Chapter 80 – What Grider Cares About

In the evening, Grider offers to buy him dinner at the Pig and Whistle to celebrate the two men’s return alive and Jace’s “inexplicable” status as a hero of the kingdom.

There was an especially large crowd of pigs and whistlers this night, and someone even set up a long table in the middle of the hall for a party.

At that very moment there was a gnome – not a real gnome, but a human being with dwarfism – dancing and singing at a table while twenty or thirty people below him sang along, laughed, and drank and ate meat to his rhythm.

The surrounding patrons were all celebrating something individually, despite the fact that they looked like they were being squeezed around, and the entire tavern was constantly bombarded with all sorts of grunting and chaotic movements.

This time the two of them ordered the Red Ridge Mountain Mess, roasted golden-skinned apples and pan-fried rock-scaled salmon, full of Red Ridge Mountain specialties, and drinks of Dwarf Quarter speciality pale ale, with Grider intending to make a bit of a compromise and drink something lighter in flavor for Jace’s sake.

Jace was practically growling as he ordered, because the bartender couldn’t hear him at all if he didn’t yell like that, and after negotiating everything he even felt a little oxygen deprived and sat down at the table a little bit paralyzed, like a robot with a power outage.

Grid didn’t know what to think, and never said a word, just watched the midget patient on the table dance merrily.

The man was dressed as a gnome, wore the beanie hats that gnomes liked to wear, danced the gnome dance, and was practically a gnome except for his ears and eyes, which were not as large as the gnome’s protruding ones. Jace saw that Grid was silent, and his own thoughts slowly flew to the Wild West.

He was planning what to bring on the trip, the time of the trip, the trouble he might get into and whatnot, and how to carry the brat, when the brat could come out, when he was determined not to, and so on.

thought, until the baked golden-skinned apples were brought up by the wine waiter, and Grid suddenly changed his face.

“What’s going on?” He asked as he muscled in on the wine waiter.

The female bartender froze for a while, and when she realized there was nothing on the table, she suddenly realized the problem, “I’m so sorry, there are so many customers right now, I’m sorry for such a mistake.”

“Quick, get this apple pie where it belongs!” Grider yelled.

“Yes.” The waitress shivered with fear and picked up the baked apple and fled.

Jace said quietly, “There’s no need to make it so formal, Grid, with the two of us eating.”

“Formal? What’s formal got to do with it” said Grider unhappily, “If you eat sweets before a big meal, how can you possibly have an appetite for meat and sausage? And it’s only after you’ve had a full meal that you eat a little something sweet that does what sweets are supposed to do, which is to pleasure you, to make you happy, to relieve the grease, and to make you have an appetite again ready to move on to the next meal!”

Jace listened to the garbled statements and just stared at Grid, knowing that Grid was certainly not mad at this wine waiter for bringing dessert early. “So what’s going on?”

Grid glanced this way and froze for a moment before realizing what Jace was asking, the unhappy expression on his face dissipating a little.

“Well …… I can’t believe I got knocked over by that orc with a stick.”

At first Jace didn’t follow his train of thought for a moment before realizing what the guy had been struggling with from earlier until now, and realizing what had made him so outrageously angry.

“You mean the shaman priest.”

The dwarf cried and howled from his mouth, “The sages on the Eagle’s Nest Mountain are all civilized, I’ve never seen them fight, I’ve never even seen them fight, they’re like a bunch of amiable teachers and elders patient with all kinds of trouble, I would have thought that Orc Wise Men should be about the same.”

Jace said, “Maybe that orc is a literate teacher and elder among the tribe?”

Grider let out a poof of laughter when the waitress brought up a plate of fried fish and placed it in front of him.

