Peter found the language section of the library on his next visit with Aunt May.
They'd been coming twice a week now. Each time Peter left with a stack of books that made Aunt May shake her head in amazement.
Today was different though. Today Peter walked past the science section and the mathematics area. He went to a part of the library he hadn't explored yet. The foreign language section.
Rows of books stretched before him. Books teaching Spanish with colorful covers showing maps of Spain and Mexico. French textbooks with pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
German learning materials with gothic script on the spines. Mandarin guides with Chinese characters. Japanese books with hiragana and katakana charts.
Dozens of languages he'd never learned in his old life. Languages he'd always meant to study but never had time for.
'Why not?' he thought as he looked at the shelves. 'I have the time now. More time than anyone else in the world. And languages open doors.'
Languages meant access. Access to scientific papers published in other countries. Access to research that never got translated into English. Access to knowledge that most Americans would never see.
He checked out a Spanish textbook first. Basic conversational Spanish with simple dialogues and vocabulary lists. Then a French one with similar content. Then a German textbook that looked more advanced.
Aunt May met him at the checkout desk. She looked at the stack of language books he was carrying. That familiar concerned expression crossed her face. The one Peter had gotten used to seeing.
"Learning languages now?" she asked. Her tone was gentle but confused.
"They seem interesting," Peter said simply. He didn't elaborate. Didn't try to explain.
Aunt May didn't push. She just helped him carry the books to the car. They drove home in comfortable silence.
That night Peter entered his temporal acceleration dimension as soon as Uncle Ben and Aunt May were asleep. The familiar shift happened. His empty house appeared around him. Twenty-four hours of learning time stretched ahead.
He sat down in Uncle Ben's office with the Spanish textbook open in front of him. Started from page one. The very basics.
The grammar was similar to English in some ways. Subject-verb-object sentence structure. Nouns and verbs and adjectives working together. But it was different enough to be challenging. Different enough to require real focus.
Conjugations were the first hurdle. Spanish verbs changed based on who was doing the action. I speak. You speak. He speaks. She speaks. We speak. They speak. Each one was different. Each one had its own ending.
Then came masculine and feminine nouns. In Spanish, every object had a gender. The book was masculine.
The table was feminine. You had to remember which was which. Had to use the right articles. El or La. Un or Una.
Accent marks changed pronunciation too. Changed meaning entirely sometimes. He had to learn where they went. How they affected the sound of words.
Peter practiced aloud even though nobody could hear him in this empty dimension. "Hola. Me llamo Peter. ¿Cómo estás?"
The words felt strange in his mouth at first. His three-year-old tongue and lips weren't used to making these sounds. The rolled R sounds were particularly hard.
His tongue kept wanting to make the English R instead.
But he kept going. Reading vocabulary lists. Speaking sentences out loud. Writing practice exercises in the margins of the book.
Hour after hour without stopping.
His Enhanced Memory helped significantly. He could look at a vocabulary page for thirty seconds and recall every word perfectly. Could see the conjugation charts in his mind whenever he needed them.
Spanish became French after eight hours of intensive study. He switched textbooks and started fresh.
"Bonjour. Je m'appelle Peter. Comment allez-vous?"
French had its own challenges. Silent letters everywhere. Words that were spelled one way but pronounced completely differently. Nasal sounds that English didn't have. The way certain letter combinations created unexpected sounds.
But patterns started emerging. Similarities between Spanish and French. They were both Romance languages. Both came from Latin. Many words were similar. Grammar structures overlapped.
French became German after another eight hours.
"Guten Tag. Ich heiße Peter. Wie geht es Ihnen?"
German was different from both Spanish and French. Harsher sounds. More guttural pronunciation. Complex grammar rules with cases and declensions. Nouns were capitalized. Verbs got sent to the end of sentences sometimes.
But Peter pushed through. Applied the same methodology. Memorized vocabulary. Practiced pronunciation. Wrote example sentences. Drilled conjugations until they became automatic.
German became Mandarin in the final hours of his dimensional day.
That one was significantly harder. Completely different writing system. No alphabet at all. Just characters. Thousands of characters. Each one representing a word or concept or sound.
The tonal pronunciations changed meaning entirely. The same sound said with different tones meant different words. Ma with a flat tone meant mother. Ma with a rising tone meant hemp. Ma with a falling-rising tone meant horse. Ma with a falling tone meant scold.
Get the tone wrong and you said something completely different from what you intended.
But Peter's Enhanced Memory proved invaluable here. He could study a character for ten seconds and remember exactly how to write it. Could recall the stroke order perfectly. Could see the radicals and components that made up each character.
He practiced writing characters.
Practiced pronouncing tones. Practiced basic phrases and sentence structures.
Twenty-four hours per day made incredible progress possible. What would normally take years of study compressed into weeks of dimensional time. What would normally require classes and teachers and constant practice could be done alone in this empty space.
Each language built on the last too. Patterns emerged. Grammar structures that repeated across linguistic families. Ways that different languages handled similar concepts. Connections between words that shared common roots.
When the twenty-four hours ended and Peter returned to reality, he felt different. His mind held new pathways. New ways of thinking and expressing ideas.
[Skill Gained: Linguistics - Level 1]
[Progress: 1/10 to Next Level]
[Mind: 1.6 → 1.8]
The system notifications appeared in his vision. Peter smiled at them. Another skill gained. Another stat increase. His mind was growing sharper every single day. More capable. More powerful.
'Languages are tools,' he thought as he lay in bed in the real world. 'Tools for communication. For understanding. For accessing knowledge that isn't translated into English.'
The implications were significant. He could read scientific papers from around the world now. Could understand research published in Spanish universities. French laboratories. German engineering firms. Chinese technology companies.
Could communicate with people Uncle Ben and Aunt May never could. Could access information and opportunities that would be forever closed to monolingual speakers.
'Everything connects,' Peter realized.
The thought struck him with sudden clarity. 'Every skill I learn makes the others stronger. Languages help with reading comprehension. Math helps with science. Body control helps with coordination. It's all one system building on itself.'
He opened his status mentally. Looked at his growing collection of skills.
Reading.
Mathematics.
Body Control.
Linguistics.
Each one was a foundation for something greater. Each one supported and enhanced the others. Reading helped him learn languages faster. Mathematics would help with programming and engineering. Body control would help when he eventually got his spider powers. Linguistics opened entire worlds of knowledge.
'Keep going,' Peter told himself firmly. 'Keep learning. Keep growing. Every skill matters. Every stat point counts.'
The world was bigger than Queens. Bigger than New York. Bigger than America. It was a massive interconnected system of knowledge and cultures and languages and sciences.
And Peter Parker was going to understand all of it. Every part. Every connection. Every piece of the puzzle.
Because that's what he needed to save his family. To become something more than just Spider-Man. To change everything.
(A/N: Time-Skip coming up!)
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