Chapter 46

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Chapter 046: The Orc’s Command

That evening, Jesse was copying the words from the Orc scroll.

There were a total of fifty-one Orc symbols. He had to make sure that his copying was flawless. Every curve of each line, every position of each dot, every thickness of each stroke, he had to imitate perfectly. This task used up a lot of ink, but luckily, the ink could be blamed on Eden Malin.

The reason for being so meticulous was because Jesse didn’t know if differences in the thickness of these strokes would cause differences in meaning or pronunciation.

It took almost four to five hours for him to make sure they were almost identical before he finally went to sleep.

The scroll itself couldn’t be brought into the Wizard’s Sanctum. He didn’t know what kind of magical power the scroll carried. If something he didn’t notice was sensed by a mage in the Wizard’s Sanctum, it would cause unnecessary trouble.

After finishing work and getting off the next day, Jesse immediately took the copied paper and ran into the library. Following Malin’s instructions, he found the Language Orcish research area.

The books here were all very thin and new, many of them were just copied with magic.

No one was nearby reading, so he grabbed several books and laid them out on the ground, including "Introduction to Orcish Rune Studies", "Basic Styles of Language Orcish Rune Combinations", "Language Orcish Runes – Basic Language Comparison", "Learning the Basics of Language Orcish", "Language Orcish for Dummies", and more.

Then he started looking at the scroll, but he immediately encountered difficulties with the first symbol.

Typically, the beginning of a normal article consists of common words like conjunctions. How could it be so difficult to find?

However, he flipped through various reference tables for an hour without any clue.

At this moment, he thought of a possibility, that this could be a person’s name.

If this scroll is a letter, then the beginning is likely a greeting or a person’s name. Generally, even if a person’s name has a specific meaning, it usually traces back to ancient language roots. Therefore, it would be quite difficult to find the meaning of a person’s name in popular modern languages.

So he decided to try a different approach, assigning a fixed time to each word. If he couldn’t find a word, he would move on to the next one, quickly scanning through all of them first, guessing the overall meaning, and then meticulously translating by combining time with context.

This way, he quickly found the meaning of the third word, servant, or follower, which was quite easy to understand. The person writing the letter was likely the recipient’s superior and leader, indicating that this was a command letter.

The difficult part was the fourth word – magic wand.

What could this be?

If this letter is related to Gul’dan, then magic wand likely refers to the legendary Scepter of Sargeras.

This thought immediately sent shivers down his spine; could the broken item in his room be the Scepter of Sargeras – definitely impossible.

Even though he didn’t have any special powers or luck, somehow he ended up with this magic wand. So, why did that Orc manage to travel through Duskwood with the Scepter of Sargeras?

And then he died.

Was the person who gave him the scepter out of their mind? The Great Chief Ner’zhul of the Horde nowadays wishes he could send a whole legion to escort such an artifact.

Knowing that the Horde couldn’t conquer Azeroth anymore and Draenor had become a wasteland of dark energy and demonic power, Ner’zhul planned to lead the remnants of the Horde to other worlds to find a new home once he learned that the Alliance was preparing to invade Draenor.

In order to open a portal for the remnants of the Horde to pass through, the Scepter of Sargeras is one of the essential artifacts.

The purpose of its creation was for the dark Titan Sargeras to use it to transfer his essence to Azeroth, but the transfer didn’t go smoothly, and after hundreds of years, the scepter ended up in Ner’zhul’s hands through a series of coincidences.

As Jesse continued translating down to the last phrase "for the Horde," he was certain that it was a letter.

The letter probably conveyed the message from the master to the servant about three important things…the direction of the Dark Portal, someone’s death, someone becoming the chieftain, traveling from one world to another, for the Horde.

Jesse was very familiar with this history, so even with missing information, he could piece together the general content of the entire letter.

Three important things represent Scepter of Sargeras, Eye of Dalaran, and Book of Medivh, these are artifacts that Ner’zhul wants to find a new world.

Before the Dark Portal was completely destroyed, Ner’zhul asked Gul’dan, the most trusted member of the Shadow Council, and the world’s first Death Knight Teron Gorefiend to cross the Dark Portal to Azeroth to find these three artifacts to save the Horde.

Centuries ago, after the defeat of Sargeras’ avatar, Medivh’s mother, who was already a Tirisfal Guardian Aegwynn, buried his body and the lost Scepter of Sargeras in the Tomb of Sargeras.

Gul’dan originally wanted to obtain this artifact and the power of Sargeras’ avatar, but accidentally died from the demonic backlash.

