Finding a Little Elf Girl

Rhode could no longer remember how long he had been in Azeroth.

All he knew was that the town he lived in was Southshore, in the Hillsbrad Foothills, and it still belonged to the Kingdom of Lordaeron.

In other words, the storyline of World of Warcraft had not yet begun.

At first, Rhode had been very excited. He thought he could gain some advantages with the wealth of knowledge he had learned in the modern world, along with spoilers or a head start on historical events.

He set himself a modest goal: conquer Azeroth.

But reality soon slapped him hard in the face.

First, coming to this world had not given him any superpowers or one of those systems so often mentioned in webnovels, so he was just an ordinary person.

Second, as an ordinary person, nobody gave a damn about him!

Perhaps if he told some prophet or Archmage that Arthas was destined to fall, or that Lordaeron would soon fall, someone might believe him. But the highest-ranking person Rhode had access to was merely the mayor of Southshore.

Like hell the mayor would believe him!

Who was Arthas?

The prince of the mighty Kingdom of Lordaeron, surrounded by an aura of greatness, glory, and righteousness. Word had it that he had just joined the Order of the Silver Hand.

Someone like that would fall?

That was even less believable than hearing that the murlocs on Southshore's coast were helping humans build houses.

Rhode had tentatively broached the subject with the mayor, but judging by the way the mayor looked at him, Rhode suspected that a few more remarks like that would land him in a lunatic asylum.

So Rhode backed down and no longer dared to spread such "treasonous" talk.

While he was at it, Rhode made a slight adjustment to his modest goal.

He changed "conquer Azeroth" to-"stay alive."

After all, for an ordinary human without any particular abilities, even staying alive in a dangerous world teeming with all sorts of monsters was no easy task.

He was not sure of the exact year, but it should have been somewhere between the Second War and the Third War.

Although these were rare years of peace for Azeroth, Rhode knew that the Third War would begin in a few years.

When that happened, war would rage everywhere, and staying alive would become even harder.

Besides, Arthas, who would become the Lich King by then, was going to attack Dalaran. If he happened to hit Southshore along the way, it would be GG for Rhode.

So Rhode's goal was to earn enough money to hide somewhere relatively safe before war broke out-such as the maritime city of Kul Tiras. If some lucky chance let him slip into Pandaria, that would be even better.

After several years of hard work, Rhode felt he was gradually approaching his goal.

He had become an outstanding-

Farmer.

He really was outstanding.

He was a fully fledged farm owner now, capable of tending an entire stretch of farmland above the Jade Mine all by himself.

Every autumn harvest, he supplied Southshore with more grain than anyone else.

The grain produced in Southshore was not just eaten by the townspeople or sent north to Lordaeron City as taxes. Large quantities were also shipped to nearby Dun Garok or Durnholde Keep to be sold for coin.

So Rhode was living fairly comfortably.

He slowly saved the money he earned. When the time was right, he should be able to make his escape, buy a house with an ocean view in Tiragarde Sound, marry a sturdy Kul Tiran wife, and live out his life in peace.

As for conquering Azeroth... of course Rhode had not forgotten.

He often wrote little nuggets of inspiration on parchment to remind himself not to forget his lofty ambitions:

"Look back on your youth, and you'll find you've lost many precious things. Don't be sad. You'll lose even more in the future."

"If you're a rock, you won't shine no matter where you go."

"Another day has passed. How was today? Are your dreams even farther away?"

"..."

Oh, right. Speaking of writing, Rhode did actually have a superpower.

Languages.

When he arrived in this world, he discovered that the people here spoke a language he had never heard in his original world, yet he could understand it and communicate with them without any difficulty.

Rhode knew this language was called "Common." Almost all humans in Azeroth spoke it.

Later, however, he discovered that he could also understand and speak the languages used by some goblins and dwarves who came to town to trade.

That was a little strange.

Knowing Common was not all that surprising. They were all humans, after all.

But knowing Goblin and Dwarvish as well could only be explained as Rhode's superpower, or his cheat ability.

