Chapter 43: The Wolf’s Den

The two men walked forward and backward along the edge of the riverbank, Grid looking out over those high slopes near the woodland while holding a torch and swinging it back and forth to illuminate the mounds shaded by the roots of the trees jutting out from these short cliffs.

“What if the Wolf’s Lair isn’t here.” Jace was so sleepy he could barely walk, but Grid was unexpectedly spry and completely out of his past image.

“Make a bet.” Grid said, “Just bet five coppers that the wolf’s den must be found within half an hour, I can smell it already ……”

“Who’s betting with you.” Jace said, “Why don’t you follow the wolves that got away?”

Grid shined the torch in front of Jace’s eyes and said, “If those wolves had fled normally, of course you could follow them to the den, but now that those wolves are completely mad at you and their leaders are dead, what den is there to speak of. If you look closely, every wolf is running in a different direction, which one are you going to follow.”

Jace thought back to the scene and his mind was nothing but confusion, not remembering where those wolves had gone.

In this moment of light rambling, Grid was already walking away.

No more footsteps, no more crackling of burning torches, just the sound of the river flowing, the wind blowing through the trees, the clattering of leaves trembling.

Jace took a deep breath and looked toward the river, a moment of quiet as if it would finally give him a little breathing room.

Grid’s words earlier had been hard on him, a path he had sought so hard to find was not recognized by his closest friends.

But it was practically no fault of the Dwarf, who, as a veteran player who knew the history of Warcraft, should have remembered the ancient hatred between the Barbarian Hammer Clan and the Shadow Force.

But Shadow Magic …… seems to be the only pathway that he came to this world to open up to be able to grow, if he just gave up, then he is likely to only be able to live out the rest of his life as a secretive and ordinary person from now on.

After all, he’s about to turn 18, so if he doesn’t take advantage of this opportunity, how many more paths are there to take?

Most of Azeroth’s heroes were showing their talents and making a difference at 18, and he was still just an odd-job man moping around the Elwyn area.

Suddenly, Jace heard a cry from nowhere.

The cry sent a chill down his back in the quiet of the night, and then he realized that it might be a child of the Giant Lake farm family!

“Grid!” Jace yelled, and the dwarf responded from far ahead.

“Do you hear it, child, there’s a baby crying!”

“What? You hear that? I can’t hear anything ……”

“Over there! Across the river! Right over there!”

The two ran together through the water toward the other side of this tributary, from treading water to floating, and finally to swimming hard against the rapids, and hearing more truly when they reached the other side.

Following the child’s cries deeper into the forest, he didn’t have far to go before he came to the bottom of a low slope covered by trees, where a hole in the earth had been plowed out was hidden.

Jace couldn’t care less about the danger and went straight into the hole, Grid was about to warn that there might be something else in there, however before he could say anything Jace was already leaning on his lean body.

“We’re coming to get you, little Fleur!” Jace crawled all the way in until he got as far as he could, only to realize he couldn’t see anything, and it was black before his eyes.

Jace couldn’t hear the child anymore, but at the moment it occurred to him that the child was only a few months old and definitely couldn’t talk, and now that he was silent, he was probably stunned.

Grid shouted his name from outside, and Jace answered, poking farther and farther in.

The deeper he went, the more pronounced the stench of rot and the foul odor of the wolf became, and he was already turning inside his stomach.

Enduring to continue inside, groping back and forth, he felt himself touching some dead small animal, not like prey caught and killed, but more like a dead coyote.

This is a wolf’s lair, right?

Why would a wolf cub die in its own den?

Following the faint sound of gasps from within, he continued to probe forward, and eventually his hand touched a damp cloth thing.

Jace felt a tingle in his scalp, touching something wet in a place like this, what else could it be but blood?

Rubbed my fingers and there was no sticking like blood.

He touched the soggy cloth again, feeling upward along it, and when he touched the slippery skin, the child suddenly cried out, feeling that he had touched the girl’s lips and teeth, which turned out to be saliva.

The sudden cry of the child in this narrow space was extremely harsh, but he was not at all annoyed, but held the child tightly in his arms.

