That night, Jess was copying the words on the Orc scroll.
There were a total of fifty-one Orcish symbols. He had to ensure that his transcription was accurate and flawless. He had to imitate the curvature of each broken line, the position of each dot, and the thickness of each stroke. This consumed a lot of ink and brush, but fortunately, the ink and brush could be counted on Eden Marin.
The reason for being so meticulous was that Jess didn't know if the thickness of these strokes and so on would also cause differences in meaning or pronunciation.
It took almost four or five hours. After confirming that they were almost identical, he went to sleep.
The scroll itself must never be brought into the Wizard's Sanctuary. He didn't know what kind of magical power this scroll carried. If something he couldn't detect was sensed by a mage in the Wizard's Sanctuary, it would cause unnecessary trouble.
The next day, after finishing his work and getting off work, Jess immediately ran into the library with the copied paper. According to the location Marin told him, he found the Orcish language research section.
The books here could be seen to be very thin new books. Many were even freshly copied manuscripts copied with magic.
Since there was no one reading nearby, he took several books at once and placed them on the ground. There were "Introduction to Orcish Runic Literature", "Basic Styles of Orcish Rune Combinations", "Orcish Runes - A Concise Comparison with Common Language", "Introduction to Learning Orcish", "Orcish Language for Dummies", and so on.
Then he started to look up the scroll. As a result, he encountered difficulties with the first symbol.
Logically speaking, at the beginning of a normal article, it is generally some common words like conjunctions. How could it be so difficult to find?
However, after searching through various comparison tables for an hour, he still had no clue.
At this time, he thought of a possibility. That was, this might be a personal name.
If this scroll was a letter, then the beginning was likely to be an address or a personal name. Generally speaking, even if a personal name had a specific meaning, it would all need to be traced back to a very ancient language source. So it must be extremely difficult to find the meaning of a personal name in popular modern languages.
So he decided to change his thinking. Fix a time for each word. If he couldn't find it, move on to the next one. First, roughly find all of them. Guess the overall meaning. Then find the time to translate carefully in combination with the context.
In this way, he quickly found the meaning of the third word, servant or follower. This was not difficult to understand. The person writing the letter might be the superior and leader of the recipient. That meant this was a letter of command.
And the fourth word was difficult to understand - staff.
What was this again?
If this letter was related to Gul'dan, then the staff was very likely to refer to the legendary Sargeras' scepter.
At this thought, he immediately trembled all over. Could the broken thing in his room be Sargeras' scepter? - Of course not.
Even if he, as a time-traveler with a protagonist's halo and golden finger (not really), somehow had the luck to obtain this staff. Then, why on earth could that Orc hold Sargeras' scepter and cross through Duskwood?
And he was dead.
Was the person who gave the scepter to him crazy? For such a divine artifact, nowadays Ner'zhul, the great chieftain of the Horde, would wish to find an entire legion to escort it.
Ner'zhul deeply knew that the Horde could no longer capture Azeroth. And Draenor had already turned into a large expanse of wasteland under the poisoning of various dark energies and demonic forces. So after learning that the Alliance army was preparing to invade Draenor, Ner'zhul planned to lead the remnants of the Horde in Draenor to other worlds to find a new home.
To open a teleportation portal for the remnants of the Horde to pass through, Sargeras' scepter was one of the essential divine artifacts.
The purpose of its creation was that Sargeras, the dark titan, wanted to use it to project his avatar to Azeroth. But in the end, this projection was not very smooth. And the scepter finally ended up in Ner'zhul's hands after hundreds of years of coincidences.
Continuing to translate until the last phrase - "For the Horde" was translated. Jess was already very certain that this was a letter.
The general meaning of this letter was that the master told the servant that three important things... the direction of the Dark Portal - someone had died. Someone was the chieftain. From one world to another. For the Horde.
Jess was very familiar with this period of history. So even though a lot of important information was missing, he could already basically guess the entire picture of the letter.
The three important things respectively represented Sargeras' scepter, the Eye of Dalaran, and Medivh's book. These were all divine artifacts that Ner'zhul wanted to use to find a new world.
Before the Dark Portal was completely destroyed, Ner'zhul once entrusted Talon Gorefiend, a member of the Shadow Council most trusted by Gul'dan and also the world's first death knight, to cross the Dark Portal and go to Azeroth to find these three divine artifacts to save the Horde.
After the avatar of Sargeras was defeated hundreds of years ago, Medivh's mother, who was already the Guardian of Tirisfal at that time, buried his remains and the lost Sargeras' scepter in Sargeras' Tomb.
Gul'dan originally wanted to obtain this divine artifact and the mana of Sargeras' avatar, but accidentally was反噬 and died tragically.
The Eye of Dalaran was collected in the treasury of Dalaran. Medivh's book was in the control of the family of King Perenolde of the Kingdom of Alterac. Because the Kingdom of Alterac betrayed the Alliance in the Orcish War, the king was imprisoned. The Alliance took over the rule of the kingdom. So Gorefiend simply led the black dragons and Orcs to attack Alterac and snatched Medivh's book.
