Chapter 42: Gloomier than the Night

Late at night, a large and a small moon hung in the sky, and the moonlight spilled over the river with a silvery glow, making the water plants along the riverbanks, and instead the deeper dense forests, all the more creepy.

The canopy of the trees blocked out the moonlight, and Grid stared at the single dark yellow monstrous eye gazing this way, struggling to discern exactly which wolf was dominating the entire pack.

As long as he is killed in the first place, the entire wolf pack will lose its backbone, thus dispersing in a flurry …… The chances of him and Jace surviving are many times greater.

A couple of smaller, younger wolves were closest, and they couldn’t stop growling low and showing their teeth in a threatening manner, like they were provoking Jace and Grid to make the first move. Grid, on the other hand, just ignored the guys and focused on the older wolves high above who were watching.

“I have a feeling that it’s likely to be the …… big one standing on the side, did you see it?” Grider said.

“How can you tell?” Jess asked.

Grid said, “The one on the side, is commanding these coyotes, and if you look closely, you can make out eye contact between them. Anyway, pay more attention to that guy later and take him out when you get the chance, don’t waste too much time on the other wolves.”

While Grid was explaining what to watch out for, a small wolf that was fighting the front suddenly lunged up from the side towards his calf and bit it, Grid kicked the wolf to the ground and was just about to stab it with his sword when a few of the wolves around him barked violently and furiously, causing him to hesitate for a moment, the kicked down wolf had already withdrawn.

Seeing that the two had been touched, in a moment the two wolves in the other direction charged at Jace at the same time, and Jace lifted his stick and jabbed it hard at one of them, which tried to dodge and grunted low as it was grazed in the shoulder.

And the other wolf had pounced on Jace, and Grid grabbed the wolf before it had a chance to get its mouth on him and ripped it off and threw it to the ground, snapping his spine with a kick.

With this attack, one wolf was wounded, one was already half-dead and twitching on the ground, and the ones that had just tried to launch an attack slowly pushed away as the older wolves that had stood high and watched began to move in.

“Is this their way of testing us too?” Jace asked.

“Yes.” Grid said, “Be careful …… Jace, they probably think you’re easier to breach and have made you a target.”

After a few of the older wolves went down, the coyotes clearly gained confidence and barked more and more vigorously, and when the older wolves started barking, the coyotes came barreling up after them, all of them really coming for Jace!

Grider had wanted to head towards the older wolf, and when he saw that Jace was surrounded by a suddenly large pack of wolves, he could only swing his sword over to help him deflect a few of the smaller wolves.

Jace felt the benefit of the stick’s length at this point, and he swung it so hard in front of his eyes that the wolves in front of him dared not approach, and when he felt the wolves behind him trying to close in on them, he turned back and swung the stick again, and those wolves hesitated as well.

When a desperate wolf was about to charge recklessly, Grid cut or slashed it with a single stroke of his sword, but every now and then he watched the position of the older wolves, only to realize that they were cunningly hiding behind the younger ones, and must have been looking for a chance to strike a blow.

The old wolves must have changed their tactics after the first few wolves suffered a loss. After a moment of confusion, the two sides surprisingly returned to a confrontational situation.

It was getting late and Jace felt a wave of sleepiness and the movements of his hands slowed down a bit, as did Grid.

“They seem to be wearing us down.” Jace said, “Shouldn’t we make this quick?”

“You’re right.” Grid said, “Jace …… protect yourself, I’m ready to put up a fight.”

“You’re on.” Jace said.

Although Jace had no idea in his mind at all about whether he could handle a siege of several wolves, but if he wore himself out like this, he would only die one hundred percent of the time, and Grid held his sword in both hands, his eyes already pinned on the old wolf that he had looked at earlier.

Jace mustered up the courage to yell, and after a few of the wolves in front of him were distracted, Grid kicked a coyote in front of him and suddenly charged towards the older wolf.

This sudden change of heart made the wolves confused for a while, some of the young wolves went to pounce on Grid but could not catch up at all, and the wolves that were going to surround Jace were not able to form a united force one after another, and Jace manipulated the stick and stabbed a young wolf in front of him to send the dagger into his waist, killing it instantly, and then swept it out and slashed it on another wolf, scaring the young wolves around him with squeaks and yells.