“Did you find it?” Grid asked from outside.

“Found it, I’ll be right out!”

Jace burrowed out with the girl, and after the dwarf shone his torch in Jace’s face, he realized that he was already covered in blood and wolf fur.

“What’s with all the blood?”

“I don’t know.” Jace said, “It all smells like blood in there, maybe there’s other meat or animal limbs or something, I can’t see anything.”

“Are there wolves in there, cubs?” Grid asked.

“There seems to be, but they’re all dead.” Jace said, “Or it could be other prey, I’m not sure.”

Jess looked at the girl with relief and said, “Just think how happy your mom will be.”

The girl stopped her bout of sobbing and just looked at Jace’s face, reaching out to touch the mud caked on his neck and forehead.

Grid looked at the evil warlock who had just scared a dozen wolves and himself half to death with a fear spell and couldn’t get mad at all.

He glanced at the cave again and said, “Shouldn’t we drag a wolf carcass out to see? It couldn’t have been by this kid, could it?”

Jace took one look at the baby girl, not even half a year old, and thought to himself that it was unlikely, but his intense curiosity still drove him to resolve to go back in and touch it.

Handing the child over to Grider, he leaned down and dug in, yanking and dragging out the body of the one closest to the hole.

The young wolf’s death was quite ugly, with no visible trauma on its body, but it was covered in puffy, swollen pustules, and was definitely not a death of starvation, or any other conventional way of dying.

“Like those zombies in the Twilight Forest?” Grid asked.

It did look like it, and Jace snapped back to that cemetery, glancing at his bandaged hand and thinking that he hadn’t gotten necrotic poisoning again, had he? I’d have to go back and visit the Cathedral of Light again to be sure.

“Why did these young wolves die of necrotic poisoning?”

“Simple enough.” Grid said, “Probably ate the poisoned carcasses that the adult wolves brought back from the forests to the south, and it’s not like they’re going to roast the meat and eat it like those people in Raven Ridge. Strange how children aren’t poisoned.”

“Picky eater, count her lucky.” Jace wiped the dirt and dust off the kid’s face and said, “But remind their parents to have their kids checked out whether they eat or not.”

“That’s true.” The dwarf nodded.

Jace said, “Maybe that’s why this wolf pack went crazy, too.”

Grid agreed, “It’s possible, those wolves may be infected as well, just like the sickly wolves to the south. There may be other wolf dens here as well, a pack that big can’t just occupy this one small hole. And it doesn’t look like the wolves dug this hole, rather it looks like the bears dug it first to be occupied by the wolves.”

Jace asked, “The wolves that fled from the south to this side?”

“Who knows.” Grid said, “Anyway, we found the kid, the wolves are pretty much beaten, those wolves won’t be coming back to this neighborhood even if they still get together, let’s go back.”

By the time we returned to the farm, the sky had turned a deep blue and the moons were nowhere to be seen.

The girl was asleep on Jace’s back, and Grid was on the verge of opening his eyes.

Watching from afar as the man ran all the way over here in a frenzy, Jace even thought in his daze that another wolf had pounced on him, and got a jolt of fear up his spine.

“Child, child ……” the man mumbled incoherently for a while as he grabbed the child’s shirt, then nervously wiped away his tears as he looked into the dark forest behind him and said, “You’re hurt, are there wolves chasing? Should we ……”

“No the wolves are dead, it’s in the south woods, not far, just a short walk, you can go and see them.” Grid gave a laugh and muttered, “I guess the ones that are alive don’t dare come back, their grandmothers are dead!”

Seemingly hearing the noise from this side, the woman also peeked her head out, and when she saw her child being carried back by the man, her legs went weak and she nearly fell to the ground.

The girl opened her eyes and looked at her parents as if she had no idea what was going on, and the couple could no longer say anything at all, just hugged and cried.

Jace sat down on the wainscoting on the outside wall of the house and realized he couldn’t hear what the couple was saying either, he just wanted to sleep now.

Looking around him, Grid was already huffing and puffing at his feet.

Watching him sleep so soundly Jace couldn’t hold it together and tilted his head losing consciousness.