Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 608: Goodbye

BAM! Duke was three sheets to the wind when that demonic warlock had the audacity to call him a devil. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Just as Duke was about to show this fool what a real devil looked like, Ner'zhul's panicked shriek hit Duke's ears like a banshee's wail, nearly sending his heart straight through his ribcage:

"NO! I don't want to bite the dust! Kil'jaeden! SAVE ME—"

In the blink of an eye, darkness swallowed the entire space like a hungry beast.

A voice darker than a moonless night in a graveyard echoed around Duke and his companions, dripping with malice.

"Save you? Oh, absolutely! The Burning Legion way!" Kil'jaeden's laughter was colder than a witch's kiss.

"DEMON SCUM!" Alexstrasza had reached her breaking point! She stormed forward and planted herself beside Duke like a mountain of righteous fury: "Show yourself, you Legion filth! Let's dance!"

Duke's teeth ground together like millstones. This wasn't part of the script, damn it all!

In the original timeline, Ner'zhul was supposed to take the easy way out—a one-way ticket to oblivion before Kil'jaeden could sink his claws into him. So why in the nine hells was he poking the bear now?

Kil'jaeden's voice oozed contempt: "A fight? HAHAHA! I haven't got time to swat flies, especially not some overgrown lizard from backwater Azeroth. But since my pathetic little puppet is crying out my magnificent name, well... I'd be a poor excuse for 'the Deceiver' if I just sat on my hands, wouldn't I? Kehehehehe!"

The Deceiver!

Sweet merciful Light!

Kil'jaeden—demon lord of the highest Eredar caste—was bad news wrapped in worse news with a bow made of pure nightmare. This bastard sat at Sargeras's right hand 25,000 years ago when the Dark Titan was still the Pantheon's golden boy. Along with Archimonde, he was one of Sargeras's ace cards in a deck stacked with death.

Kil'jaeden had bent the knee of every dreadlord and their king Tichondrius, making them his personal lapdogs to handle the dirty work—corrupting entire races and feeding them to the Legion's meat grinder. Every world the Legion touched became nothing but cinders and screaming ghosts.

Archimonde's armies were unstoppable juggernauts that could flatten mountains and boil seas, but it was Kil'jaeden's cunning that made it all tick. The son of a bitch was a master of disguise who could sell ice to a frost giant and make them thank him for it.

Hell, just recently he'd shapeshifted into Ner'zhul's beloved wife and sweet-talked the orcs into massacring the Draenei—the scattered remnants of Prophet Velen's people who'd given Kil'jaeden and his Eredar brothers the finger all those millennia ago.

Back when Duke was just a player button-mashing through raids, Archimonde the Defiler and Kil'jaeden the Deceiver were just really tough boss fights that made him curse at his monitor.

But standing here in the flesh? The Deceiver's bag of tricks was deeper than a dragon's hoard and twice as deadly. Even a time-hopping smartass like Duke had to tip his hat to that level of diabolical genius.

Kil'jaeden rarely dropped his own name in conversation, but when he did... Duke's spine turned to jelly.

"System! Scan everything within a country mile! I want every magical hiccup, every arcane fart!"

"Roger that, boss!"

In less time than it takes to blink, Duke's blood turned to ice water. Kil'jaeden's ace in the hole was staring him right in the face—the Skull of Gul'dan.

Wrapped up tighter than a miser's purse strings in layers of protective magic, Gul'dan's noggin was cooking up something that would make a volcano look like a birthday candle.

Holy shit on a shingle! Duke finally understood why some two-bit death knight's skull could pack the punch of a god-tier weapon.

The damn thing was stuffed to the gills with Sargeras's own corrupted power!

Right now, an explosion that would make the Big Bang look like a firecracker was building up inside that bony time bomb.

It was like strapping dynamite to a fallen god's corpse and lighting the fuse. Duke couldn't even begin to wrap his head around that kind of devastating power.

According to his system's readings, everyone present would be turned into their component atoms—everyone except maybe Alexstrasza.

Even with Karazhan's defenses cranked up to eleven, Duke would be deader than a doornail.

Hold your horses!

That backstabbing orc had waltzed into Karazhan carrying a magical nuke!

Son of a bitch! Duke had been played like a fiddle!

Time crawled to a standstill.

Everything around them moved like they were swimming through molasses.

Tirion Fordring's face was tighter than a drum, his massive two-handed warhammer gripped so hard his gauntlets were creaking like old floorboards.

Gavinrad flanked Duke's position, yanking an epic tower shield from his pack and switching his hammer to a one-handed grip faster than you could say "incoming."

The Windrunner sisters had their bowstrings pulled taut as piano wire, standing back-to-back like a pair of deadly bookends as they sidled toward Duke. Alleria's eyes darted around like a hawk hunting mice, trying to spot Kil'jaeden lurking in the shadows. Vereesa kept shooting worried glances at Duke between scanning for threats.

Only Alexstrasza stood there bold as brass, hands on her hips, chin up like she owned the whole damn world. If any Burning Legion bigshot had the stones to show his face, she'd personally introduce his nose to his brain.

Nobody but Duke knew that Kil'jaeden wouldn't actually materialize.

Duke's mind raced through a thousand desperate schemes, but they were all stuck between a rock and a hard place. They were like poor bastards who'd swallowed poison—the venom was already in their veins, and no amount of hoping and praying would get it out.

Just when things looked bleaker than a funeral in winter, Duke spotted Ner'zhul sprawled out like roadkill. Several of the orc's tusks were glowing with a sickly red soul-light.

Eureka! Lightning struck!

Didn't the Dark Portal want to play hero and rescue Ner'zhul?

Well, here's your chance, you interdimensional pain in the ass!

Faster than you could say "abracadabra," dozens of Duke's duplicates materialized, each one pulling a different stunt. The light show didn't just rattle his own allies—it had Kil'jaeden scratching his head while peeping through Ner'zhul's soul-link.

But only one clone—the one Duke was puppeting with everything he had—made a beeline for Ner'zhul. With a kick that would make a mule proud, Duke's duplicate planted his boot right in the orc's gut, launching him and that cursed skull like a cannonball.

"YEEEOOOOWWW!" The former Horde chieftain went airborne, screaming like a scalded cat.

The next heartbeat, reality tore open like wet paper, and a portal blacker than Satan's soul materialized—complete with snarling snake carvings and sword-wielding sentinels flanking the doorway.

"Duke?!" Alexstrasza's jaw hit the floor. Wasn't Karazhan supposed to be Duke's personal playground?

Duke kept his mouth shut and let the Dark Portal gobble up the dying Ner'zhul like a hungry beast. He even positioned one of his clones as a meat shield in front of Alexstrasza.

"IMPOSSIBLE!" Kil'jaeden's howl of rage echoed from the void like a tornado made of pure fury.

When your enemy's having a conniption, you know you've hit the jackpot.

Even though nobody else had a clue what the hell just happened, the fact that Kil'jaeden was throwing a tantrum like a toddler who'd dropped his candy meant Duke had played his cards right.

"MOVE YOUR ASSES!" Duke's real body grabbed both Windrunner sisters by the wrists and yanked them backward while teleporting faster than greased lightning.

If Duke was screaming bloody murder, you knew the shit was about to hit the fan in the worst possible way.

After a split second of confusion, the sisters—quick as whips and twice as smart—blinked out of danger while hauling Duke toward Karazhan's entrance.

Alexstrasza scooped up both paladins like they were children.

Just as the terrace door slammed shut with a boom that shook the foundations, an earth-shattering roar erupted from behind them that would have made the gods themselves cover their ears... novelbuddy.cσ๓