In the afternoon, Jess and Grit met up in a newly opened small tavern near the entrance of Stormwind City, organizing their luggage for the trip. Grit had brought quite a few things for this journey.

"My lumber axe and small round shield, that Stormgarde straight sword won from what's-his-name the prince, cheese, a flask of spirits, a beast trap. Looks like I've got everything," Grit said.

"A beast trap?" Jess looked up at Grit's side, noticing the black iron beast trap placed on the table.

Grit explained, "You want to hunt for the Claw of Evil. We can set traps in the areas of Duskwood where wolves roam, then attract them with meat... It’s much safer than directly fighting those beasts."

"That does make sense," Jess admitted, "But it might take a long time."

Grit secured the beast trap and slung it over his back, saying, "Shouldn't be a problem. I've been a hunter in the Hinterlands for a long time. What about you, what did you bring?"

Jess replied, "Just the usual stuff, the markers and diagrams for locating herbs are the most important. Also, dried bread crumbs... Of course, the crumbs are for us to eat."

As Grit hung the strap of his small round shield on his waist, he nodded and said, "I know, if we're in Duskwood, we can make do with what we find."

Jess chuckled stiffly, mentioning, "That doesn't sound too good. The heroes buried at Raven Hill Cemetery were all warriors of past wars."

Grit turned to ask, "What does bait have to do with cemeteries?"

Suddenly, he felt something was off.

"You want to dig up human corpses for bait to attract those animals? Brother, is there something wrong with your mind? I mean to catch some small animals..."

Jess quickly said, "Ah, maybe I listened to too many horror stories from the patrolmen. They all say that the animals there like to eat human corpses. We were just talking about Raven Hill Cemetery and you mentioned making do with what we find..."

Grit's expression changed as he said, "Is that so?... It could be a method after all."

"Let it be," Jess said, digging through his bag, "I brought an extra coat, in case we really have to delve into the dungeons, we must change out of our clothes if we manage to escape. The big cemetery at Raven Hill has been severely contaminated with corpse poison, some who ventured in blindly came out with sequelae, perhaps because of wearing dirty clothes for too long."

"Did those patrolmen tell you that?”

"Some of it was told by immigrants from Raven Hill and Grand Hamlet," Jess said, picking up the package, "We should get going, or we might not make it to Sentinel Hill by night."

Stormwind City, having expanded its districts and constructed thousands of new homes, has accommodated tens of thousands of new citizens. Yet, many refugees in and around Hero's Vigil have pitched tents.

Among them are many disabled people with no means of survival, elders, and children who have lost their homes and sources of income.

Priests from the Cathedral of Light are distributing food and caring for the sick among these dilapidated tents, while some workers are helping these poor people repair torn tent fabrics or other essential tools.

The young king hopes to accommodate as many refugees as possible, especially since many of them have fled from Duskwood or Redridge Mountains and are citizens of the Kingdom of Stormwind.

Previously, it was possible to divert to Goldshire, but now Goldshire also has refugee camps. Perhaps newcomers will have to consider moving to further towns like Moonbrook.

Walking to the city gate, Jess looked at the children sitting at the tent entrances, staring blankly at the gates of Stormwind City. He remembered his own arrival in Stormwind City, not knowing if he would ever have a place to live amidst the devastated districts.

Now, he's barely settled in, but the future remains uncertain.

The two spent ten copper coins to have a team transporting wine take them to the post station near Sentinel Hill Fortress, where they rested for the night and set off early the next morning towards Sentinel Hill.

The Western Plaguelands at this time certainly couldn't be considered barren. In the Common Tongue, the name of the Western Plaguelands is closer to "a large flatland to the west."

Harvest Festival was approaching, and the endless fields of summer wheat shimmered golden, contrasting starkly with the lush green forests that divided the wheat fields.

Scarecrows stood abruptly across the slightly undulating plains, watching every passing carriage.

By the time they arrived at Sentinel Hill, it was already dark. In the game, it took only a few minutes to run there on foot, but here, riding in a carriage, it took a whole day and a half. The road through the Western Plaguelands was relatively safe, monitored closely by a network of post stations.

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From the carriage, they could see the torches burning atop the tall watchtower on the hillside.

This place was still bustling at night, with miners chatting and drinking in the streets, watching the carriages that entered the post station, whether from other lands or local.

