An attack from within and without

"At last, this day has come!"

"Hang every last one of Ridgewell's lackeys!"

"Your miner granddaddies are here!"

Just as the defenders of the Gold Coast Quarry were locked in fierce combat with the Defias rogues led by VanCleef, waves of furious shouts suddenly rose from inside the quarry.

"Brothers, kill these damned overseers!"

No one knew who had started it. Hundreds upon thousands of furious cries intertwined and converged, finally coalescing into an even greater force. It poured out through the quarry, putting unimaginable psychological pressure on the Gold Coast defenders.

Countless miners suffering from hunger and cold brandished their spades and shovels, shouted all sorts of slogans with unclear meanings, and charged at the defenders from behind.

The soldiers of Stormwind City felt as though they were fighting an ever-rising tide of fury. They knew full well that their meager resistance would soon be swept away by that tide, and then the flood would surge out from here, inundating other places, other quarries...

The quarry officer's will to fight remained fairly strong, but all his subordinates had already lost the desire to keep fighting. Beset by several rogues, the officer struggled to fend them off.

He raised his shield and did his utmost to withstand their attacks, but in the end, an unassuming rogue slipped behind him and lightly sliced his arm with a dagger.

The officer paid no mind to the shallow wound. On such a fierce battlefield, what was a minor injury worth mentioning?

Naturally, he also failed to notice the faint, multicolored patterns reflected on the dagger beneath the light of the torches fastened all over the quarry's rock walls.

Clearly, making poisons was another skill an excellent rogue had to master.

The rogues did not ease their assault on the commander in the slightest. He parried without a moment's pause, glistening beads of sweat rapidly seeping out over his neck and chest, while the highly toxic liquid spread through his body ever faster with his accelerated metabolism and blood circulation...

A few minutes later, the loyal officer suddenly dropped his sword and shield, clutched his throat in agony, then struggled and fell to the ground without making so much as a whimper.

He was already dead.

The "unassuming rogue" chuckled, then kicked the officer's corpse. He no longer moved.

Felix took out a stolen handkerchief and very carefully wiped his multicolored dagger.

The substance coating it was an asphyxiating agent. Once the blood carried a sufficient amount to the lungs and heart, it would attack the respiratory system, cause pulmonary edema, coagulate the blood in the heart, and raise blood pressure.

Thus, the poisoned victim would be unable to carry out the normal exchange of fresh air and waste gases in the lungs, then die of suffocation in extreme agony, unable even to give a final howl.

Clearly, Professor VanCleef's lessons in poison-making had been highly effective, and his outstanding student Felix was an expert at applying what he learned to new situations-he had even learned to improve the poisons himself.

With the officer's death, the remaining soldiers scattered, some dying and others fleeing. Their defeat became a rout.

Holding the Cruel Barb, VanCleef walked over to Felix. "Brother, we've won. This quarry belongs to the Brotherhood now!"

"Yes, guildmaster," Felix replied briefly. The outcome of this battle had been entirely within his expectations. "Next, we should use this money to-"

"Hawkeye, what should we do with these prisoners?" Lightfinger and several rogues strode over, escorting a large crowd of Alliance soldiers who had given up resisting and abandoned their "honor."

Lightfinger pulled VanCleef, Felix, and the others into a corner of the quarry, a vicious gleam in his eyes.

"Should we give them all the-" Lightfinger made a throat-slitting gesture and spoke in a hushed voice.

"No need," Felix said. "Strip them of all their armor, weapons, and equipment. Let anyone willing to stay in the quarry as an ordinary worker stay, and let the unwilling ones crawl back home."

"What?" Dudmore was very surprised. "Felix, that's not what you said last time. Besides, last time we let those adventurers go, they sold us out right away!"

"The circumstances are different now, Dudmore." Felix decided to explain the distinction to them patiently and thoroughly. "The nature of the operation and its targets are different. We can't lump them together."

"First, our last operation was a special operation, where secrecy was extremely important. To prevent leaks, we had to eliminate them. Besides, even if we had eliminated them, hardly anyone would have known, and the incident would have had very little impact."

"But this time is different. This was an open attack, and quite a few enemy soldiers escaped anyway. So-called 'secrecy' is completely out of the question. If we let these men go, neither they nor the other soldiers who know them will put up serious resistance against us in the future."

"Second, the prisoners we encountered last time were adventurers, whereas these are serving soldiers."

"What's the difference? Don't they all serve the nobles of Stormwind City?" Now VanCleef was bewildered too.

"Of course there's a difference. Soldiers enlist to put food on the table, to collect military pay. Once Stormwind's army can no longer provide wages sufficient to support their families, they can easily turn against the nobles of Stormwind City, or even accept our leadership. But adventurers are different. They often come from the noble class themselves, and sincerely support the Alliance, the nobility, and the king."

"So adventurers should be executed, but as for those soldiers, as long as they pose no threat to us, it's better to let them go."

In the various quests in World of Warcraft, adventurers serving the Horde and the Alliance never needed to receive a guaranteed base wage. They received rewards only after completing quests.

Moreover, the bulk of those rewards came from the loot dropped by defeated bosses, with only a small portion handed out directly by the NPCs who issued the quests. Thus, most of what adventurers received could be considered things they had earned themselves.

And if they failed to complete a quest, adventurers received nothing.

In summary, almost all adventurers could be said to work for the Alliance voluntarily, whereas soldiers had to receive their military pay every month even if they did nothing, even if they lost battles.

Adventurers who did not demand wages were, of course, more hateful than soldiers who "only worked when paid, and might not get the job done even after being paid."

The answer to the question of who were the Brotherhood's potential friends, whom it could win over, and who were its enemies was already self-evident.