot to the side gaining space before he pushed most of his weight forward on his right and trusted the blunt tip of his spear toward the other throat with a yell-hiss.

He missed, or more like the bulkier one sidestepped causing the attacker's eyes to widen in shock as he flailed, lose his footing in the muddy ground, and fell forward face first into the mud. Three long seconds went by before the second took the hand of the first and yanked him up.

<That was both risky and cheap of you, brother.>, the bulkier one said and the other grumbled before spitting globs of mud he just swallowed causing the other to chuckle.

Liam commanded both of his birds to fly up, as he turned around hearing footsteps, already knowing who it was he looked up and was met with the Akwey, a long and intricate spear in his right hand.

<I see you,>, the Olo'eyktan greeted his eyes moving toward the human's war scythe, <Has the Lost Child come to observe how my people train? Or perhaps participate?>

<Greeting and yes Akwey… It will be enriching. I'm a craftsman in fields not even the "RDA" could comprehend, but not a warrior. I won the same way an adult could beat a young child in a fistfight, no matter how skilled the child or unskilled the adult may be. And after I have important matters to discuss.>, Liam said as he placed his bag on a dry rock, his upper armor unclasping itself like the shed exoskeleton of an arthropod, showing his physique as he was now in only a pair of shorts.

<Then let's begin and I think you would make a good training partner.>, the chief agreed, and that was true for the winning part.

The Lost Child was fast, incredibly so, and just as if not even stronger but his movements were that of someone untrained, but skill alone could not cross every gap.

Strength, speed, intelligence, luck, equipment, number, experience, agility, and so many more factors were just as crucial in deciding how a fight will end. It was an art.

*

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