The caravan had been travelling eastwards along the New Siacis Mountains for 17 months, and as we looked eastwards we could no longer see the rolling black mountains in the distance. [According to Leipas, if we crossed that mountain, our caravan would be completely out of the Dwarf Kingdom's territory and would enter the Pai Plateau. I have heard that there are thousands of orc tribes, large and small, and that these ancient tribes carry on the power of their ancestors. These days, the jokes in the caravan are noticeably less, and I can see that everyone is a bit worried about the orc tribes and the grey dwarf bandits waiting for us ahead.
Each Thunder Rhinoceros hauled thousands of pounds of fine iron ingots on its massive hill-like body, with a handler straddling a soft seat at the back of its head and two deputies sitting at the top of its spine, responsible for managing the huge cargo of this rhinoceros, as well as simple lookouts and vigilance, all of which were the property of Leipas' charge, and the huge caravan of seventy Thunder Rhinos stretched out over two kilometres. The dwarves of the tribe are all naturally excellent blacksmiths, except that the style of armour and weapons they make is very different from human preferences. Due to the natural brute strength of the dwarves, those heavy armours and fine shields as big as door panels are not very much sought after on the human side, they are too heavy, so fine metal materials are the hard currency.
At the front of the caravan were 20 or so of the hardiest Boreal horses, two adventurous bands of warriors, swordsmen, archers and mysterious wizards who followed us over the Neosyracis Mountains, where I was told they hunted the magical beasts in the forests on the edge of the mountains for magical materials to sell back to the human world. Anyway, Kurtz had secretly told me that they were a dangerous bunch and not to mess with them. They enjoyed the caravan's capacity, some of the goods belonging to them Leipas promised to transport them to the imperial capital for free, while these adventuring groups were responsible for guarding the safety of the whole caravan.
Behind the Thunder Rhino caravan were 13 huge black iron carts, each one like a small house. Each of these bison can easily pull 5,000 pounds of cargo.
Don't think that the carts are filled with nobles, on the contrary they are just a singing and dancing troupe from the capital of the human Grimm Empire, invited by the Dwarf King to the Dwarf capital three years ago for a commemorative celebration, on their way back from the celebration. A huge troupe of 300 people, 180 dancers alone, cooks, tailors, musicians, waiters, magicians, etc. I'm told this is not even the largest troupe in the Grimm Empire. I never thought anyone would be willing to spend 5.6 years on a journey just to see the celebrations of a certain country.
I later learned from Leipas that there was also a vehicle known as a magical airship, which Leipas described as more like a dirigible, except that it was a large enough vehicle to carry hundreds of people. The route from Stane to the royal city of Grimm had long been open, but this time the dance troupe went overland east along the New Ciachis Mountains, to the Pai Plateau to pick up the ritual war dances of the orc tribes. Perhaps some of the tribes close to humans will interact with them.
In September, the warm monsoon winds from the Endless Sea bring plenty of rain, filling this Dwarven land on the western side of Roland with life, melting the snow and making everything grow. The warm breeze brushed my cheeks like a mother's hand, and I excitedly took off my sheepskin coat, which had smelt like salted fish all winter, and jumped naked off the back of a 7-metre high thunder rhinoceros like Kurtz, rolling a few times in the green grass before leaping into the lake like a white chub. The fresh water enveloped my body and I dived a few metres into the lake with the strength of a fish leap before alternately plucking the water with my feet to push my body further.
My hot body was submerged in the cool water, and every cell in my body was greedily sucking up water. I let out my last breath and finally burst out of the water. There was a round table-sized ice floe a few metres away, and Kurtz, the boy, was propping himself up on the edge of it, lurching upwards and sitting dripping wet on it, grinning at me with his teeth bared.
And waving at me and shouting in not-quite-fluent Imperial, "Giga, climb up here, this ice is fun!"
Seeing the ice floes in the lake gave me an idea of how cold it was in the early spring. I couldn't help but admire the strength of this boy from the orc tribe, leaving me with nothing but envy. I dared to jump into the ice floes because of the fire poison in my blood, which was burning my body every day. I could feel the hot fire rapidly carbonising my flesh and blood, but at the same time there was a wonderful regenerative power in my blood that repaired my body, carbonising and regenerating it, and at first I didn't even think I was human, but a piece of thinking Frying meat. Only by dipping into such cold lake water did I feel a touch of coldness in my body.
I think I must have eaten too many barbecue jerk-offs in my last life, and this is what I have to suffer from in this life, and it tortures me every moment of every day to put me through such pain. The fire poison was consuming every cell in my body all the time, turning them into ashes and then flowing out of my body along with my sweat, and after every cell in my body collapsed, somehow it split instantly into new ones, and sometimes I wondered if maybe I had orcish werewolf blood? The only medicine man in the group was an old, old orc. Old Kulu was always bragging to me about how strong he was when he was young, and how that boy Kurtz was not even a tenth of him, and now his dried up body had little strength left, and sometimes he didn't even bother to reach for his medicine jar, always calling me around.
