13 Jack Returns

For the sake of avoiding trouble, Ichabod Hare avoided publicly proclaiming Jack's existence until two months had gone by. At the time, Kran had long left Groamburk and hadn't come back. In fact, no news had been heard from either Gayle or Kran. Faced with complete radio silence, Ichabod was confident in announcing to the world that he had taken in a son.

The news was met with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, as well as the expected bad-mouthing from the Calles and Retrona families. Comments, rumours, and suppositions such as Jack actually being the result of an out-of-marriage affair between Ichabod and one of his employees; or that Ichabod was a cuckold and was giving his lover's son a home. To all the rumours, Ichabod shrugged and ignored them in their entirety. They wouldn't last long, in any case; a few years at most.

Meanwhile, on his side of things, he was growing more and more attached to Jack by the day. It all began as a means for him to comply with his old friend's request; but slowly, and surely, his love for the child grew stronger with each sunrise. At the same time, he had given Adras a home and a job as a singer-songwriter at his establishment; a position she fulfilled with admirable success, which gave his inn an additional level of class. He even began feeling attracted to her in a way that he hadn't felt for another woman before.

Their daily liaisons over the nurture and care of the child quickly changed into something more. At first, Ichabod found an excuse in the sense that he wanted to teach her things like reading and writing. In doing so, he got closer and closer to her and was constantly surprised at how quickly she picked up things.

In teaching her, Ichabod found a partner almost as world-savy and cunning as him; and Adras found a man that looked at her with passion for her personality and not her breasts. As she learned more from him (and of him) with each passing day, she became more and more infatuated with his curious personality and witty comments. Ichabod and Adras fell in love.

Overall, you could say that fate had brought the three people together in the shape of a quasi-dysfunctional family. But a happy one, nonetheless. Slowly, one year passed since Gayle brought Jack and Adras under Ichabod's roof and in all that time, merriment and joy were the norm in the Wishful Hare.

--

It was the morning of Jack's first birthday when he returned to, a few hours before the party; but Jack was completely unaware of this. After integrating his soul and mind into his new body, he'd spent an entire year grasping at the introductory passages of the Harmony of Everything.

As it was to be expected of a pinnacle cultivation method boasting unparalleled might, he had only been able to grasp the introduction after an entire year of meditation. Even after attempting to continue with the meditative state and move on to the first chapter, Jack had been wholly unable to do so. It was as if the method itself wouldn't allow him to progress until he completely mastered the section available to him.

Upon closer thought, it seemed reasonable. Jack had come across many cultivation methods with restrictions placed upon them; it wasn't unimaginable, then, that such a godly method had some implanted in it, no matter how mysterious.

Whatever the case, Jack was anything but displeased with his harvest after this period of so-called seclusion. The introduction firstly detailed a layout of all the chapters and how they corresponded to the different stages of cultivation. In addition, it explained that to cultivate this method, one must constantly temper the body to the highest degree and grind the soul into its purest form in order to accommodate contradicting energies into oneself and merge them into one's source.

To summarise, the introduction consisted of two parts: a method to temper the body, and one to build up one's soul. After that, each chapter focused on two contradicting and diametrically opposed forces.

The first chapter: fire and water.

The second: speed and stillness.

The third: light and darkness.

The fourth: Yin and Yang.

The fifth: War and peace.

The sixth: life and death.

The seventh: Order and Chaos.

The eighth: Beginning and End.

The ninth: Everything and Nothing.

What this meant, and how they were to be interpreted, Jack could only wonder as he was far too weak to even begin to imagine. Everything had a path, and his had already been laid out in front of him after many years of painful suffering. All he could do now, was to walk it step by step and see where it would lead him.

These were all matters for the future, however, and as such he needed to firstly examine his surroundings and formulate a plan accordingly.

Therefore, Jack examined his body and found that, just as he'd suspected, he was in the body of a weak baby. To that, he didn't know whether he should laugh or cry. As a baby, he was in the true golden stage of cultivation and could advance by leaps and bounds with half the effort. However, his weak body would be a strong limitation for his growth. In the short-term, his advancements would be at a snail's pace; but, in the long run, his ability to breakthrough would increase exponentially.

Sighing silently to himself, he extended his perception outwards without opening his eyes and giving away that he was conscious. After being rebirthed, his spiritual sense had become much weaker; in fact, it was so feeble that it took him almost an hour to stretch it to its limits, a mere few feet from the cot. Barely enough to make out his immediate surroundings. He could only make out the layout of the room he was in and who was in it with him.

He was in a cot in a small office-like chamber with small windows. The walls were barren, except for a few paintings and two small windows at the very top of them. Clearly, whoever used this room wasn't fond of natural light. To the western side of the room was a small desk full of small drawers. Strewn about all over the floor and desk were dozens, if not more than a hundred, different parchments chaotically and without order.

