Chapter 1 The Alliance Expeditionary Force

Thump, thump, thump! A rough knock on the door woke Jess up.

“Jace! Jace Sesso!”

“Coming right up.”

Jace put on his shirt and opened the door, and outside the door a number of people on the street were walking in groups toward the gates of the city, which seemed to be in the midst of some great gathering, and was very noisy.

In front of him, a tall tough guy who reached Jace’s chest height raised his hand and grabbed him by the collar.

“What are you doing, huh? I can’t believe you’re sleeping on such an important day, you’re going to miss it soon!”

“Tall” was by no means ironic, the guy with the black beard and the face with the linen patch over his right eye was a dwarf, and he was definitely one of the tallest of his kind.

“So, Grid, what’s going on?” Jace asked impatiently.

“Don’t you want to see Aurelia Windwalker?” The Dwarf named Grid said excitedly, “She is the Ranger General of Quel’thalas, General Turajan’s favorite …… If we don’t see her now, how will we ever have the chance to see such an Elven beauty in the future?”

At the sound of Aurelia Windwalker’s name, Jace felt his heart jolt and slam twice.

It wasn’t because he had any special meaning for this female elf general, but because this familiar name instantly evoked memories of his past life that he had dusted off in the bottom of his heart.

Yes, he was a traveler and had been in this world for seventeen years.

He hadn’t felt right since he was yanked out of his mother’s womb; the memories of the previous world were as clear as if they had been carved in stone, and even the rapid brain development of three to five years old hadn’t been able to erase them.

I was still in front of the computer concentrating on opening the World of Warcraft group book, and after a burst of tiredness the things in front of me changed completely.

He was born in the royal city of Lordaeron to a Lordaeron guard who watched over the walls and a mother who was the daughter of a farmer in Briar.

His childhood was pretty smooth, but when he was ten years old the Dark Gate opened and the Orc War broke out. Fortunately, the royal city of Lordaeron was not seriously affected by the orc war.

The chaos and disasters that had occurred in the far south, as recounted by the refugees who had fled from the Stormwind Kingdom, made it clear to Jace that everything here was exactly as described in the game world.

In that case, it would be necessary to leave Lordaeron and settle in Stormwind in order to live out your life successfully.

Because according to the game’s plot, in a dozen years, the brilliant and splendid Lordaeron would be completely destroyed by the legions of natural disasters, and the entire land of the kingdom would be ravaged by the plague.

Not only do the victims not get peace in death, but they are pulled up from their graves by necromancy to fight for the undead masters who want to conquer the world until they are torn apart and can no longer stand.

And while Stormwind was destroyed at this point, it was pretty much smooth sailing for decades afterward, with no destruction-level disasters.

There was certainly no way Jace was going to sit around and do nothing, however his parents had lived in Lordaeron their entire lives and were not willing to move anyway, and there was no way Jace was going to convince his parents of what he had heard from the other side of the world that wouldn’t happen until a decade or so later.

Luckily, they weren’t opposed to young Jace venturing out.

Stormwind was destroyed in the war, and King Terrenus II of Lordaeron spent a great deal of money hiring craftsmen and young laborers from the major kingdoms, even the dwarves, to help the Urien royal family in Stormwind rebuild their home.

Jace, then fifteen years old, took advantage of the wind and joined the returning Storm Kingdom refugees in this city of hope in the game, later the capital of the Alliance.

Right now, with his strong body, Grid toppled the crowd of onlookers in front of him like an icebreaker, and led Jace all the way forward, unable to hold back a harrumph of laughter as he did so.

He didn’t hide his excitement at all; after all, Aurelia Windrunner, the legendary master of combat, was exactly the type of woman he adored the most – a warrior of both beauty and strength, and at the same time, unlike those pompous elves who liked to brag about themselves, she was a true hero capable of defeating hundreds of people with a single blow.

Jace was certainly excited, as this was sort of the first famous Wraith celebrity he’d been able to meet in person.

For the first seventeen years of his life, those familiar names were heard only from the lips of his parents, or other townspeople and citizens, or they were sent back from the battlefield.

He had never personally known, or even met, any of them.

Jace chased Grider out the inner gate to the Valley of Heroes-which, of course, wasn’t called the Valley of Heroes at this point.

Without the statue, the Valley of Heroes is in a state of disrepair, devastated by wars that lasted for years, and the flames of demonic warlocks and red dragons have burned the once lush shade of the river to the ground.

Veterans of the orc wars passed in formation over the bridge of the city gates that had only just been rebuilt, their armor still bearing scorch marks and hacked out dents, and the weapons and shields they wielded bearing the markings of different kingdoms.

Their destination was thousands of miles to the southeast, the Dark Gate, the pathway through which the orcs had descended from the Otherworld.

Grand Marshal Turajan is gathering his army at the Watchtower, preparing to cross the Dark Gate built by the orcs straight into the orcs’ old home of Draenor, ending the orc horde’s threat to this planet, Azeroth, once and for all.

