Year 12 of the SuaChie Calendar, Seventh Month (September 1494).
Western Sea of the Three Islands Archipelago (Philippines), Xiefiba Quyca (Southeast Asia).
The salty wind of the Sunset Ocean (Pacific) swept across Tyfo's face, carrying a scent he had almost forgotten: the unmistakable odor of solid ground, dense vegetation, and tropical humidity.
Over three months had passed since the monumental fleet cast off from the docks of Sunset Edge City (San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua), in the warm Suaza isthmus.
The endeavor was a defiance of the world's immensity. It had been the young leader Chuta who, with his unfathomable vision, proposed to the crowns of Spain, Portugal, and England this Joint Expedition to cross the vast Sunset Ocean and reach Cipango and the mythical kingdoms of East Asia.
They sailed with a might that defied the waves: five Suaza vessels in total.
Two of them were gigantic Tequendama IIs, high-tonnage ships that served as flagships, one for the Suaza delegation and the other for the English. Flanking them were three swift Tequendama Is, assigned to the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Suaza Kingdom's own contingent.
Tyfo, a battle-hardened military officer and an expert in languages and tactical planning, clung to the port-side railing of the Suaza Tequendama II. He felt a feverish euphoria bubbling in his veins.
He was no frightened novice; years ago, he had accompanied the eccentric Captain Sogeking on his first expedition across the treacherous waters of the Dawn Ocean toward the shores of Guanza Quyca, serving precisely as the language and communications officer.
Yet even on that occasion, sailing blindly toward an unexplored continent, the voyage had not felt as overwhelmingly eternal as this one. The storms in this ocean had been mild, but they were laden with a dangerous cadence and deep swells that kept the crew in constant tension.
Now, with the hazy yet undeniable coastline of Asia taking shape on the horizon, Tyfo knew his true moment to shine was about to begin. He was not essential for managing the sails or the helm; his battlefield lay in words, in decoding the first contact upon setting foot on land.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of hurried boots descending from the upper deck. A young officer, a direct aide to the General of the Armada, stopped before him and delivered a martial salute.
"Officer Tyfo," the young man announced, his breath caught from the rush. "General Umzye is looking for you. He requires your presence in the captain's cabin immediately."
Tyfo nodded in silence, smoothed the folds of his tunic to regain his military composure, and made his way to the aft cabins.
Crossing the threshold into the captain's cabin, the atmosphere shifted. The room was steeped in the scent of wax, polished wood, and unfurled maps. Standing by the large central table was Umzye, the imposing General of the Kingdom's Armada, whose very authority filled the room.
Beside him, scrutinizing a set of navigational charts with almost fanatical intensity, was Christopher Columbus, the noble explorer and official representative of the Crown of Castile and Aragon on this expedition.
Umzye looked up as he heard him enter. His face was a mask of unyielding discipline.
"Tyfo," the general's voice cut through the air with firm resolve. "We have sighted the coast and are approaching the anchorages. I want you to prepare your team at once. Gather everything you need for your work; we shall be the first to make contact."
"Yes, sir! My entire team is standing by," Tyfo replied promptly, though he paused briefly, his brow furrowing for an instant as he mentally reviewed the protocol. "However, General..."
Umzye arched an eyebrow, gesturing him to continue with a slight flick of his hand.
"I must remind you that the gifts and offerings need to be prepared in the longboats from the very first minute," Tyfo pointed out, maintaining eye contact. "Offerings are not mere courtesy; they are a vital part of our objective to establish neutral ground and decipher the local tongue more swiftly. We cannot arrive empty-handed if we expect them to speak to us."
General Umzye seemed to weigh the words for a second.
Then, the rigidity of his features softened into a subtle, almost imperceptible smile of approval. He understood that his officer was being proactive, anticipating the frictions of the landing.
"Your mind is in the right place, Tyfo," Umzye dismissed him with a nod. "Rest assured, the shipments of gifts are already secured and ready in the lower holds, just as Leader Chuta planned... Go to your post."
"At your command, General."
Tyfo exited the cabin, his pulse racing, and hurried down to the lower deck, where his subordinates and the rest of the communications officers were already waiting in anticipation.
"Attention!" Tyfo barked, his voice echoing over the creaking wood. "Prepare the recording equipment at once! I want notebooks bound against the damp, charcoal pencils in abundance, and even our quills and tightly sealed inkwells. We will not let a single syllable of these new people be lost to the wind!"
One hour later.
