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Leaving Stormwind and heading straight south, crossing Mirror Lake and Westbrook Garrison before turning west, brought one into Westfall.

Seated in the jolting carriage, Duke gazed at the scenery outside.

Beyond the window lay what seemed like eternally clear skies. Even the wind carried a hint of barren dryness. As far as the eye could see was yellow earth, yellow land, yellow fields. Like Elwynn, Westfall had pleasantly comfortable temperatures, but strong winds from the sea and Duskwood constantly swept through the region.

If not for the still-plump grain in the fields, Duke would have thought this was a wasteland.

In truth, perhaps because of underground rivers, the land here was fairly fertile.

Unfortunately, Westfall had plenty of nasty monsters. What annoyed Duke most were the vultures filling the sky. He had personally witnessed one of the mercenaries he had hired as nominal guards being attacked.

A black shadow streaked across the sky, drawing a straight line of death through the air. In the blink of an eye, the deadly shadow had already descended. In just a few seconds, the young mercenary's skull would be struck heavily by the vulture and burst like a smashed rotten watermelon.

The young mercenary's equipment was decent. He wore a standard iron helmet discarded by Stormwind guards. But against such a swift strike, no unprepared rookie could defend himself.

The impact alone would be enough to snap his cervical vertebrae.

It was easy to imagine that he would soon die.

At that moment, terror froze the entire caravan. At least six or seven mercenaries who witnessed the scene showed looks of horror, while Uncle Macaro, the mercenary captain, looked utterly aghast. Yet the vulture was so fast that they did not even have time to draw their bows and retaliate.

At that critical moment, a hand extended from the carriage window.

Duke's hand.

That was right. It was still the combination of [Presence of Mind] and [Pyroblast]. This move was more than enough to beat up ordinary soldiers and humans. But as a targeted spell, in this real world of Azeroth, there was no such convenient thing as a spell guaranteed to hit once it locked onto a target.

What mattered was the mage's own prediction.

Prediction itself was a rather mysterious thing. It relied on experience and intuition.

Because his mana was limited and Duke had yet to find an effective way to replenish it, he did not actually have a thorough understanding of his own [Pyroblast]. In truth, Duke had merely instinctively felt that, based on the fireball's speed, it would probably reach somewhere around that area.

Yet after Duke's dynamic vision caught that existence as swift as the wind, only half a second passed before a sudden sense of inspiration struck him.

Perhaps the vulture could roll left or right. But Duke did not believe that this flat-feathered beast had that much intelligence. So, he directly aimed ahead of it.

Before the dozen or so guards had recovered from the shock of seeing one of their own attacked, they suddenly realized that the important figure they were protecting had acted.

"Whoosh—" Carrying a blinding glow and a scorching heat that rushed toward them, a massive fireball trailed a long tail of flame as it flew from the carriage window, shooting straight toward the vulture's path.

"Good! Oh... no... ah—" The mercenaries' cries, rising and falling in turns, perfectly reflected the course of events.

At the very first instant, they were delighted that Duke had acted.

Then they immediately discovered that, as the overlord of Westfall's skies, this vulture—called a "Corpse-Ripper Bird" by most Westfall farmers—possessed extraordinary maneuverability. With a powerful flap of its left wing, the water-vat-sized fireball would likely brush past the beast that did not distinguish between life and death before attacking living people.

And the target it intended to attack remained unchanged.

Every mercenary's face was filled with indescribable regret.

Yet in the next instant, the still-youthful hand extending from the carriage window suddenly snapped its fingers...

The enormous fireball seemed to be fiercely clenched by an invisible giant hand. With a bang!, it abruptly exploded beside the Corpse-Ripper Bird. It was not an omnidirectional explosion, but a one-sided blast resembling a controlled demolition, perfectly avoiding the young mercenary's side.

Faced with flames scattering more densely than torrential rain, the hateful flat-feathered beast gave a caw and instantly became a blazing torch, plummeting dejectedly from the sky.

From delight to disappointment to wild joy, the mercenaries' emotions were like a roller coaster.

Seeing the Corpse-Ripper Bird fall, they all raised their weapons high.

"Long live Lord Marcus—"

Only then did the young man who had nearly been attacked and killed realize in stunned disbelief that he had just wandered once before the gates of hell.

Listening to the fervent cheers, Duke felt slightly taken aback. He was willing to work hard to change the fate of the Stormwind Kingdom, but that did not mean he would become a saint who blessed all living beings and saved every single person.

Duke had never entertained such saintly notions. To him, rather than a rescue, this had merely been practice. At the instant he acted, his body had moved before his thoughts.

Now, Duke's actions had won the mercenaries' approval and gratitude.

Mercenary captain Macaro rode over on his skinny horse, bringing the young man who had just escaped death with him. "My deepest thanks to you, great Lord Marcus. You just saved my son."

"Your son?"

"Yes, my only son, Philip. This is his first mission. His mother and I strongly opposed it from the start... Sigh, thank goodness he's all right. Otherwise, I wouldn't even know how to go back and face his mother..." As he spoke, Macaro's voice choked up. He pressed Philip's head down, making his son bow to Duke.

"It's good that he's all right. Let's continue the journey." To be honest, Duke did not want too much involvement with Macaro and the others. After all, he had only used these mercenaries as a cover and did not want them implicated because of him.

Seeing that Duke seemed cold on the outside but warm at heart, Macaro did not take offense. After all, Duke had just demonstrated his nobility through his actions.

Macaro bowed slightly. "Actually... it's like this. I obtained a set of spell notes by accident. They have words inscribed on them that we don't understand. But I think they might be useful to someone like you, sir. It would be best if you would accept them."

"Oh, then thank you." Duke did not stand on ceremony and directly accepted the notebook-like set of notes. The money Old Norton had given him would eventually run out, and when it came to spells, Duke believed the more the better.

Yet when he accepted the notes and opened them, he was dumbfounded.

It was not that the system spirit could not analyze or learn them. Rather, the system prompt was rather bizarre.

"Congratulations, Host. You have obtained the level 0 spell [Mage Hand], and the level 2 spells [Dalson's Chilling Prison] and [Dalson's Scorching Furnace]!"

Duke had played World of Warcraft for so long that he would swear on his own life: those three things definitely did not exist in the spell list of Azeroth's mages.