At this moment, Grider lunged towards the old wolves with a strange yelp, yet the one he had his sights set on took a few steps back, allowing two of them to get in his way.

Greed slashed his sword down towards the neck of one of the old wolves, his sword was so fast that the old wolf was hit in the mouth when he tried to back away to avoid it, and the other wolf took advantage of Greed’s unsteady balance before he had a chance to retract his sword and bit down hard on his hind leg.

The dwarf’s yell made Jace’s heart thump as he looked that way, seeing the old wolf that appeared to be the alpha wolf circling around to come behind Gridd and was about to strike him a fatal blow, and Gridd, realizing the danger behind him, cleaved the alpha wolf that was biting at his back leg with a single stroke of his sword, but couldn’t break free of the head that was biting at him with a death grip.

He cursed in Dwarven, and as Jace looked that way, there was a sudden, sharp, fiery pain in his own back as well.

A wolf took advantage of his distraction to pounce on his back, making a series of scratches to try and nibble on the back of his neck, which he shook off with force, however, seeing that Jace was injured, a few of the other wolves that had surrounded him barked wildly and surged forward!

Jace was knocked to the ground by these wolves, he blocked the gnawing bite of the one in front of him with the stick in his hand and pushed it away with all his might, and was about to stand up when another wolf bit his arm and dragged him down to the ground, and as he tried to reach out and grab this one’s eye, his hind leg was torn up by another coyote in a mad frenzy.

There was a burning pain in his limbs, and he couldn’t make it anywhere, and Grid’s side was already surrounded by several old wolves, and he was completely buried in the middle of them at his height, so all he could see was a straight sword swinging around, and every now and then he could hear the screams of the wolves as they were being hacked at, but those old wolves didn’t seem to want to back off at all.

If we don’t put up a fight, it’s really going to be over.

Jace stomped hard through the pain, kicking the coyote that was biting his right leg over, grabbing the coyote that was dragging his arm sleeve and snapping his neck as he did so, and picking up his stick and smacking it squarely on the head of a coyote that was trying to lunge at him again, sending it straight to the ground in a hardened upright position.

The rest of the wolves had gone killing mad, not caring how many of their own companions had died, and before Jace could get a stick to mend the stick of one of the wailing wolves on the ground, he was nearly laid out when another wolf bit into his back and dragged him back a few meters by his shirt.

A mixture of anger, tension and madness clutched hard at Jace’s consciousness.

It’s time. It’s time.

–Feuergert.

The long stick in his hand shook slightly.

The jolt snapped Jace out of his senses and calmed his near verge of losing control, as a sharp pain suddenly hit his limbs, back and neck, hurting him enough to close his eyes.

It was endured for a while, until a few seconds later, when the fierce pain eased slightly to a tolerable level.

Yet when he looked at the scene around him again, there wasn’t a single standing wolf left.

The screams of the pack of wolves in the dense forest rose in all directions, and the backs of several wolves fled frantically with their tails between their legs, as if they had seen some horrible devil and never dared to look back.

The old wolves around Grid were all gone as well, leaving only a few carcasses on the ground, and ones that were too badly injured to move.

The alpha wolf wasn’t dead yet, still there shivering and staring intently at Jace, his lower body already shitting and pissing, but still refusing to back down.

However Grid wasn’t looking at the wolf, he was also looking over.

“…… Did you make this, Jace?”

For a moment Jace didn’t know what to make of it, he glanced at the stick in his hand, a purple magical light flowing between the seams of the rough cloth wrapped around it, evil in the very best way possible, while he felt cold around him, the coldness and the pain alternating with the pain, almost making it impossible for him to stand still.

The head wolf collapsed, his eyes still fixed on this side and refusing to rest in peace, and Grider stood frozen and looked this way, his sword having fallen to the ground.

“Your hands, Grid.” Jace pointed to the Dwarf’s hands, and the Dwarf’s eyes slowly shifted downward, realizing that his hands were shaking so violently that he couldn’t control them.

For a long time after that, neither spoke.

Grid crouched by the river and kept washing the blood from his body and clothes until his hands stopped shaking.

Jace examined the wounds on his body, they were much lighter than expected, there was no particularly exaggerated bleeding, no vital blood vessels should have been injured.

