Chapter 232 – Legend of the One-Armed Kul Tiras Hero Jackal Slayer Archmage

After burning the whole place down, the two men looked at the ghastly fire, the charred odor carrying a sickening stench of corpses.

“I’m kind of scared of catching necrotic poison.” Jace scratched his wrist and said, “I’m going back to the Cathedral of Light for a physical.”

“I have to go too.” Grid said, “By the way, do you think it’s necessary to go back and look at that Hog’s body? Should we break its head a little more to prevent it from coming back to life?”

“Makes sense.”

The two ran all the way back to where Hogg had died, one with a machete and one with a broken sword, chopping up the huge corpse of the jackal leader in a rotten whoop before giving up.

Compared to the corpses we just saw in that altar-like place, this big pile of rotten meat in front of us all looked a bit eyebrow-raising.

Grid gasped, “You gave me your word that you wouldn’t learn these spells.”

“Don’t worry.” Jace said, “Even if I want to learn it, I have to have talent in that area before I can do it, the problem is that at the moment with my talent in the field of arcane arts, it took me days to learn a light spell before I was finally able to cast it proficiently, and arcane wisdom took even longer than that, and mage armor …… not to mention that right now These things I even have trouble figuring out which section of these papers is a spell, how do you expect me to learn.”

“I’m not going to bullshit you if you’re going to learn necromancy, Jace.” Grid said “I’ll cut you on the spot.” Jace shook the paper out of his hand and said “I’ll take this to Winressa when I get back, okay? I’ll go straight to her when I get back to Stormwind, no chance of learning.”

“Alright, I’ll keep an eye on you.” The dwarf said with a nod.

Jess asked, “So why don’t you take the papers? If you’re so afraid of me stealing them myself.”

The dwarf immediately growled, “No! Keep these things away from me, dammit, there’s no way I’m carrying.”

“Then you don’t have to bullshit me!” Jess said helplessly.

In fact, he never wanted to learn any necromancy either.

This is a completely uncontrollable path of no return, everyone who has anything to do with necromancy dies without a burial place, unable to tell whether they are alive or dead, and all the people close to them who have any relationship with them also simply have no one who can look at the end of the road, and die without any peace.

So, he was quite understanding of Grid’s reaction.

If it hadn’t been for that incident in Dalaran, he probably would have given these directly to the Wizard’s Temple, but now he just couldn’t do that.

Either destroy the information or give it to the elves, he didn’t even want to try to figure out how to translate this stuff, didn’t want to be associated with it.

If Walesa wasn’t in Stormwind, he might have actually burned them along with Grid along with that camp and the death knight corpses.

At noon, the two dragged their tired bodies out onto the main road at the end of the forest, and the sight of the sentry towers over at the Western Springs Fortress made them feel as if they were finally returning to the world of sanity.

“I thought I’d never come back.” Grid muttered, “If there really is a Land of Shadows in this world, it would probably look like that in there.”

When he finished, he looked over at Jace, who had just leaned against a street sign, and said, “You give me your word that you’re sure you’re not going to learn necromancy.”

“No, you’re asking for the umpteenth time.”

“So how can I trust you ……”

“How about this.” Jace held up one hand in the form of a silver hand and said, “I pledge to the Holy Light.”

“No!”

“Then I promise …… all my gold that if I learn Necromancy let me not be able to afford a house in Stormwind for the rest of my life.”

“Ah …… that’s more like it.” Grid nodded.

Jace thought to himself that this was at least in Stormwind, if he had been at the level he was at in his last life after two years of hanging out there in the provincial capital, this oath would basically be the same as not taking it.

At that moment, a group of patrols passed over the road in the direction of the Western Springs Fortress, and seeing the dress of the two men, one of the soldiers asked, “Well, gentlemen, have you encountered the Jackals?”

“Encountered!” Grid threw the cloth bag wrapped with Hogg’s claws on the ground and said, “Met an oversized one.” Several soldiers rushed over when they heard it and flipped open the bag to take a look, and every face showed surprise.

“Is this Hogg’s claw?”

“The fur is the right color and it’s really dead ……”

“Hogg’s dead! That Hogg’s claw is here now! Only Hogg’s claws can grow as big as an orc’s hand ……”

“The hero of Western Springs has been born, come and see, Hogg is dead!”

