Bullet

The situation staring them in the face made the three tribal heroes frown harder than accountants during tax season.

Go in? Or chicken out like scaredy-cats?

This was a problem bigger than choosing between pizza and burgers when you're starving.

Jump in? Those blizzard tornadoes spinning around inside weren't messing around – they'd turn anyone into a human popsicle faster than you could say "brain freeze." Watching those razor-sharp ice prisms whirling around would give Stephen King nightmares.

Stay out? Tens of thousands of elite warriors were watching this trainwreck unfold, and Warchief Blackhand had issued a death sentence that was clearer than a neon sign: no matter how many bodies hit the floor, this human mage who had the brass balls to publicly pimp-slap their reputation had to be turned into confetti.

Could they bail out like Elvis leaving the building?

Samuro, who materialized like a ninja at a Chuck Norris convention, eyeballed Kilrogg and Orgrim with the intensity of a poker player holding aces.

Plot twist – it was the Orc Swordmaster who rolled the dice first.

Ditching the stealth advantage of Wind Step like throwing away a winning lottery ticket, the Orc Swordmaster launched himself directly into Duke's massive ice fortress that was wider than a football field, drew his blade, and started spinning like a Tasmanian Devil on Red Bull.

Samuro's eyes blazed with killing intent hotter than ghost peppers. Duke had to die! Every human who dared spit in the face of Horde glory deserved to bite the dust. The most brutal blood sacrifice would honor the brothers who got barbecued by magical flames!

The sword light was more dazzling than a Las Vegas marquee on New Year's Eve.

The incredible whirling sword light was like a never-ending tornado, transforming in no time flat into a storm, a twister made of pure sword energy that could slice and dice better than any infomercial gadget.

The damage from that terrifying sword light went above and beyond what any normal blade should reach, creating sword energy that kept carving up Duke's shield like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Daniel gripped the flag behind Duke with the shock of someone who'd just seen Bigfoot riding a unicorn, muttering to himself, "What in the Sam Hill is that skill?"

"Blade Storm – the signature move of the Fire Blade Clan's Swordmaster," Duke sneered with the confidence of a Vegas dealer holding all the aces.

Duke could recite the sword master's fighting techniques backwards and forwards while blindfolded.

"If that's your ace in the hole, then kiss your ass goodbye!"

Oh yeah! Duke had locked onto Samuro like a heat-seeking missile. Unlike Kilrogg and Orgrim, who were built like brick outhouses, Swordmaster Samuro packed serious firepower, but the bottom line was that Samuro was an assassin, while those two cockroach-tough bastards were straight-up warriors.

From one angle, the Sword Master was cut from the same cloth as a Mage – both had the most devastating attack power and destructive capability, but flip the coin and their bodies were fragile as glass figurines.

Actually, scratch that – the Sword Saint was **more extreme than a reality TV show.

After cranking up his speed and attack power to eleven, the Sword Master only had one get-out-of-jail-free card: Mirror Image, which relied on multiple clones to bamboozle enemies like a shell game at a county fair.

What Duke feared least was mirror images. With his system AI scanning 24/7, Duke could always separate the wheat from the chaff faster than a card shark spotting marked cards.

Of course, Duke had a simpler and more balls-to-the-wall approach.

The next second, he dramatically raised his left hand high as the sky, snapped his fingers with more swagger than a rockstar ending a guitar solo, then whipped his left hand to the left like he was conducting a symphony of destruction.

This brand-new move, created by mixing and matching Dwarven Quenching Hell and Ice Ring like a mad scientist in his lab, was called Rapid Avalanche.

With one smooth-as-butter arm wave, every square inch of space within the wide-area ice shield – except for Duke, Daniel, and a ten-meter safety zone behind them – got frozen solid as a rock instantly.

At first, Sword Saint Samuro tried to weather the storm by spinning faster than a NASCAR engine, but he quickly discovered his spinning was slowing down like molasses in winter, his movements getting more sluggish than a government bureaucrat processing paperwork.

Houston, we have a problem!

For a hot minute, Duke almost thought he could take Samuro out in one shot like a Wild West gunslinger.

When Duke opened his right hand and made a crushing gesture, about to use a giant ice fist that appeared out of thin air to grab Samuro and squeeze him like a grape, Orgrim crashed the party.

The massive square-headed Doomhammer came down with a thunderous crash that could wake the dead, and a visible lava crack blasted through Duke's Wide-Area Ice Shield like a hot knife through butter, perfectly timed to let violent heat rush into Samuro's blade storm that was about to call it quits.

After the high temperature got pumped in, Samuro suddenly had enough juice to fight back against Duke's arctic assault. The blade storm that had almost flatlined once again showed its mind-blowing destructive power.

