Chapter 121 – Crimes of the Goblins

The next day at noon Jace could no longer feel anything physically different, but still managed to talk his way out of it, even doing a radio gymnastic in place, before the guarding priest finally relented and let him go.

Yesterday, he had said that he was going to see Master Carlo Duchamp to agree on the ship’s ticket, but he ended up being delayed all day at once by practicing his magic.

Jace slipped into the blue hidden earth, ready to grab some food and head over to the Wizard’s Sanctuary to find him, only to run into him right there in the tavern.

Duchamp was sitting in the window reading a book with a cup of coffee, wearing a simple white shirt on top and a pair of gray linen pants underneath, and with the guy’s somewhat out-of-period short hair and scruff, if it weren’t for the highly medieval décor next to him, Jess would almost think that he was looking at a middle-aged, white-collar man sitting on the streets of 20th-century Italy sipping a cup of coffee.

“Master Duchamp.” Jess went over and asked, “May I sit?”

“Ah, Jess, sure.” Dushan set his coffee cup aside and asked, “How’s it going, did you and your friend agree on a time?”

“Agreed.” Jace sat down, handed Duchamp the note Grider had written, and said, “We intend to take that trip to Southsea Town on the great Palatine Conquistador on the 17th.”

“I know that’s a Hot Sands Consortium ship.” Dushan tucked the note into his pocket and asked, “That’s fine and all, but do you know about the things the goblins did in the Orc Wars?”

Well ……

Now that’s a question for Jace’s blind spot; he’s never really cared much about the goblins as a race, let alone what they do before the game’s starting timeline.

By the way, while goblins are a bit closer to the Horde in the game in general, goblins other than the Rusty Waters plutocrats are roughly neutral and do business in Alliance cities as well.

Dushan looked at Jace’s blank face, so he said, “Decades ago, the Hot Sands Consortium took Blackwater Bay from the trolls and renamed it Hidden Treasure Bay, which was originally a human bay that was plundered and lost by the trolls, and is now the property of the Hot Sands Consortium and the Blackwater Pirates. The Hot Sands Consortium used it as their new base of operations, wanting to meddle in the trade of half the continent. Anyway, during the orc war, the Hot Sand Consortium used the harbor of Treasure Bay to help the orcs transport supplies, provide warship technology, and maps of the entire Thorn Valley, and various other actions in exchange for gold coins. And all that money was raided by Orgrim Doomhammer from the vaults of Stormwind Fortress.”

“In other words, the wealth that the Stormwind Kingdom accumulated from the Troll War helped the Hot Sand Consortium expand rapidly, and they called it business, but it was undoubtedly hostile behavior in the eyes of the Alliance. If it weren’t for the fact that after the war they offered to compensate a large sum of money to aid in the rebuilding and explicitly promised to help the Stormwind Kingdom with navigation and freight transportation between the Stormwind Kingdom and the other kingdoms at sea, the Kingdom would have had to blow up Treasure Bay when it recovered. But so what, this money is also the property of the Stormwind Kingdom in the end, no matter how many numbers this compensation is not enough to make up for the crimes they committed, it also depends on their subsequent performance, on how much effort they are willing to ‘put in’ for their reputation of neutrality.”

Jace had a real lack of knowledge about these things, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen the Hot Sand Consortium’s banner when he first arrived in Stormwind, and thought that the Goblins had a pretty close trade relationship with the Alliance. But it was also really close, just economically close.

Jace said helplessly, “My friend has been asking around the harbor for a few days, and he’s not willing to choose a goblin ship either, there really is no other choice.”

Dushan nodded, “I don’t mean to oppose your choice, now of course it’s best to have a boat to ride in. I’m just telling you to be careful, Jace Sesso, those goblins will do anything to make money. But I also know how difficult it is for you, I will take care of it for you and send the boat ticket to your teacher, Master Marin, don’t worry.”

“Thank you teacher.” Jess said.

