Working in Stormwind: A Warcraft Isekai

Jess refused the harpoon the goblins offered him. Instead, he unfastened his cloth-wrapped staff and held it in his hands.

The cloth around it was soaked now, making it a little heavier, but holding the staff still made him feel safer.

He stared at the open hatch. Knowing there was something waiting for you in the dark and having to go toward it anyway was a rotten feeling.

The five formed a line and moved through the passenger corridors one deck below. The three new volunteers went first, Jess was second from the rear, and Gred brought up the back beside him.

The leader was a clean-shaven man, stripped to the waist with a coil of rope across his back. He had no shirt or armor at all. He kept a long fork pointed straight ahead, every muscle in his body tense.

Jess carried his little notebook, now wet at the edges, and studied the blurred writing. He quietly repeated the spells he’d written down. Forgetting one when he needed it would be disastrous.

”Hey. Look at this,” the leader said.

A goblin’s corpse lay on the stairs to the lowest hold. He was one of the men who’d gone down earlier to catch the black panther.

Two deep claw marks ran across his back. One had cut right through his abdomen, leaving his insides spilling out. Apparently he’d been badly wounded and had crawled all the way here before dying. There was only one corridor left between him and the hatch.

But given those injuries, he wouldn’t have lived even if he’d made it out.

The others probably hadn’t fared any better. They were either dead or hiding somewhere. Otherwise, someone surely would have run back to the deck for help.

The bare-chested man stepped around the corpse, went down the stairs, and peered inside. After making sure there was no immediate danger, he beckoned.

When they all reached the floor of the hold, a faint, murmuring voice drifted from the distance through the jumble of wind, waves, and rain striking the hull.

All five looked sharply toward it. Everyone had heard something.

Gred stared in the direction of the sound. ”Can anyone make out what that is?”

”Help?” the ponytailed man said. He carried a fishing net and a short stick. ”I hear someone calling for help. Sounds human.”

Once he said it, Jess thought it sounded like a cry for help too.

But none of the five moved. They all understood what the voice was being used for.

The beast hiding in the hold would never have spared an injured person for no reason. It was using his cries to draw rescuers in and ambush them.

There were animals on Earth that knew how to lure prey like this, let alone the clever, treacherous beasts of Azeroth, raised in a world nourished by arcane magic. Everyone here had some hunting experience. They weren’t going to fall for such an obvious trap.

”I’ll take a look,” Gred said. ”I’ve got a shield. I can draw the panther into attacking me, then hold it off. You lot find a chance to capture it.”

”Are you sure?” Jess asked.

”Of course I’m sure. Why would I offer if I wasn’t? Stop talking nonsense, Jess,” the dwarf muttered.

”Go ahead, dwarf,” the ponytailed man said. ”We’ll cover you.”

The bare-chested man nodded.

”Careful, dwarf,” the woman added, gripping her club. ”If it goes badly, run. Don’t get yourself killed.”

”Don’t say such unlucky things, damn it,” Gred grumbled.

”Watch behind those crates,” Jess reminded him.

To clarify the source, this chapter came from the author’s official page without consent, and that page supports the author.

Gred nodded, adjusted his hold on the shield, and crept toward the voice. He peeked around every obstruction, afraid something would leap on him without warning.

The others followed as far as a place from which they could attack quickly. Then they stopped and watched Gred enter a patch of total darkness.

The ship rocked, seemingly harder down here than it had on deck. The woman steadied herself against the wall and watched the dwarf. The ponytailed man pressed against a wooden crate.

The bare-chested man crouched by the bulkhead, fork ready. A pale, indistinct shape lay ahead. Jess remembered that the sailor who’d gone down earlier had worn a white shirt beneath a layer of mail. The armor appeared to have been stripped off.

Jess worried about Gred. He had spells ready for all kinds of emergencies. If the others discovered he was using shadow magic, so be it. At a moment like this, he honestly didn’t care.

Gred was nearly beside the figure in white, yet the panther hadn’t appeared.

”We need to move closer,” Jess whispered. ”If he’s attacked from here, we won’t be able to help him in time.”

”Right.” The bare-chested man shuffled forward in a crouch. The others followed.

Jess glanced over his shoulder at the far end of the hold. Rows of crates and soaked coverings blended together in the gloom. Lightning flashed, turning the empty passage stark white.