Though referred to as a post station, Sentinel Hill was almost the size of a small town.

The kingdom’s southwestern heavy town—Moonbrook was one of the wealthiest places in the kingdom, outside of the capital. This town developed around a massive mine shaft.

As the kingdom’s most important grain-producing area, the central location of Moonbrook naturally became a major grain distribution center.

Thanks to the kingdom's rebuilding efforts, which increased the demand for stone and minerals, Moonbrook quickly regained its prosperity before the Orc Wars.

Riding the wave of this boom, Sentinel Hill, originally just a transit station between Moonbrook and the Elwynn region, also benefitted.

Moreover, with the recent discovery of a new mining area to the northwest of Sentinel Hill, many miners from Moonbrook moved here seeking new opportunities, making Sentinel Hill look poised to become a new town in the Western Plaguelands.

The real scale here was much larger than the game, resembling a small town from a Western movie built alongside a railroad—except here, the "railroad" was watchtowers, barracks, and grain transport routes.

The damage from the Orc Wars was more visceral here than in the game, with some of the outermost houses burned down and still unrepaired.

A small church next to the logging camp was severely damaged during the war. Now, a group of construction workers, surrounded by scaffolding next to the main church building, slept beside piles of stone and wood, undisturbed by the miners and townspeople moving back and forth.

Jess could tell this brand-new town was short on hands, with recruitment notices everywhere for miners, construction workers, and farmhands, offering nearly the same wages as in Stormwind City.

No wonder Marlin was worried about going here for work. If one got used to life here or in Moonbrook, they might not want to return to Stormwind City.

"See that slaughterhouse over there?" Grit pointed to a small building around the corner, ten meters away, and said, "Tomorrow we can go there to buy some bone fragments as bait, so we won't have to resort to digging up corpses."

"Even bone fragments aren't cheap, especially now with the food shortage," Jess said. "We could try hunting boars along the western riverbank for meat, right?"

Jess had no hunting experience; he was just speaking from what he knew of the game.

Grit explained, "The Bloodfang Boars in these parts are notoriously ferocious, even the Gnoll don't expect to hunt them for a stable meat supply. Know why pig liver pies are so expensive? It's because only the liver of Bloodfang Boars can achieve that flavor... Hunting Bloodfang Boars requires professional boar hunters."

Jess asked, "You're from the Hinterlands, so how come you know so much about boars from the south?"

Grit replied, "Live another fifty years, and you'll also know some obscure, useless knowledge, Jess. Those boars might be fierce, but at least they're easier to deal with than the dark wolves of Duskwood. We'll have to be careful; I don't want to be attacked by a pack of sharp-toothed beasts."

Jess said, "At least death would come swiftly."

Grit shook his head, "Not necessarily. For example, bears in the Hinterlands don't like to kill their prey. They capture you alive and start eating from the least important parts up, eating until you can't feel the pain and accept your fate. By the time you're dead, they just toss you aside, simply because they don't like the dead."

Listening to Grit vividly describe the scene of dwarves being eaten alive made Jess uncomfortably shift his legs.

"So the wolves would go for your throat first?" Jess asked.

Grit guessed, "I suppose so, which is rare good news."

The two entered a tavern, immediately surrounded by a rich smell of rust.

Jess couldn't tell if the rust smell came from the miners or the butchers who had chopped too many innards, emitting a bloody scent. Either way, it was unpleasant.

Grit ordered two mugs of barley beer, and the two sat down to eat their prepared dry food.

The tavern was quite noisy, with their neighbors being a group of men and women in various traveling outfits, speaking loudly.

But each of them was armed, and the other customers, even if a bit irritable, consciously kept their distance.

"Some cowards, when they encounter something they've never seen before, will deliberately exaggerate their encounters," a stout man with a full black beard, resting a long-handled warhammer on his knee, said. "In my opinion, there are no Gnoll chieftains two men tall. It's just that those guards haven't encountered Gnoll for too long, so they get scared at the sight of them and have nightmares about seeing big ones."

"You mean there's no such thing as a Gnoll chieftain?" a woman with a hunting bow on her back said coldly.

Her voice was so rough it blurred gender characteristics. Coupled with her very short, almost unclear golden hair, at first glance, she might be mistaken for a man.