The monumental fleet had dropped anchor. Tyfo stood aboard one of the four large rowboats that had been lowered from the hull of the Suaza Tequendama II. The rhythmic splashing of the oars against the tranquil water marked the final meters toward a new world.
His heart pounded wildly as he gazed anxiously toward the stretch of sand. In the distance, amidst the thick oriental vegetation, the first silhouettes of the local natives could already be made out, watching the arrival of those immense wooden mountains with evident stupefaction.
Turning his head, Tyfo saw that the remaining boats of the joint expedition—Spanish, Portuguese, and English—were also approaching the beach, forming an impressive multinational front.
When the keel of his boat finally scraped against the wet sand, adrenaline took hold of Tyfo. He clutched his notebook to his chest and bent his knees, entirely ready to vault over the gunwale, sprint toward the locals, and begin exchanging their very first words. He wanted to unravel the secrets of Cipango immediately.
But before he could make the leap, a heavy, leather-clad hand landed firmly on his shoulder, anchoring him in place.
"Hold your eagerness, Officer Tyfo," commanded the deep, authoritative voice of General Umzye, who towered beside him in the boat. "The protocol is clear. First, we will establish a fortified camp and secure the perimeter. No one approaches the natives until our position is impregnable."
Tyfo let out a sigh, swallowing his euphoria all at once. This world would have to wait a few more hours to be deciphered.
…
Exactly two hours had passed since General Umzye's heavy boots had curbed Tyfo's momentum. Two hours that, to the language officer, felt like another voyage across the ocean.
The base camp had been erected with astonishing martial efficiency.
Over the strip of white sand, a small temporary settlement now stood. Tyfo's gaze swept over the taut canvas tents billowing in the tropical breeze and the wide wooden tables assembled against the clock.
A few meters away, a mixed group of Suaza sailors and European expeditionaries stoked the fires of makeshift stone ovens, their smoke mingling with the scent of sea salt. There were no permanent structures; the weather was astonishingly docile, a warm caress that demanded no heavy shelters.
Furthermore, the fleet's cartographers and tide experts had warned that the coastline was treacherous. Salt marks on the nearby rocks betrayed dangerous high tides. The ideal position for a lasting settlement lay a few hundred meters inland, shielded by the thicket.
However, the strict doctrine of the Suaza Kingdom dictated that foreign land was not taken, but negotiated; it was imperative to request permission from the local inhabitants before driving a single definitive pillar into the ground.
Tyfo was sitting on an empty barrel, sharpening the tip of his charcoal pencil with a knife, when he felt a pat on his back. It was Kusi, a Suaza soldier from his squad.
"It's time, Tyfo... The general is assembling the retinue," the young man announced, pointing toward the edge where the sand surrendered to the jungle.
Tyfo's heart skipped a beat. He put away his knife, secured his heavy, leather-bound notebook to protect it from the damp, and leapt to his feet.
Upon reaching the rendezvous point, the vanguard was already in formation.
Umzye waited with an upright posture, his light armor reflecting the gleam of the afternoon sun. Beside him, sweating profusely beneath his heavy courtly garments, stood Christopher Columbus, impatiently fanning his face.
Behind them, half a dozen guards held the expedition's diplomatic passport: heavy, finely carved wooden boxes and wicker baskets overflowing with gifts. A couple more soldiers carried thick canvases concealing bronze tools, an industrial secret they would only reveal if initial diplomacy warranted it.
"Move out," ordered Umzye in a low rumble.
The group advanced slowly, crushing dry leaves and brushing aside vines.
It was not long before they reached a natural clearing where the natives awaited them. Tyfo held his breath. They were men and women of dark coppery skin, adorned in light garments and ornaments that jingled softly in the breeze. Their posture was tense, like bowstrings about to loose, yet in their eyes shone a feverish curiosity that outweighed their fear.
As they drew closer, Tyfo noticed where the locals' gazes were directed.
They weren't looking at the Suaza armor, nor even the imposing ships in the distance; their eyes were fixed on Columbus. The extremely pale complexion of the European navigator, coupled with his reddish beard and extravagant clothes, had them hypnotized, wavering between reverence and distrust.
At about ten paces away, Umzye raised a fist. The escort stopped dead in their tracks.
"You and I, officer," murmured the general, taking hold of one of the baskets.
Tyfo hoisted a wooden box and both took a step forward, leaving behind the steel and spears of their guards.
