Meeting Merlin Again

Seeing the Warrior's overjoyed expression, Xiao Yu suddenly remembered something. He realized he might have acted impulsively, but thankfully, there was still a chance to make amends.

Azathoth (Source of Chaos): "Um, give me the shield first. There's something wrong with it; if it's not fixed, you probably won't be able to use it."

"Ah, there's a problem!" The Warrior tensed up immediately and hurriedly handed over the shield. "What's the problem?"

Xiao Yu thought to himself, "The problem is I shouldn't have given you the original."

The most powerful aspect of story items lies in their uniqueness. In the game's storyline, each story item is one-of-a-kind. If you give it away, you'll lose it. However, as long as you have a story item, you can create a knock-off version as a quest reward or a boss drop. I had completely forgotten about this before.

He's been too immersed in his role lately, but thankfully he reacted quickly.

The equipment adventurers obtain from bosses and quests is actually counterfeit. Crafting these counterfeit items requires [Adventurer's Remains Fragments], or you can directly generate them using in-game currency, but in-game currency is quite expensive; generating a single counterfeit legendary item would probably cost ten to twenty thousand in-game currency. Fortunately, Xiao Yu had previously killed thousands of adventurers while fighting in Silvermoon City and Tower of Amalarui, accumulating over a hundred thousand Adventurer's Remains Fragments. He hadn't had a chance to use them before, but now they could finally come in handy.

To create a knock-off of a legendary item, a huge amount of fragments were needed. It took a full 50,000 Adventurer's Remains Fragments to finally complete the crafting.

I checked the attributes.

[Name: Bulwark of Azzinoth]

[Category: Equipment (Shield)]

[Quality: Legendary, Requires Level 50]

[Function: Armor +50, Maximum Health +400]

[Item Effect (Active): Phase Shift. Enters a phase dimension where you are immune to damage from any attack, and you are also immune to damage from enemies. Your movement speed is reduced by 80% for 20 seconds.]

[Item Effect (Passive): Phase Deflection. When attacked by ranged attacks (including magic), there is a 25% chance to reflect the attack or magic back. This effect is ineffective against area-of-effect attacks (magic).]

[Note: This is a magical shield crafted using magical phase technology. Due to the instability of this technology, this shield is one of the very few experimental products of phase technology.]

Basically, all the attributes are slightly weaker than the original version, and there are level requirements to equip it, but overall the changes are not significant. When the Warrior took the shield, he was dumbfounded, "What's wrong with this shield? Why does it look different?"

Xiao Yu thought to himself, "Of course they're different. How can a knock-off be the same?"

Having finally managed to get rid of the Moonlight Travel Group, Xiao Yu hesitated. He now had two choices. First, he could fight Azshara and the Elemental Will directly. If he won, that would be great; if he lost, he could retreat back to the island. With the help of adventurers, he should be fine for the short term, but he estimated that he would face a protracted war.

Of course, he had a second option: ignore the Lost Island, leave some troops to defend it, or even abandon the territory altogether and lead the main force directly to the Throne of the Elements to perform the Elemental King ceremony. Once he successfully became the Elemental King, he would have nothing to fear.

But if he fails, not only will he be defeated and killed, but he will also lose the cash cow that is the Lost Island. At that time, all his hard-earned wealth will be lost.

It's a really tough decision. Even if Xiao Yu were willing to go all out, he still couldn't make up his mind.

After much deliberation, Xiao Yu decided to stay put for now. Firstly, he wasn't necessarily incapable of defeating the combined forces of the Naga and the Elemental Will. Secondly, he hadn't yet contacted Medivh to help open the gate. Thirdly, if he were to open the Throne of the Elements, he would inevitably face attacks from the four Elemental Kings. Even if he could exploit their internal conflicts to prevent them from joining forces, Xiao Yu wasn't confident of victory in a one-on-one fight. The weakest of them all, Al'Akir the Elemental Lord of Air, was a six-skull-level boss, and elemental creatures were incredibly powerful. Even as Chaos Elemental, he might not be able to win due to the vast difference in their elemental strength. Not to mention the strongest, Ragnaros, who had eight skeleton-level enemies. In the later stages of the game, each increase in skeleton level represented a significant power gap.

Therefore, if you could spar with Azshara and test Azshara strength, you would have a better understanding of her abilities. Although there is no way to make a direct comparison, generally speaking, in the ranking of the major bosses in the Sky World, Azshara and the four Elemental King should be at the same level of strength.

With that in mind, he decided to sort out Medivh's matter first.

Not much is known about Medivh Xiao Yu, except that he was the last Guardian, a very important character in the story. Medivh was involved when the Orcs invaded Azeroth, and there seems to be some hidden story behind it. Later, when the Scourge swept across Azeroth and the Burning Legion attacked the World Tree, Medivh also seemed to be involved and played an important role.