Yet of the crowd watching the army march out, Jace was the only one who knew how they would end up.

A few years later, the leader of the Orcs, Neojo, channeled the magic that destroyed Draenor, and the entire planet fell apart. The Expeditionaries took it upon themselves to destroy the Dark Gate on the Draenor side so that this cataclysm would not reach Azeroth.

Since then, all members of the Expeditionary Force have been left behind in that dying world.

To honor the sacrifices of the expeditionary force, the King of Stormwind ordered that statues of the Sons of Lothar, the heroes of the expeditionary force, be erected on this bridge and named it the Valley of Heroes.

“Where’s Aurelia, I want to see Aurelia Windrunner!” Grid yelled, oblivious to the solemn atmosphere around him.

Both the citizens of Stormwind and the members of the expeditionary force were almost aware of the dangers of this operation, and everyone had come here to strengthen the soldiers.

However, to a dwarf like Grid, fighting to the death against an enemy strong enough to destroy the world is simply the highest romance in life.

Looking out amongst the parade of Dwarven warriors who had arrived here from Eagle’s Nest, his eyes were filled with envy rather than concern.

“If I hadn’t been blinded in one eye by a troll’s bat and couldn’t throw a hammer la, I’d be willing to follow Kudran Brute Hammer into the Dark Gate.” He regretfully said in the common tongue with a dwarven accent, “I’d be General Aurelia’s close comrade in arms by then, and in the end, it’s not clear who will actually get to hold the beauty between your Marshal Tulayan and I.”

Hearing his words, the surrounding citizens who were still slightly bored silently withdrew their eyes.

Before the Orc War, humans, dwarves and elves used to have huge divisions and conflicts, and even had several conflicts.

But at this time, all the residents of Stormwind City knew that if it wasn’t for the dwarves and elves who stood together with the humans in the moment of crisis and fought to the death in the face of the otherworldly invaders against all odds, they might not have had the chance to go back to their hometown again.

Jace said, “Aurelia has two other sisters with the same beauty. You still have a chance, Grid.”

“Heh!” Grid let out an embarrassed laugh, “I don’t see those childish little girls, I like mature ones.”

“Ms. Sylvanas, the second of the three Windwalker sisters, is said to be over six hundred years old.”

“Over six hundred years old? Then wouldn’t her sister be ……”

“Hush ……”

Jace saw the blue-feathered golden phoenix flag of the High Elves fluttering in the distance as they approached.

“Come on, come on, help me climb up to the railing …… I can’t see!”

Grid muttered a complaint, and it took all of Jace’s strength to lift the nearly 200-pound steel barrel slightly.

In the afterglow, a group of High Elves were advancing in formation, dressed in silvery-white armor, holding carved spears and silver bows, their sea-blue cloaks hunting with the wind through the valley, both men and women elegant and composed, a stark contrast to the Dwarves and Humans.

The female elf riding the white horse at the very front was probably Aurelia Windwalker, the ranger captain of Silvermoon City.

She was clad in an emerald green cloak, her long, pale blonde hair falling to her chest, and her magical eyes, glowing blue from being full of arcane power, were visible enough even in the sunlight to stare resolutely ahead.

Aurelia’s cheeks were wasted and exaggerated, not to mention the thin, narrow, pointed nose that grew to high, pointed ears that were slightly odd by human standards.

Jace remembered the first time he had seen an elf from Quel’thalas in Lordaeron and felt like he had stumbled upon an alien.

While it was true that they were no different from the in-game appearance as a whole, only more detailed and realistic, Jace no longer had any of the same outlook that he once had when playing the game.

After more than a decade of living in the Otherworld, he suspected that he was becoming more and more distant from the social animal he had once been, becoming more and more like a native of Lordaeron.

If it wasn’t for the certainty of a natural disaster invasion in a decade or so, there was no way he would have made the decision to travel across the ocean and away from home to come to Stormwind City.

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have Goldfinger.

Yes, so far, no old grandpa in a ring, no suddenly awakened ancient bloodline, not a single magic-filled arcane gemstone, not a whispered instruction from any god or demon lord to be heard.

He was just a bricklayer from the north, no different from the locals except for a mouthful of common language with a Briar accent.

Other people’s crossing, and mine.

If Jace had opened up like those other main characters of travel novels with a system of some kind of extra points or something, he might have had the ability to stop this and save the world in their place at this point.

And now, he can only rely on his own hands to earn money to eke out a living, at best, relying on his foreknowledge of future events to pick a safe and stable place to live.

But at the very least, he was going to make enough money to get his aging parents from Lordaeron to Stormwind. If he couldn’t save the world, at least take care of the people who meant the most to him.

Grid sighed as he looked at the fading expeditionary group and asked, “Do you have any plans for today?”

“Go to the notice board and see what work is available.” Jess replied, “It’s almost time to pay next month’s rent.”

The two chatted as they walked with the crowd toward the inner gate.

