Chapter 230 – The Evil Land

“Wake up, hey Grid.”

The dwarf looked up in a daze and said, “…… What time is it?”

“Just after 2:00.”

“You woke me up after 2:00?!”

“It’s not like we’re at your house right now.” Jace lifted his bag up and slung it over his back and said, “How are you doing?”

“Ah …… right, aren’t we home yet, damn it.” Grid braced himself and lifted the blood-stained armor and sniffed it, frowning, “I didn’t think it was anything when I took it off last night, but now it smells kind of gross.”

Jace asks, “I didn’t say anything about how your armor was ……”

Grid stared at Jace and said, “What do I feel? Like I’ve just gotten very sick, I feel empty in my head, empty in my heart, and overall, just the normal feeling after drinking a healing potion.”

“Are you still sleepy then? I’m looking for something that’s not quite right, can you get up and walk, let’s have a look around.”

The dwarf propped himself up by holding onto the trunk of a nearby tree, twisting back and forth in place as he steadied himself, his bones grinning from ear to ear.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, what did you find? What’s not quite right?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Hearing this, Grid looked at Jace for a moment, his expression, which had been a bit confused a moment ago, slowly becoming serious.

The two returned to the creepy place that was swathed in various branches, the shifting shadows inside still there, and Jace wasn’t even sure if they were jackals, or some other kind of ghostly thing anymore.

He asked quietly, “Do you smell that odor?”

“Smell that, this place reminds me of the Twilight Forest.” Grid held his forehead and said, “What is this place? Are those shadows jackals? Or is it fucking haunted?”

“I saw it just now, do you think it could have something to do with that necromancer?” Jace said.

Grid whispered, “I’d almost forgotten about that necromancer and those living dead …… Damn, what’s with all the weird stuff on this side of the Irving Forest? I would have thought jackals, fishmen and bears were abominations enough.”

“One surprise after another, huh?” Jace taps his bag and says, “Saeuno, can you sense the presence of any spellcasters here? Arcane ones, necromancers …… or warlocks or whatever.”

“Only dead bodies …… smell like dead bodies!” The little ghost whispered.

“Are there jackals in here? Can you sense the living?”

“It’s too hard for me ……,” said the Kid helplessly.

“Waste.” Grider said.

The Kid asked, “So tell me if there is one?”

“How do I know?” Grider said.

“Waste ……”

Jace muffled the demon’s taunts as he said, “Okay, okay, okay …… you can stop talking.”

Grid Instant glanced at the demon and looked at Jace and asked, “What are you going to do, force this camp like you did before?”

“A forced attack?” Jace sighed, “We don’t even know what’s in here, what if there’s a death knight in there?”

“Really, don’t scare me.” Grid’s eyes widened as he said, “However, there’s a big difference between a Death Knight and a Death Knight, you’d know that by asking those soldiers who participated in the Battle of Hillsbrad! I just don’t believe that the Death Knights hiding in the jackal’s den can be as powerful as …… you didn’t just take out one in Dalaran ha!”

“Better be careful.” Jess said.

Grider said, “Why don’t we have the brats light the place up first? It looks like it’s all wood and stuff, so we’ll go in and take a look at it if it burns over and doesn’t budge.”

Jess said, “What if we burn something important, don’t you forget what we’re here for.”

“And yes ……” said Grid, “the bounty for this jackal head alone is too small, but are you sure there’s anything of value in here?”

“Sure, not sure, I’m not Hogg, what’s the point of asking me.”

Jace held up his hood, stared at the camp for a moment, and said, “I’ve got an idea, let’s have the Kid sneak in and see what’s there and we’ll decide what to do with it.”

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Grid asked.

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Jess said, “If it doesn’t work we’ll just drop it and run.”

The Kid shook Jace’s collar in protest again, and Jace said quietly, “If you want to stay alive, you’ll listen to my orders honestly, go in, see if there’s anything important, and then come out, and don’t run out with something private and cause the whole thing to blow up like it did last time out in the wild west, and then we’ll have no choice but to leave you behind, got it? Got it?”

The Kid nodded vigorously and leapt out of Jace’s bag toward the camp, then disappeared in an inconspicuous flash.

Grider lay on his back on the dirt slope staring in the direction it had disappeared in, and Jace leaned down and watched for movement in the camp.

The camp had been quiet, with little fluctuation, until the Kid reappeared beside the two, and Jace asked, “What’s it like in there?”

“Lots of bodies of jackals that don’t move …… and ones that do.”

Jace glanced that way again and said, “No surprise, other than that? Any live jackals?”

“Not a single one.” The little ghost continued, “But there was a human body in the center, master!”

“Human? Is it the body of a mercenary?” Grid asked to Jace, “Should we go in and see if it moves too?”

“It won’t move, and it’s been dead for a long time!” The little ghost said.

Jess said, “Touch over and see, be careful.”

The two of them felt their way from tree to tree, and once they were close enough to the spooky encampment, Jace peered inside through the crooked gaps in the trees.

Like the Kid said, there were only five jackalope zombies who didn’t look like they had much of a brain hanging around.

There were the corpses of less than a dozen jackals here, and oddly enough, the jackals here were all short.

Jace was wondering if he had fought Hogg so he was looking at any jackals small when he saw the human body he had just looked at.

The intact human body was leaning to one side, surrounded by a pile of small jackalope bodies, he was wrapped in some scanty rags and his body was almost black, it looked like it had been here for a long, long time.

The whole place reeked of a strong corpse odor.

This place was a long distance away from either Western Springs Fortress, Raven Ridge, or Sentinel Ridge, and the nearest Western Springs Fortress was separated by a large forest occupied by jackals, so it was possible that this place had not been detected by Stormwind City’s soldiers from beginning to end.

“This is fucking all fucked up.” Grid whispered.

This was beyond Jace’s knowledge of Azeroth; after all, the game’s Elwyn Forest wasn’t this weird.

“Let’s take out these walkers and see what’s inside.” He said.

Grid nodded and the two found a gap they could burrow into and walked in, the jackal walkers realized there was an intruder and began to squeal and squeal, but the two got up to speed extremely fast, coming up to mow down a few, and then teaming up to bring the last few down.

These jackals were far less intelligent than the ones that appeared to have been resurrected by the necromancer before, just a bunch of raving lunatics.

It was a small space surrounded by dead tree trunks and branches, full of all kinds of jackal carcasses, all piled up here, ranging from fresh to long dead.

The human corpse sat in the middle, and Jace realized that he hadn’t died sitting here on his own, but had been held in place by jackals with iron rods and nails and such, like an enshrined statue.

Jace covered his nose and leaned in close to turn over the human’s body, which appeared to be intact on the surface, but a closer look revealed that it was highly decomposed, blackened, and the surface of the skin was even cracked, with the insides presumably even more messed up.

The state of this corpse reminded him of something very unfunny.

Talon-Blood Demon’s Carapace.

Could this be the shell of another Death Knight, the one they had been looking for?

“Come this way, Jace!”