He half expected a monster to appear among the shadows, like something from a horror movie, but he saw nothing.

The ponytailed man grabbed the edge of a porthole, his hair blowing about in the wind. He followed Jess’s gaze.

”We should watch our backs too. What if it’s waiting behind us?”

The bare-chested man nodded and glanced around. Just then, thunder rolled after the lightning, and Gred shouted from ahead.

”Can’t save this one! Half his body’s gone! Damn it!”

”Holy Light,” the ponytailed man muttered. ”Could someone just tell me where that panther is?”

”At this point, I’m not sure even the Light could find it,” the bare-chested man said, looking around. ”What if we’ve got this wrong? Maybe the panther hurt that fellow, thought he was dead, and left. The hold isn’t all that big. If it’s still here, how can none of us sense a trace of it?”

The panther’s musky smell filled the hold, but it was hard to tell where it was stronger or weaker. The cage hadn’t been moved either. Perhaps the odor came from droppings left inside it.

The bare-chested man had a point. There weren’t that many places to hide in the hold—unless the black panther could become invisible.

As far as Jess knew, this world didn’t have the game’s Stealth ability, where a creature simply vanished and you could only see a transparent outline when you got close.

As they hesitated over what to do next, the ship lurched without warning. Jess grabbed the bulkhead.

A sudden roar sounded beside him. A human shape flashed past and vanished. Jess tried to turn, but the rolling deck kept him from looking around immediately.

”It... ah!”

The bare-chested man shouted something and crashed against the outer wall. He scrambled up and yelled, ”Something was just here!”

By the time everyone recovered, the ponytailed man was gone. Only his stick remained!

Had something dragged him away?

”It’s the fellow with his hair tied back! Something grabbed him!” The woman raised her club toward the rear. ”I didn’t see anything... and there’s nothing behind us! I was watching that direction the whole time!”

”What are you talking about?” Gred ran back to the group. ”He just vanished?”

”You didn’t see it?” Jess asked.

”It was pitch-black where I was. I was crouched over that man’s wounds when the ship knocked me over. How could I see what happened here?”

”Something took him, and it moved incredibly fast,” the bare-chested man said. ”We’re no match for it. It’s waiting for us to make a mistake! We should go back and wait for daylight. Damn it, this ship’s too big! We’re not the hunters anymore. We’re the prey!”

The beast was more patient and better at adapting than they’d expected.

Jess desperately wanted to bring out Saeno. The imp was surely better than any of them at sensing a hidden danger. It had a demon’s eyes, after all, and no matter how well the panther concealed itself, it was still alive, its body full of life energy.

He could cast a shadow spell and claim it was arcane magic, fooling these people who knew little about spells. But how could he explain an actual demon appearing right in front of them?

”Can we even make it back alive?” the woman asked.

”Pull yourselves together, damn it!” Gred struck his shield with his pole. ”That’s one less person to split the reward with! Shouldn’t you be excited? Forget capturing it alive. Use everything you’ve got. We’re killing that son of a bitch!”

”Agreed,” said the bare-chested man. ”I say kill it too.”

”First we have to know where it is,” the woman said. ”You’re experienced hunters. Shouldn’t we work out how to surround it?”

”I’ve hunted in Stranglethorn’s forests. Never aboard a ship!” the bare-chested man snapped. ”And we absolutely shouldn’t split up. We’d all die!”

”Fine. But we still need to find it. Let’s figure out exactly what happened just now.”

A sharp crash sounded overhead. It could have been fighting, but it sounded just as much like something falling onto the floor above.

The sea wind howled like a ghost. Everyone was jumpy by now.

The woman looked up. ”Should we go upstairs?”

”What if it’s another false alarm?” the bare-chested man asked helplessly.

None of the four could decide whether to go. If they rushed up and found nothing, they’d be letting the beast lead them around by the nose.

Jess thought about it. If the panther wanted to snatch someone, why hadn’t it attacked Gred when he was alone? A creature fast enough to seize a man from the middle of four people could surely have crept up to Gred while the ship lurched and dragged him away before the others reacted.

What had stopped it from attacking Gred? Why had it gone for the group instead?

Jess looked toward the darkness where the corpse lay, then back at the patch of floor washed in moonlight.

The windows. It was the windows!