The high-speed spinning sword blade, carrying extreme heat that could boil water in the surrounding air, actually chewed through Duke's shield by a full quarter in one fell swoop.

Duke's face turned darker than a storm cloud.

"I knew that Doomhammer wasn't some bargain-basement piece of junk!" Duke cursed like a sailor who'd stubbed his toe.

As Orgrim's legendary weapon, Doomhammer had never been some no-name piece of hardware. Being baptized in lava for years had given Doomhammer fire elemental power that was off the charts. However, the current Doomhammer wasn't even firing on all cylinders yet.

Just like Lothar's Sword of Kings, when a weapon carries the hopes and dreams of millions of people from an entire race, even if the weapon itself was made from ordinary scrap metal, it gets promoted to at least semi-legendary status.

Not to mention that Doomhammer itself wasn't your run-of-the-mill tool.

No joke – after becoming Warchief of the Horde, Orgrim's strength would at least double what it was now.

The next moment, Kilrogg joined the party like an uninvited guest at a wedding.

Wielding two short axes that were **shorter than a baseball bat, Kilrogg Deadeye went full berserker mode. His axe blades carried some mysterious mojo, and every lightning-fast swing could actually drain the icy power in Duke's shield **faster than a vampire at a blood bank.

Duke's already storm-cloud-dark face got even blacker, darker than the bottom of a cast-iron skillet.

"Holy hell! Every hero in the Horde is a complete freak of nature! I'm done playing with you lunatics! Daniel, we're getting the hell out of Dodge!"

A real smart cookie should know when to fold 'em, using strategic withdrawal to fight another day from miles away.

When the three Horde heroes revealed their trump cards one after another like magicians at a talent show, Duke immediately realized this was only the tip of the iceberg. It was still way too early for him to put them six feet under.

So Duke hit the road faster than a jackrabbit at the first sign of trouble!

He grabbed Daniel and beat feet backwards.

Since they'd been looking up at the mountaintop from halfway up the slope, it wasn't until this moment that the three Horde heroes were shocked to discover that Duke actually had a griffin hidden just around the corner.

With absolutely zero intention of fighting to the death with the tribal heroes, Duke hopped on the griffin behind him like a cowboy mounting his trusty steed.

The griffin didn't understand why Duke was cutting and running when the fight was heating up, but thanks to its top-notch training, after sensing the designated signals from its temporary master, the griffin let out a long howl with a touch of attitude and suddenly spread its wings and took off like a rocket.

"Edmund Duke! If you've got any balls left, come down and throw down with me!" Seeing Duke about to fly the coop, Orgrim was madder than a wet hen. He couldn't wrap his head around why this seemingly all-powerful human wizard would even think about running like a scared rabbit.

Hadn't he already gotten the upper hand on all three of them?

"Orgrim, if you've got any backbone, come to Stormwind Fortress and duel me in front of a hundred thousand human soldiers! You've got some nerve challenging me to a one-on-one when you're ganging up like a pack of wolves! Bite me!" The griffin climbed faster than a rocket ship, and in the blink of an eye Duke rose to thirty meters high.

Duke shot back in Orcish, and Orgrim was speechless as a mime. Duke was right on the money – the three of them were all big-shot heroes in the Horde!

Just as Duke was about to make his great escape, at that moment, a bone-chilling whistling sound approached at breakneck speed from far away.

Bullet Time – this ridiculous ability, with help from the system AI, Duke actually pulled it off.

Time around him suddenly slowed to a crawl, and the thing that had almost reached the speed of sound finally appeared in Duke's vision in nearly frozen time.

It was a weird-looking, massive single-edged axe, the blade of which looked somewhat like a giant fishhook, or rather, like an elephant's trunk.

In the entire world of Azeroth, there weren't too many axes of this shape, but there were definitely quite a few.

Considering that the guy who launched this missile was at least a hundred meters away from Duke. And from a hundred meters out, he could throw an axe so inhumanly powerful, with a terrifying scream that could rattle your soul and power that could shake heaven and earth.

Then this axe could only have one name – Gorehowl!

An ordinary axe certainly wasn't enough to make Duke so flabbergasted. This Gorehowl was the crown jewel of its owner's legendary reputation.

Grom Hellscream – Even though Duke was destined to be in the Alliance camp in the future, he had to tip his hat to this Horde hero.

Looking in the direction where the axe was launched, with help from the system, a powerhouse figure was clearly highlighted by a red target marker.

As a hardcore gamer, Duke recognized Grom in a heartbeat. He was a rare orc with braided hair on his head, black hair that cascaded to his chest, and a trapezoidal face. He also sported single shoulder armor on his right shoulder, and a skull-patterned belt across his chest. His tan body was packed with strong muscles that contained unimaginable explosive power.

