Questing System - Chapter 11：Overturning Assumptions

Icarus stared at the pen door. He had basically been kept in a baby pen when his parents weren’t around and inside a cot when he needed to sleep. Hating this space was obvious as curiosity was one of his basic drives. The key to escaping this pen of doom was a problem, one that he had been struggling with for almost the entirety of the past three months since his parents started leaving him alone. Today he felt that he had finally figured it out, after tiring himself out multiple times. He crawled up to the gate and then used the bars as support to slowly but steadily stand. ‘Yes, almost there.’ Just as he was almost standing up, the door to the room opened startling him and causing him to fall on his ass.

Sana walked up to the pen and looked at Icarus, ‘were you trying to get out Icarus?’ He shook his head. After three months, Icarus began communicating with Sana and Daedalus using signals such as shaking his head or nodding his head. They didn’t find it strange that their barely three month old son could understand them, so Icarus had no problems with it either. She reached down and gently pressed his nose.

‘Lying is a bad habit mister!’ He could tell she was pretending to be angry, he could tell so he decided to feign guilt. There was a complete lack of remorse in him for obvious reasons. ‘You got me now, but eventually I will get out of this damn prison!’

‘Aww, do you want mommy to pick you up? Lets get you out of this place.’ His mother wrapped her arms around him and picked him up. His message got across, just not in the way he wanted. ‘We are going to visit uncle Caylus today.’ He tilted his head at her. ‘He just had a baby girl. We are going to go meet them and take a look at your future playmate.’

‘Ooh, another baby?’ Icarus hadn’t seen a single baby around, which was fair given that they lived on a secluded farm. His mother carried him out, wearing a new set of clothes. Icarus was wondering how exactly they were going to the farmhand settlement until he saw it outside. The sight of it actually made his eyes pop out. When he had first come to this world, he had thought that it was a medieval world. Clearly he shouldn’t have assumed things from local circumstances since in front of him was a car. It was one of those really old ones that were first released. That made him question a lot of other things as well since he had practically assumed everything so far.

Icarus marvelled at the scenery as the car sped on the rough road. Lush forests were present all around and rolling hills peaked through every bend. It was beautiful, especially the forest present just before the settlement. As they soon as the trees covered his view, the vibrant lull of the flowing water and the energetic chirping of the birds flowed into his ears. The sunlight peaked from under the leaves, casting long shadows and creating dim corners, yet this shade in the mid afternoon didn’t have a ounce of ominousness to it. The cool breeze tickled his and he closed his eyes to feel it softly brushing past his ears. By the time he opened his eyes, he had already arrived at the settlement.

The settlement was small with only a few wooden houses. As the car rolled up to one of them, the occupants all came out and greeted Daedalus. Icarus noticed that amongst them was a blonde woman carrying a small baby. In fact, she was the only one with a baby. ‘My lord, my lady, welcome to my humble abode.’ Caylus lead them into the hut which was surprisingly well furbished. Daedalus went off with Caylus to grab a beer whilst Sana and Katherine, Caylus’ wife, went off to put the babies into the pen. ‘Icarus, watch Jasmine,’ Sana instructed as she put him down into the pen, ‘make sure she doesn’t get hurt.’ Icarus nodded and noted that there was amazement present in Katherine’s eyes. Icarus had seen enough of it to be able to tell the emotion immediately. ‘My lady, the young lord has such high intelligence! He will surely become an incredibly talented mage.’

Sana simply laughed at this and shook her head, ‘you don’t know the troubles of having a smart child.’

They both walked off leaving Icarus deep in thought. Katherine’s word choice in the sentence was too specific. She didn’t say that Icarus was incredibly smart, she said that he had high intelligence. There was a great difference between the two. If the scenario was really as he thought of it then why hadn’t his parents asked about his status screen, or even mentioned it once? There was definitely something unique about his situation, he just couldn’t put a finger on it. ‘My assumptions have already been proven wrong once, it won’t be a surprise if it happened again.’ As he was thinking, his eyes wandered and he noticed that the other baby was sleeping soundly on the floor. ‘They certainly have a lot of trust in me to leave me alone with this baby.’ He watched over the baby girl sleeping soundly on the floor and it dawned on him; he wasn’t a special case, he was closer to a genius. ‘I am much more intelligent than normal babies and everybody knows that but doesn’t freak out. This could only mean one thing; there are others equally intelligent babies out there.’ He shivered just thinking about it. He was a full grown adult before he reincarnated into this body, carrying over his intelligence. If babies in this world could be born at that intelligence level then it would truly be ridiculous.