“Then being an orc is too miserable.” He dipped his fingers in the fish soup and put it in his mouth, and said, “I still don t understand, that power …… that strength, I can t understand. Although I have not fought directly with the orcs, but I have seen the eye orcs fought dwarven warriors, dwarves are not afraid of orc warriors at all, orc warriors have a lot of power, yes, but it is not so …… much because I am the best of those warriors, and it is precisely because of my excellence that I have been chosen to be a griffin knight! Dwarves shouldn’t be too much weaker than orcs, it’s not like they can’t take a single move.”

Jace speared a piece of fish with his fork and said, “The orc shaman is like this, when he rushed at me, I could already see him urging the wind element to fuel his attack, didn’t you feel it?”

“Wind element?” Grid thought for a moment and said, “I did feel an extremely powerful wind when he hit my shield, could it be that the wind element could help shamans strengthen their muscles? Speaking of which, my left arm is still vaguely sore, it’s really enough to hurt my pride.”

Jace said, “The wind elementals must have strengthened their impact, otherwise why did that orc summon wind elementals when he was attacking?”

“Kind of makes me feel better, Jace, damn magic again.” Griddles dipped another bit of fish sauce into his mouth.

“You give me …… you stop.” Jace pointed at his finger and said, “Just dip it and forget it, don’t get your spit on the fish! There’s your fork in there.”

The dwarf hemmed and hawed for a moment, wiping his fingers with his shirt and picking up his fork.

Jace forked another piece of fish into his mouth and said, “Think about those human warriors, the human warriors who fought the orc armies in the Black Swamp, in the Valley of Thorns, in Elwyn, in the Red Ridge Mountains, and in the Western Wilderness. I believe that orc shaman is definitely not such a prominent and powerful existence amongst the horde, and even then it was able to beat the two of us so badly, so that means that the alliance doesn’t know how much it cost to finally repel them.” Grid said, “I certainly know that, not to mention the Amani trolls, not to mention their ……”

With that said, the dwarf hesitated for a moment and said, “Let’s not talk about that, there’s nothing to talk about, anyway, it’s over, the orcs are getting fewer and fewer, and I won’t take the liberty of leading you into the fire without figuring out what the mission is actually going to be about after that.”

“And you know it’s a fire pit.” Jace said, “That orc shaman is as strong as an elephant, I stabbed him twice with my sword and got the bone stuck, it’s just …… not a normal creature at all!”

“It’s my fault la.” Grid said, “Speaking of which, have you ever seen an ogre?”

“No.” Jess said.

The wine waiter finally brought up the mess, and the serving plate with its thick maroon sauce held a heap of oozing offal and bone-in chunks of meat, steaming hot, chunks of fat fat fat that quivered twice as the plate fell to the table, immensely tantalizing.

“It’s ready to go,” Grid said slowly as he pulled a section of intestines straight up in his hand to stuff in his mouth, “A distinctive flavor, Jace, I know you must not be able to stand animal intestines, that’s just the way it is with you Stormwind humans, you don’t have a clue about what good food is. “

Jace grunted softly at his unseen appearance and said, “Let’s talk about ogres.”

“Brute Hammer’s legions have encountered tribal ogre forces in Arash.” The dwarf touched the oil on his fingers and said, “Those ogres, each one of them was 10 feet tall, a half-human, you know? You may not be able to imagine it too well when I say that, but once you’re actually in front of them, you’ll know it’s very shocking. Those guys are not only tall, but also strong, fat, the dwarf’s sword into the belly of those guys and then pull out, can’t even see the blood, all yellow.”

“Shit?”

“Oil!” Grid said as he rattled the fat on the plate with his fingers, “That’s the oil, you know, they don’t care about stab wounds, an attack that could stab a troll to death with one sword would be as good as no stabs on them, slash down towards their necks and the sword would pull out as if it was sucked in by the flesh, you wouldn’t see any blood at all without using a long weapon, and you can’t even imagine that guys like that actually You can’t even imagine that a guy like that would even be able to do magic.”

“Not to mention the dragons.” Jace said.

“Not to mention the dragons!” Grid nodded vigorously a few times.