“I’m going to pay it too.” Grid said, “A couple of copper whiskers say Baron Leskovar is raising the rent next month, from five silver coins to six.”

“Aren’t you going to live in a different house?”

“Where to? Now the whole Storm City is raising rents, the cheap ones are all full, do you want me to go to Shining Gold Town? Don’t get your head cut off by orcs on the way.”

“Hasn’t the road to Shining Gold resumed its daily patrols yet?”

“Recovered, the patrolman’s sword and intestines were just found on the shores of Lake Mirror last month.”

“Swords and …… intestines?”

“Human intestines, not orc intestines.”

“Could the wolves have done it.”

“Is there a difference, Jace? Wolf plagues, orcs, fishmen, and the Aelwyn Forest is scarier than goddamned Cintron, I mean it. At the very least the Amani trolls understand a little Dwarven, and you yell out ‘Spare me!’ , and they don’t mistake it for ‘Stick my head on the tip of a spear now!’ .”

“You’ll end up with your head on the tip of a spear anyway.” Jace laughed.

“It’s true that there’s no difference, but it feels more like fighting an enemy to the death than being somehow eaten by a brainless beast, if you know what I mean.”

The two of them talked and laughed as they walked over to the notice boards at the crossroads of the trade area; a few months ago the boards were all about repair work in the various urban areas, now a good portion of them were all about wanted bandits and wandering orc chieftains in the Aerwyn Woods, as well as recruitment for laborers over in the Red Ridge Mountains.

The reconstruction of Stormwind City was nearing its end, and most of the more detailed and specialized work had been taken over by the local professional craftsmen’s guild, the Brotherhood of Stonemasons, which meant that they, the foreign workers, would have to find a way to find another way to make a living.

The house that Jace had rented was on the back street of the Storm City Trade Row, one of the first buildings to go up in the new city. Most of the refugees lived in the old town, and the ones who were willing to live in the new town were the outsiders, the workers, like them.

However, as the new town became more and more prosperous, Jace now had to pay 4 silver coins a month for rent, and it was expected to go up soon, and the dwarves had always been well informed.

For a former World of Warcraft player like him 4 silver this price is a joke, after all, he played the game when the bag has been carrying hundreds of thousands of gold coins did not feel much, casually stroll through the auction house is thousands of in and out.

Yet here in Stormwind City, many people in Stormwind couldn’t earn more than a few silver coins for a month of hard work.

Jace remembered that last year there was a man outside his house who polished the armor and weapons of veterans, charging only two or three copper coins for a polish, and during that time the silver mines of the western wilderness had not yet been recovered from the black stone orcs, and a silver coin was worth nearly two hundred copper coins.

That guy is a local of Storm City, and used to have some relationship with a certain noble, but now he is living in a very tight situation, and I heard that his house was inhabited by an ogre during the orc occupation, and he owes a debt for redoing it.

Jace wasn’t as good as the man, at least he had a trade, while he was doing nothing but force work, and that honorarium from Terrenus II was going to be spent.

Originally, the deal was one gold coin per person, but it turned out to be 40 silver coins when it was handed out.

The nobles on the payroll claimed that the dog-heads in those gold mines around the town of Shining Gold had been driven out, and now that gold was cheap, 40 silver coins were enough to get a gold coin.

However these workers had seen neither gold coins nor dogheads since they arrived in the Stormwind Kingdom. Only Jace knew that the mines hadn’t been cleared of the dog-heads after twenty years, and the dog-head bosses were all encrusted with gold teeth.

Not to mention, now that the gold mines are back in production, why aren’t they handing out gold coins, or at least crushed gold nuggets of about the same weight?

Now it is harder and harder to find a job every day, last week a job to escort the wood from the East Valley lumberyard to Storm City, halfway a pack of gray wolves followed a few of their hired hands for two or three hours, only to come back and give each of them an honorarium of 35 copper coins, which is just a joke.

There’s a bunch of out-of-towners just like him who are crazy about it.

While fretting, I suddenly saw a rather unusual job on the bulletin board.

“Recruiting an assistant with some knowledge of history, archaeology and preferably some knowledge of herbs. Possess good patience and other excellent qualities, and work in the Mage District – Eden Marin.”

Eden Marin?

Jace remembered that there was a great mage, Marin, in the mage district of Stormwind City, and his daughter was also an excellent mage and participated in the War of Northern Aggression between the Alliance and Horde coalition more than a decade later.

If this Eden Marin was that Archmage Marin, wouldn’t applying for this assistant be a great opportunity to become a mage?

Knowledge of history, knowledge of archaeology, knowledge of herbs …… Although Jace hadn’t systematically studied history and archaeology, he felt that with his own knowledge of this worldview, these aspects should have no problem hanging on to the vast majority of ordinary people.

Since this mage is posting such a notice on a notice board that faces field workers and ordinary citizens, he should not have too high expectations of the applicants either.

Once you become a mage, you shouldn’t be short of money, right?