“By the way, Jace, I haven’t asked you yet.” Dushan took a sip of coffee and asked, “Do you have any special methods for learning the Orc language ……? I know that some nobles in Dalaran who have very rich families go around acquiring books, tomes, letters and so on left behind by orcs to help themselves master the orcish language as soon as possible, but you …… I don’t think you have that much wealth in your family, do you? Of course I don’t mean to offend.”

Wait, rich nobles in Dalaran are going around acquiring orcish writing?

Wouldn’t that mean that we wouldn’t have to risk going to the Treasure Bay auction, and could just drop by Dalaran to sell that Orc Letter.

By the way that remnant book …… Jace thought in his mind that he could also copy all the things on there and sell that book to the people who acquire orc information in Dalaran to make money.

It’s just that it’s written on there about life diversion, if we sell that book, isn’t it the same as publicizing this spell? I don’t know if the warlocks in Dalaran, have learned this spell, if they have then selling it is also selling it, if they don’t know …… then isn’t it the same as giving away their masterstroke?

Thinking about it, Jess felt that that scrapbook still couldn’t be sold outright.

It is important to realize that before the Celestial Plague invasion, the development of warlocks in Azeroth, especially human warlocks, was very, very slow, and it was really the Burning Legion demons summoned by the Celestial Plague Legion and scattered throughout the world after their defeat that led to the great development of black magic in humans.

That being said at this point in time, it’s only right that Jace should also be careful that the good things he learns aren’t spread out indiscriminately, so that he can level up over the other warlocks as quickly as possible.

What a spirit of sharing …… Fuck him.

“My family doesn’t have much money, at best we can maintain our daily expenses, we definitely don’t have the money to buy those expensive books.” Jace explained, “My parents are both ordinary people, and I basically rely on the library, and my own understanding, to learn Orcish …… language. I think a lot of the students in the class are just treating orcish as a hobby, while I really hope to rely on orcish to seek a better-paying career or something in the future, so that’s probably my advantage.”

When he finished, Jace gulped involuntarily; he couldn’t quite do a proper bollocking right now.

“So actually you are optimistic that these orcs left behind in Azeroth will coexist peacefully with humans in the future?” Dushan asked casually.

“I don’t see that happening, ha!” Jace laughed dryly and said, “If humans and orcs can coexist peacefully in the future, will learning orcish still pay well, Master Duchamp?” Carlo Duchamp laughed and said, “Indeed it does.”

Coming out of the Blue Hermit, Jace felt like he’d finally solved a big puzzle in its entirety.

Standing in the gardens of the Wizard’s Sanctuary, Jace looked up at the white tower and thought about the mage armor.

The biggest obstacle to learning Mage Armor at the moment was that one’s energy cap wasn’t high enough, and even though one didn’t know what the end result of casting a spell would be if one’s energy cap was sufficient, it was clear that if one didn’t break through the cap, one wouldn’t be qualified to know the result at all.

Thinking back to yesterday’s spell casting process, Jace was actually feeling a bit fatigued about a third of the way through the spell. After two-thirds of it, he was actually bracing himself as he communicated with those arcane energies in high density.

If one were to follow the standard of practicing Arcane Wisdom before, one should have rested at two-thirds of the way through the spell, or drank a bottle of mana potion to slow it down.

As a result, he was in a hurry and overdrawn his mana causing the evil consequence of fainting.

Luckily there was no permanent damage, Marin had told him once that there were still plenty of cases where such overconsumption had resulted in irreplaceable evil.

Then, of course, there was spellcasting focus, and Jace knew that he had actually wandered off a couple times during yesterday’s spellcasting due to a lack of confidence and other reasons, which must have negatively impacted the spellcasting immensely.

But would it be complete if he insisted on focusing on doing it again? Not necessarily, and Jace didn’t think he’d be any better off trying again anytime soon, let alone at risk. With that in mind, since he was already under the Sorcerer’s Sanctuary, he might as well check the library for any other ways to raise his energy ceiling besides practicing magic.