Azathoth Had Gone Mad

"Do not despair, my Warchief! Although our fleet is destroyed, we still have airships. These great inventions of the Goblin can safely transport our soldiers back to Orgrimmar!" said the Goblin King Gallywix proudly.

Thrall's face lit up with joy, but just then...

With a deafening roar, a bolt of lightning as thick as a bucket crashed down from the sky, blasting an airship into a fireball. One bolt of lightning after another fell, and the airships docked on the towers of the Lost City were all blasted into fireballs by these bolts of lightning.

"It seems our airships have all been destroyed," the Dragon-Slaying Sword Saint sighed.

"Don't despair!" Jaina suddenly said. "In the past few days, my people and I have built a temporary teleportation array. Although it can only be maintained for a short time, it can still send a portion of the troops back to Stormwind City."

This was an unexpected bonus, just as King Kirin Tor was pleased with the unusually high efficiency of the King Varian Tor mages during this expedition.

Boom! With a deafening explosion, a massive building in the Lost City collapsed, turning into ruins.

"Oh my god!" Jaina exclaimed, Varian felt a sense of foreboding. (Don't tell me that the great hall is where the portal is.)

"Your Majesty, that grand hall is where the portal was located, but it seems the portal is no longer usable."

Upon hearing this, Varian wanted to curse inwardly.

Just then, someone else spoke up; it was the dwarf High Tinker Mekkatorque.

"No need to despair, Your Majesty—our great dwarf technology can—"

With a snap, Varian and Thrall almost simultaneously covered Mekkatorque's mouth, as if doing so would prevent an accident from happening.

However, doing so clearly did not prevent things from getting worse.

Suddenly, white parachutes appeared in the sky, and one of the dwarves descended towards them, shouting as he fell, "It's terrible, Your Majesty! The Skybreaker has been captured by the wind elemental army!"

Varian and Thrall weakly removed their hands from the High Tinker's mouth, and the High Tinker sighed, "Well, now we can despair."

Because the script was open-ended, Xiao Yu was intimately familiar with the situation on the island. He knew exactly what technologies the Alliance and the Horde could use, and naturally, he had prepared countermeasures before the invasion. At the very beginning, he destroyed all three of their trump cards. Now, the fleet was destroyed, the airships were bombed, the spaceships were captured, and the portals were razed to the ground. The Alliance and Horde armies were now completely trapped on this small island.

This was something that the many Alliance and Horde heroes present could obviously have thought of as well.

Just when everyone was feeling dejected, Varian finally demonstrated the courage of a leader. No matter what, he could not be intimidated by difficulties, which is an essential quality of a leader.

Varian Wrynn (King of Stormwind City): "Do not despair, my lords. Although we have suffered some setbacks for the time being, we still have the help of adventurers. Gather the soldiers, give orders to the adventurers, and tell them that war is imminent. As long as we have the help of adventurers, we will always have hope of victory. As long as there are generous rewards, we will never have to worry about lacking the help of adventurers."

This is a rather convoluted statement; a direct translation would be. "Money talks."

In fact, even without him saying it, the adventurers had already sensed that something was wrong, because while they were running the dungeon, lines of announcements suddenly appeared on their screens.

[World Announcement: Water Elemental Lord Wotkud has fled the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple raid has been reduced from a 40-player raid to a 30-player raid.]

[World Announcement: The Murloc Knights have escaped the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple dungeon has been reduced from a 30-player raid to a 25-player raid.]

[World Announcement: Naga Lady Xiwadelin, the Naga Tidecaller, has fled the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple raid has been reduced from a 25-player raid to a 15-player raid.]

[World Announcement: The Elemental Elders Council has fled the Lost Temple, and the difficulty of the Lost Temple dungeon has been reduced. The dungeon difficulty has been lowered from a 15-player raid to a 10-player raid.]

[World Announcement: Gaierdela, the Dragon Turtle King, has escaped the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple dungeon has been reduced from a 10-player raid to a 5-player dungeon.]

[World Announcement: Mermaid Ariel has escaped the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple dungeon has been reduced; the 5-player dungeon has been downgraded to a single-player story dungeon.]

[World Announcement: The Sairen High Priestess has escaped the Lost Temple. The difficulty of the Lost Temple dungeon has been reduced; it has been changed from a single-player story dungeon to a public quest area.]

What the hell is going on?

The players—especially those playing as adventurers—were completely dumbfounded. Many of them had never seen a dungeon boss run away before. Of course, it wasn't uncommon, but it usually happened in regular dungeons run by the players themselves. But how could a dungeon boss in an expansion pack's story mode run away?

The hero players were even more frustrated. Those adventurers had spent a week running the dungeons; even the weaker teams had managed to defeat three or four bosses and farm a decent amount of gear. Some of the stronger players had even cleared the normal difficulty and acquired plenty of equipment. But these hero players weren't having it. They'd been eagerly awaiting the hero difficulty, fighting tooth and nail for those ten story-killing slots, and now all the dungeon bosses had disappeared. Wasn't all their effort completely wasted?

