Chapter 85 – Thoughts of a Veteran

In the afternoon, Jace set off with his stick, armed with a cloth bag and tools for picking herbs, as well as a warlock’s bag containing a brat and a bottle of Shadow Protection potion.

Originally, this trip to the western wilderness was to pick up herbs, and to see if she could meet any fishmen or such along the way, to help Ursula see what information she wanted to know about the shadow magic used by fishmen and whatnot.

But after interacting with the teacher, and especially after realizing that there was an important orcish language exam afterward, the mana potion became less important.

After all, he had to study orcish seriously for a month after that, and he wasn’t even going to come out if he didn’t have to in order to still have room to practice his spells.

Used to traveling with dwarves, it was surprising that he was still a bit uncomfortable being so alone in a merchant’s wagon traveling quietly on the roads of the Aelwyn Forest.

Resting at the Western Springs Fortress in the evening, where Jace was planning to collect a weapon that no one else was using, a veteran with a somewhat strange tone came up and asked him what he was planning to do with the weapon, and Jace emphasized a few times that he just wanted to have a defensive weapon to be able to scare off the occasional wild animal, before the man agreed to sell him one.

Following the veteran to one of the more remote tents, he entered and saw a large pile of scrap metal in the corner.

“Take it.” The veteran pointed and said, “Ten coppers a handful, and you’re lucky if you pick up one you can use.”

Jace picked at it for half a day before finding a knife that was almost still functional.

The veteran bent over, bare-chested, and began to gather up the broken weapons he’d picked about, and Jace asked, “Where did all these weapons come from?”

“Scavenged and used, many used by jackals or fishmen.” The soldier turned his head and smiled, “Do you want orc weapons? Orc weapons we also have here, a little more expensive, but most of them are still able to chop wood, too big you may not be able to use it, but small knives, small swords and so on, you can bring it to use in two handles, I think you have about the same strength.”

The man’s expression seemed as if he was deliberately mocking something, and Jace shook his head sagely.

He remembered the stick that the orc shaman at Red Ridge Mountain had been holding that looked so thick up close, but from a distance held so pitifully like a twig in his hand. That alone was enough for him to imagine what size orc weapons were.

“Do you guys run into a lot of fishers?” Jace asked again.

Soldier said, “these two years this side of the shore sometimes have some drift over the wreckage of the ship, soak the water supplies how, the west side of the fish people all attracted over, so the trouble is a little bit, in the past do not go to the west side of the coast can not see the fish people at all.”

“What shipwreck?”

“Warships, of course, and Kul Tiras’, and Storm City’s …… have them all, and even orcs.”

“Orcs?”

“Right.” The soldier said, “Because we were on patrol once and saw the fishmen roasting orc meat for dinner.”

“How do you know it’s orc meat?”

The soldier patted himself on the head and said, “Orc heads are instantly recognizable to me, and couldn’t be more familiar.”

“So you’ve seen orcs first hand.” Jace asked, “You’re a veteran of the orc wars huh?”

“What do you think?” The soldier let out a laugh and said, “Not only am I a veteran of the orc wars, I was one of the first to go into the swamp under King Lane’s orders, and there weren’t many of the first few batches that went in that made it back in the end, and I was one of them. At that time, I was full of anger and only thought of revenge, so I later crossed the Baladin Gulf and also followed the Silver Hand to participate in the Battle of Hillsbrad.”

“You should have a high rank then.”

Jace had just asked before realizing that he seemed to have said the wrong thing, this guy was selling scrap weapons here and didn’t look like a high ranking officer in any way.

“No, because at Hillsbrad I deserted.” The soldier confessed.

“But where could I escape to, there were orcs, trolls, and wolves bigger than cows everywhere, so I went back. Because I had meritorious service and there was a shortage of men for the rebuilding of New Storm City, I wasn’t executed and came back to help with the labor, and after that I was recalled to the army to work as a logistician. I’ve been a soldier for half my life, I won’t do anything else.”

