Chapter 69 Chapter Sixty-Eight The Dwarves
Jima found the meat in her mouth suddenly tasteless. After so much trouble, battling the trolls, and painstakingly accommodating this group of refugees, using up so much magic power without gaining anything.
She glanced at the cheerful survivors beside her, their cheeks rosy and their laughter ringing in the air, and Jima felt even more heartbroken, as if her heart had been stabbed, bleeding profusely.
If they all sold themselves into slavery, would that make up for it?
Jima thought, calculating a little in her mind, finding a way while ensuring they didn’t starve to death, and wasting time. It just didn’t add up.
Her tail lay limply on the cold ground, shoulders slumping down as she said, “This world is really unfair.”
“We should keep trying to save more people,” George said. “There might be a guide among them that we need.”
Thinking about today’s events made Jima’s head ache. She said, “Don’t. The trolls aren’t stupid, just not particularly clever. Our strategic goals have been exposed; they just need to gather together, and it would make our rescue plans all the more difficult. Just think about it—trying to rescue a group of frightened survivors beneath the eyes of three hundred trolls; if just a few of them were to get in our way, our efforts could be wasted.”
“There are two hundred and twelve trolls,” George corrected. “Today, we cleared a total of eighty-three trolls.”
“No matter how you look at it, the greater the numbers, the harder it gets,” Jima said. “Today, I managed to deceive them, split the battlefield, and exploit the element of surprise, but it won’t be that easy moving forward. They can keep us busy for a long time.”
“Jima, we still have to give it a try; saving even one more person is beneficial,” George insisted. “The help from a guide could save us several delays in rescue operations.”
“Stop trying,” Jima said. “A guide who can navigate the Noskar Mountains must have ventured deep into them. And anyone who has done so has to be brave and capable. Those kinds of people either die in battle or fight their way out; how could they be among these weaklings?”
For a moment, George fell into thought.
Jima just wanted to leave quickly, to chase down the fragments of the Demon King’s crown, and most importantly, to get away from here as soon as possible. Seeing this group of survivors laughing and eating their food made her heart feel cold as ice. She felt like a fool.
“George,” said the saintly woman Jenna beside her, “if faced with a dilemma, why not choose the good option?”
George nodded, “You have a point; let’s discuss how to rescue the captives. Jima, your abilities and wisdom have shone brightly today.”
“Even if you praise me to the heavens, I won’t give you a pleasant expression,” Jima said, expressing her displeasure even more with her acting. “This isn’t a dilemma; it’s just you piling a lot of chips on the least wise option based on your own values.
“Do we really need a guide? I can fly; I’m still a demon. The chaotic weather phenomena caused by the magic winds in the mountains aren’t a problem for me at all.”
George replied, “The mountains beset by the magic winds have many unnatural phenomena. A wise guide can help us avoid dangerous areas.”
“Honestly ask yourself: can the assistance a guide provides offset the time and magic costs necessary for rescuing people, subtracting from what I offer the team?” Jima’s tone and attitude made Jenna somewhat uncomfortable.
She continued, “I won’t even mention the invisible risks we undertake during this time. What if the Eternal Chosen personally arrives? The demon realm and the mortal realm aren’t separated by any kind of barrier that specifically intercepts the strong. If you were holding a holy sword, I’d rather take a gamble; who knows, maybe if he came, you could take him out with one sword strike?”
George vaguely understood the meaning of ‘taking out’ as killing effortlessly.
“Give me time; let me think it over,” George set down the torn cabbage he was holding.
The table fell silent.
The survivors’ annoying voices came through, blended with joyous laughter from the relief of survival, but mingled with a few sounds of crying.
Compared to this, the dwarves’ complaints, loud as they were, seemed much more pleasant to hear.
Since drinking the strong liquor Jima had brought, the dwarves had been nonstop chattering as if their tongues and beards were so long that if they didn’t chew on something, their tongues would grow too long and endanger their lives.
They grumbled that Jima’s liquor was outright inferior.
“(Dwarvish) In our fortress, even a three-year-old child cannot drink this liquor!”
Some dwarves directly splashed the drink from their cups into the campfire, extinguishing a match, “(Dwarvish) It doesn’t even burn!”
One stopped his hand: “(Dwarvish) Put that down; you impudent fellow, we used her fire, ate her bread and meat.”
‘Impudent fellow’ was a derisive term for elves.
“(Dwarvish) What? You dare to compare me to an impudent fellow?” The dwarf splashing the drink’s face turned red.
“(Dwarvish) Did I say something wrong?”
The dwarf who splashed looked at Eve Frostleaf and said, “(Dwarvish) Anyway, they can’t understand what we’re saying; otherwise, that pale-skinned impudent fellow would definitely act like a goblin, stirring up trouble and scheming because that’s what all the impudent fellows do—the entire world is their spy.”
“(Dwarvish) Really?”
“(Dwarvish) We cursed her on the way, and she didn’t say a word.”
“(Dwarvish) Stop arguing; I’ve got one last keg of ale here.” A butcher pulled a jug of liquor from somewhere, sighed, and expressed his deep regret: “I originally planned to take a sip before I die, to commemorate my glorious death, but unfortunately that troll was too strong; it took five axe blows to kill me. A butcher who doesn’t die for ten years is just a coward.”
Along the way, these dwarves dead and injured. The butcher always charged to the front in fights, hoping to die in battle, yet emerged unscathed.
The dwarves’ eyes lit up as they said, “(Dwarvish) Good brother, some legendary butchers haven’t died for hundreds of years simply because they are highly skilled; no one can kill them.”
The butcher pursued a glorious death, not a fruitless one.
“(Dwarvish) Hurry up and distribute it; I’m starving to death.”
The butcher said, “(Dwarvish) We can just make do and pour it into the inferior liquor made by humans.”
Every dwarf reached out, grasping the jug of liquor tightly, surrounding the butcher so that no water could leak out. After everyone got their share of the liquor, they picked up the cold bread to bite into.
“(Dwarvish) Too bland, soft and mushy, like an impudent fellow.”
As they spoke, the dwarves took out a handful of mineral sand, about the size of beans, from their packs, sprinkling it directly onto the white bread. Those with no conditions even scraped some gravel and small stones from the ground to sprinkle on the bread, and just like that, took bites.
Chewing produced a “crunch crunch” sound of teeth grinding against small stones, making one’s teeth ache.
Jima felt her teeth ache and was pondering how to find a reason to chase this group of dwarves away. She understood half of their language and could barely comprehend what they were saying.
Eve Frostleaf could understand it all.
Because she carried a rare object that allowed her to understand and comprehend most languages of the world.
This object was very precious, and they had only received one, designated for Eve Frostleaf because of her excellent hearing.
Jima looked at Eve Frostleaf’s oval face, plotting to team up with the tall, slender figure and use the dwarves’ offense against her to chase the dwarves away together.
Eve Frostleaf spoke, “George, these dwarves could perhaps be our guides.”
Jima’s mind snapped. She had already thought of this point, so she didn’t remind George and instead wanted to drive the dwarves away.