The Eye of Dalaran is stored in the Dalaran vault, while the Book of Medivh is controlled by the Perenolde family, the kings of the Alterac Kingdom. Gorefiend led the Black Dragons and orcs to attack Alterac and took the Book of Medivh.

With the help of the Army of the Black Dragon, Gorefiend successfully took these three artifacts back to Draenor and handed them to Ner’zhul. Ner’zhul used them to open a portal, which led from one world to another.

When one person dies, another becomes the chieftain, referring to Gul’dan, who died in the Tomb of Sargeras, and Ner’zhul will become the new chieftain.

The Horde on the Azeroth side did not know this news, so the letter informed them about the situation on the other side of the Dark Portal and asked them to return and go to the new world with the Horde.

By the time Jesse understood this, it was already dark outside, but he was very pleased with his progress and did not expect the letter to be deciphered so smoothly.

There is one problem still remaining: What does the first line mean, and what does the "magic wand" refer to?

After gaining a deeper understanding of the Language Orcish, the writer used a formal symbol to show how important and sacred the three artifacts were when describing them.

However, the rune on the magic wand did not have this formal symbol, meaning that the rune was not referring to the Scepter of Sargeras.

Does this mean that the stick in Jesse’s hand is the one? Not necessarily. The stick could very well be the sender’s own magic wand, and the symbol could be pointing to something else.

This time, Jesse found a book titled "Investigating the Pronunciation Rules of Language Orcish Symbols" and another book called "Teaching Language Orcish Pronunciation" on the bookshelf, ready to try reading the letter.

He thought that if he could read it, he might find a connection between the name in the letter and the name of a famous character in his memory.

The pronunciation of Language Orcish is not consistent, perhaps due to the heavy influence of Ogre and Eredun words contaminating the original pronunciation rules. However, Jesse managed to roughly find the names Gul’dan and Ner’zhul in the letter based on the unclear pronunciations.

Gul’dan is dead, Ner’zhul has become the chief.

Ah… the joy of deciphering the letter is just like solving a math problem.

Even though it was dark outside, Jesse was wide awake because he still couldn’t match the first word with any famous character.

"Angol."

He repeated the pronunciation and searched his memory carefully, but couldn’t find any similar name.

Hold on… If Gul’dan is already dead and Ner’zhul has become the chief, then who sent the letter?

In fact, the answer was starting to become clear. The sender might be Teron Gorefiend himself, as only he knew the latest progress on gathering the three artifacts, and the recipient was probably one of his servants left behind on Azeroth – another servant of the Shadow Council, or more precisely, a Death Knight.

The sky outside was showing signs of getting lighter, but Jesse felt more alert than he did last night.

He glanced behind the bookshelf, where many diligent apprentices or apprentice mages were still studying hard, and the Arcane lights in the Wizard’s Sanctum were still lit for them, and he was not the most noticeable person.

Jesse prepared to find a way to translate the phrases behind "Angol" and "magic wand," which were the first sentences of the letter.

Using the rules of the Orcish language he had learned, as well as some grammar from translating the letter, he went over the Orcish language reference that he was still not very familiar with at the beginning. Finally, he found a very fitting phrase to insert after "magic wand," which seemed very close to the symbols on the letter.

This is a part from a letter written by Great Chief Blackhand of the Blackrock Clan to his son, where he used a flag to represent himself and showed that seeing the flag was like seeing him in person.

Just like the saying "seeing the flag is like seeing the person", it’s similar to the symbols behind a magic wand. It means that seeing the wand is like seeing a person.

If this is a letter by Teron Gorefiend himself, then the saying "seeing the wand is like seeing the person" would imply that this magic wand is Gorefiend’s staff.

However, Jesse remembered clearly that in the game, Teron Gorefiend’s weapon looked like a hollow long-handled hammer with multiple pages, and there was a dark Magic Stone in the middle of the hammer head to enhance his weapon.

The stick hidden in his house was long and thin, and didn’t look like the powerful warrior’s battle staff, more like a walking stick instead.

Wait.

Teron Gorefiend was originally an Orc Warlock. After his death, his soul was guided by Gul’dan into the body of a human knight, thus acquiring the appearance of a Death Knight later on.

Could that stick be the magic wand he used when he was an Orc Warlock named Teron’gor living in Draenor, and after becoming a Death Knight, he left it as a kind of command token?

Thinking about this, Jesse felt like he had no solid evidence and was just making wild guesses.

It was past midnight, and even though he was still full of energy, he could feel his mind slowing down. After all, his wounds were still hurting.

It was still early, not yet time for Malin to go to the study. He took books from the shelf, sorted them by category, and arranged the ones he had copied neatly before going to the library.

On his way to Malin’s study, he saw a magic wand shop on the roadside.