In the northern side of the room was a large fireplace, neatly cleaned and taken care of as well as intricately ornate with carefully carved qilins and phoenixes dancing to the high heavens. Even the andirons were crafted to look like dragons hovering majestically over the hearth. Evidently, the owner of this room cherished this fireplace greatly.

There was a man sitting on a comfortable seat covered with a thick, woolly blanket and with his feet raised on top of a stool facing the warm, flickering, flames. Well, to call him a man would be quite generous. He was short and stumpy; and his hair had all but gone. His left leg was significantly smaller than his right, thin and fragile as a stick. The face was malformed in a few places and his left eye bulged out uncontrollably but they shone with wit and intellect.

This was, of course, Jadelere, Ichabod's accountant which, due to everyone else being unfathomably busy with Jack's birthday preparations, had been tasked with keeping his eye on the little boy. A task he was seldom asked to perform given his unnatural propensity to curse such vulgarities that many a time the female staff had almost fainted from it. In fact, Ichabod had warned the man sternly that if he even whispered half a profanity near the boy, there would be Abyss to pay.

A warning that had, expectedly, fallen on deaf ears.

"Fuck me sideways with a hammer over a fire and call me an imp-kebab, this is as much of accurate accounting as I am sexy to women." He cursed loudly as he grabbed a goblet of wine and took a loud sip. Jadelere was going over the revenue reports of the last bimester and had obviously come across some irregularities. "These numbers aren't even remotely close understandable. Divines crap, I'd rather trust a whore's virginity than this! What the fuck are they even thinking?! Fuck me; please, fuck me; just get an orc to fuck me over and over again rather than read this. They say reading is good for the mind, but I swear that I'm dumber just by having come in contact with these words. If these letters are the sign of intellectual prowess, my arse has teeth and it devours women for sustenance! Orc's penis!"

Jack couldn't understand the language as it wasn't any of the spoken tongues he was familiar with but it was similar to some of the languages that he'd come across in the Abyss Library. Furthermore, he wasn't a genius that had lived for ten thousand years for nothing, and so he started imitating Jadelere.

Orc's penis… Orc's penis… Orc's penis…

The small voice was soft at first, but it gradually picked up in strength and soon even Jadelere could hear it. Frozen in shock, he clumsily rose to his feet and limped awkwardly towards the boy's cot.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this cannot be." He mumbled to himself, fearing the worst.

"Orc's penis!" Exclaimed the boy, struggling with the correct enunciation of the syllables.

"Divines save me!" Jadelere cried out with tears in his eyes. If Ichabod learned that the boy's first words were something so vulgar, he wouldn't be able to escape an agonizing and miserable death. "Wait, if you've learned to say that, maybe you can learn something else. Look at this, this is a book. Repeat after me: book, book, book."

"Uk, ook, book." Watching the strange man dangling a torn, old-looking volume of a strange nature in front of him, Jack felt amused and so complied with him; enunciating the word the man was repeating carefully.

"Yes! Divines yes!"

"What is the meaning of this racket?" Questioned a clear voice from the doorway. It was Adras, who'd come over to bring Jack out to the celebration. "Why are you, a devout atheist, praising the Gods?"

"Adras! My dear! To what do I owe this exquisite pleasure?" Asked Jadelere, his mind working on overdrive as to how he could extricate himself safely from the situation.

"I'm here to take Jack with me. The guests have arrived and they're waiting for him." She replied nonchalantly. "But you're avoiding the question, Jadelere."

Abyss dammit, this girl becomes Ichabod's woman for a few months and she's already talking like him. It was true, Ichabod and Adras had begun their romantic liaison a few months earlier and had been nigh on inseparable ever since. Ichabod had gone beyond formally educating her and teaching her how to read and write, to involving her in the business and also having her be present in his meetings as his own personal assistant.

"Milady, that's the last thing I want. It's just that I heard some sounds and I was merely concerned that the boy had defecated on himself but, worry not, that doesn't seem to be the case."

"I see. Well, thank you, Jadelere, for…"

"Book. Book. Book."

"What in the name of the Divines?"

Exhibiting speed far above what a woman of her caliber should have been capable of, Adras leapt forward and pulled the boy into her arms, knocking Jadelere squarely on his rear-end.

"He spoke! My boy spoke his first words!"

Without sparing Jadelere a single glance, she left the room screaming about the good news to anyone within hearing distance. It wasn't long before they reached Ichabod and he, too, couldn't keep his excitement to himself and immediately made two proclamations: firstly, all services of his establishment would be free of charge for the entire day and, secondly, that Jadelere was to become the boy's personal tutor.

At all this, the boy in question could only helplessly watch the chaos he'd provoked as a bystander. Little did he know that Ichabod and Adras had become increasingly worried with the child's lack of external reactions and typical signs of curiosity that babies exhibited, to the point of worrying whether he suffered from some mental deficiency. It was to be expected that they reacted with such excitement, especially considering that it was just in time for the child's first birthday celebration.