Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 635: Lok’tar

When Mograine got worried enough about Duke to work himself into a lather and thundered back with his personal guard like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse themselves, all he found was one lonesome soul standing there with tear tracks carved down his face like battle scars.

"Where in blazes is Miss Barov?"

"Sent her packing back to Stormwind City.'"

Understandable, but what in Elune's sacred name were those tear streaks doing on Duke's mug?

And what was that story behind the sudden power surge crackling around him like summer lightning, those magical elements swirling through his being like a hurricane made of pure arcane energy?

Mograine hadn't laid eyes on Duke for more than ten long years.

Even during that legendary scrap where Duke and the entire tower of Karazhan vanished into thin air like smoke in the wind, Duke and Mograine had been slugging it out on different battlefields—one holding down the southern front while the other defended the northern reaches.

In Mograine's mind, Duke was still that brilliant tactician with balls bigger than Ironforge itself, but his personal fighting strength was about as impressive as a gnome trying to arm-wrestle an ogre.

You could never put Duke and raw magical power in the same sentence without laughing yourself silly.

Things had changed faster than a goblin changes his prices. Even Mograine—who knew about as much magic as a rock troll knows about fine dining—could feel the sheer arcane might radiating off Duke like heat from a forge.

Had Duke somehow clawed his way back up to Archmage status?

Hell no!

Not quite there yet!

Compared to old Antonidas, he seemed to be running a few coins short of a full purse.

The elemental energy was there alright—brilliant and exciting as dragon's fire—but there was still a gap in quality, like comparing fine elven wine to rotgut tavern swill.

Even so, the power rolling off him was scarier than a pack of hungry worgen.

Duke wasn't even thirty winters old yet, was he?

By the Light's grace, the bastard still looked pretty much the same as he did at eighteen—not a day older, like time itself was afraid to touch him.

Mograine's surprise stopped right there like a horse hitting a brick wall. If he'd known Duke had already achieved honest-to-goodness immortality, he might've turned greener than an orc with envy.

Shaking off their amazement like dogs shaking off fleas, they peered down the mountainside to survey the carnage below.

The battle between the orc army and the Scourge was getting nastier than a tavern brawl on payday.

Elite orc warriors from the Warsong and Frostwolf clans had formed a battle line stretching five kilometers from here to kingdom come, holding back the tide of walking corpses surging from north to south like they were trying to dam up the very ocean itself.

While this front line held tighter than a dwarf's grip on his gold, further south the great orc migration was in full swing.

Countless orc women and children hauled everything they owned on their backs or clutched their young ones tight, running like all the demons of the Twisting Nether were nipping at their heels.

If these had been humans instead, there'd be no chance in hell of crossing the Hillsbrad Plains in such record time with the Sea of the Undead breathing down their necks.

Human nature meant dragging along family heirlooms, household goods, and every piece of property they could carry—civilian migrations rarely covered more than fifty kilometers in a day, moving slower than molasses in winter.

Orcs were cut from different cloth entirely.

These tough-as-nails greenskins used the sky as their roof and the earth as their mattress, born and bred for the hunting life where they could survive on nothing but grit and determination even if they didn't have two copper pieces to rub together.

What's more, most of these orcs had just been freed from internment camps and owned about as much property as a beggar owns castles.

The result was that these orc women and children were moving faster than a fully armed human army on a forced march—and that's saying something.

"Attack, you brainless maggots!" Kel'Thuzad roared like thunder splitting the heavens. The soul-deep punishment from this high-level undead lord made hordes of lesser undead shake like leaves in a hurricane.

They bellowed back, using soul-piercing shrieks to drive forward endless waves of zombies, ghouls, and other low-level undead cannon fodder, sending them crashing against the orc battle lines like waves against a seawall.

This time, not only Kel'Thuzad but even Arthas himself took notice—and when the fallen prince paid attention, folks tended to end up deader than his old man's kingdom.

"Orcs? Those green-skinned savages..." Arthas's corruption ran soul-deep, a twisted transformation of mind and spirit, but that didn't mean his brains had turned to mush.