But apart from that, he didn't know anything else. After all, at that time he was still a fire elemental, still hanging around in the Fire Elemental Plane, and hadn't participated much in the war storyline of the Prime Material Plane. So, finding Medivh would have to rely on some cheat codes.

Taking out the Magic Mirror of True Knowledge, Xiao Yu silently recited the incantation.

Azathoth (the Source of Chaos): "Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me where Medivh is."

While reciting the incantation, Xiao Yu felt a little awkward. Suddenly, a black mist-like image appeared in the originally calm magic mirror. The black mist spun around and gradually dissipated, and then an image appeared in the mirror.

In a dimly lit conference hall, a man dressed in a purple robe stood with his back to Xiao Yu. Beside him stood a wooden staff, the top of which was shaped like a raven.

(This man must be Medivh.) Xiao Yu.

Medivh sat on the right side of a long conference table, and around the table sat six other people—no, these people were not real people, but rather holographic phantoms, which reminded Xiao Yu of the Jedi Council in Star Wars.

These seven people, including Medivh, were all dressed as spellcasters, each wearing either ornate or mysterious robes. They were clearly not ordinary people. They were talking, seemingly discussing something. In the center of the conference table, a map of the Sky World could be seen. Since the Magic Mirror of True Knowledge could only display images and not text, Xiao Yu couldn't hear what they were saying, but it didn't sound like anything good.

What surprised Xiao Yu even more was that Medivh didn't seem to be the one chairing the meeting. He was only sitting in the first seat on the left, while someone else was sitting in the main seat—a person whose face was completely hidden in the shadows under a hood. This was a bit strange. How could the Astral Archmage Medivh be relegated to a subordinate position? Who was this person chairing the meeting?

As he pondered this, he rotated the mirror, trying to figure out where Medivh was. Suddenly, the image in the mirror shifted, and a somewhat familiar face appeared in Xiao Yu's eyes.

It's Merlin!

He was diagnosed with a terminal illness and desperately sought any treatment, eventually finding a fortune teller in a game—that guy named Merlin. I remember he was just a minor boss or an elite back then, but now he's on par with Medivh. That's pretty impressive.

Merlin had always given him a strange and eccentric impression, so he left a particularly deep impression on him. He never expected to meet him again under these circumstances, but Merlin was sitting at the very end of the right-hand side, looking listless.

Xiao Yu took two steps forward, wanting to go around and get a clearer view, but he hadn't expected that after only two steps, as the image in the mirror passed by Medivh—

Suddenly, the image in the mirror flickered, like a television with a bad signal, with intermittent disturbances. Just as Xiao Yu was wondering about this, Medivh in the mirror suddenly turned around, his eyes, as deep as the universe, staring straight behind him, as if he could see Xiao Yu and was looking at him through the mirror.

Xiao Yu was startled and before he could react, Medivh had already stretched out a hand and forcefully brushed two fingers across the image in the magic mirror. With a crack, a fissure appeared on the Magic Mirror of True Knowledge, as if the brush had scratched the inside of the mirror. Then, the black mist inside the mirror began to rise again, quickly obscuring all the images in the mirror, and the Magic Mirror of True Knowledge immediately stopped displaying any images.

(Holy crap, how could it detect me spying? My precious thing!) He quickly checked the mirror. Thankfully, it was just out of durability, not destroyed.

However, this situation still startled him; this Medivh was no ordinary person.

But why is Merlin there too?

Xiao Yu didn't know if Medivh would tell Merlin what he had discovered, or if Medivh had truly discovered his identity, or if he was simply instinctively blocking the Magic Mirror of True Knowledge's gaze. But regardless, Xiao Yu decided to go to Merlin and get to the bottom of things. It seemed like the best option, and if he needed Medivh's help, perhaps Merlin could act as a go-between.

Thinking of this, Xiao Yu immediately exited the game and sent a message to Merlin. Fortunately, the two had previously added each other as friends in their contacts.

However, after waiting a few minutes, Merlin did not reply immediately. Xiao Yu guessed that he was probably in a meeting.

He decided to wait until after his meeting to reply to the message, so he went back into the game.

As soon as he entered the game, he saw Esmehalda walking in from outside with Amalarui.

Azathoth (the Source of Chaos): "By the way Esmehalda, you're from the Kirin Tor. Do you know Medivh?"

Esmehalda (Archmage the Kirin Tor): "Medivh? Why do you ask that? He hasn't had any contact with Dalaran for a long time, but I do know that he might be a member of the Council of Sages."

The Council of Sages? Upon hearing this, Xiao Yu suddenly had a flash of inspiration. Could it be that what he had just witnessed was a meeting of the Council of Sages?