Jace looked at the man, and it was hard to imagine what the warrior who had survived being chased by orcs in the Black Swamp had been through in Hillsbrad.

Not only were there death knights in that battle, but there were also red dragons, and no one could say that they would have been able to hold out calmly until the end without actually being in that battle.

And this man talks about these things that should make it hard to walk away for the rest of one’s life, as if he were telling someone else’s story.

“What are you looking for in a fishman?” The veteran asked suddenly.

“Oh, I was thinking of taking a trip to the north coast, so I thought I’d ask where there are fishers so I can try to avoid them.” Jace replied and then asked, “If I were to try and get over there, where would be a good place to go first? Are there any places to stay?”

“Cross the bridge and keep going west.” The veteran said, “Follow the road for about a dozen miles and you’ll see an abandoned village over there, no one there. There’s a farm over by the village, not far from there, owned by the Fabron family, who grow pumpkins, and a few miles further north, there’s a small fishing village with only four families, where you can see the coast, and all of these places you can find land to live on.”

Jace replied with thanks and was just about to leave when the other man asked, “By the way, are you planning on going to that fishing village?”

“I’d like to check it out.”

“My wife was born there.” This old soldier said, “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen her for a long time, so if you’re going, take a message for me that I’m all right.”

“Could be.” Jess asked, “What’s her name?”

The veteran didn’t say anything, just looked at Jace for a moment, then turned and left through the other exit of the tent.

Jace wasn’t at all surprised by the other man’s incomprehensible reaction, because he’d thought the guy wasn’t quite right mentally from the start.

Of course, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to help the unlucky man, it’s just that without the soldier’s name or his wife’s name, how was he going to report it?

After walking out of the tent, he felt more and more that there was something weird in the man’s words.

Fishing village, fisherman, wife, mentally unbalanced veteran.

You’re not going to give me the Shadow of Innsmouth, are you?

There aren’t any weird fishing villages that exist in the game either, and there are no incidents of Stingy Cthulhu Wind in the western wilderness, but there are indeed some abandoned and broken down houses over on the north coast.

Since the veteran said that there were only four families in that fishing village, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a family with a daughter married to a soldier from within.

Jace remembered what the veteran had said about vengeance, anger, and the like, and considered that the wife had probably been killed in the war, and that it was probably because of that that the veteran was mentally unbalanced, and that he was being treated as a deserter or something when things went wrong on the battlefield.

In that case, it’s a good idea to tell your wife’s family what happened to the veteran.

After a night’s rest at a stagecoach stop on this side of the Western Springs, we were on the road early the next morning.

He’d heard of the Fabulon farm, after all, it existed in the game, but the soldier’s mention of unoccupied villages, fishing villages, and whatnot, he had no recollection of them at all.

The western wilderness was huge, probably a lot bigger than the Elwyn area, and the last time he’d been here with Greed, it had taken a day and a night just to get to Sentinel Ridge, let alone the town of Moonbrook further south.

And from the map, it appears that the wagon-walking road from Fort Western Springs to Sentinel Ridge is only a short short distance from the large area in the eastern half of the Western Wilderness.

Maybe there are a lot of little unknown settlements or something, probably quite famous before the orc wars and the opening of the Dark Gate, and all but disappeared as the orcs swept through the area.

By noon, Jace was getting a little hungry and was struggling with whether or not to eat something right now when he finally saw a farm.

The farm had been harvested, and judging by some drying dead leaves next to the farm, this would be a pumpkin field. Could this be the Fabulon farm that the veteran from before was talking about?

Speaking of which, Jess didn’t see any towns villages or anything like that.

“Hey, that one over there, are you a pumpkin collector, coming in October? The harvest festival is over.”

Someone shouted from the far side of the house and Jess looked over to see a tall man in a brown coat.

“I’m not here to buy a pumpkin, sir!” He responded as he walked over to see that the person shouting was a young man.

“It’s Mr. Fabron?”

“Yes, Rydol Fabron! The owner of this farm!”