"Jonathan, you shameless bastard!" After hearing about the tragedy in Cathedral Square, Windsor pointed at General Marcus and unleashed a torrent of abuse.
Marcus Jonathan did not dare fight back. He merely stood to one side, trembling, long since stripped of the boundless bravado he had shown when ordering the slaughter of women and children and the brutal punishment of the workers.
In fact, he was utterly bewildered now, too.
Jonathan had completely forgotten his conversation with Katrana, along with the thoughts that had led him there. He had no idea how he had come to give such an order.
When insults failed to satisfy him, Windsor even reached out, grabbed Jonathan's head, and tried to smash it against the wall.
"All right, all right, Marshal Reginald, stop hitting him." The kindhearted and understanding Katrana hurried forward to intervene. "General Jonathan was only acting out of wholehearted loyalty to His Majesty. If anyone is to blame, it is these stonemasons, who spoke without restraint and dared to hurl abuse at His Majesty."
With several nobles pulling them apart, Windsor and Jonathan finally separated.
Although the marshal had yet to fully recover his composure, one thing was perfectly clear to him-
Berating Jonathan would not solve any practical problems. Whether or not the Stonemasons' Guild had been plotting a rebellion before, they truly intended to revolt now.
The Stonemasons' Guild had numerous members, while King Varian had taken the vast majority of Stormwind City's military forces to the Redridge Mountains. The guild members could be dealt with as long as they were unarmed, but if they obtained enough weapons to launch a rebellion, the consequences would be unthinkable!
Windsor had to prepare the defenses. The immediate priority was to strengthen security around the city's armories, followed by a tight blockade of the docks.
Before leaving, Windsor suddenly shot Countess Katrana Prestor a glare, his eyes filled with suspicion.
After fleeing the chaos of Cathedral Square, some stonemasons returned to their base in the sewers. Others stopped somewhere else first.
Joseph ran to the monastery in Old Town to visit his mother-of course, all he saw was a cold corpse.
Bazil Thredd wanted to take his wife and son away. What he received was twice what Joseph had-two cold corpses.
When Joseph and Bazil returned to the sewers, all their cowardice had vanished. In their eyes, Felix saw only hatred etched into their very bones, never to be extinguished.
Every plan to maintain peace with the Kingdom of Stormwind had ended in failure.
Thus, every member of the guild would have to face a cruel question-
"What exactly should we do now, Joseph?" After hiding in the sewers again, the incensed workers gathered around Joseph, making him very nervous.
That morning, Joseph had called everyone into the sewers and saved them from disaster. Now, with Guildmaster VanCleef missing from the square and his fate unknown, people naturally looked to Joseph as their pillar of support.
But Joseph was utterly at a loss, too. He wanted to kill, but he did not know whom to kill or how to do it.
After all, he had only listened to Felix and Vladimir's advice and given it some thought before coming up with the idea of falsely claiming that the sewers had structural defects and were on the verge of collapse.
He knew nothing beyond that. So he turned a complicated look, mingling anger and a plea for help, toward Felix and Vladimir, hoping the two could suggest a good plan.
Felix stepped forward under everyone's gaze. His face bore a maturity and sternness rarely seen among the stonemasons, a sternness that did not belong to this era.
He took a deep breath, trying his best to calm himself.
"Brothers, what we needed before was fairness and justice. We came together only to demand justice."
"But this afternoon, we faced the most heinous crimes and terror in this world. Then let us give that terror back to them!"
"Give that terror back to them!" A loud cry erupted from the crowd.
"We must use organized terror to arrest, assassinate, and eliminate these nobles and officials, to eliminate the roles they now play, to eliminate their standing in human society, to eliminate their bodies and souls."
"Eliminate them! Eliminate them completely!" The crowd's cries grew louder.
"Before, all we wanted was justice, but these shameless, cruel nobles have strangled justice with their own hands. They must not think we will keep seeking the fairest means of struggle."
"We no longer need justice! Now it is face-to-face warfare, a life-or-death struggle."
"Let them die! Let them die!" the crowd shouted.
"Now let us prepare to eliminate them! Brothers, Guildmaster VanCleef is not dead. I am absolutely certain that his body was not in Cathedral Square."
"He was captured by those evil nobles' lackeys, and there is a very strong chance that he is being held in the Stockade. I need to devise a plan to rescue him. Does anyone here have a map of the prison, or does anyone still remember the layout of its sewers? Let me repeat myself: who knows the prison?"
"Me!"
"I helped build the prison!"
"I helped design the prison sewers!" Several people eagerly volunteered.
"Very good." Felix nodded.
As his fingers kept moving across a map, a prison-break plan quickly took shape in his mind.
He was still very familiar with the Stockade-after all, as everyone knew, the Stockade could not keep anyone locked up.
Back when he had still been a Horde champion, Felix had once accompanied Thalyssra, Rokhan, and the others to rescue Princess Talanji of Zandalar from the "heavily guarded," "meticulously prepared," and "fully battle-ready" Stockade.
Throughout the entire prison break, Stormwind City's people had played no role whatsoever. The strongest opposition had actually come from Kul Tiras's naval commander.
That commander, who had frozen everything in ice and nearly driven the Horde champion Felix into a hopeless situation, was currently still a mere magic apprentice in Dalaran. Felix found it even harder to imagine what Stormwind City could now use to stop their prison break.
Beneath Stormwind City, a true storm was brewing.
Now, every path of compromise had disappeared. At this point, only two ways lay before the Stonemasons' Guild: one led to victory, and the other to death.
So, would victory belong to the guild, or would death?
Felix was determined to pursue victory, but he knew that the weapon of criticism could not replace criticism by weapons. The Stonemasons' Guild currently had no reliable gear at all, and they could accomplish nothing like that.
"Felix, we found a letter here!" someone shouted, bringing a flexible bottle that had been thrown in through some unknown passage entrance before Felix. "I can't read. I don't know what it says."
Felix noticed a sheet of paper inside the transparent, flexible bottle. He opened the glass bottle and took it out.
Vladimir, Joseph, and Bazil quickly gathered around to read the letter with him.
The first line read: "Do you yearn for revenge? I can offer you help."
Before you continue