Street fighting

When the rising sun in the east cast its first rays, glorious Stormwind City was already in chaos.

Just as Felix had expected, their advance through Old Town had not gone smoothly.

With so few seasoned veterans like Bazil Thredd and Thuros Lightfinger, the guild's armed forces had been held back by the nobles' private soldiers and guards on the main streets and outside the great houses, making further progress difficult.

To avoid heavy casualties, Felix did not dare launch a forcible assault. Instead, he sheltered in a corner, locked in a tense standoff with the enemy.

To hold the barricade, the musket squad led by Thuros Lightfinger had already fought the city defense forces from atop the tavern for over an hour. Shoulder to shoulder, they fought on, successfully halting the enemy's advance with muskets, bows, and crossbows.

As for Bazil and Dudmore, no one knew whether their operations had gone smoothly. The members of the Stonemasons' Guild could only pray in silence, hoping they had already succeeded.

"Felix, what do we do? We can't advance any farther!" a worker asked nervously. "All we can do now is take our swords and daggers and fight those nobles' private troops house by house."

"Maybe we can go around here," someone else said. "Our goal is to eliminate those nobles, so there's no need to keep tangling with them here-"

"No." Felix immediately rejected his suggestion. "The enemy has already set up heavy crossbows and muskets on top of these houses. Going around would cost us too much."

Besides, even if they went around, they risked being surrounded. Felix could not take that risk.

"We'll use shovels and wrenches to fight them for the houses." Drawing on the experience of the past two hours of fighting, Felix analyzed the situation. "These houses are too cramped. Longswords are hard to wield, and one slip sends them into a wall, where they're hard to pull out. A lot of our brothers died that way... but these shovels are just the right length. A weapon like a shovel, which you swing up and down, is more flexible, and it's easier to turn with one than with a bayonet in a narrow hallway."

"Hand out the guild's shovels to the brothers! Don't put blind faith in standard-issue weapons. We can beat them!"

"Felix!" A man carrying a musket rushed toward the corner through a hail of arrows. "We can barely hold the tavern anymore! The enemy has reached the lower floor and is fighting our brothers hand to hand... we're outnumbered-"

Muskets really aren't as useful as machine guns. If we had machine guns instead, I guarantee these soldiers wouldn't dare take a single step over the line.

It really is one crisis after another.

"Take me there." Felix gritted his teeth and followed the musketeer back to the tavern from earlier. A melee was underway in the tavern's main hall, and they joined in without another word.

Felix raised the sword in his hand and slashed at the Stormwind City light infantryman before him.

He had intended to thrust through a gap at the man's joints, but his sword struck the man's armor instead. Apart from leaving a shallow dent, it did no actual damage to the enemy at all.

"Let's get upstairs, quickly." Knowing he was not good at fighting, Felix broke away from the battle and rushed up to the top of the tavern through the stairwell controlled by the Brotherhood.

Lightfinger was directing several musketeers there in attacking the city defense forces stirring below, to stop them from approaching the tavern along the street. At the same time, he also had to assign men to intercept the enemies who had already charged inside.

As a result, he had long since been overwhelmed.

"Lightfinger, how are things?"

"Damn it." Lightfinger pulled the trigger, and the black powder struck another Stormwind City soldier with the shot. He did not even have time to glance at Felix. "We might not be able to hold this street!"

"What about the Goblin Bombs you were given?"

"What damn use are those bombs? It's not like I can send a bunch of brothers out carrying bombs to throw them onto those damned lackeys' heads." Lightfinger complained bitterly, "Instead of giving us those bombs, you would've been better off giving us two more muskets. We'd have more firepower that way. Maybe those Stormwind City soldiers wouldn't have been able to reach-"

"Brother Blanco," Felix ignored Lightfinger's complaints and walked straight over to another young stonemason. "Please help me tie this rope to this rod. Remember, it has to be a slipknot."

Although he had no idea what Felix intended, Benny Blanco did as he asked.

Felix first carefully checked Blanco's work, then shouted, "Everyone downstairs, get up here!"

Once the brothers fighting fiercely against the Stormwind City soldiers on the lower floor had retreated to the top floor, Felix gently tied the Goblin explosive to the other end of the rope and lit its fuse.

"Felix, have you gone mad? What are you doing-" Someone nearby screamed, but Felix ignored them, focusing only on the task in his hands.

Timing it carefully, he gave the iron rod in his hands a sharp swing, sending the explosive, which was about to detonate, out in front of the building. Under gravity, it swung through a ninety-degree arc, finally coming free of the rope's slipknot and dropping through a second-floor window into the building.

Then came a loud boom, accompanied by screams rising one after another.

"Brothers, charge with me! Wipe out every last one of these Stormwind City lackeys!" Felix roared and led the charge down from the top floor.

After taking a bomb blast, the tavern's entire second floor was a wreck. These bombs would later be powerful enough to destroy the warships of Zandalar's Golden Fleet. Using one now just to blow up a single floor was overkill.

Felix noticed that Stormwind City soldiers killed or maimed in the explosion lay everywhere. Some were still groaning in pain, hoping the workers of the Stonemasons' Guild would show mercy and spare them.

"Please... save us..."

"Save you?" Lightfinger cursed viciously. "When you lackeys were murdering our brothers yesterday, did you show any mercy? Why didn't you think then that this day would come? Why didn't you imagine you'd fall into the hands of your stonemason grandpa so soon?"

With that, he thrust a sword into the chest of the gravely wounded Stormwind City soldier before him.

With the enemy either dead or wounded, the fighting here soon ended. Felix was covered from head to toe in bloodstains from other people. He leaned on his sword and rested against the wall.

Looking at the veteran stonemason, who still had not had his fill, he smiled and said, "Lightfinger, now you know how to throw these Goblin Bombs onto their heads, don't you?"

The guild team leader answered with a resolute smile. "Yes, very clearly."