Developing believers in the Northland is like finding water in the desert, and it is extremely difficult. Everyone says that people here are born unbelievers, but I don't think so. I think they have faith, but what they believe in is always themselves, the sword in their hands. We missed the opportunity —— Archbishop of the Duchy of Swan, Archbishop Armand Richelieu, of the Goddess of Life.

In the evening, facing Richie, who was pulled back to Stormwind Castle by a legendary magic, Olivia threw him a book: "Since you are a member of the Swan family, I think you can put the magic book first, and your most urgent thing is to understand the thoughts and customs of the people here, in your words, called values." This book is for you. ”

The title of the book is none other than "Smith of Suffering".

Since the Northlands were once the home of the orcs, how did the first humans here come to be?

The answer is slaves captured by the orcs.

Many years ago, Smith was one of them.

Unlike thousands of other slaves, he could write.

Smith was a resident of a village that once existed in the southern part of the Northern Fortress, and his father was a priest of the gods, with a beautiful wife and a pair of children, and was a very happy family, so he learned to write at a very young age.

At that time, the orcs had to go south every year to plunder, and when Smith was eight years old, the entire town was taken captive to the Northlands, including their family.

After arriving in the Northlands, his father was also saved from being killed because he could write, but the whole family was assigned to different tribes as slaves and was forced to separate.

The young Smith's first job as a slave was sheep herding, which he hated at first, but later during a herding trip, he met his sister, so he gradually began to like this job, and wanted to use the peculiarity of this job to find his family and meet him.

The work was not all smooth sailing, and on the third day of the herd, he lost five sheep in his management, and of course, the orcs could not be counted, another human who was also a slave and his best playmate, Jim.

When the orc found out, he broke three of his ribs without asking any questions, but fortunately he was spared when he found out that it was the wolves around him who took the sheep away.

In the days that followed, beatings became commonplace, with the highest record being six beatings a day. The whistleblower Jim was hit by a tornado during a grazing half a year later, leaving his sheep behind and fleeing alone.

The usual flattery did not make the orcs feel any pity for Jim, and in order to show that he took the initiative to ask for help, he grazed a large flock of sheep, which was a huge fortune for the poor orcs, and now that they were all lost, the orcs would certainly not let Jim go.

They pierced Jim with sharpened sticks, and Smith saw the bloody sticks peeking out of Jim's gaping mouth and his desperate eyes. Jim struggled for more than an hour to die in agony, his body left outside the camp, and five days after Smith tending his sheep found one of his shoes and half a piece of clothing under a large tree.

The dead Jim dedicates a nice dinner to the beast.

This incident made Smith realize that if he didn't do something about it, he would sooner or later be killed in the same way because his value was too low.

So, he began to learn the art of herding, and gradually he got the hang of it, and the flock he managed grew larger and smaller, and he was beaten less and less - it was impossible to avoid it completely, and his master was a grumpy orc, often drunk, and sometimes beating people was just a simple exercise, and there was no need for a reason.

After another whole year, he finally met his father, at an inter-tribal fair.

The father's appearance is skinny and unclothed, Smith is almost unrecognizable, and he is being taken out by another orc to sell as goods, because he has studied in the temple since he was a child, and when he grows up, except for prayer and mass, his father has lost all other life skills, and cannot create value, and he can survive by relying on his magic skills that are quite good among ordinary people.

By then, Smith was already a good shepherd and could speak in front of his master.

So, he told his master that his father was a good manager, that he could write and calculate, that he could help his master create a lot of wealth, and that he hoped that the master would buy his father.

He got his wish, and his father was bought and used in three sheepskins.

Smith found out that his father had been castrated, and it turned out that when he was in another tribe, a female orc often peeked at him and even secretly gave him food. So the jealous orc-man cruelly tortured his father, did not ask him if he was interested in the female orc, and often beat him, and the human slaves around him, fearing being implicated, also deliberately alienated him, and even robbed him of food.

But that didn't dampen the father's will—because he was God's pastor.

In this desperate place, my father still prayed three times a day, meticulously, and on the grand festival of the gods, he would also try his best to hold rituals, and preach the teachings of the gods he believed in to the people and orcs around him, and he firmly believed that the gods he believed in would come to save him, because he was also able to use divine magic, which was given to him by the gods, indicating that the gods had been paying attention to him.

His father took all this suffering as a severe test, and he was not afraid of death, because he believed that after death he would become a heroic spirit of the gods and enter the kingdom of the gods.

However, after meeting his son, his father also changed a lot, and with his good arithmetic, he soon got the position of orc butler, and continued to teach Smith to read and write in his spare time.

Although the orcs didn't understand, they knew that the benefits had increased, so the life of the Smith father and son was much better, which also gave him the opportunity to observe more about this new world.

He discovered a pattern that the orcs would raid human territory every year near the end of winter, regardless of whether they had enough food for themselves. This seems to be a way for their own survival of the fittest, maintaining a strong desire to fight and superb combat skills is the top priority of every tribe, the old and weak are killed in battle, and the nature that remains is the strongest.

And he also found that orcs seem to be particularly capable of reproduction, and the rate of reproduction is even faster than that of humans who are known for their numbers among the diverse races, and in the human world, it is normal for his parents to have two children, but the number is only five or six. But here his master has five female orcs, and these five females give birth to a newborn almost every year until they are infertile, discarded, and replaced by new females...... It's just that not many of these children live to adulthood, but each of them is a qualified warrior, and they have been fighting wild beasts, fighting other tribes, and fighting their siblings since childhood...... Those who are qualified to survive are always the strongest ones, which is terrifying.

In the end, he came to the conclusion that the orcs were a race that would inevitably expand outward, because they multiplied much faster than they could produce, and they didn't know how to run a business, as evidenced by the fact that Smith's father's shallow business skills had greatly improved the living conditions of his master's family.