They walked with deliberate slowness, displaying their empty palms before placing the gifts on the ground, halfway between the two groups. Then, they took a couple of steps back.
One of the local leaders, an older man wearing a headdress of woven feathers, stepped forward cautiously. He inspected the gifts. When his fingers brushed the soft texture of the Suaza fabrics and his eyes caught the gleam of the precious stones and exotic fruits arranged in the wicker, the tension in the air seemed to dissipate.
The old man looked up and spoke a few words.
It was in that instant that Tyfo's true work began. His mind operated at breakneck speed. Alveolar fricative... rising tone at the end of the word... staccato rhythm, he analyzed mentally. The syllables sounded utterly foreign, but he tried to anchor them to the structures of the languages he had already mastered.
Knowing this was his moment, Tyfo took a step forward, radiating a gentle confidence, and performed a formal greeting of the Suaza Kingdom: a fluid, circular motion with his hands, culminating in a slight bow.
The locals exchanged surprised glances and, after a second of hesitation, the elder replied in his own dialect, accompanying his words with an open-handed gesture toward the sky.
A greeting, definitely a gesture of welcome or peace, Tyfo thought, elated.
Without wasting a second, the officer pulled out his thick notebook and charcoal pencil. The sound of graphite scratching against paper drew the natives' attention. Tyfo smiled, walked two steps closer, and pointed at the bright sky. Quickly, he sketched a circle with rays on the page and showed it to the old man, tapping the drawing and then pointing to the sun.
"Sun?" asked Tyfo, exaggerating the interrogative intonation with his hands.
The old man blinked, looked at the drawing, looked at the sky, and suddenly his face lit up with a smile of comprehension.
"Adlaw," the native said, his voice clear.
Tyfo felt a shiver of pure thrill. He immediately transcribed the pronunciation using the Suaza phonetic alphabet in his notebook.
The barrier had been broken. …
Over the next hour, the scene transformed into a frantic and joyful exchange. Tyfo drew feverishly: a crescent moon, a tree, blades of grass, the sea crashing on the shore, rain clouds.
For every drawing and every finger pointed at nature, the locals gifted him a new word. Tyfo repeated the sounds out loud, correcting his pronunciation when the natives shook their heads, and laughing alongside them when he finally got it right.
He did not stop at nouns.
Soon he began to walk with exaggerated steps, run in place, and jump, gesticulating wildly to capture actions. He lined up stones on the ground to decipher numbers, paying meticulous attention to how they linked one idea to another, searching for the vital connectors and adjectives that gave color to a sentence.
On the pages of his book, ink and charcoal were charting the first true bridge between the Suaza continent, old Europe, and the mysterious kingdoms of Asia. And Tyfo, immersed in his linguistic trance, knew that this was the most important knowledge of the entire expedition. …
The rhythmic sound of axes striking tropical wood and the constant bustle of builders had replaced the coastline's millennial silence.
A week after that first, historic exchange of words traced in the sand, the Suaza settlement had taken on an undeniable shape. It had ceased to be a mere forward camp, evolving into a bastion for the expedition, a small, bustling enclave they formally christened Discovery Town (Surigao, Philippines).
For Tyfo, those seven days had slipped away like sand through his fingers.
His eyes, bloodshot from a lack of sleep by the light of oil lamps, did not reflect exhaustion, but the feverish gleam of someone deciphering the secrets of the universe. He hadn't stopped for a single instant. His tent had transformed into a sanctuary of scrolls, notebooks, and tablets where the local language was beginning to lay bare its entire culture.
By the third day, General Umzye had assigned him an indispensable companion: Vala, a seasoned Suaza expert in history and politics. Together, they formed a formidable duo. While Tyfo unraveled syntax and vocabulary, Vala interpreted the context, extracting gold from every anecdote, song, or tale the natives shared.
"They are not mere nomads, Tyfo," Vala murmured one afternoon, watching from the forest's edge as a group of locals unloaded formidable baskets of roots and fruits from a massive outrigger canoe. "They belong to the great Lumad family. They call themselves the Mamanwa, and they speak a language they call Cebuano."
Tyfo nodded, rapidly charting the connections in his notebook.
"And they have adapted marvelously," the language officer added. "Although their ancestors and sister tribes are predominantly gatherers, these Mamanwa have mastered agriculture by harnessing the richness of this land. Not to mention their naval skills... those great canoes with which they ply the coasts defy any swell."
With his basic grasp of Cebuano growing day by day, the interviews became more profound.