It's like hooking up with a girl online, getting ready to have sex, but then she disappears right away – you've taken the pills, bought the condom, and are about to get down to business. That feeling of having nowhere to vent your anger is enough to make everyone furious, and they're all clamoring to demand the game company take action.

Those player heroes who had read the script and had contracts with the game company were even more surprised. This was completely different from what was written in the script. Had the script been changed without their knowledge?

Therefore, they all started sending private messages to Xiao Yu.

Mephist (Dragon Knight Lord): "Hey bro, what's going on? This script is all wrong."

Esmehalda (Archmage the Kirin Tor): "Xiao Yu, are you crazy? How are you going to explain this to the game company?"

Raymond (Commander of the Royal Guard): "Brother, you're something else—I'd like to see how you get out of this."

Kaya Shadow Hunter (Moon Goddess Ranger): "Wow, wow, wow, well done, buddy. You're starting to pique my interest."

Feierdenan (Arcane Master): "??????????"

Ox (Dragon-Slaying Sword Saint): "..."

However, none of the private messages received any response or explanation. In fact, Xiao Yu did not intend to explain; he would show these people his answer through his actions.

Azathoth (the Elemental King): "Foolish mortals, you have completely fallen into my trap. The Lost Island will be your burial ground. Stormwind City and Orgrimmar will soon be reduced to ruins. None of your people will survive, and your nation will fall. All this is the consequence of your daring to oppose me, the Elemental King."

With that terrifying sound, a Chaos Dragon appeared in the distant sky. This Chaos Dragon was over two hundred meters long, so enormous that it blotted out the sun. It was even more astonishing than the one that appeared in Stormwind City last time. Just the sight of it flying towards them was enough to instill fear in anyone.

"It's the true form of the Elemental King!" Thrall, as Shaman, was very knowledgeable and could tell at a glance that the Elemental King before him was appearing in his true form, not in any projection or descent mode.

The sound continued, and soon the Chaos Dragon flew to the skies above the Lost Island, stopping at a distance of 500 yards, beyond the range of all magic.

Azathoth (Elemental King): "I am Azathoth, the Source of Chaos, the Elemental King, the ruler of the Elemental Plane, the Destroyer of worlds. This world will tremble before the Elemental Tide. Your previous victories were merely bait to lure you into complacency. Foolish mortals, as I predicted, your arrogance and ignorance easily led you into my trap. Now, you will pay the price for your actions."

Holy crap, this is absolutely amazing! The adventurers who came out of the dungeon were all excitedly looking at the huge boss in the sky, thinking to themselves, "This is what a final boss of an expansion should be like! It's even going to destroy the players' main city. It's unstoppable!"

These adventurers showed no concern whatsoever about the impending destruction of Orgrimmar and Stormwind City. In their view, it was merely a gimmick by the game company, and perhaps a new epic quest to rebuild Stormwind City / Orgrimmar would be released.

The Chaos Dragon was still speaking.

Azathoth (the Elemental King): "However, the Elemental King is merciful. You still have a chance to save your people, Thrall and Varian. If you two swear allegiance to me and lead your people to submit to the will of the Elemental King, then I will grant you my mercy. Your country will be preserved, your people will be spared from death and destruction, and your cities will no longer be razed to the ground. You only need to cede some territory to my elemental race."

Xiao Yu certainly didn't intend to fight the Alliance Horde to the death. Although it sounded cool, with adventurers around, it was a losing battle. Even if he killed all the NPCs, as long as the adventurers were still there, he couldn't win. Besides, that would mean the game world would have to shut down, which wasn't his goal.

His goal is still to force a peace treaty. As long as the Alliance and the Horde choose to surrender and cede a few more resource-rich territories, he wouldn't mind peace.

Because if I reverse course now, the game company's resource allocation towards me will definitely disappear. In that case, if I want to maintain the size of my elemental army, I will definitely need a lot of resources. Therefore, resource production areas are very important.

Thrall and Varian, facing such a desperate situation, were both in a dilemma. Whether to agree to the Elemental King's conditions and spare the people of both factions from destruction was clearly a question, but not one that could be ignored.

However, the two people's hesitation frightened the observers arranged by the game company.

"Quick, quickly send a message to the boss! Azathoth is too immersed in the role, he's gone mad! The Alliance and the Horde are about to surrender! If they surrender, what's the point of this expansion? Get the boss to send an oracle right now!"

P. S.: Please subscribe! My subscriptions have dropped a lot lately. I know the recent storylines haven't been very enjoyable, but this significant drop is really taking a toll on my wallet.

And now the plot has started to reverse, so please, dear readers, subscribe as soon as possible! I am deeply grateful.