Debating

Chromie's face instantly flushed bright red. After a moment of silence, she finally lowered her head. "I don't know."

This time, Felix was genuinely surprised.

"You don't know? How could you not know?" Shock was written all over his face. "Can't the Bronze Dragonflight travel freely through time? I thought you would see countless possibilities across different timelines, so surely you would know the consequences of the Red Dragon Queen being rescued."

"Time traveler, you really do know our secrets." Chromie's eyes were filled with anger. But because her current frame was so tiny, that anger... uh, looked more like a pout.

"Tell me, were you the one who did it?"

"What?!" Felix was even more bewildered.

Oh no, now I've become Azeroth's Sun Xiaochuan. Every bad thing gets pinned on me.

"We of the Bronze Dragonflight can no longer glimpse the future!" Chromie said urgently. "And even the visions of the future we see in the Caverns of Time might not become reality anymore."

Now Felix found it even harder to keep a straight face.

So you bronze dragons don't know anything, but you're still insisting on maintaining some so-called "correct timeline"?

You aren't even giving me gear. Why should I listen to you?

Felix forcibly suppressed his anger and... amusement, and patted Chromie's head. "Sorry, I have to fulfill my responsibilities."

Suddenly, he remembered that Chromie herself had revealed he would save countless people in Lordaeron from their fate. So Felix still needed to be more aggressive. He had to take the moral high ground and harshly criticize these bronze dragons.

"No snowflake is innocent in an avalanche," he said. "The Defias Brotherhood must never remain indifferent to the misfortunes of others. How could we turn our backs on the suffering of Lordaeron's people!"

But as long as the Bronze Dragonflight had no morals, Felix's moral blackmail was useless.

Chromie spread her hands, and the flow of time and space trembled slightly. "Enough! Come with me. You can't stay here any longer! I won't let you tamper with the timeline!"

She lunged forward, trying to grab Felix's hand. At the same time, however, the flow of time and space shook violently again, and a little gnome girl who looked exactly like Chromie suddenly appeared there, using her momentum to pin Chromie to the ground and wrestle with her.

They rolled back and forth like winter melons on a roof beam.

"Go, young Rogue. Do whatever you want to do, and stop the disasters unfolding on this continent! No organization or individual can stand in the way of your determination!"

Of course, Felix could immediately seize the opportunity provided by the Infinite Dragonflight and escape. But if he did, other bronze dragons might keep coming to trouble him later.

If he could settle everything in one go, that would naturally be ideal.

He knew the other gnome was Mirok of the Infinite Dragonflight. However, he decided to pretend he didn't.

So Felix stepped forward and said with feigned helplessness, "My two esteemed bronze dragons, could you please agree on an opinion before coming to trouble me? You should know that our time is precious, for the sake of the Brotherhood's righteous cause."

"She's not a bronze dragon!" Chromie shouted in protest. "She's a fallen infinite dragon. She wants to destroy history so that the whole world will head toward destruction-"

"How do you know the world will head toward destruction?" Felix countered. "You clearly can no longer glimpse the course of history after it changes, so what gives you grounds to say that?"

"Because..." Chromie suddenly lost her confidence. "Because the timeline we saw is the best one!"

"So many enemies are eyeing Azeroth hungrily. In many parallel timelines, the world ultimately fell to destruction, was ruled by fel, or was filled with undead. And among infinite possibilities, we found one righteous path. That's why we of the Bronze Dragonflight must protect it at any cost! But these bronze dragons fell and became the Infinite Dragonflight-"

"Shut up, Chromie!" Mirok said impatiently. "I'm you, and you're me. One day, you'll understand just how stupid your current thinking is!"

Felix turned his head to look at the poor Westbrook Garrison soldiers several hundred meters behind him. They were still frozen in their utterly ridiculous, comical poses, without any sign that they could move.

Seeing that the two gnomes were about to start arguing again, Felix asked, "Chromie, is changing the 'past' what you forbid?"

"Of course. We must preserve history according to the correct timeline!"

"But 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' are relative concepts," Felix said solemnly. "Today is the future relative to yesterday, but the past relative to tomorrow."

"The 'past' cannot be changed, and today also counts as the 'past' relative to tomorrow. So everything that happens 'today' must follow the 'correct timeline' and cannot be changed either, right?"

Chromie blinked her beautiful big eyes and nodded.

"Since everything happening now cannot be altered, how are life's free will and the uncertainty of matter in motion expressed? If everything that happens in the future is fixed and unchangeable, then there is no change. Without change, what grounds do you have to say Azeroth is 'alive'?"

"An Azeroth whose future is fixed is already dead."

"If we believe the future holds infinite possibilities, then 'yesterday' was also the future relative to 'the day before yesterday.' Was 'yesterday' therefore also full of infinite possibilities?"

"The uniqueness of history conflicts with the infinity of the future and life's free will. If the Bronze Dragonflight wants to acknowledge that life possesses free will, then it must abandon the assumption that history is unique."

That was indeed the case.

The greatness of any hero lay in "free will" and the right to choose.

Anduin Lothar could run away, or he could bravely lead the Alliance's armies to face the fury of the Old Horde. That was why he was a hero.

If the entire world was fixed in one predetermined form, then Lothar was merely a chess piece, a puppet. What made him a hero?

If everything in Varian Wrynn's life, from birth to death, had been determined in advance by someone else, then what kind of hero was he?

Seeing Chromie shaking her head in confusion, Felix decided to throw a few more paradoxes at her, aiming to muddle her mind even further so she wouldn't think of coming to trouble him.

"If someone went back fifty years and killed his own biological grandfather, would he immediately disappear from the world?"