Chapter 578 36. The Ambition of Warlocks (Part 1)

In the early morning, dewdrops hang on the grass stems by the roadside. The cold breath of night has not completely faded from the land, but in the early morning wind, there is more or less a trace of gunpowder smoke. Looking up from the barren land, the sky is filled with The black smoke column has not been extinguished, and on the edge of the Black Cloud Peak, some tauren tents are still burning.

At this moment, Major Ren of the Gray Wolf Brigade of Gilneas, who had rushed to Black Cloud Peak to inspect the battlefield under the order of King Liam, and hundreds of soldiers behind him were looking at the battlefield in front of them blankly.

The stairway to the stone pillar that was guarded by the tauren of the horror totem was empty, and the ground below the stone pillar was full of corpses that fell from the top of the Black Cloud Peak. After falling down, it was difficult to see the intact outline, and in the bushes around the blood-stained stone pillar, some scavenging wild dogs who smelled the "aroma" of food were watching the fully armed human soldiers vigilantly .

"Check around for those..."

Colonel Wren led his soldiers up the Black Cloud Peak. He looked at the completely destroyed Tauren position in front of him and the burning huts. He wanted to issue some orders, but he stood on the steps. Looking around, the tauren camp, which was still noisy a few days ago, was dead silent now, as if life had never existed here.

What's more, with the unique intuition of a veteran, Colonel Wren felt that some sick and dark things were hiding in the ruins at the top of the Black Cloud Peak. They might not exist physically, but the threat of those strange things, Perhaps no weaker than a savage centaur on a frontal battlefield.

"Go find the survivors!"

After hesitating for a few minutes, the colonel still gave the order. He had to figure out what happened here last night, what happened to the tauren tribe of more than 3,000 people, which caused them to be completely destroyed overnight .

And just as the soldiers clenched their muskets with bayonets and were about to spread out to search, a voice suddenly sounded from the edge of the ruins:

"You better leave the wreckage alone..."

"who!"

The colonel subconsciously grabbed the gun at his waist, and pointed the muzzle at the shadow in the sun behind him vigilantly. Under his gaze, a group of people slowly walked out of the shadow. They were some human beings, probably more than 100 in number. They are all wearing the hoods of the Church of the Holy Light, but the color of the hoods is a rare black, and these men and women also have more or less traces of blood and battles, most of them Everyone looked very tired, and there were some wounded.

Clearly, they had a tough fight.

"Who are you? Friends."

Colonel Renn saw his compatriots appear on the battlefield of Heiyunfeng, and he did not let down his vigilance. Under his questioning, the leader of those weird people, a middle-aged man who seemed to be in his 40s, picked up a piece of paper from his pocket. He took out a small, folded letter and handed it to the colonel. After reading it at a glance, the Gilneas colonel's eyes widened.

He looked at the more than 100 compatriots in front of him in disbelief, and lowered his voice:

"It's really you... You just destroyed this clan with just a few people? Are you kidding me?"

"It's not just us."

The leading priest, Shadow, drew a few religious symbols on his chest in a gesture of compassion, and behind him, the silent priests also made the same gesture.

"And the 95 of our compatriots who died here, the victims who spilled their blood on this desecrated ground, without whose sacrifices we could not have achieved such a feat, but this is not the time to say that , when we embrace the shadow, our name and existence are irrelevant. This is the will of the Holy Light."

The priest recited the sacred scriptures silently, but he could not give people the slightest sense of the sacred. In these weird priests, Colonel Wren could not feel the warmth of the holy light, but could only feel the faint cold sting from the darkness. This made him and his soldiers subconsciously want to stay away from these weird priests.

"On the western platform of Black Cloud Peak, there are still some tauren captives whose minds have been defeated, waiting for you to receive them, Colonel."

Father Shadow didn't care about the doubts and faint fear in the soldiers' eyes. He stretched out his hand, pointed to the wreckage in other areas of Heiyun Peak, and said to the colonel:

"The devouring plague still remains in these ruins, as well as the shadow fiends we summoned from our dreams. Their existence is fatal to flesh and blood, but in the real world, they only need a week's time It will dissipate naturally, but unfortunately, in the next few years, these stone pillars will be infected by the power of fear, and it is not suitable for too many people to live here until everything returns to normal."

As he spoke, the priest led the rest of his compatriots towards the stairs leaving this place. He seemed very silent, like a person who really lived in the shadows.

"What's your name? Father?"

When the priests were about to leave, Major Wren sighed. He looked back at the priest in the black hood and shouted loudly:

"I have to write down your contributions in the battle report... I can't use "Anonymous" to refer to you, can I?"

The shout stunned the silent priest for a moment, then he turned his head, pulled his hood down, and said in a hoarse voice:

"You can call me... Daize, we are the heresy judges of the Church of the Holy Light, you can just report it like this."

"Okay, Reverend Daze."

Colonel Wren moved his fingers and shouted:

"Anyway, thank you for your sacrifices for the Empire."

The shadow priest named Dai Ze didn't answer, he shook his hand without looking back, and just disappeared on the stairs without a sound, and the moment he walked down the stairs of Black Cloud Peak, Dai Ze saw Looking at the bones of the tauren who fell to the ground in the fear of last night, he sighed deeply. Under the sunshine, the priest knelt on one knee on the barren land, as if alive The shadow like an object was drawn to grow old and long.

In the wind of the wilderness, he silently recited his inner prayer, and finally, with his eyes closed, he said softly:

"This...is all the will of the Holy Light."

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The destruction of the Black Cloud Peak's Horrortotem clan was a hearty victory in the westward war launched by the empire. It directly changed the situation on the rear battlefield. In the wilderness to the west of the Great Elevator, and the last centaur tribe occupying the easily defensible Grand Canyon "Wind Nest", the advance of the human army is not as fast as it should be.

