Chapter 679
Chapter 679: Dragon Soul
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Elune’s arrival didn’t attract the attention of the Highborne, and no one even knew that she had appeared.
Over the following period of time, when the Highborne discovered that Tyrande’s divine protection always existed and they couldn’t do anything to her, they gradually lost interest in her. Azshara never mentioned getting Tyrande to be her maid again. The Highborne only imprisoned her and didn’t let her leave before mostly stopping paying attention to her.
Xavius was a scheming and cunning person. Illidan’s surrender always made him think that he was here to save Tyrande, so he kept a close eye on him. But what puzzled him was that Illidan really attacked his compatriots ruthlessly in the following days. The Kaldorei Resistance sent several waves of troops to Zin-Azshari. First, they were probing the weak points of the guards of the Well of Eternity, and second, they wanted to assassinate Azshara. But these troops were repelled by the Highborne, and Illidan also participated in the battles and personally killed several night elves of the Resistance.
This token of allegiance made it impossible for Xavius not to believe it, so he gradually relaxed his vigilance against Illidan, thinking that he really wanted to join the Burning Legion.
But in fact, Xavius didn’t know that Illidan’s actions were actually made to win Roy’s trust. After hearing Krasus and the others’ evaluation of Demon King Osiris, he had always thought that Roy was a cunning demon. In order to make his intentions of joining appear more real, Illidan had to attack his own people. With his few attacks, the interior of the Kaldorei Resistance gradually learned of his betrayal.
His brother, Malfurion, was furious about this. Tyrande had been captured, and Illidan had betrayed him. These two pieces of news dealt a huge blow to him. But at this moment, he couldn’t worry about so much because his current opponent was another commander of the Burning Legion, Archimonde!
From the beginning of the war, Malfurion had persuaded his mentor, Cenarius, to contact the demigods in the wilderness and ask them to join the Resistance against the Burning Legion. Cenarius agreed to Malfurion’s plan and went to contact these demigods. Although the wilderness demigods couldn’t arrive in time because their residences were too far away, they still joined the Resistance one after another. But they didn’t join the main battlefield and chose to deal with Archimonde and his two lieutenants, Hakkar the Houndmaster and the pit lord Mannoroth.
Since Roy was guarding the rear and in charge of the portal, Archimonde and his two lieutenants had basically been on vacation during this period of time, and their way of taking vacation was to kill and destroy! As they advanced, they flattened all the cities in front of them. When they advanced to the middle of Kalimdor, Archimonde felt that this speed of destruction was not satisfying enough, so he separated from Hakkar and Mannoroth, and the three of them split into three paths to wreak havoc.
The destruction the three of them brought to Kalimdor was immense. They destroyed countless forests and mountains, causing the wilderness demigods to suffer greatly. So after realizing that they had divided their forces, the demigods formulated precision strikes against the three of them.
The first to be killed was Hakkar the Houndmaster, with the orc veteran Broxigar as bait. After smelling the scent of the orc, Hakkar tracked down Broxigar, but he was ambushed in Cenarius’s territory. The large number of cerberus troops led by Hakkar were slaughtered, and Hakkar himself eventually died at the hands of Malfurion.
On another side, several wilderness demigods besieged Mannoroth, but they failed to kill him. In the end, Mannoroth escaped with serious injuries, and the wilderness demigods could only stop chasing helplessly because of the injuries to their eyes.
As for Archimonde, the ambushing demigods paid a heavy price. Not only did they not cause any damage to Archimonde, but during the battle, one of the strongest demigods perished. This fallen demigod was named Malorne, a majestic white stag. He was the consort of the legendary Moon Goddess Elune, the father of Cenarius, and the White Stag King. He had powerful strength comparable to that of a demon king. In the battle with Archimonde, both sides fought to the point of the sky falling and the earth rending, appearing to be evenly matched.
However, in the end, Archimonde was stronger. After all, he had been a demon king for more than 10,000 years. Even though Malorne was one of nature’s greatest champions, it was impossible for him to compare to Archimonde. In the end, the White Stag King had his neck broken by Archimonde and died tragically in the battle. He was Archimonde’s greatest battle record so far.
