Chapter 197: The Thunder Fists

“Grady!”

“Grid ……”

Even though Jace couldn’t understand Dwarven, Grid’s name was at least noticeable.

Many of the dwarves recognized his appearance and came over to greet him, to which Grid only barely responded.

According to Grid’s descriptions along the way, it seems as if he is on the verge of being abandoned by his hometown and his father, and it is more than likely that he will be greeted with a cold shoulder when he returns to his hometown as well.

But Jace hadn’t expected at all that so many people here would know him and care so much about him.

The homecoming dwarf became the center of attention among the steps of the mountain range, and many of the dwarves came over at the sound of his voice, some greeting him, others chiding him a few times, reminding Jace of his own return home to meet his mother as it were.

Some of the dwarves rushed up in obvious agitation, even shouting something angrily, and Grid responded only grudgingly, with a bit of embarrassment and embarrassment on his face.

Jace guessed that it was also asking why he didn’t contact his family more, or why he just left like that for a long time without hearing from them.

Once they had greeted Grid, they naturally focused on Jace, and the dwarves approached, some speaking a few words of dwarven, others grudgingly greeting in broken common, saying a few words about how are you, where are you from, and so on.

Jace answered as best he could, but the other man didn’t seem to understand either, and had to rely on Grid to explain one by one.

Surrounded by the enthusiasm of the local dwarves, before they knew it the two had climbed halfway up the stairs the dwarves had built up. From here Jace looked out over the rest of the cliff face, seeing it more clearly than from the bottom.

Several huge cave palaces can be seen here nestled in the hills, guarded by dwarven statues, all with half-open, massive, heavy stone doors at their entrances.

Zigzag steps were built from the base of the mountain all the way up to near each palace, and Jace looked up, noticing that some griffins were circling the eagle-headed colossus at the highest point, as if they had made it their lair.

Perhaps none of the buildings here could match the gates of Ironforge Castle, but the clusters of palaces of varying sizes on the cliffs formed another form of grandeur with that giant eagle stone sculpture as well.

Halfway up, Jace slumped down on the handrail and rested for a moment, at which point he noticed that the look on Grid’s face was already complex.

“Gred …… are you that famous here? It feels like the whole city recognizes you.”

“It’s not that famous.” Grid pointed to the other side of the cliffs and said, “See over there, no one over there knows me except a few griffon knights, Lord Kudran’s home is over there, that’s the hall of the Brute Hammer family. Here is where we Thunderfists live, all considered my cousins.”

Jace looked in the direction Grider was pointing, and indeed saw a much larger stone palace, just out of sight from the assortment of trees and cliffs and rocks, that was quite a bit larger than this one.

The Brute Hammer Clan is the largest of the Brute Hammer Dwarves, after all, outsiders named this entire clan after their clan name.

“Is it true that the dwarves here don’t know the common language?” Jace asked helplessly.

“Most don’t.” Grid said, “The ones who have been out and about will know some, either the older ones, the sages and lords and such.”

“Where did you learn the common language?” Jace asked.

“Fort Rapids.” Grider said.

“Why, what are you doing in Fort Rapids.” Jess asked.

Grid said, “It used to be thirty or forty years ago that Stormgarde wanted us to send guards to patrol the Sador Bridge to make sure that the Black Iron Clan didn’t harass their peasants, and at that time I volunteered in order to try to get on a griffin a little bit earlier and was anxious to be able to get some credit for my work. You know in those days in the Eagle s Nest Mountains …… everyone thought that humans were less trustworthy than elves. If the elves were a bunch of arrogant selfish people then the humans were a bunch of cunning bandits, and that’s how most people saw it in the earliest days.”

Jace wasn’t surprised by the stereotypes, and asked, “But why doesn’t Fort Rapids send its own army to patrol there?”

“Because the Sador Bridge was built by us and those people in Copperbeard.” Grid explained, “When the bridge wasn’t built over a hundred years ago, Fort Riptide didn’t have to worry about the Black Iron Ones at all …… In the past, no one but griffins could cross the gorge that separates Kazmodan from Arash. So Tolbein feels that we and Copperbeard should be held responsible for that.”

“No wonder you’re so familiar with what weapons the close guards at Fort Riptide use.” Jace drifted off.

“I wasn’t there long either, and spent my days just wandering the road from Riptide to Sador Bridge with my sword, making small talk with the soldiers and farmers there.” Grid said, “The common tongue was far less familiar then than it is now, and it was only after a few years of assisting in the defense there that the group of us who had learned it became emissaries for communicating with the outsiders down in the mountains, you understand, don’t you? Especially during the time of the orc wars.”

Speaking of which, Grid was again surrounded by a group of Dwarven guards who had run out of nowhere and were still wearing their leather and lock armor.

Jace could only step aside awkwardly to watch him get squeezed into the middle of a group of dwarves.

At that moment, though, he noticed that one of the dwarves grabbed Grid’s hand and asked something, and Grid shrugged him off less than happily, trying to get away from the men to take a few quick steps forward.

The dwarves pressed on as if they didn’t quite understand, but Grid didn’t want to answer them anymore.

Jace could probably guess that the other man was probably asking Grid about his illness.

After being shaken off by Grid, though, one of the dwarves saw Jace and said, “Hello, friend of Grid.”

“Hello.” Jace hastened to say as well, a raw hello in Dwarven, and the dwarf clapped his hands together happily and said, “To the Alliance of Lordaeron!”

Everyone actually didn’t speak the same language, and after a few chilling words the dwarves let Jace go, who immediately caught up with Grid and ran into a patch of halls carved out of a cave.

“Your friends here aren’t quite what you said before.” Jace said as he followed him.

Grider took a quick step deeper, saying as he went, “What’s different?”

“They’re kinda warming up to you, aren’t they ……”

“Stop it.” Grid said with a stern face, “I’m going to see the Sage and ask him what the name of the owner of this battle manganese is. Honestly, I don’t even want to attend the banquet tonight, I just want to get out of here quickly.”

“Why don’t you help me practice my mage armor again tonight? I think I still wasn’t skilled enough last time ……”

“That’s fine too.” Grid nodded and continued walking away, and Jace rubbed his rumbling stomach and looked at Grid’s back, vaguely sensing the reason for his unhappiness.

Anyone here who knows Grider knows about his injuries and his pain.

So in a place full of Brute Hammer Dwarves, his identity as a Brute Hammer Dwarf naturally faded away, leaving him with the label “disabled veteran”. For him, the Eagle’s Nest Mountain is a “torture chamber” built by a group of people who want to be good to him and take care of him.

If outsiders brought up his disability, he could curse back and beat them back to make them pay. But here it was as if he was bound and gagged, unable to do anything to resist.

Grider ultimately chose to flee, and it wasn’t a bad solution.