The two were pushed to the front of the sentry tower by a group of soldiers, and Jace was hugging his bag tightly the whole way, fearing that the human skins containing the dark words of the Necromancers would be squeezed out and spilled in front of the crowd.

When he arrived at the sentry tower, the sheriff came out to greet him in his Stormwind City armor on purpose, and stared up in surprise when he saw Jace, asking, “Are you …… you the mage from the other night?”

“It’s me, sir.” Jess said.

“There’s only two of you? I know there’s another team of three that hasn’t come out of the forest yet, and I have a feeling it’s going to be a bad one.”

Jace and Grid looked at each other, dare I say that the group of seven was completely unknown to the soldiers here, it was not likely that the two of them had stumbled upon professional bandits posing as mercenaries.

The sheriff said, ”Regardless, both the merchant routes and the inhabitants of this neighborhood, including the western wilderness side will surely be able to live in peace for a few years now. I think I can thank you both on behalf of the people and soldiers of the town of Shining Gold and this side of Western Springs for your dedication …… In fact, I even think that these bounties are a bit low, but the king really can’t come up with any more money either.”

The sheriff handed the bags of money to the two men and excitedly said a whole lot of praise, but it was also true that there were no more additional rewards, and Jace thought to himself that it wasn’t any wonder that no one had been able to successfully hunt Hoggs, the level of shit that went on here wasn’t at all proportional to the rewards, and it felt like it would be better to mention at least 3 or 4 gold coins to be close to it.

“Having said that, I still don’t know either of your names ……”

“Greed Thunderfist.” Grid said as he wrote down his generic name.

Jace hesitated for a moment, but thinking that the piece of necromantic altar had already been burned, and that the only clue was in his own hands, there was nothing more to worry about, and he signed his name.

The sheriff glanced at Jace as he signed his name, frowned, and asked, “You’re Jace Sesso? What’s the connection between the one who saved Stone Castle and you? Or are you the one?”

Jess confessed, “I’m the one.”

“That’s the Jackal Slayer of Stone Fortress!” The sheriff told the soldiers around him, “Don’t you all know about that Jackal attack at Stonefort? I heard the king rewarded him with a royal family heirloom sword!”

“Wait ……” said Jess, “No it hasn’t!”

A nearby soldier said, “No wonder he can hunt Hogg …… I told you last time, if anyone could take Hogg down, it would have to be that mage from Stone Castle!”

“Is it really Jace Sesso?”

Hearing the voices in the sentry tower, a number of people outside poked their heads in to see what was going on. Jace was confused, thinking, “Where’s the royal family heirloom sword? How come he didn’t have one.

“Really?” Grid looked at Jace and asked in a low voice, “A sword was really given to you? Did you secretly sell it yourself?”

Jace looked around and said quietly, “I would sell the sword Varian Urien gave me? Don’t you be ridiculous.”

“He can’t be Jace Sesso, I’ve heard that Jace Sesso is a Kurtilas with a broken arm.”

“You heard wrong, he is taller than a Kulthirasian, not a real Kulthirasian.”

“The lad isn’t even that tall, and his arms are still full nah!”

Jace felt like it was a bit of a big deal, and after half a dozen explanations that he simply couldn’t wriggle out of, it was only with the help of the sheriff that he was able to properly explain what was really going on up at the stone fortress.

That’s the story of a bunch of veterans of the orc wars holding the castle with Jace, and it’s not even close to as exaggerated as the legends make it out to be.

Luckily, the soldiers were usually used to hearing outrageous legends and had a mental expectation that the truth of the matter would emerge.

Add to that the fact that Jace showed off the faint burn marks on his arm, and the corroboration of a few veterans who had heard a little more reliable versions of the story, and it was good to at least get his story straightened out at the Western Springs Fortress.

But Western Springs was only a small stagecoach station after all, and there was no telling how many outrageous legends about himself he would encounter in the future.

After taking a good bath in the Nafriti River, and then carefully washing all the clothes they wore, washing off the corpse smell, and changing into the old uniforms and pants that the soldiers had given them for nothing, the two of them boarded the carriage and set off on the road back to Stormwind City.

Experiencing the warmth of the people of Western Springs had improved Jace’s mood quite a bit, and there was the crappy thing about necromancy that just needed to be dealt with slowly, right?

Drowsiness overtook him and he fell asleep, with only the sound of wheels rolling and horses’ hooves in his ears.