After this battle, the wilderness demigods were severely injured. In addition to Malorne, several other demigods had also perished. The remaining demigods had to fall into a deep sleep to recover from consuming too much magic power. Although these demigods had eternal bodies and wouldn’t truly die—thanks to their souls being more akin to forms of life essence than ordinary souls, and the essence could only be corrupted or purified but not destroyed—it still required a lot of time to resurrect.
Archimonde’s devastation was unstoppable, so Malfurion could only seek help from the five great dragonflights again. Fortunately, the dragons finally agreed to take action.
Unlike Krasus’s request for help before, as the War of the Ancients became more and more intense, the Aspects discovered the strength of the Burning Legion. After realizing that Azeroth would really be in danger if this continued, the Aspects could only move out.
The attack of the five great dragonflights forced the demon army of the Burning Legion to stop marching on Kalimdor. The five Aspects attacked together and finally repelled Archimonde.
After escaping, Archimonde wasn’t injured, but he was angry from losing dignity in front of Roy. He wanted more soldiers from the Legion and wanted Sargeras to descend as soon as possible, but the portal above the Well of Eternity was expanding at an unsatisfactory rate. The size of a portal that could teleport titans was unimaginable. With Sargeras’s colossal body, this portal needed to be larger than a mountain range. It might even require expanding the portal to the size of the entire lake of the Well of Eternity. How could this be accomplished in a short time?
Archimonde couldn’t do much about it, and neither could Roy, so he could only persevere and take it slow.
In order to regain his honor and wash away the humiliation of being repelled, Archimonde led the demon army of the Burning Legion and fought dozens of battles with the dragon army. Both sides had victories and losses. The Aspects couldn’t completely defeat the Burning Legion, but the expansion of the Burning Legion was temporarily stopped.
But everyone knew that this stoppage was only temporary. As long as the portals still existed, the demons of the Burning Legion would pour into Azeroth one batch after another. Sooner or later, the dragon army would drown under the iron hooves of the demons.
Worried about this situation, the Aspects held a plenary meeting to discuss how to deal with the Burning Legion. At this meeting, the Black Aspect, Neltharion the Earth-Warder, proposed a solution. He felt that the power of the Aspects was too scattered now. If they could make an artifact and gather the power of all the Aspects into it to create a powerful strategic weapon, they might be able to eliminate a large number of demons in one blow, thereby greatly reducing the number of demons and creating opportunities for counterattacks.
This proposal was naturally very reasonable. The Aspects felt that it wasn’t bad, so they quickly decided to create this artifact known as the Dragon Soul.
However, neither Alexstrasza nor Malygos thought that Neltharion, who had made this proposal, was no longer one of them.
Although Neltharion had obtained power from the titans when he became an Aspect, as time passed, he realized that the titans were only using Azeroth as an experimental ground. The responsibility of being the Earth-Warder had actually been imposed on him. Although he could give orders to the entirety of Azeroth, the same burden pressed on him every day when he woke up, making him feel suffocated.
The bitterness and burden in the depths of his heart caused flaws to appear in Neltharion’s mind, and his duty as the Earth-Warder brought him closer to the imprisoned Old Gods than the other Aspects. In the past ten thousand years, Neltharion had heard the Old Gods whispering in his ears day after day, which eventually drove him to the edge of madness.
Neltharion felt that this invasion of the Burning Legion might be an opportunity for him to free himself. He could destroy Azeroth, release the Old Gods, and destroy all the experiments of the titans. Then he would be free and no longer have to bear those heavy burdens… He could even go one step further and become the ruler of this world…
Therefore, during the forging of the Dragon Soul, Neltharion lied that he had already infused black dragon power into the artifact and then deceived the other four Aspects to infuse their power into the artifact.
Alexstrasza and the others had no doubts. In the end, they successfully forged the artifact. The dragon army took this artifact and began to counterattack Zin-Azshari with confidence, intending to have a decisive battle with the Burning Legion.
After Archimonde received the news, he was a little surprised, but he didn’t think too much about it. He immediately took away most of the Burning Legion demons and planned to fight this decisive battle with the dragons, leaving only a small number of demons under Roy’s command.
Roy was quite curious about this decisive battle, so he observed the entire battle from a high-dimensional perspective.