Through maps drawn with sticks on the damp earth, Tyfo and Vala managed to weave together the region's complex geopolitical web. They discovered that they were in the Mai Archipelago—also known in local myths as the Three Islands Archipelago.
We are south... South of the great Cipango! Tyfo had thought when the locals' astronomical and maritime references matched up with the European navigation charts.
They were in the very heart of the routes to the mythical Indies and the coveted Spice Island. The puzzle was complete. The archipelago was a melting pot of cultures, harboring free tribes, fledgling kingdoms, and vast areas under the shadow of imposing neighboring sultanates.
The large island on which they had founded Discovery Town, known locally as Mindanao—near what future records would call Surigao Bay—was dominated in its interior by massive, structured forces.
However, the Mamanwa explained that the smaller islands scattered to the northeast were occupied only by small family tribes, dispersed and far less belligerent.
That tactical intelligence changed the course of the expedition.
That very night, in the expansive command tent, Tyfo presented his findings to the leaders. General Umzye, arms crossed and wearing a stern expression, listened intently, flanked by the imposing figures of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish hidalgo; Juan Cortizos, representing Portugal; and James Norrington, for the English Crown.
"Discovery Town was raised with the sweat, timber, and engineering of my people," decreed Umzye, his voice resonating with unbreakable authority. "The control and administration of this port will remain under the charge of the Suaza Kingdom. After all, we have done the heavy lifting."
The Europeans exchanged appraising glances. Columbus stroked his reddish beard, weighing the diplomacy of the situation.
"That is fair, General," conceded the Spaniard. "But the alliance demands a shared stronghold. If what Officer Tyfo says is true, and the northeastern islands are virtually uninhabited and free of great armies... I propose we mobilize a joint contingent."
Thus, the agreement was sealed. A new settlement, a symbol of the Joint Expedition, would be founded on one of those pristine islands.
Three Weeks Later.
Year 12 of the SuaChie Calendar, Eighth Month (October 1494).
United Town (San Jose, Dinagat Island, Philippines), United Island, Mai Archipelago.
The wind blowing through the new town was cooler, laden with the pungent scent of wild orchids and the resin of gigantic trees.
Twenty days had been enough to transform an uninhabited coast into a vibrant multinational camp, situated on a fertile island to the northeast of their initial point of arrival.
Tyfo walked along a newly cleared path, marveling at the untamed exuberance of the place. He had left half of his team of interpreters in Discovery Town to maintain the excellent trade relations with the Mamanwa, while he took on the challenge of establishing contact on this new frontier.
Before him, sitting on a fallen log, was a young hunter from the island's small local tribe.
"Kini usa ka kahoy?" asked Tyfo softly, pointing to an immense mahogany tree, utilizing the base of the Cebuano he had learned.
The young man looked at him with curiosity, tilted his head, and smiled.
"Kahoy," the boy repeated, though with a slightly more nasal tone, omitting the fluid connectors that the Mamanwa utilized in the south.
Tyfo let out a sigh of immense relief and satisfaction, jotting down the change on the final pages of his already worn book. He would not have to start from scratch.
To his great fortune, the dialect of this virgin island shared the same linguistic root; only a few words altered their musical intonation, and certain connectors were lost in the brevity of the phrases… The bridge of communication remained intact.
He closed his leather notebook, feeling the weight of the accumulated knowledge in his hands. He looked out toward the bay, where the intertwined flags of Suaza, Spain, Portugal, and England fluttered together beneath the Asian sun.
The entire world was opening up before them, word by word, and he held the golden key in his hands—at least the one to this territory.
.
----
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
Thank you all for your support.
First, I wanted to let you know that the rain has let up a bit, but it looks like it will continue for the next few days. I'll try to schedule two more chapters as a backup.
By the way, I'm preparing a new, completely complete character list.
Also, using Google's NotebookLM, I summarized all the chapters of the novel. I actually wanted to upload it as a supplementary chapter, but seeing that more than 400,000 words are summarized in 15,000 was a bit discouraging.
The worst part is that it's well summarized, haha.
UFD: Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese-born military officer, navigator, and explorer who became a naturalized Spanish citizen. He led the expedition to the Moluccas, but he ended up dying in the Philippines.
He dies in combat on Mactan Island, which is 233 kilometers from Surigao City, or as the Suaza people named it, Discovery Town.
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Read my other novels.
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 91) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 34) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 14) (ON HOLD)
You can find them on my profile.]