If not for her strong build and the bulge of her chest pressing against the leather jacket by the bowstring, Jess might have difficulty recognizing her as a woman at first glance.

The skin of this group was exceptionally pale, almost dazzlingly so, with clear veins visible, likely from a very northern place.

A man in a white thin shirt sitting next to the woman said, "If a Gnoll tribe loses its leader, they can quickly elect a new one. But if the new leader lacks the previous one's charisma, the entire tribe will languish and infight for a while. I don't deny that the recent increase in Gnoll ferocity is due to a new powerful leader... but two men tall is exaggerated."

"That's what I think," the black-bearded man said. "In the end, we might not find any two-men-tall Gnoll chieftains, no matter how many Gnoll we kill... After all, the bounty wants a Gnoll head that's twice as big."

The black-bearded man said, "Maybe young Varian wants something for nothing, setting an unreachable bounty condition, and then letting us fools hunt Gnoll everywhere, looking for some big leader, only to find nothing in the end. They don't have to spend anything but drastically reduce the Gnoll population in this area, and no one can claim the bounty!"

The man in the white shirt said, "I don't think using Varian's name would do such a lowly thing, in the end, it would hurt the royal family's credibility."

The woman said, "I did some investigation beforehand; some miners and farmers indeed saw giant Gnoll, but I'm not sure... if it's the same one mentioned in the bounty."

The black-bearded man sneered, "Mercenary words are untrustworthy, not to mention those cowardly miners and farmers!"

"What did you say?" Another solid man slammed the table and stood up, and the black-bearded man just glanced at him, calmly taking a sip of his drink.

"Making such comments here, you must be sick of living, you hairy beast!" another miner coldly said.

Jess slowly lifted his mug, sipping it to cover his face, sensing an inevitable brawl.

"By the Light!" The man in the white shirt stood up, addressing those around him, "For the sake of our common faith, let's calm down. My friend had some issues with miners before, but it was a group of dwarven miners who provoked us, not you..."

Hearing this, Grit choked on his drink and turned to glare at the man, making a few nearby customers realize the stocky, tall dwarf sitting here was actually a high dwarf!

Jess whispered to Grit, "The dwarves of Aerie Peak haven't found their mine yet, right? If he mentions any, it must be the Dark Iron or the Bronzebeards of Loch Modan..."

Grit turned back, looking as if Jess made a good point.

"We've seen a giant Gnoll chieftain," Jess raised his voice to the mercenaries, "Over by Sentinel Hill. If you follow the riverbank, I believe you'll find some clues."

"I don't mean to disrespect you, kid," the black-bearded man glanced over, "but I don't believe someone like you would survive encountering such a Gnoll."

"Roughly speaking, his balls are at least twenty times larger than yours," Grit coldly said. "Make another peep, and I'll stuff this mug into your backside."

At this point, Grit waved the mug nearly as big as his head in front of him, his right hand already clutching the sword hilt poking out of his sack.

Jess, already concerned about potentially delaying their subsequent plans if a real fight broke out, now couldn't move past the concept of "twenty times larger balls."

The deterrent effect of a rampaging dwarf in a human world is considerable, even making the black-bearded man somewhat apprehensive.

The woman had been staring at the sword in Grit's hand all this time. She leaned over and whispered something in the black-bearded man's ear, mouth shaping the words "Stormgarde."

"I'm just trying to help, folks," Jess cleared his throat, "After all, if you can take down that giant Gnoll, it would benefit the entire Kingdom of Stormwind. I genuinely hope you can claim that reward. But if you continue to be unfriendly, I believe everyone here would be happy to help my friend here... shove his mug... into your... backside."

The black-bearded man looked around, realizing he had indeed angered a bunch of middle-aged laborers fresh from the mines.

The man in the white shirt sighed, whispering, "Clive, you should control your temper, don't stir up trouble, this isn't Northrend."

Northrend? So these people came from the northern shores of the Northrend continent, no wonder they spoke with an unheard accent.

The tavern's tense atmosphere gradually relaxed, and the black-bearded man's group of three, sensing the hostel's hostility, whispered among themselves and left.

After all, if they stayed here and someone sneaked into their room in the middle of the night and whacked them on the head, it would be too late for regrets. The miners here, having lived half their lives in this area, knew countless ways to kill without trace.