Looking back into the creature’s eyes, Ben gave his first smile since entering this new world, pointed at himself and spoke his name.

“Aris!”

Ben’s voice exploded outwards, with his high pitched baby voice and his low control of his vocal chords he screamed his name, causing the creatures to cover their ears in discomfort; Ben showed an embarrassed expression from shouting his name out in excitement so he tried once more, this time controlling himself.

“Aris!”

Ben’s voice came out once more but this time it was the pure, soft voice of an excited child.

All the creatures in the room including the presumed leader looked on with wide eyes and shocked expressions, Ben was almost afraid that some of their eyes were going to fall out.

Ignoring their expressions, he pointed towards the larger creature and spoke its name.

“Evest!”

The creature’s eyes opened even wider, along with its jaw almost hitting the floor, it took several seconds for the creature to compose itself before its eyes began to lightly tear up, quickly reaching its arms out to wrap around Ben and bring him in for a hug, squeezing him against his chest, this caused Ben to feel like his bones were being crushed, as well as the air being pushed out of his lungs and before long he was performing a tap-out like he’d seen in wrestling on earth to try and stop this creature from crushing him.

Noticing Ben’s discomfort, the creature stopped its hug and placed Ben back down on the bed with what seemed like an apologetic look on its face, after waiting for Ben to recover his breath the creature once again picked up the goblet from the ground and took a small drink of it in an attempt to show Ben it was harmless.

Seeing the creature try and get him to drink the blood drink again, Ben thought “Might as well, it doesn’t seem to want to hurt me” Before pointing at and slightly opening his mouth as an indication for the creature to feed the drink to him, since the goblet was half the size of Ben there was no way he’d be able to lift it to drink from.

The creature smiled brightly once more and lifted the goblet towards Ben’s mouth slightly tilting it to allow him to drink from it.

Ben tried to finish the drink as fast as possible to reduce the horrible taste of the blood, but against all of his thoughts, the blood drink was unbelievable sweet, only being able to compare it to Golden syrup, except it was much less viscous and much easier to drink, this prompted Ben to happily gulp down all of the liquid, though strangely there was no red orb in the drink, most likely having dissolved in the blood.

Ben finished the drink and gave a happy burp and patted his belly with a satisfied expression on his face, making him look like a middle-aged man.

[Can you understand me now?]

Ben’s eyes quickly darted to the source of the voice being greeted again with the face of the large smiling creature, Ben responded automatically with a simple “Yes”.

[Hahaha! Good, very good, it is only natural for my son to be this incredible!]

With a booming laugh the creature revealed itself to be Ben’s father, although the part of being incredible confused Ben “I know humans can’t talk or move when they are this young, but I’m not a human anymore?” Ben thought to himself, although what he thought and what he said were two completely different things, he started with the important things first.

“You can understand me? because of the drink?”

Ben’s vibrant blue coloured eyes stared innocently at the creature that he would be calling father from now on.

[Yes, that’s right, this drink is known as ‘Phonetic inheritance wine’ using a parents blood and a flavoured catalyst like the ‘Red Orl pearl’ I used to alter the taste, we make the wine to allow our new-born children to understand our language without teaching them by inheriting the parents knowledge, making a child learn the language at a young age is much more beneficial to their growth, although this is only for normal children, even those children labelled as prodigies are not able to speak before they even an hour old! Haha!]

While Ben was marvelling of the miraculous effects of this ‘Phonetic inheritance wine’ his ears picked up the frenzied chatter in the background.

[Why is he acting so normal, this isn’t a situation to act so normal, is it?!]

[This child… ive seen strange things throughout my life but this…]

[Ahhh, another strange one has appeared]

[A strange father with an even stranger child…]

“Strange this, strange that, I’m not that abnormal, am I?” Ben almost started to cry internally, being called strange so many times was mentally draining.

Ben’s Father finally stopped ignoring these other creatures when he noticed his son’s gloomy expression and turned towards them with a fierce glare [If all you can do is slander my son then GET. OUT. OF. MY. HOUSE!!] Ben’s father spat out these words one after another each one getting louder and more vicious than the last, this caused the other creatures to freeze up in fear, sweat pouring down their faces, one of the creatures even collapsed onto the floor as a result of their legs being drained of strength.

Ben’s father removed his gaze and returned his beaming smile towards Ben, removing all traces of the previous deadly gaze he held only seconds before. This caused Ben to become conflicted, he felt genuine warmth from the protectiveness of his father but at the same time, his Father’s explosive temper also scared him, but this was thrown to the back of his mind when he noticed that the other creatures had quickly withdrawn from the room the moment his father’s gaze had been retracted from them.

[Do not care for them son, I would sooner take my own life than allow anyone to defame my only child]

Evest sent another beaming smile, which Ben returned in kind “Thank you, father”.

Hearing his son call him father for the first time Evest made an embarrassed expression before making a little boast [Of course! It’s only natural for a father to protect his son!]

Ben released a childish giggle watching his father acting so childlike; after all this commotion, and finally being able to communicate, he decided to start digging for information.

“Father, what am i? where am i? and where’s my mother?”

These questions had plagued Ben’s mind since he first arrived here only several minutes ago, he still didn’t know what he was, he clearly wasn’t human, he had no idea where he was, most likely not earth, and finally where was his mother, being a new-born child shouldn’t his mother be besides him, not his father?

[Ah… this… it’ll be easier to see for yourself rather than explain everything. can you walk yet? your muscles should have developed enough by now]

In response to this Ben shuffled his body around onto all fours before pushing up with his hands and balancing on his legs, after some shaky steps and almost tripping over trying to adjust his balance, before a minute had passed Ben had managed to gain enough balance to take his first steps, though during all of this he couldn’t help but be amazed at what he was currently doing, a baby doing its first steps within a hour of being born, he knew of nothing but wild animals that could achieve this but now he had too. Going by what his father had said, this was normal for his species, he had a lot to get used to.

Evest looked on, watching his son attempt his first steps, although he had said he should be able to walk by now that was merely a test, he wanted to see just how incredible this son of his was and he wasn’t disappointed, his son managing to walk somewhat steadily within a minute, it was nothing he could have imagined possible, the only reason he had told his son those words was to make his son see these things as ‘normal’, if only exceptional feats were considered to be normal by his child then that would only accelerate his growth.

[Good, very good, lets go, it’s time to show you of- show you the outside world! Haha!] Evest gave a nervous chuckle after his correction hoping his son wouldn’t notice…

“He wants to show me off. I guess I’m not normal after all” It didn’t work. All of Evest’s hard work had gone down the drain.

Evest lifted Ben off of the bed and placed him on the floor, being a hard surface it made it easier to walk than on a soft bed, so Ben quickly managed to fully adjust to walking in his infant body before following his father out of the house.

After walking through several corridors Ben finally arrived at the door leading to the outside, although before he left, he couldn’t help but comment on how huge the house was “is this really our house? Why is it so big?” but all he got was an egotistically reply making Ben roll his eyes.

[Because your father is a super important person!]