Well, yes! I was the smallest handyman in the whole caravan and could do anything, run errands, deliver messages, clean horse manure, clean shoes, boil hot water, dig wild vegetables, whatever I could do and the men could think of, I had to do, if I still wanted my half a loaf of black bread every night.
I remember old Kuru telling me that I was picked up by him on the edge of the Burning Mountains, far beyond the Dwarven capital to the west. He guessed that I had eaten too much fruit from the Burning End tree to get such a strong element of fire in my blood, and that I had been burned unconscious and was not meant to be saved. No orc or dwarf has ever survived eating the fruit of burning. The fruit is also called the fruit of purification and is given to the dead. When a dying person dies after eating it, his whole body will be turned into ashes and I heard that the kernel of the fruit will even grow a spiritual fire that can burn out the soul and purify it to ascend to the Kingdom of God.
I am convinced of what the old kuru said, for I entered this body after the original host's soul had been purified. But whether or not the original host's soul ascended into the Kingdom of God I do not know, I think it is more likely that it went up in smoke. I can still remember clearly that before I fell into a coma, I was a chef in a large hotel, specialising in cold plating and carving carrot flowers. cold off, I thought I was dead.
I didn't expect to wake up to find myself a five-year-old on fire, every inch of skin, flesh and bone squealing in the heat like a piece of fried beef, and in the kind of pain that can make you pass out and wake up from a coma, an old orc put his dried up arm above my head and slit my wrist with a small black scimitar, bleeding black and purple all over me, most of it poured into my mouth. Most of it was poured into my mouth. Miraculously I survived. The old orc was Kulu, who said that I was probably the child of one of the travellers on the tour and that before I died I had swallowed the Burning Fruit, as is the tradition, and waited for my body to turn to ashes and my soul to ascend into the heavens, but after eating the Burning Fruit, the power of the fire elemental had inspired the power of my family bloodline and I had awakened to my true name: Blue Flame. The power of the flames of the Burning Fruit caused me pain, but it was not enough to burn me to death. As to why the soul was not purified by the fire of the mind, perhaps that Burning Fruit had not yet completely ripened.
My name is Giga. Blue Flame. If there is a future awakening of my true name, it will be stacked backwards one at a time. My true name was still very weak, and I was unable to resist the power of the Flame Fruit. I would not have survived and absorbed the self-healing power of regeneration and recovery from his blood. But the feeling of being burnt by fire every day was really worse than death.
During that time, if I had the power to kill myself, I would have killed myself without hesitation, because I think even hell is nothing more than that. I spent more than four months lying on the back of the thunder rhinoceros, and every day old Kulu would find various herbal juices to pour into my body. It was during those days that my bloodline power was given another name, "Self-Healing", which almost made old Kulu's jaw drop, knowing that this was an ability that almost all orc wolf warriors dreamed of. Only those wolves who have awakened the "self-healing" ability in their bloodline are considered true warriors of the Orc-Wolf clan.
My body was destroyed and then regenerated, hundreds and thousands of times, and my weak body slowly began to withstand the flames, which meant that I was born with fire resistance, and gradually the burning pain slowly subsided. The power of those flames would emanate from my limbs.
In the nearly two years since I came to this world of magic, Leipas had taken the time to teach me some Imperial language every day, but progress was not very fast. Old Kuru would sometimes even tell Leipas that I should have been a human-looking orc child, because I was more fluent in orcish. By human age in this world, I was only seven years old. I was starting to fit in with the caravan. Leipas was the head of the caravan, in fact he was also the head steward of the United Chamber of Commerce, and his credo was that he would never keep anyone idle, that everyone in the caravan had to show their worth, and so did I. I was not given any preferential treatment just because I was a child.
A herd of thunder rhinoceroses were gathered on the lake's edge, and the handlers herded one of the gentle thunder rhinoceroses and the orderly ones onto the grass at the edge of the lake, ordering the rhinoceroses to get down one by one, unloading their heavy loads and stacking them neatly to one side. The thunder rhinos are then given water to drink before being herded by the best herders to graze in the pasture. I thought these fleshy, long-tailed rhinos were more like the Stegosaurus of dinosaurs from my old world. At this point Fred, the deputy riding on the Thunder Rhino, shouted to me, "Giga, stop playing and watch out for Master Leipas' whip, and hurry up and brush these leather saddles and dry them while the day is good."
I waved my hand in a rush from the lake, poked my head out of the water and said, "Got it, Fred." This was originally his job and sometimes he would let me do it. Kurtz sat on the ice floe and gave Fred a hard stare and whispered to me in Orcish, "This Fred guy must be going to fool around with his little dancer again, Giga, don't you help him."
"It's okay, it's not too much work, isn't that what they say in Orc slang: to suffer is to be blessed?" I swam back in orcish, the saddle-chewing wasn't really a waste of time, I was supposed to get Fred's share of the broth at night, the lake was still a bit too cold and I was getting chilled after a short dip in the water. Might as well go ashore and brush the saddle.
Taking one look at the big guy who could have trampled me to a pulp with one foot, I puffed myself up and swam hard to the shore, my work beginning