"Champion Squad!"
"Here!"
"Holy Light Squad!"
"Here!"
"Darrowshire Squad!"
"Here!"
Clad in armor, with the Fire of Justice on his back, Dick stood in Stratholme's fire-ravaged grand square. Behind him lay the boundary dividing outer Stratholme from its interior. The outer city belonged to the light, while the inner city belonged to darkness. But today, after learning from Jaina that Arthas had returned, Dick had made up his mind. In this battle, they would wipe out every last undead inside Stratholme!
The regiment's deputy commander, High Knight Erigor, held a thick tome as he walked past the hundred knight squads and the thirty militia squads recruited an additional month earlier, his voice ringing out strongly. Each time he called a name, twenty knights answered with equal vigor. By the time all 130 squads had been called, the morale of the 2,600 soldiers standing behind Dick had reached its peak.
Dick had seen plenty of these ceremonial "rallies" in his previous life. But only when he truly became a leader did he realize that such formalities really were indispensable. Facing the 2,600 soldiers brimming with fighting spirit, he took his warhammer from his back and poured Holy Power into it. It was like raising a golden torch that pierced Stratholme's cold, eerie darkness.
"Soldiers of the Stratholme Regiment! Champions of Eastweald!"
"I am Dick, Dick, the Last Protector of Stratholme! You all know me!"
"A Paladin, a champion, has only one lifelong pursuit! To fight against all evil!"
"Many of you never witnessed the destruction of Stratholme. You cannot know the despair I felt that day!"
"That day, the glory of the Holy Light was torn to shreds. That day, our battered war banners fell into the flames!"
"The undead killed my people. They would not spare even a child! That is what they will do for their master! What can we do for ourselves?"
"Today, I stand here once more! I will declare war on evil! As a man who once fled, I will reclaim the honor I lost here!"
"Today, if I fall in battle here,"
"I will die for justice for this city. I will die for those innocent victims. I will die to protect my family and the woman I love!"
"Who would fear such a death? Who would refuse such glory?"
Dick looked at the silent soldiers. He could see the clenched fists of the knights and militiamen. He knew a blazing fire had been lit in their hearts, and now he would unleash it.
"Now, I'm going to fight those bastards to the death!"
"Who will come with me?"
Silence held for a second. Then seemingly endless battle cries and roars shattered the tranquility of all Stratholme. Young recruits and veterans, militiamen from Darrowshire and elsewhere, raised their weapons like beasts swearing vengeance.
Dick turned his head. He saw Erigor and the five Paladins who had fought Ramstein alongside him raising their weapons too. He saw Herod holding his enormous war axe and his Champion Squad, Dawi and Redpath's Darrowshire Squad, and the Paladin Dave, who had nearly died in Stratholme, with his Knight King Squad. And... there were the priests, likewise raising their staves. Even Miss Whitemane, who had always barely acknowledged Dick, lent her strength to that roar.
Dick's eyes reddened slightly. Turning back to the undead retreating step by step into the darkness, he extended his left hand. A lifelike Holy Light Flail took shape in the air.
"Stratholme Regiment! Charge!"
"Charge!"
The sight of 2,600 people charging together was terrifying.
Although every squad had its own assigned area under the plan, at least in this opening moment, the surging Holy Light gathered together and swept through all the undead at the front in an instant. Like wheat felled by a scythe, these elite undead, virtually invincible against ordinary people and far more numerous than the Stratholme Regiment, became trembling prey. In an instant, the two sides' roles were reversed.
"Go to hell!"
Dick twisted aside from the claws of a ghoul lunging out of the darkness. Its sharp claws left five bloody holes through a gap in his armor, but the Paladin did not pause. He immediately retaliated, knocking down all the ghouls ahead with one hammer blow, then hurled the Holy Light in his left hand along his path of advance. Twenty attempts in his dreams had already given him complete mastery of the Knight Secret Technique-Consecration. Now he could cast Consecration anywhere within his field of vision.
The ball of Holy Light struck the ground, and the gathered skeleton champions immediately broke into a ridiculous "dance." Holy Light mixed with Order Power was an absolute killing weapon against any undead. With Dick's current Holy Power, even a resurrected Ramstein would have had no choice but to avoid the searing Consecration.
In less than three seconds, Dick's path was clear. He saw the Greater Abominations gathered in the distance, the Necromancers, and the one in charge, hiding at the very rear of this final battle line-the traitor Rivendare.
"Traitor! You're dead! No one can save you!"
Following behind Dick, Erigor roared at Rivendare in the distance, his eyes red. He, too, was one of the Paladins who had nearly died in Stratholme that day. He wanted nothing more than to personally kill the man who had sent his comrades to their graves.
Rivendare was helpless as well. Arthas's fire had burned away his strongest trump card. Before the Necromancers under him could awaken the bodies that had not been completely burned, Dick's Stratholme Regiment had moved into the ruins. The first thing they did was sprinkle every corpse with holy water, then bury them.
Corpses purified by holy water could not be awakened. Thus, in this altered history, Rivendare was far worse off than he had originally been. At first, the two sides had been evenly matched, but once the recruits grew accustomed to the battlefield, this "Stratholme Regiment" had kept him constantly pinned down, leaving him no room to act.
Having finally endured until Arthas's return, Rivendare seemed to see tomorrow's victory before him, like a golden apple within reach.
Provided, of course, that he could live until tomorrow.
After being completely divided up by 130 fighting units like packs of hunting wolves, Rivendare lost even his sole advantage in numbers. To the precisely coordinated twenty-man Paladin squads, ghouls and skeletons posed no threat at all, unless they encountered spellcasting undead such as banshees. But Rivendare had only a dozen or so high-ranking undead like banshees, nowhere near enough to go around.