On the contrary, he remembered exactly how dangerous orcs could be in a real fight.

Uther had made him spar against orc prisoners to toughen him up like hammering steel on an anvil. Before his fall from grace, he'd also helped put down orc uprisings with the efficiency of a well-oiled war machine.

Most importantly, he'd witnessed firsthand the battle where Lordaeron City nearly fell, and the memory still made him feel shame burning in whatever passed for his soul these days.

Though he no longer believed he possessed any human feelings worth a damn, the fires of vengeance still drove him to make his decision.

Arthas raised his gauntleted hand like a general commanding the apocalypse.

The massive black war banner began to move forward like death incarnate.

Beside him rode hundreds of Death Knights mounted on skeletal warhorses that looked like nightmares given flesh and bone.

In life, every last one of them had followed Arthas from battle to bloody battle—from Andorhal in Lordaeron all the way to the frozen wastes of Northrend—right up until Arthas drew Frostmourne and cut them down like wheat, then dragged their souls back from death to serve as his elite Death Knight cavalry.

The moment they launched their charge, the orcs sensed them coming like prey sensing a predator.

Thrall bellowed over the din of battle: "Orgrim! Got any bright ideas? Looks like some heavy hitters are heading our way!"

Orgrim glanced back at the orc migration—one third of the women and children still hadn't made it to safety behind their lines—then whirled around with fire in his eyes: "Thrall! As the future warchief who'll shoulder the burden of our people's destiny, answer me this as my chosen successor! Would you abandon your clan when danger comes knocking?"

"No—never in a thousand lifetimes!" Thrall's answer rang out like a war horn, strong enough to wake the ancestors.

Grom, Rexxar, and thousands of orcs fighting tooth and nail nearby all grinned like wolves at the same moment.

"Lok-tar ogar!"

Victory or death—no middle ground, no surrender, no mercy!

How many long years had it been?

It had been ages since tens of thousands of orcs had roared out this battle cry with such earth-shaking power and primal fury.

In that moment, every old-timer who'd survived the Second War felt tears of pride burning in their eyes like liquid fire.

With one bone-crushing chop after another, the zombies and ghouls that charged the orc battle line fell in groups like grain before the scythe.

Right then, Arthas's Death Knights thundered into the fray like the end of the world on horseback. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

The skeletal warhorses—so thin they looked like walking coat racks held together by spite and dark magic—reeked of death so strongly that even the low-level undead scattered like roaches when the lights come on. They charged forward like icebreakers through a frozen sea, reaching the orc front lines in just a few heart-pounding minutes.

This was combat stripped down to its raw, bloody essentials—no fancy tactics, no clever strategies.

Would the unstoppable force break through the immovable object?

Or would the dam hold against the flood?

The thunderous crash that followed told every living soul within miles the brutal truth—this was going to be a draw written in blood and bone!

Orcs weren't built for playing defense like turtles hiding in their shells.

Though it looked like the orcs were the defending side, that was pure illusion. The orcs maintained their so-called defensive line entirely by turning their enemies into paste and bone fragments.

When a Death Knight charged in, either the Death Knight's dark magic snuffed out an orc's life faster than blowing out a candle, or that orc used his holy light-blessed war hammer to smash both Death Knight and skeletal mount into powder with one devastating blow.

The instant clashes were like watching two unstoppable forces meet head-on.

This was more like a horrific mutual annihilation, the kind of meat grinder warfare that made even hardened commanders wince.

"Kill them all!"

"Lok-tar!"

In the blink of an eye, it became a chaotic free-for-all where only the strongest and luckiest would see another sunrise.

Just as the Death Knights smashed into the battle line like a battering ram through parchment, even the Scourge failed to notice that fresh troops had quietly entered the battlefield from the southernmost peaks of the Alterac Mountains.

At first, nobody spotted this new force because they were shrouded in a cold fog covering several square kilometers like a blanket.

It felt no different from the Scourge's own chilling aura of undeath—just another patch of supernatural frost in a landscape already crawling with the walking dead.