After tearing his shirt, which was already a mess from the wolf’s rips, and making a simple bandage, he sat down on a large rock by the river.

The dwarf gathered his things and walked over to Jace, carrying a small jug of wine.

He slumped toward the stone, took a deep breath, and asked, “Did you learn such powerful spells from those two books?”

Jace shook his head and said, “I learned it from other warlocks.”

Despite the huge pile of beard separating them, Jace could tell the dwarf had a serious expression on his face.

Jace didn’t say anything, and Grid held Jace’s shoulders and said, “Let me tell you a story while we rest.”

“Once upon a time, long, long ago, Ironforge used to be the common home of the Dwarves, and we have lived in the high mountains of Danmoro since the dawn of recorded history, and Ironforge is the grandest city that all the Dwarves have built together, and it is a source of pride for us.”

“However nothing lasts forever, there were too many dwarves in Ironforge and some were forced to travel to the mountains and caves of Danmoro, that’s when three of the largest clans amongst the dwarves, the Brute Hammers, the Copperbeards and the Black Irons, all of them wanted to stay in Ironforge and rule the city. more than 200 years ago, the last of the Kings of the High Hills died, and all was finally messed up. “

“I don’t want to judge who was right or who was wrong, who struck first, and who killed the most dwarves, and who brought the heaviest devastation to Ironforge, these are buried in history, and it’s impossible to say.”

“In the end, Copperbeard was victorious, and my ancestors traveled to the north, where they excavated yet another great dungeon comparable to Ironforge amidst the mountains, the great Grimbator.”

“However, not many years later, the king of the Black Iron Clan who fled into the area of the Red Ridge Mountains and settled there – the self-proclaimed ‘Witch King’ Thorisen utilized the abundance of minerals and timber there to build an army of magical statues, and then, together with his wife, Mordgood each led their own armies and attacked both Danmoro and Grimbato, in a vain attempt to completely conquer all the Dwarves in one fell swoop.”

“It was Mordgood who attacked Grimbalto, a witch who had surrounded Grimbalto for so long that she couldn’t attack it, she actually became so enraged that she cursed the entire city with an evil magical artifact that she had gotten from who knows where. Though she died in the battle, the artifact was far more powerful than Mordgud itself, and it was it that compelled the woman, and the once immensely wise King of Mages, Sorenson. But once it was understood, it was too late, and the Dwarves could never return to their past glory.”

“The magical artifact fell into the bowels of Grimbator, and no one ever saw it again, but the entire city was turned into a fallen abyss of evil spirits and shadow curses because of it, and thousands of dwarves died in agonizing pain. We had to leave there and continue north until we reached Sintran.”

“Dark magic is not a good thing, it disorients, it makes you lose your mind, it becomes more and more extreme, and eventually it becomes so that you don’t even recognize yourself anymore, my old brother.”

“But I don’t want to sway your choices either.”

“Everyone has their own choices, and my clan loves freedom and knows how hard its come by, so we don’t like being told what we should and shouldn’t do. In the same way I don’t like to do that to others, and even more so to you.”

By this point, the dwarf had lost some of his words, and despite the fact that he was pouring a mouthful of wine with every paragraph, Jace knew that he wouldn’t get drunk so easily, and that he was just in a deep tangle as he wanted to give himself up but wouldn’t say it outright.

“However, I also have to admit that your magic is really powerful.” Grid looked at the wolf corpses that were falling to the east on the river bank and said, “I was fighting them for my life, only to suddenly feel a wave of unprecedented, never-felt-before fear. Even when I faced a troll hunter in the dark, I was never that scared. I thought it was going to be the end, knowing that I might not be able to fight, and that I was about to be bitten to death so I was scared silly, but I realized that the wolf was even more scared than I was. It was trembling like it had seen a live lion, that look was amusing enough.”

“That’s when I realized, ah …… we’re afraid of the same thing.” The dwarf chuckled twice as he spoke.

“If I ever stop being me, you kill me.” Jace said.

Grid shook off his right hand, which was still trembling slightly, and the smile on his face slowly faded.

“You know I can’t do it, Jace. Not to say you’ve changed into a man, even if you turned into an orc, I couldn’t lay a hand on you. But if that day does come, I’ll walk away, as far away from you as I can, until I’ve forgotten you as a person altogether.”