25 The Dark Caverns

Everybody was surprised by the fact that Icarus was an archer. It has to be known that an archer's usefulness was directly related to two things; their strength and their mastery. They were not a weak hunting team and hunts are supposed to be generally unpredictable. In such a case, a major role such as archer was supposed to be filled up by a strong person who could hold their own. Their leader, Caylus was also extremely up-tight and they knew that he wasn't the type of person to lax the entry requirements for any reason whatsoever. Given these facts, they could only conclude that their young lord was actually skilled enough to join their team. This fact was the surprising part as it takes even geniuses a good few years to master archery to a satisfactory level. Naturally, they tried to downplay their surprise as they were only supposed to be farmhands and weren't supposed to know these facts.

After the introductions were finished, Caylus pulled out a sheepskin map of the Dragonite farm. The whole farm was shaped like a gigantic five-fingered claw, which made Icarus' imagination run world about the history of the farm. 'Okay everybody, now as you know, John and Casey reported repeated cases of missing sheep from their flock. We know that they usually graze the Metacarpal P area.' Caylus pointed to an area that was on the lower third of where the pinky would be if there really was a claw. Icarus immediately understood two things from this. The first was that Caylus was trying to help him out by letting him get familiar with the area of the farm. At the same time, he also understood that the entire farm was labelled in a quite simplistic yet specialized manner; they were using the anatomical names of the bones to label the areas. 'To think that the people here had enough knowledge about medicine to have a naming system or is it all a complete a coincidence?' Deciding to just not think about the matter, Icarus continued to focus on the matter at hand.

'Hick, what did your investigations reveal about the locations?' Caylus pointed towards Hick who nodded before replying. 'I went scouting there yesterday. At first, I didn't find anything in particular, but then I came across a gigantic ditch that seemed pretty unnatural, near the Proximal P region.' Hick pointed to the upper end of the Metacarpal P region, 'when I looked around, I soon found tracks leading into the Proximal P region.' He had a slight frown on his face as he stroked his chin, 'from the size and shape of the tracks, they seemed to belong to a Titanoboar.' There was no change in anybody's facial expression, which actually surprised Caylus. That was until he realized that his young lord probably didn't even know what a Titanoboar given that he had just started to learn about hunting and animals. As for the people he was commanding, the Titanoboar was no problem for people of their calibre; if they weren't normal farmhands.

The current situation caused Caylus to facepalm internally. 'Hmm, that is quite troublesome given that the boar is at the minimum 10 feet tall.' He tried to give these idiots a hint by mentioning the height of the boar and prayed to god that the young lord didn't notice. It was quite futile though as Icarus was flabbergasted by the mere mention of the height, at the same time noting the strange way Caylus bought it up. Luckily Icarus was quite awkward with Caylus so he decided to not think too much about it. The others seemed to finally catch-on as they started acting concerned as well. To be honest it wasn't really their fault. At the level of these guys, it was practically impossible for something like the Titanoboar to give them any particular trouble. In fact, they would only need to wave a hand to squash it into meat paste. One can imagine how hard it was for people with these capabilities to act like such a thing was a threat all of a sudden.

In the end, they all decided to head over there and put an end to the Titanoboar. Just as Caylus was wrapping up the map, Icarus' sight fell upon the area he presumed was Distal P. He nearly yelled out stop in that instant as the feeling of resonance spiked to unimaginable levels. Barely managing to stop himself from doing so, he looked away in order to settle the feeling inside his chest. Nobody noticed his odd behaviour as they all began heading towards their horses and were soon on their way to the area of the incident. Icarus had completely forgotten about the 10 feet tall boar he was going to hunt very soon, instead, he was thinking about how to extract the needed information about what exactly was in that area that was given him such a feeling. He rode up next to Frank who he deemed the most approachable. 'Hey Frank, now that you guys mentioned grazing areas, I realized that despite being the inheritor of the farm, I didn't even know the different allocations of the areas. Could you tell me about them?'

Frank smiled as he nodded, happy seeing that his lord had a thoughtful son who was taking his responsibilities seriously. 'Very well young lord, I shall start with the road to the nearest city. It is connected to the Carpal area.' Frank paused, realizing that the young lord might not know the area names until Icarus clarified, 'father already told me about the name of the areas.'

Frank nodded before continuing, 'the Carpal area is mainly for farming. The leftmost side of the Carpal area is actually where the Lord's house is and directly opposite that side is the Settlement. In between, they are the fields which we didn't see because of the route that was taken. Then there are the four Metacarpal areas, which are used for grazing. Beyond that area is quite wild with a lot of overgrowths, these areas are mainly used for game hunting and providing the farm with game meat.' Frank stopped speaking which caused massive confusion for Icarus. 'What about the Distal areas?'

Frank furrowed his eyebrows as he started at Icarus with a serious expression. 'Young lord, if possible, please stay away from those areas as much as possible.' Icarus' heart skipped a beat as he felt the weight behind Frank's voice, as if…

'Why?' Icarus just had to ask, he had to know exactly why he felt resonance with such a place, just what exactly what was at that place?

'My lord, these areas are forbidden areas where no life could ever survive. Even the strongest amongst us don't dare go near that region, in fact, we have given them all nicknames in order to let others know of their ominousness.' He paused as if remembering something traumatic, 'the Distal P area is known as The Dark Caverns.' As if on cue, everybody shuddered, causing Icarus to go completely silent. It looks like he wasn't going to get anything out of them.