Chapter 16: Defenders of the Night

Jace followed suit when he heard Grider’s words, and at some point there was a young man standing in the doorway, about Jace’s age, watching them pack their packages here.

“I’d like to ask you guys.” The young man said in a cold voice, “I am the town guard, what are you doing here in Crow’s Ridge with these weapons?”

Jace looked the guy up and down and realized that although he called himself a town guard, he was unarmed and not in uniform; could he be a two-bit crook trying to extort some money?

“We’re just passing through.” Jace said, “We came from Sentinel Ridge and some of our luggage got soaked when we passed the Nafriti River, so now we have some time to check and see if anything is broken.”

“Ah yes, yes, yes.” Grid hastened to agree.

“I don’t trust you guys.” The young man said, “Please come with me or don’t blame me.”

Jace thought to himself how nonchalant you half-grown kids want to be, and he glanced at Grid, who seemed to understand what was going on as well.

Jace suddenly stood up and pounced on the young man just to hold him down, the young man yelled like crazy surprisingly backed Jace underneath him, and just wanted to raise his fist to fight, but his arm was pulled by Grid, and the whole person was lifted into the air at once.

“Morgan!”

A girl’s voice shouted all three into silence.

At the end of the corridor, a blonde girl was looking over with shock on her face, she gave a frozen look at the boy being held up, and asked in a slightly sobbing voice, “What are you doing to him?”

“What are you to him?” Jace asked.

“I’m his wife.” The girl said firmly.

A wife? Jace froze for a split second, the man looked about his own age, married at such a young age?

Although it’s not surprising that this sort of thing would have happened in the Middle Ages, ……

“Let go of me!” The boy grabbed Grid’s arm and kept struggling, to no avail at all of course, “Liz, go back, I …… can fix them!”

It was clear that even the young girl, who seemed to have never been in a fight before, completely read the situation between the three men at the moment, despite the boy’s still stiff upper lip.

“Is he really a guard?” Jace asked.

“He ……” The girl hesitated for a moment and said, “Sort of.”

“Yes it is, no it isn’t, what do you mean it is?” Grider asked Jace, “Should we put first him down?”

Jace nodded, and as soon as Grid threw himself on the ground, the boy stood up with flying speed, straightened his collar and said, “You’re strong enough.”

Grid grunted contemptuously and said, “Never seen a dwarf have you boy, I’ll show you a good time today.”

“So what the hell is going on?” Jace asked.

The girl hesitated for a moment, but finally said, “Explain yourself, Morgan, I have to go take care of Sarah.”

The three men looked at each other, not intending to fight again but still wary of each other as they walked downstairs and found a table to sit at.

“Morgan, huh?” Jess asked, “What exactly do you do?”

Morgan stared intently at Grider, not seeming to let his guard down yet, before answering after a moment, “Actually, I’m a guard from the town of Glen to the east.”

Jace asked again, “You’re a guard from Glen Town, so what are you doing in Raven Ridge?”

“I am a resident of Raven Ridge and went to Glen Town for Liz, the girl you just saw here, my wife. Then when more and more of the residents of Raven Ridge left, and the guards that were there didn’t want to stay, I applied to the captain of the guards in Grantown to come back here, and the captain agreed.”

“Why are all the residents here gone?” Grid asked, “I heard there were quite a few people over in Grantown.”

Morgan replied, “The Glen Town side is alright, if it wasn’t for the jackals from the Red Ridge Mountains who have been blocking the roads a lot lately, life would be alright. But the Raven Ridge side ……Raven Ridge side ……”

He pursed his lips and said, “There are werewolves.”

Grid frowned and asked, “What’s a werewolf?”

Morgan said, “I haven’t actually seen it either, but that’s what everyone says.”

Jace gave Grid a disgusted look and claimed to be sixty or seventy years old, but it turned out that he had never even heard of a werewolf.

“A werewolf is a creature from a story passed down on the human side, half man, half wolf, very powerful, will steal children at night to eat.” He explained.

“What’s so great about being half man and half wolf?” Grid said, “Stupider than a man, dumber than a wolf, isn’t that a waste?”

Morgan sighed anxiously when he finished, “You outsiders don’t believe it.”

Grider said, “You’re so convinced when you’ve never seen it yourself.”

“Someone was injured by a werewolf.” Morgan said, “The man’s chest was ripped and bloody, and when he was rescued he kept saying that he had met a werewolf and died quickly. But the next day before he could be buried, the body disappeared, and many say he was attacked by a werewolf, and was cursed to turn into a werewolf as well and escape.”

“Maybe they were captured by ghouls and turned into the living dead.” Grid said.

“Crow’s Ridge was known for its funeral industry when it was booming.” Morgan said, “If a person was bitten by a ghoul and had been poisoned with necrotic venom, there wouldn’t be a second place in the entire Stormwind Kingdom that would know how to deal with such a nuisance better than Raven Ridge. But the injury that person suffered was completely different, there was no ghoul poison, only terrifying shadow energy.”

Hearing this, the look on Grid’s face had frozen as he asked, “That means you still haven’t seen a werewolf in person.”

“Indeed not.” Morgan admitted.

He added, “You guys don’t seem like bad people, and I’m really sorry about before, I’m just wary of all outsiders at times like this after all. No matter what you guys are here to do, please remember not to go out at night, never go out at night, someone said earlier that werewolves would be out at night. Take a step back even if there are no werewolves, the Twilight Forest is much more dangerous at night than during the day.”

“Thanks for the heads up.” Jace said.

“It’s my duty.” Morgan said, “Haven’t introduced myself yet, Morgan Radimore, if you guys are in trouble you can call me, everyone in town knows where I am.”

“Grid.”

“My name is Jace.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, and may the Holy Light be with you.”

Morgan went up the stairs, and Jace looked out the door, feeling that the town was even more eerie than it had been a moment ago.

“You believe this stuff the kid said?” The dwarf asked.

Jace said, “Since he said that, let’s think about going to pick up the herbs tomorrow, there’s no harm in it anyway. There might be fewer walkers and animals during the day as well, maybe if we can’t tell day from night, it makes a big difference to the animals or undead.”

Werewolves certainly exist, and in the game, werewolves are very rampant around the Twilight Forest, wreaking havoc everywhere.

But Jace remembers that it would have been a long time later, something to do with an ancient holy relic, the Moon God’s Scythe, left here after a Dark Elf had been slain, so it was hard to believe that the werewolves of the Twilight Forest had existed more than a decade ago at the present time.

Perhaps it was just as Grid had said, the people here might have mistaken some other monster for a werewolf, after all, the legend of the werewolf had always been a popular children’s bedtime story here.

“Just as well, I’m tired after a long day of traveling, I’ll go up and lie down first.” Grid yawned, and when he said that, Jace was sleepy too.

Listening to the Dwarf’s earth-shattering snores in the middle of the night, Jace looked out the window at the quiet forest for a long time before he finally fell asleep.