In the end, Gorefiend successfully snatched these three divine artifacts with the help of the black dragon legion and returned to Draenor and gave them to Ner'zhul. Ner'zhul used them to open the teleportation portal. This was what was meant by from one world to another.
One person died and one person became the chieftain. It should refer to Gul'dan, who became the actual ruler of the Horde during the Orcish War, dying in Sargeras' Tomb. And Ner'zhul would become the chieftain.
Since the Horde on this side of Azeroth had not yet learned this news. That meant this letter was from someone who knew the news telling the people here about the situation on the other side of the Dark Portal and notifying them to return to the Dark Portal and go to the new world with the Horde.
When he understood to this point, the sky outside the window had already darkened. But Jess was still very satisfied with his results. He didn't expect this letter to be interpreted so smoothly.
However, there was still one problem at present. That was, what was the meaning of the first line? What exactly did that staff refer to?
After a deeper understanding of the Orcish language. When describing the three divine artifacts, the writer used a respectful symbol to express how important and sacred these three divine artifacts were.
But on the runes on that staff, this modifying symbol was not seen. That meant that the staff pointed to by this rune was indeed not Sargeras' scepter.
Was it necessarily the stick in Jess's hand? Not necessarily. That stick was very likely to be the staff of this messenger himself. And this symbol pointed to something else.
This time, Jess found a book titled "Research on Orcish Symbol Pronunciation Rules" and a book titled "Orcish Pronunciation Teaching" on the bookshelf. He was preparing to try to read this letter out loud.
What he thought was that if he could read it out loud, he might be able to find the connection between this name and a certain famous person's name in his memory.
The pronunciation of Orcish was not very regular. Perhaps it was because there were a large number of ogre and Eredar loanwords in Orcish words, polluting the original pronunciation rules. But Jess still managed to roughly find the two names Gul'dan and Ner'zhul in the letter by relying on vague pronunciations.
Gul'dan was dead. Ner'zhul became the chieftain.
Ah... The pleasure of deciphering a letter was just like doing a math problem.
Although it was already dark, Jess had no sleepiness at all. Because he still hadn't connected the first word to any famous person.
"Angol."
He read this pronunciation and carefully searched his memory but couldn't find any similar name.
Wait... Since Gul'dan was dead and Ner'zhul became the chieftain. Then who was the person writing the letter?
In fact, the answer was already on the verge of coming out. The writer might be Talon Gorefiend himself. Only he knew the latest progress of collecting the three divine artifacts. And the recipient was probably a servant he left in Azeroth - another servant of the Shadow Council. Or more accurately, a death knight.
Outside the window, the sky was already showing signs of dawn. But Jess felt more energetic than last night.
He took a look behind the bookshelf. Many diligent apprentices or apprentice mages were still persevering in reading. And the arcane lamps in the Wizard's Sanctuary were still lit for them. He was not the most conspicuous one.
Jess was preparing to find a way to translate the phrases after Angol and after staff. That was, the first paragraph of this letter.
According to the Orcish language rules he had already mastered and some grammars he had learned during the process of translating the letter. He flipped through the Orcish comparison that he was not very familiar with at the beginning again. Finally, he found a phrase that was very suitable to be inserted after the word staff and also looked very close to the string of symbols on the letter.
That was a paragraph from another letter written by the then great chieftain of the Horde, Blackhand, to his son. Blackhand used a battle flag representing the Blackrock Clan to represent his majesty. Expressing that seeing the flag was like seeing Blackhand himself.
This expression of seeing the flag was like seeing the person was very similar to the rune string after staff. This was a postpositive usage. That meant the meaning of this sentence was seeing the staff was like seeing the person.
If this was a letter written by Talon Gorefiend himself. Then if seeing the staff was like seeing the person. Didn't this mean that this staff was Gorefiend's scepter?
However, Jess clearly remembered that in the game, Talon Gorefiend's weapon looked like a hollow long-handled multi-bladed hammer. There was a dark magic stone in the middle of the hammer blade to enhance his weapon.
The stick hidden in his house was long and thin. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't seem like the battle scepter of a powerful warrior. It would be better used as a carrying pole.
Wait.
Talon Gorefiend was originally an Orc warlock. After his death, his soul was guided by Gul'dan into the body of a human knight. Only then did he have the appearance of a death knight later.
Could that stick be the staff he used when he was still living in Draenor as Talongore? After he became a death knight, he left it as a kind of command token?
At this point in his wild imagination, Jess felt that he had no definite evidence anymore and it had completely become a wild guess.
And it was already early morning. Although he was still full of energy, he clearly felt that his mind was slowing down. After all, his injuries were still hurting.
It was still early. It was far from the time when Marin went to his study. He put the books he took down from the bookshelf one by one back in their original categories and placed them neatly. Then he put away his copied letter and came out of the library.
On the way to Marin's study, he saw a staff store by the roadside.