During the battle, the dragons and the Kaldorei Resistance invested a large number of troops, forcing Archimonde to send all his demons onto the battlefield. When the Aspects felt that the time was right, they finally revealed their trump card, the Dragon Soul!
The moment the power in the Dragon Soul erupted, the sky lit up with a light brighter than a nuclear bomb explosion. The purest magic energy from the Aspects instantly exploded, dying the ground and sky a rust-like scarlet. Then an endless rain of fire fell from the sky, and incalculable lightning bolts struck the ground.
On the ground, the demons of the Burning Legion couldn’t withstand this violent magic energy at all. They screamed and howled as they were turned into ashes under the flames and lightning. Many of the souls of the demons didn’t even have time to escape and return before they were torn and shattered in the massive energy field.
With just one attack, tens of thousands of Burning Legion demons were wiped out. Even Archimonde, who was commanding the battle, suffered heavy injuries. He screamed, opened a portal on the spot, and directly escaped back to Zin-Azshari.
However, what no one expected was that not only did the demons of the Burning Legion fall under this attack, but also… the night elves on the same side as the dragon army!
A large number of the Kaldorei Resistance soldiers were affected by the flames and lightning falling from the sky. Before they could even scream, they turned into humanoid torches. Although this attack was mainly aimed at the demons, thousands of night elves also turned into ashes.
This scene stunned everyone. They didn’t know why the weapon targetting the demons would even affect their allies.
Just as everyone was at a loss, the gigantic Neltharion, who was flying in the sky, looked down at the battlefield and laughed wildly. “Hahahaha! Did you see it? This incomparably powerful force! And I, Neltharion, am the controller and master of this powerful force! From today onward, you insignificant and humble insects, whether you are elves, demons, or dragons, must submit to me!”
Neltharion’s eyes revealed a crazy color. He arrogantly made a declaration to all the living beings present. At this moment, the whispers of the Old Gods that had been echoing in his mind finally disappeared, making him think that everything he was doing was right.
His crazy appearance shocked the Aspects. They didn’t understand why Neltharion would suddenly do this. The Blue Aspect, Malygos, who had always been as close as brothers with Neltharion, didn’t think much at all before he led his blue dragon army to surround Neltharion and asked him loudly why he did this.
But the crazy Neltharion no longer had this brother in his eyes. He silently activated the Dragon Soul again!
The familiar light flashed again, but this time, the Dragon Soul wasn’t targeting the defeated demons of the Burning Legion but the blue dragons under Malygos. With just one attack, countless blue dragons screamed, turned into billowing smoke, and fell from the sky. Malygos’s consort, Sindragosa, was also heavily injured. She was hit by the immense magic power in the Dragon Soul and sent flying several kilometers away from the battlefield. Although Malygos relied on his Aspect power to withstand a large amount of damage, he was still heavily injured and fell.
With just one attack, Neltharion almost wiped out the entire blue dragon army. This effect was even stronger than when he attacked the demons of the Burning Legion. The reason was naturally that Neltharion had tampered with the Dragon Soul during the forging process. Not only did he not infuse his own power into it, but he even made the Dragon Soul have an unparalleled restraining ability against other dragons. As long as other dragons were around the Dragon Soul, they would become exceptionally weak.
To put it bluntly, the Dragon Soul was like a demon contract. Anyone who signed their name on it would be bound by it. However, the black dragons had not infused power into it, so Neltharion and the black dragons could control this artifact without restraint.
The allied forces didn’t expect such a huge change to happen on the battlefield. Fortunately, Archimonde and the demons he led were shocked by Neltharion’s demonstration. The defeated demons couldn’t care less about turning to deal with the allied forces, which created an opportunity for others. Krasus suddenly transformed into a red dragon and flew into the sky. Perhaps because of his identity as a time traveler, the influence of the Dragon Soul on him wasn’t as great as expected. The red dragon opened his mouth and bit Neltharion’s wing, fighting desperately in the air with him.
Precisely because of Krasus’s bravery, Neltharion couldn’t focus on controlling the Dragon Soul for a while. Without the suppression of the Dragon Soul, Alexstrasza and the others immediately began to counterattack Neltharion. The four Aspects plus Krasus besieged Neltharion and finally forced him to flee in panic.
However, Neltharion still took the Dragon Soul with him…