On the one hand, 70% of the entire Thousand Needles has fallen under the control of the empire, and on the other side of Thousand Needles, at the northern entrance of Feralas, the night elf army has blocked the exit of the other side. This directly led to the fact that the remaining centaur tribes had no way to retreat, and those barbarians who were driven to a dead end could only resist stubbornly.

On the other hand, under the aggressive power of the human empire, the originally arrogant Centaur Khan had to humbly accept the help of the cunning goblin consortium. With the support of a large number of alchemy bombs, the centaurs who finally had "hot weapons" also had a little more power to fight back in the human attack.

"boom"

Several crazy centaurs covered with alchemy bombs roared and rushed towards the human position. Seeing the suicide attack of the monster with red eyes and thunderous voice, even the bravest human soldiers had to Choose to fall back to avoid these flexible "human flesh" bombs.

More than 20 heavy weapons fired non-stop, weaving a death net in front of the position, and blasting the bodies of those centaurs who rushed over in the air, but even so, the death-defying barbarians were hung After the alchemy bomb was detonated, the small fragments filled in the bomb still caused several casualties to the soldiers staying in the position.

"Dry!"

Aldrin, the old knight of the Kingdom of Stormgard who was supervising the battle on the front line, grabbed his helmet and slammed it on the table in front of him. Carrying the wounded soldier back to the medical center at the rear, the old soldier's heart was like a burning fire.

This is not the first time.

Those stubborn centaurs got the bombs from the goblins, and then learned this disgusting and threatening "meat bomb" tactic without a teacher. Most of the crazy centaurs covered in bombs destroyed most of them. Even the elite company after a full facelift would suffer heavy casualties from the self-explosion of a few centaurs who rushed out from nowhere.

What's more terrible is that this kind of self-detonation firepower that can appear anytime and anywhere has greatly affected the courage in the soldiers' hearts. No one wants to be crippled by the opponent's self-destruction after killing the opponent.

But the reality is like this, the crazy behavior of the centaurs did prevent the human empire from continuing to advance. After seeing the effect, those brutal centaur Khans put more effort into making such dangerous "gadgets". Moreover, under the impetus of their evil wisdom, they have developed a "variety of tricks" attack methods.

It is said that a day ago, on the Wind Nest battlefield, there was a Lordaeron infantry regiment retreating to the rear for recuperation, and it was completely blown out of the formation by the collective self-destruction of hundreds of centaurs rushing out halfway... That is really true. It was an out-and-out disaster. It is said that the soldiers on the Wind Nest battlefield are all in danger now, and the offensive over there has completely stopped.

"Let the frontline soldiers retreat 300 meters! Let the engineers dig trenches for attack! Send more scouts!"

The old knight Aldrin shouted to the orderly beside him:

"Deploy 10 multi-firing machine guns from the armory to the front line, and tell the sergeants on the front line! I need them to kill those bastards on the way to the charge! Got it?"

The roar and anger of the military commander can't change the current predicament on the battlefield. As long as human beings make an all-out attack, there will inevitably be barbarians who are ready to burn themselves and explode to stop the soldiers. The worst part of suicide attacks is that, As long as it succeeds once, it can be exchanged for several times the harvest. Under the current situation, every soldier in the human empire is very precious, and no military chief would be willing to bury his soldiers with those smelly barbarians.

"We need more Griffin Riders and turn the sky into our battlefield!"

In the Northwest Command, the irascible King Garin walked around the table, waving his hands and shouting at the others:

"Air supremacy! That's a word I've heard from dwarves and goblins selling weapons. It makes sense, doesn't it? Now it's clear that unless we are willing to pay huge casualties, those smelly centaurs won't I will not voluntarily surrender, and I am not willing to accept the surrender of those bastards, I will cut off the heads of each of them!"

"And those damned Steamwheedle goblins!"

The eyes of the young king were bloodshot with anger:

"The damn weapons they gave to the centaur buried at least the lives of nearly a thousand of our great boys, and they all deserve to die!"

"Most of the Dwarves of the Wildhammer Clan stayed in Kul Tiras, and there were not many Griffin Riders who followed us to Kalimdor. The beast trainers are trying to tame the local wyverns as air mounts, but The massive air force you want is unlikely to be possible for at least a few years."

The Duke of Ebonlocke, who was also frowning, stared at the tactical map on the table in front of him. There was a strange light in the eyes of this old man who was over sixty years old. After fighting with King Garin for a few words, the old man The Duke took a sip of his wine, waved his hand to fend off the surrounding guards, and then lowered his voice:

"If the group of elf mages in Quel'Thalas are here, we can use the abilities of the mages to send an army into the core area of ​​these centaurs, and a center will bloom..."

"Good idea, but those high elves are too busy playing games with those ogres in Feralas, and they don't have time to help us."

Galin said angrily:

"The mages of Dalaran have gone somewhere... so what you say is meaningless."

"No!"

The old duke sighed, he raised his head and looked at King Garin:

"I have a force of spellcasters who are willing to sacrifice for the cause of the empire. Their appearance will directly change the situation on the frontline battlefield, but the only question is, Your Majesty Garin, do you have the guts to use them?"

"What's the meaning?"

King Garin sensed something in the old duke's words, and he asked suspiciously:

"Your Excellency Ambrock, it's already this time, please don't go around in circles, okay?"

The old prince had a strange expression on his face, but after a while, he still explained seriously:

"Ahem...I mean, a few days ago, a group of sneaky warlocks approached me and expressed their desire to join the empire's military power system. I can guarantee that they are powerful and innocent, but you Knowing the bad reputation of warlocks in the empire, that's why I ask you, do you dare to use them in this war?"