Even Greater Abominations, once the entire regiment had been equipped with hooked chains for hunting large creatures, were firmly restrained by ten holy-water-soaked chains. Unless they had reached Ramstein's level, these weapons of war could only close their eyes and await death beneath the relentless barrage of Holy Light weapons.
Small-unit combat, using local victories to drive victory across the battlefield-that was Dick's approach. Fortunately, after seventy-five days of fierce suppression, fewer than half of Rivendare's thirty thousand elite undead remained. Otherwise, Dick's plan could never have truly been put into practice.
Numbers! Numbers were always the Undead Scourge's sole unbeatable advantage! Even the lowliest risen, once their numbers reached a certain level, could unfailingly breach Quel'Thalas, the mighty kingdom of the High Elves. Without numbers, the undead were nothing!
Boom!
After nearly half an hour of fierce fighting, Dick poured his last scrap of Holy Power into his warhammer and smashed it into the ground. The erupting wave of Holy Light instantly drove back the three abominations closing in. Watching them howl as the Holy Light burned them, Dick pulled a bottle of concentrated holy water from his pack and emptied it into his mouth.
Bitter-a bitterness that made anyone who drank it once never want a second taste. Yet that very bitterness stirred the depleted Holy Light within Dick's body back to life. Wielding his warhammer in one hand, he flicked his left hand forward, and a brilliant Holy Light Flail smashed down on an abomination's head. This was no longer the experimental version he had used against Ramstein.
During his last three Stratholme dungeon runs, Dick had relied on the increasingly powerful Judgment of Order to keep the Death Knight Rivendare almost completely suppressed under a relentless barrage. On the final run, he had even broken through his limits, producing an effect with Judgment of Order similar to Fist of the Heavens.
What was Fist of the Heavens?
It was simple-just what Dick was doing now. After one Judgment of Order struck, the Holy Light Flail did not disappear. Instead, following Dick's movements like a real flail, it continued sweeping across the bodies of the other two abominations. Bracing himself against the ground with the Fire of Justice, Dick swung the constantly dissipating and instantly replenished Judgment of Order in a circle around his body with one hand.
Any undead daring to enter that circle of white light would be mercilessly destroyed.
Dick could feel that this experiment was probably the initial form of the more advanced Knight Secret Technique-Divine Storm. But he still had a long way to go before fully understanding Divine Storm, the retribution Paladin's ultimate trump card in the game.
Bang!
The last abomination's head was blasted into the sky by the tremendous force of the Fire of Justice. As its enormous body fell, Dick, covered in blood and filth, stood before the gloomy, cold-faced Rivendare with the Fire of Justice resting on his shoulder.
Behind him, the undead... had long since collapsed.
"When you betrayed your own people, did you ever imagine this day, bastard?"
Erigor angrily braced his longsword in his hand, itching to swing it and cut him down the next instant.
But Dick looked in puzzlement at Rivendare's indifferent eyes. Having faced this man twenty times and died at his hands seventeen times, Dick knew Rivendare's appearance better than anyone. Those eyes should not have been there. In their place should have been two blood-red flames of Undead Fire.
Dick frowned, watching Rivendare hold his runeblade before him. He focused harder, and the next instant, Rivendare's information appeared before his eyes, giving him a tremendous shock.
"Rivendare-partially undead Rare Lord" "Human/undead" "Strength-85, agility-70, stamina-200, runes-4" "Evaluation: This pitiful fellow has yet to complete the Death Knight ritual. In this world where history has been altered, he will probably never have the chance to become a Death Knight."
Well.
A cold smile appeared at the corner of Dick's mouth. He had forgotten about that! More than three months ago, he had already schemed Kel'Thuzad to his death in Tirisfal's Nameless Valley. Originally, Kel'Thuzad should have personally performed Rivendare's transformation ritual. But after his death, that ritual had stopped, leaving Rivendare in this half-dead state.
No wonder Dick had encountered only one rare undead, Ramstein, despite wandering this city for so long. The original bosses, Baroness Anastari, Maleki the Pallid, and the others, had not yet been transformed by Rivendare, because he himself lacked the ability to turn others into undead.
In this form, Rivendare was more than a third weaker in stats alone than the fully transformed Death Knight Rivendare Dick had faced. Against Dick, whose strength had been boosted by Holy Strength to the new threshold of one hundred points, he could not make so much as a splash.
"A lord... you're probably the weakest lord of all."
Dick said something Rivendare could not understand, then attacked with a hammer blow. Erigor immediately lunged in as well, sword swinging.
The fight ended almost before it began. Twenty confrontations had made Dick intimately familiar with Rivendare's moves. Once Erigor drew the pitiful man's attention, Dick extended his left hand and blocked the runeblade's horizontal slash with his palm. Metal rang against metal. In the instant Rivendare froze in surprise, Dick poured all his Holy Power into the Fire of Justice already raised in his right hand.
Every warrior present saw that pillar of Holy Light shoot into the sky, followed by a wretched howl.
"Ding... Arthas's request completed." "Reward: All attributes +15." "Ding... Large Historical Node-Stratholme completed." "Review-omitted." "Assessment complete. Current world divergence-11%. New template-talents unlocked! New template-rank unlocked!"
"Phew..."
Dick took a deep breath and smashed the holy water in his hand over Rivendare's corpse. Looking at the remains reduced entirely to ashes and the two items left among them, Dick pressed his lips together.
If I'd really stopped the massacre back then, I probably could have earned the full six percent. But... it doesn't matter. Under my influence, a tenth of future history has already changed. That's enough!
Just watch! I won't have come here for nothing. I will change this world!
In fact, he already had, hadn't he?
Top fifty overall!!! We reached that goal!!! Oh yeah!!! The promised ten updates will start going out tonight, spread over three days. Thank you for your support, brothers!!