Still, wasn't this cheat ability far too weak?

Make money as an interpreter? A job like that meant traveling all over the place without knowing whether he would live to see tomorrow. Farming felt much more secure.

Besides, being a farmer was plenty of fun.

Outside the busy farming seasons, Rhode's daily routine mostly consisted of patrolling the farm during the day, pulling weeds now and then, chasing away wild animals, and spending the rest of his time reading.

At night, he patrolled again, read some more, and then went to sleep.

All his books were borrowed from town.

There was a young teacher in Southshore named Stalvan who loved studying Azeroth's history, so he owned plenty of history books, such as "The Old Gods and the Ordering of Azeroth," "The Dragonflights," "Ironforge: The Awakening of the Dwarves," and "The Founding of Quel'Thalas."

Although Rhode knew this fellow named Stalvan might later do some awful things over a female student, leaving players with the classic quest chain "The Legend of Stalvan," he seemed quite normal for now.

Stalvan was one of the few "educated men" in town, after all, so Rhode spoke with him fairly often. They could be considered friends, and Rhode frequently borrowed books and bought parchment from him.

Rhode had no desire to study history. He already knew quite a lot of it from playing the game.

He only read to pass the time.

In a little town like this, with inconvenient transportation and no internet, time dragged on endlessly.

So he mostly spent his days tending the farm and reading. He rarely even went into Southshore.

Of course, Farmer Rhode had troubles of his own lately.

Too many animals were coming to the farm in search of food.

Most were small wild boars and badgers. They posed little threat to Rhode himself, but every so often they would root around in the fields for corn, sweet potatoes, and the like.

That's money! My wife fund!

The farm was too large, and Rhode was only one man. It was hard to keep watch over every field.

Although he had put up scarecrows everywhere, these animals were clever. After a few visits, they figured out the scarecrows were fake and stopped giving a damn about them.

So Rhode was run ragged, constantly patrolling the different fields to chase away these greedy animals.

Today, just as Rhode was finally dragging his exhausted body off to bed, he heard noises from the cornfield beside his house again.

"Can't a man get any sleep?" Rhode grumbled, throwing on his coarse cloth clothes and gripping a steel pitchfork.

Apart from wild boars and badgers, there could also be large wild animals nearby, such as bears and tigers. Even the spiders here were dangerous-they were much bigger than those in the real world.

He definitely needed weapons, so Rhode always kept a steel pitchfork and an iron rod in his house.

Now, looking like "young Runtu," Rhode walked out the door.

He heard chewing, but it did not sound like an animal.

What could it be?

Rhode tightened his grip on the pitchfork and crouched low to quiet his movements, then carefully approached.

He soon found his target in the cornfield. By the moonlight, he could make out an uninvited guest.

What is that thing?

A straw-hat monster?

All Rhode could see was a tattered conical straw hat trembling slightly.

He tentatively gave the hat a gentle poke with his pitchfork.

"Ow!" The straw-hat monster let out a clear cry.

A child's voice?

Then the straw-hat monster turned around.

It really was a child.

She wore that huge, battered straw hat on her head, big enough to cover almost her entire body.

Beautiful long golden hair spilled out from beneath the hat. Her bangs parted in the middle, curling up at the tips, and her adorable, delicately sculpted face looked up at Rhode with a pair of big blue eyes.

She wore a little blue one-piece robe, and her exposed arms revealed porcelain-white skin.

Hmm? She doesn't look like one of the local children.

Or rather, she did not look like a human child at all. The edges of her ears were a little too pointed.

Rhode now recognized the straw hat as the one he had put on the scarecrow in his cornfield.

"Little one, you'll have to explain this," Rhode said in Common.

"Well! Hahaha! I'm really sorry. I was hungry, and when I saw you had corn here, I came to pick some to eat."

The child's voice was clear and lovely.

She was speaking Common too.

Seeing Rhode staring at her straw hat, the child took it off. "I thought this hat was cute, so I put it on."

Now Rhode could see the child's long, slender ears.

She really was an elf!

A little high elf girl.