Jess didn't dare to go to the Slaughtered Lamb again. After all, he had provoked the leader there. Going there again would be asking for trouble, wouldn't it?
He spent every afternoon self-studying Orcish in the library. He also spent five silver coins to ask a blacksmith in the dwarf district to forge a sword of similar weight to that Stromgarde straight sword. He used it to practice real sword skills with Gerred. In that way, the effect of improving his skills would be better.
These days, the weather has cooled down very quickly. In Azeroth, the calendars used by humans and dwarves are similar to the Gregorian calendar on Earth. A year is still divided into 12 months. However, different languages of different races will use different names to call different months.
For example, dwarves will call April "Sulun month". And there are also differences between Lordaeron and Stormwind Kingdom. In short, it's hard to say clearly. Perhaps because of this, after countries and races have interacted more and more deeply, the habit of just calling numbers has become more and more common.
The first day of October is a Tuesday, which is Jess's first Orcish language class.
That afternoon, according to the address given to him by Marin, he searched several times in the Wizard's Sanctum. Although he arrived half an hour early, when he found the classroom, he was still a little late.
After entering the door, the teacher seemed to be absent. A group of students were sitting around in the already small classroom and all looked over here.
To Jess's surprise, there were about twenty people here. There seemed to be no one younger than him. There were also many middle-aged people. There were even an old couple who looked like husband and wife. Their hair was all gray and they were very likely to be over seventy years old.
"Jess Sethor, right?" At this time, a middle-aged man waved and said, "I am Carlo Duchamp. I think Master Marin has already introduced me to you."
"Ah... Master Duchamp." Jess nodded slightly. He didn't expect that the teacher would sit around with the students. Plus, these people were of all ages from young to old. It was completely impossible to tell which one might be the teacher.
Duchamp wore a pair of small glasses and had a shaved head. He looked tall and thin. There was always a smile on the lips surrounded by prickly stubble.
Seeing that Jess was a bit at a loss, he said, "Come on. You are the youngest in this class. We will take care of you."
The others all nodded and smiled politely. Jess was extremely unaccustomed to such a classroom with such a strong mature atmosphere. He could only respond with an awkward smile and sit aside.
"It's like this." Duchamp said, "Our class is not like other language courses where you follow the teacher from start to finish. Instead, it mainly focuses on communication. Everyone takes out the materials related to Orcish that they have collected. According to the content we already have... try to translate and then exchange opinions with each other. When looking at other people's materials, please be careful not to be too rough. Handle them with care because every Orcish book or letter is extremely expensive. So I also suggest that every student copy an Orcish rune by themselves and bring it to class. Don't bring the original. Although this will require several times more effort. As for other precautions, we will talk about them little by little during the class."
In fact, while Duchamp was introducing the class rules, Jess had been looking at the appearances and clothes of the people around him. Before coming here, he was a bit worried that he would meet the warlock members from the basement of the Slaughtered Lamb here. So he was still a bit nervous.
After all, if what Marin said was correct, this class was already the only Orcish language class in the Wizard's Sanctum. If those warlocks mistook the incantations as Orcish, they would definitely try every means to squeeze in.
Fortunately, there was no one among these people who looked familiar or who looked at him with strange eyes. There should be no one he knew.
Most importantly, Gargan was not among them.
However, when Duchamp said that every Orcish book and letter was extremely expensive, he felt his attention was immediately drawn to his lips.
How expensive?
How much could a tattered book with nine-tenths of its pages burned sell for? How much could a classic composed of incomprehensible Orcish and an unknown language sell for? How much could a letter of order written by Teron Gorefiend himself sell for?
For that burned book and bilingual classic, Jess definitely couldn't sell them.
But that order from Teron Gorefiend seemed to have no value anymore. After all, he had copied one. And he had no interest in collecting these things.
If he found a rich person interested in collecting Orc-related cultural relics and sold that thing, how much money could he get?
Booty Bay... Booty Bay...
Thinking of the story that the staff merchant Alan Havigan told about a staff being sold for 240 gold coins, Jess felt his head was already getting hot.
This letter was a personal letter from the highest level among the Orcish high-level leaders and elites. It not only had collection value but also had a bit of military value.
Perhaps this meant that there was still a genuine death knight walking on Azeroth who had not been captured. He had been waiting for the retreat order from his superior Teron Gorefiend until the Dark Portal was occupied by the Alliance...