He even maintained the axe-throwing pose like a statue.

Grom Hellscream was famous, first and foremost because he was the first orc to be sweet-talked by Gul'dan and drink the blood of the high-level demon, the pit lord Mannoroth, which turned the dark brown skin of orcs green and gave them the power to invade the world of Azeroth.

As chieftain of the Warsong clan, one of the most powerful orc clans, Grom's strength was absolutely top-tier.

In the Second Dark Portal War in "history", the axe of Grom, who was responsible for guarding the Dark Portal, was drenched with the blood of human warriors. He killed as many as 48 powerful knights with names and reputations. His greatest achievement in "history" was sacrificing himself and teaming up with the later Warchief Thrall to take down the Abyss Lord Mannoroth, who had bamboozled the orcs.

Duke never expected that Grom Hellscream, who didn't participate in the first Battle of the Dark Gate, would come and bushwhack him.

History had once again reached a major turning point!

At this frozen moment, Duke felt like his mind was stuck in ice.

Some things, seeing them, doesn't mean you can pull them off.

Duke's scalp was tingling like live wires. From the bullet time that slowed down the passage of time, he saw the starting point of the axe and also the endpoint of the axe – his back, but Duke had no way in hell to avoid this fatal blow.

Speed up, slow down, dodge left, avoid right, block... In just a moment, the system AI helped Duke run simulations of what might happen next thousands of times in his mind, but Duke came up empty every single time.

This had nothing to do with skill.

This was a strike that completely blew past the scope of martial arts and transcended the concepts of physics and scientific principles.

It felt like this was the kind of process that took a guaranteed hit as a starting point and completed the hit by itself. It was a completely unreasonable attack that totally flipped cause and effect upside down.

Just like Lothar's sword of kings that gathered the will and faith of humanity for more than a thousand years, Grom's axe throwing also gathered all the spirit of this "Sword Saint" who also came from the Burning Blade Clan, as well as the wild and unmatched will of the entire clan's 100,000 warriors.

"Orcs will never be slaves--" Grom Hellscream's classic battle cry seemed to still echo in Duke's ears.

Duke saw a vision on the axe that was spinning end over end, and witnessed the struggles and battles of the orcs on the land of Draenor for thousands of years.

Survival of the fittest.

The orcs used their wildness and unbreakable will to become the masters of the land of Draenor.

Now Draenor was heading toward destruction, and the orcs, following the unholy alliance between Gul'dan and Sargeras, saw Azeroth as the next stop for the orcs to continue their legacy.

No compromise, no lucky breaks.

At this moment, Duke finally realized that even as a wizard, sometimes he had to throw down with real steel and guts.

"HAH!" Duke shouted. At this time, Daniel, who was helping control the griffin up front, was terrified to discover that twenty meters behind him, there was an extremely massive axe that broke through the stagnant air and chopped toward him.

Suddenly, twelve magic circles and thirty-six wizard hands appeared not far in front of the left side of the griffin.

Daniel opened his mouth in pure amazement. He didn't even notice that the strong wind from high-speed flight rushed into his mouth, making his face puff up and look ridiculous.

The two metamagic feats, Multicasting and Moving Casting, are special abilities that many mages can't master in their entire lifetime. Not everyone can keep their cool while moving at high speed, allowing every spell to enter the mental zone perfectly and use magic power to activate them in the correct sequence.

Not to mention Multicast in Moving Casting.

Even if Duke's magic was performed silently, it was still mind-blowing for mortals.

This was like asking a person to run at Olympic sprinter speed without slowing down and recite 48 different ancient poems with more than 100 words in their minds crystal clear at the same time.

Is this even humanly possible?

But Duke pulled it off with help from System Genie.

Not only Daniel, but also Orgrim, Kilrogg, Samuro who were nervously watching Grom Hellscream's attack below, as well as Warchief Blackhand not far away, and thousands of orcs witnessed this spectacular sight.

The magnificent array that suddenly appeared in the sky was like a miracle described in an epic poem.

Arcane Blast fell with thunderous impact.

It wasn't chaotic shooting like a torrential downpour, but very precise and calculated firing with a strange rhythm.

"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!..." In a very short time, dozens of arcane shocks rained down on the axe blade that was constantly spinning, and each attack was less than one-fiftieth of a second apart. But each attack nailed the same position on the left side of the axe blade that was constantly spinning and changing position in the air.

From left to right, Arcane Blast was fired from the twelve magic circles, and arcane missiles were also launched from the hands of the thirty-six mages.

Without anyone noticing, the mighty Gorehowl was steered off course.