Chapter 229 – The Dark Forest

The tall jackal leader scurried off into the woods, leaving only a shifting figure moving back and forth from a distance.

Jace and Greed were bombarded with bombs but still caught up with its shadow with all their might, that guy had escaped the mercenary’s hunt for I don’t know how many times, this time he mustn’t be allowed to get away with it again.

Jace shoved the Kid into the bag behind his back and ran with all his might, but Grid ran and gradually lost the pace.

He looked at Jace somewhat feebly, while Jace’s stamina was okay, perhaps because of all that life energy he’d extracted earlier, and more likely because he hadn’t been sparring with Hogg at high intensity for a few minutes ……

Despite telling Grid earlier not to push it, since Hogg was right in front of him, even he didn’t want to give up any little chance.

“Ah! Fuck!”

Grid howled behind him while Jace ran faster and faster, the only thing in his suit was the dark figure in the forest, he had to catch up!

I don’t know how long the chase had been going on, how many roots and sinkholes had been crossed, but Jace felt as if he was getting closer and closer to the dark figure, and there was no doubt that Hogg was badly injured as well, he couldn’t have escaped for as long as a healthy jackal could have.

Hogg’s back was getting clearer and clearer, and Jace watched him, casting the Weakness Curse again as he ran, this time already feeling like he was running out of energy.

Hogg was hit and fell to the ground, Jace took the opportunity to quickly drink a bottle of mana potion, threw the bottle away and chased after him, Hogg braced himself and suddenly stomped on his hind legs to raise a cloud of dust to meet him squarely.

Jace stepped to the side, and even as he stepped out of the way of the huge cloud of dust, he still got some of the debris scraped into his face hurting like hell.

Hogg rushed through the raised dust a fierce chop down, Jace took the sword a frame did not expect this sword was broken by a blow!

Hogg wailed in excitement and swung the machete again with that one arm in a succession of sweeps, Jace dropped his sword and retreated several steps, feeling that each swing could cut his head off directly and sharply, and even the wind from the machete whistled painfully at his neck.

Seeing that several chops couldn’t hit Jace, Hogg suddenly took a big step forward to make another horizontal chop, which was hardened by Jace picking up his staff and blocking it!

Hogg grumbled indignantly, and from the same direction, another chop, Jace again with the staff again block, this time the chop on the staff “pincer” sound shocked his entire arm numb, which he realized what Grid had just experienced ……

And the Hogg now is the Hogg that has been affected by the curse of weakness ……

“Hogg …… will never die ……”

Hogg roared and opened his mouth seemingly to gnaw on Jace’s shoulder, Jace dodged it sharply and Hogg took another horizontal bite, being blocked by Jace picking up his staff to block his foul-smelling lisp. Seeing the staff was gnawed, Hogg heatedly laughed a few times, biting the staff in the hand of the knife and a horizontal slash, Jace gave up the staff jumped back a step, felt his stomach by the wind, almost thought to be disemboweled.

Hogg bit down on his staff and hemmed and hawed, swinging his blade to slash at it again, and Jace reached out, the staff letting out a shadowy glow suddenly snapping out of Hogg’s mouth, ripping out several of its teeth in one fell swoop.

Hogg screamed as he was brought over and stumbled by the staff, dropping even his machete to the ground.

It struggled to get up, and this time it was not as strong or agile as it had been a moment before.

But Hogg seemed even more hysterical, his face covered in blood that looked like black ink in the moonlight, and despite the fact that both eyes were no longer able to focus and he was shaking, he still snarled and raised his hands as if he were going to beat the warlock in front of him to death with his fists.

Jace knew that the last bit of strength the guy had been holding on to by his insane will had basically been sapped with this fall.

He picked up his opponent’s exaggerated orcish machete and slashed into its brain with all his might, ending the creature’s life once and for all.

The machete stayed in the skull and Jace took a few steps back with a slow exhale.

Looking at the head of Riverclaw, whose limbs were still twitching, he thought to himself that if there were any adventurers to come here twenty years from now, no matter who they saw wanted, it wouldn’t be Hogg.

Stormwind Prison, and there will never be another such prisoner.

At that moment, Grider came up from behind, panting, and asked, “What did I miss?”

“Missed it all, Grid.” Jace stepped out of sight and pointed to Hogg’s body not far away, “How about that, I killed it.”

“You ass, shameless thing.” Greed braced himself on his knees and gasped twice, saying, “I just don’t have the strength, damn it …… hurry up and help me strip the armor off, hurry up.”

“I’m kidding ……”

Jace helped Grid take his armor off a little and gave him a healing potion, and Grid grimaced as he lay down in a soft pile of leaves to catch his breath for a few moments.

“How’s that, Jace, am I hurt pretty bad.”

“It looks okay, a bruise and a purple patch, but it doesn’t seem to be anything particularly life-threatening.” Jace said as he sat down next to him.

“A life-threatening injury, you despise me, don’t you?” Greed grabbed Jace’s collar and said, “How could I possibly be killed by a bunch of brainless retards, you’re simply …… I’ve known you for nothing ……”

Before the words were out of his mouth, the guy had fallen asleep holding Jace by the collar.