Thinking about these, couldn't this letter sell for a few gold coins?
"Jess Sethor." Duchamp suddenly called his name. Jess was stunned. It turned out that he had already been lost in thought.
In the first class, and in this strange class where everyone was sitting around, he actually let his thoughts run thousands of miles south in front of so many people.
"Please look at this rune. What do you think it means?"
Duchamp handed a piece of paper with Orcish written on it to Jess.
Jess looked left and right. Recalling those Orcish runes he had seen in the library in the past two days, he felt that there seemed to be some similarities, but he couldn't think of where they were similar.
After all, he had only been studying for three or four days. Although the intensity was quite high, it was impossible to be familiar with a completely different alphabet system in such a short time. Even if he had seen it, it seemed that he couldn't recognize it.
"This rune is pronounced 'Mak'gora'. In Orcish culture, it is a very important ceremony." Duchamp reminded.
Jess had a faint impression of the pronunciation of "Mak'gora", but he really couldn't remember the specific meaning. But when Duchamp said that this was a very important ceremony, something suddenly popped into his mind - a duel of honor.
Because he only knew this ceremony of the Orcs. It was a duel to the death for the position of the chieftain of a tribe.
"Duel of honor." Jess pointed at this piece of paper and said, "I know this."
After saying that, he felt that the sweat in his hair was about to come out.
"Duel of honor?" Duchamp and the other students around all showed a look of confusion.
Jess looked around carefully and asked, "Isn't it right?"
"This does mean duel. That's correct." A middle-aged classmate beside him said, "But why is there this layer of honor in it?"
Jess realized that he had been too clever for his own good. He had said too much. It would have been better to just say he didn't know.
He was about to explain, but then realized that if he talked about some cultural content about the duel of honor, these students and teachers who didn't know much about the Orcs would be even more suspicious of him. So he said vaguely, "I thought that the duels of the Orcs might be like those of human nobles. For competing for an important thing, such as a lover, such as dignity or something. But it's not a deathmatch. So they duel and stop when they reach a certain point... This is just my own understanding."
"There is a certain possibility." Duchamp said, "The Orcs are a race that loves fighting. Maybe they will use duels to decide some affairs within the tribe."
"I don't agree..." Another younger woman said, "I don't think the Orcs have any sense of honor. They have been burning, killing, looting and doing all kinds of evil things. If they love fighting, then fighting to the death is even more reasonable, right?"
Jess knew that this woman was right. Before the young warchief Thrall ruled the tribe, the Orcs' duels had always been to the death. At the very least, they had to beat the opponent until they were seriously injured and could no longer fight.
At this time, an old man said, "Perhaps they will be kinder to their own people."
Another man said, "When the Orcs attacked Westfall, some farms were not severely looted. The towns that were most severely damaged by the Orcs were all those with garrisons and those that resisted the most fiercely... Perhaps they didn't want to harm enemies without weapons."
"A village in the marsh was completely massacred. Do you think those marsh people can have any decent weapons to deal with the Orc army? I think you are not far from being an Orc sympathizer. You have ignored the countless dead farmers and burned farms from Elwynn to Redridge." A young man retorted.
"Don't casually determine other people's positions, kid." The man said sternly, "Do you want to ignore some objective facts in order to express your own justice? Then I'd like to see how you interpret the Orcs' motivation for not wanting to harm the farmers of Westfall!"
"It's just slavery of a backward civilization." An older female classmate said slowly, "The Orcs also need to eat and drink. They need slaves to provide them with food."
"We are not a course for cultural and political discussions." Duchamp stopped the argument that was about to diverge to the moon and was even a bit dangerous. "As for the values and social concepts of the Orcs, let's leave it to scholars of history, sociology, and ethnology to discuss. We should focus on language research."
Compared to a teacher, Duchamp was more like a host, always controlling the discussion not to deviate too much from the language itself. After all, in the current Alliance, how to treat the Orcs is a quite dangerous topic.
Next, several students shared their materials. Jess really learned a lot of Orcish grammar and some usage habits of words that he hadn't noticed in the library.
When the class was over, Duchamp gave Jess a stack of papers and said, "This is some of our summaries from the previous period. You can use it as supplementary teaching materials and read it carefully. When you have almost finished reading it, return it. Because we only copied two copies. Copying Orcish runes is really very difficult."
Jess couldn't agree more. How long would it take to copy such a thick stack of papers? It would definitely be of great help to his progress in learning Orcish.