Jace listened to how Grid had such a strange taste in his mouth, it felt like a movie where the dying man talks tough.

He looked back and forth for any fatal wounds on him again, making sure there was no blood on his back or anything like that, plus the fact that he was still breathing evenly and looked like he just fell asleep from exhaustion, before finally letting go.

After all, movies can’t be made every day, and as long as enough flags are set up, there will always be times when they don’t work.

Jace moved closer to Hogg’s torso and measured his head, which felt about the size of his entire chest.

It wasn’t practical to carry such a head back, it was heavier than all their luggage.

He remembered that in the game, the proof of killing Hogg seemed to be with its claws.

Jace looked at the one arm, and sure enough the claw was as big as his face, an outrageous Jackal’s Claw indeed, so let’s take that.

He took Hogg’s machete and chopped off the claw with a single chop, bled it, wrapped it in a cloth, wrapped it around a few times to stop the oozing blood, put it next to Grid’s luggage, and sat down to catch his breath for a few moments.

Finding a rock for the dwarf to cushion his head, he found himself a root to lean on, clutching his staff and finally breathing a sigh of relief.

His gaze slowly lagged, finally having a moment to fret.

Thinking back to the necromancer from earlier, Jace felt that there were just too many questions to figure out here.

The first thing is who resurrected the Necromancer?

There simply wasn’t a second possibility other than the Death Knight, which Jace felt was almost like slapping the answer to his head.

Maybe those patrollers had killed revived undead jackals before, only that they weren’t very good at distinguishing which ones were undead and which ones were truly living jackals, and that’s why they had the illusion that there were more and more Riverclaw jackals to kill.

To be honest, Jace hadn’t expected to come to kill Hogg at all and have to deal with the Necromancer, after all, there was no sign of any undead creatures here in the game.

So if the two of them didn’t come to this forest to take out Hogg, what happened after that?

As per the game, while the Riverclaw Jackals have many warlocks with mastery of dark magic, there are no necromancers, much less walker jackals like the carrion-skinned tribes of Tirisfal’s woodlands.

What changed all that?

Did the Silver Hand come here later? Or did Varian or Bovar Vortagen conduct some sort of purge against the spread of undeath?

Or …… the black dragon princess Onyxia?

Based on everything that was available, Jace could only guess blindly and couldn’t come to any solid conclusions at all.

He was still a bit excited at the moment, so his thoughts were always wandering wildly, and he didn’t know if it was the Shadow Protection Potion or all that Life Vitality he had extracted that kept him in a constant state of hyperactivity without much noticeable sleep.

Still, he lay down to give himself as much rest as he could for a while; after all, the jackals were still roaming the woods, and Jace not only had to protect Grid, but also watch out for any surprise attack that might come at any time.

Those jackals smelled blood and were likely to surround them from all sides.

Frankly speaking, after that battle just now, Jace wasn’t too afraid of these retarded monsters anymore.

His worries seemed a little redundant though, after about two or three hours there was silence amongst the woodlands, the jackals didn’t seem too keen on finding the body of the dead patriarch.

But just as he was gradually letting his guard down, a fishy odor that wasn’t quite right drifted faintly over.

The smell had nothing to do with the corpse of Hogg, who was emitting the smell of blood and beastly taint before him, but was the smell of true necromantic energy.

“Sarno …… Sarno?”

How dare this guy not respond to his call? Simply ate the bear’s heart and leopard’s guts.

He took the warlock bag off and saw that the guy had fallen asleep on his back in it.

Do demons have to sleep too? Has this guy spent too much time with the two of them and gotten too caught up in the drama?

But just now, this little kid did use an unknown amount of magic in order to help Grid fight Hogg, and now there were some dark red lines floating on Grid’s body, which must be the Blood Deed Seal.

The Kid’s energy was probably weaker than Grid’s, Jace knew that, and after putting on two or three spells he was out of energy. “Wake up.”

Jace slapped the Kid’s face and the Kid opened his eyes blankly.

“What are you doing ……”

“Smell anything wrong?”

“I can’t smell anything right now ……”

“Then keep an eye on this place, I’ll take a look over there.”

“Well ……”

“Don’t go to sleep, not until I get back! If there’s any danger, wake this shorty up, understand?”

“Got it!”

He placed the warlock’s bag with the brat by Grid’s side and stood up to look in the direction where the necromantic scent had drifted from, and as he walked a short distance that way.

Then he realized that this was the direction Hogg kept running in.

Not long into the walk, he came upon what appeared to be a place shaded by a thick patch of dead trees, like a secret camp, only without the familiar tents.

It was hard to see anything at night, and Jace could only vaguely look in from a distance and see some shadows shifting inside in an eerie gesture.

Is that a jackal camp? Why is there no campfire at night?

He opened the map and looked at it, comparing it to the direction he had just moved in, where there seemed to be no markings of a campground.

Jace didn’t dare to go any further, the arcane streams floating around his body hadn’t disappeared yet, and if he went any further, he would surely be discovered.

Better to go back and wake up Griddle and come back together to check it out.